Thank Yous and Happy Birthdays -

Thank you to both geekmama and jaded_jamie for the snowflake cookies. They're almost too pretty to eat!

And a slightly belated Happy Birthday to killabeez and to gillo, two more reasons I'm so glad for the Internet. I've met some wonderful people - sometimes in real life and sometimes not - and these are just two. I hope the next year is the best yet for each of you.

SLIS is My Life

Or will be in January. (SLIS = School of Library and Information Science.) I think I need to print that out a few times and tape it up anywhere I might do my normal procrastinating. School has always come very easily to me and as a result I developed lazy study habits over the years. In fact, the only classes I didn't get easy As and Bs in - math and (consequently, since math is so necessary to so much of it) science - are the ones I had to really study for. Yeah, I was that annoying kid in 8th grade that would come it just before English or History class, do the homework in five minutes, and get an A on it. Of course, I was also the kid in 10th grade who flunked geometry because I could not get those stupid formulas to stay in my brain for tests. (I got Bs on the homework - not easy Bs for me, but got them - but on tests, when we couldn't have the formulas in front of us, I couldn't remember them.)

In any case, I think my life is about to become more structured and scheduled than it has been in over 30 years. Maybe I'll end up with one of those charts you make little kids to remember to do everything every day (brush teeth - make bed - clear table - gold star in the box when you do it). It's going to be a challenge, but I'm looking forward to this.

I feel much more positive about this degree than my associates or bachelors. Especially my bachelors - I mentioned at graduation that I had really mixed feelings about it. I was glad to finally get it, but really wished it was in English, not Organizational Management. I did that program, though, just to get it done as quickly as possible so I could go on to other things. I also didn't feel that the program really challenged me, so sometimes I feel like it was kind of a cheat. It's not - it's a real degree from a real, accredited college that's been around for quite awhile (and at which my dad taught some social work classes back in the late '70s and early '80s) - but I pretty much breezed through it, so it doesn't feel quite real, I guess. I daresay that won't be an issue with this one!

All of which means that orientation went well and I passed all three sections of the IC3 certification exam. In fact, I was the first one done. They covered pretty basic stuff, but not so basic that one could go in with no background and pass by guessing. I'm glad I studied for them - if I hadn't, even having used computers at work for 20 years, I wouldn't have passed them. It wouldn't have been the end of the world - I could've still taken the first required class and thrown in some 1 or 2 credit class, like Nutrition, to keep my financial aid and deferments - but I didn't want to start out that way. I should be able to get my books in early January, then classes start on January 11.

"It's Been Surgically Removed"

This was the first thing I heard when I turned Star Trek on this evening, a few minutes late, spoken by a very perturbed Doctor McCoy.

Can you guess which episode it was from that scene alone? Can you? I did! Here's a clue:

"Brain and brain! What am brain?!"

(Some things are so utterly bad they're good.)