Mr E, mini me and I yesterday evening returned from a quick two day trip to Frankfurt am Main in Germany. We arrived there on Thursday evening…
… and on Friday afternoon I went to visit an academic library and meet with the librarian there, none other than fellow blogger Herba Minor! Last August I went to a large international librarian’s conference called IFLA and had hoped to maybe meet other fellow blogger-librarians there. That did not happen but the idea did arise to do a little personal exchange instead. The first part of that exchange happened last Friday; sometime next year part two will happen when I will happily welcome a return visit.
Herba gave me a full on tour of her library and we had such a great professional exchange. Turns out academic libraries in The Netherlands and Germany deal with many similar issues. And I think I’m going to steal an idea from them for at least one of “my” libraries…
It was also just lovely meeting Herba in person after knowing her from blogging for so many years, she felt familiar to me right away. We didn’t only talk about libraries, there was a lot of catching up on other topics as well, including Mr. Armitage. It was just so very nice to finally connect in person. Afterwards we met up with Mr E and mini me for dinner and had the most lovely evening to boot.
On Saturday, Mr E, mini me and I stopped by a church I used to go to in Frankfurt when I lived not far from there with my family in my late childhood/early teens. It was (and still is) an English language Anglican/Episcopal church and also very instrumental (together with the US Army base library that we used to frequent) in me not forgetting my English after we moved to Germany from Israel…
We also took a brief look in the little town of Friedberg for a bit (which was very close to where I lived), before we headed home again.
We had a lovely short trip and I’m already really looking forward to Herba’s return visit some time next year!
I work at an Applied Sciences University Library and this past school year I participated in a project with students to develop a library game that was supposed to make learning about information literacy more fun and less dry.
The students came up with a board game that is a sort of Game of the Goose meets Trivial Pursuit meets a game where you have to do challenges. As you progress along the board, each correct multiple choice information literacy question earns you a point (an ‘edubadge’) and the first one to the end gets extra points. If you get a question wrong you have to perform a “Shame on You” action (e.g. walk like a T-rex, dance the Macarena without music, tell a joke, talk in a high-pitched voice for a minute, etc.). There are also Joker cards where you can get extra advantages or you can punish another player. The overall winner is the person who was able to earn the most points (edubadges). The game is a mix of knowledge questions and just unadulterated fun.
The students have finished their project but we librarians are still perfecting the look of the game (and making it open source so other libraries can use it as well!). One of the things still left to do was to collect all sorts of items that can be used as game pieces. During a meeting a few weeks ago (these game meetings are some of the most fun meetings I have ever attended) I was wearing a pair of Guylty’s mini-book earrings that my colleagues admired and the idea was born to use those little books as game pieces for our game! So, I ordered a few booklets from Sonja and she custom-made them for us…
They arrived on Tuesday and were already used the next day, on Wednesday, where they were a choice as game pieces during an event at one of our libraries.
The books literally garnered some oohs and aahs and “so cute!” exclamations. We also have a smaller version of the game board for which they are better suited size-wise but they were also enjoyed on the big board. Several rounds of the game were played and a few players indeed picked one of the books as their game pieces. So fun to see fandom meet work in such a way! Thank you again, Sonja, for your beautiful work. 🙂
And speaking of books – my signed copy of Richard Armitage’s Geneva arrived today!
Just in time to take with me on a mini holiday to Portugal! I am very much looking forward to reading it. We are flying to Lisbon on Saturday and will stay there till Wednesday to see our son. I can’t tell you how much I love that I am going to see him again!
I have this urge to say “Forgive me, father, for I have sinned, my last confession was a month and a half ago!” Apparently that was when I last posted here, a month and a half ago for Richard Armitage’s birthday. I never intended to take a hiatus from blogging but life happened. A concerned reader made me realize how long it had actually been since I last blogged (thank you for thinking of me!) and I figured it would be a good thing to give a small sign of life.
After my summer holiday, work got insanely, and I mean insanely, busy with some big projects due at the same time and some petulance from a few colleagues that annoyed the shit out of me and took a lot of my energy. It’s all still very busy, although the end of the worst of it is in sight, thank goodness.
In addition, we see my mother deteriorating, she just needs extra care and attention (she’s almost 88 now). It means I’ve had to give up volunteering with refugees on the Wednesdays so that I can spend time with my mother and take care of her needs. I’m glad to be able to do that for her but seeing her deteriorate is also a big worry.
Also, this empty nest thing with my son leaving has been eating at me, although I do have to say that it has gotten a little better over time with seeing that he has been settling in very well in his new life in Portugal. Next week we’ll be flying to Lisbon to visit him for a few days, see the life he has made for himself and see for ourselves the view from his window.
This empty nest thing will get even emptier if mini me and one of her best friends succeed in finding an apartment together in the city they are both studying in. The househunt for them is going strong but the housing market is very crowded here, so they will need a bit of luck finding something affordable.
Speaking of house hunts: I am always looking at new houses as Mr E and I intend to move away from where we live now to another city here in The Netherlands. The plan was for a year or two from now but, just when I think things are starting to settle a bit, we run into a duplex apartment we really like right now! A little ahead of schedule but we couldn’t ignore it, viewed it twice, and have put a bid on it this past Friday. Nerve wrecking, we don’t know yet if we will succeed in getting it.
And then yesterday all hell broke loose with a new war in Israel! My 28 year old nephew is nervously awaiting to hear whether he will be called up for duty to fight. So far, he hasn’t been called but some friends of his have. Such scary times! The war broke 50 years after the Yom Kippur war, a war that happened when I was three and a half and living in Jerusalem. I have some vague memories of that war: of covering the windows in the evenings with dark blankets and my mother being adamant that we don’t move the coverings so that no light could escape; I remember one night (or several? I don’t recall, it all blurs together) of my dad going out to help transport the wounded with his car and being afraid that he wouldn’t come home. I think that’s what I remember most, the fear. When will this situation ever get better, when will this conflict ever end?
Anyway, everything seems in upheaval right now and somehow, with all that, blogging and reading other blogs, has fallen by the wayside. I’m so sorry, especially about not finding the time to read on other blogs! I’m not sure when I’ll be back on a regular basis. Maybe after our little Portugal holiday? Know that I am fine, just a little overwhelmed at times… So, bear with me for a bit, I will be back and in the meantime I hope all of you readers are well and remain well!
My Richard Armitage birthday fundRAiser haul arrived in the mail today. I got the three buttons (I used to have a “distRActed” one but have lost it) in the Ebay auction and I figured as there were stickers left in the Etsy fundraiser, that it couldn’t hurt to get some of those too. All for a good cause.
As you can see in the picture, I have immediately put the stickers to use. The John Thornton “Look back at me” sticker has the perfect colouring to suit my e-reader, Harry Kennedy’s “Well there you go” jumper sticker colours very nicely with my laptop and Thorin Oakenshield’s “If this ends in fire we shall all burn together” felt very fitting for the back of my work phone!
Today is also the last day of my summer holiday. Mr E started work again today and I spent the day in bed, reading on my e-reader (that now has a lovely new sticker to adorn it). I have finished my book and have now transferred to the garden. Yes, I probably should have mowed the lawn or trimmed the bushes in our garden but somehow just reading on the last day of my holiday felt like a better thing to do.
Tomorrow I’ll start work with catching up on e-mails and then going in to the office to see what I can do for the big move of one of our libraries at the beginning of next week. We/I prepared all we could before the holiday, so I hope there won’t be much else to do except for posting stickers on the new book shelves to indicate where all the books should go after the move. We’ll see!
I hope the new bookshelves were indeed installed last week and lots of other stuff always seems to come up anyway. The moving dates and all the planning alone have changed something like six times before they became “definitive” in mid July. I’m also nervous for the computers that are supposed to be moved, i.e. the public catalogue search computer and the information desk computer. I was assured that the IT department is aware of the special configuration of those computers but I’ll only be convinced once I actually see it for myself. Also, the alarm detection gates will be installed from Thursday but there were some issues with the wiring and such which should have become resolved in the past weeks but who knows if that will have happened? The “if this ends in fire we will all burn together” feels very relevant for this project.
Anyway, enough about work, back to the Armitage-haul: thanks yet again to Guylty for all the hard work in the fundraiser and for the discreet fangirling items I was able to score! On to the next…
… why I haven’t gotten around to posting my latest Meet cute Monday yet. I’ll tell you in pictures…
On Friday evening, Mr E and I had a nice relaxing evening in our back garden.
That’s also when I had time on my laptop and I actually picked a movie and a scene and prepared a post for Meet cute Monday. However, I can’t pre-upload the selected clip on Instagram, it would publish too early if I already did that on Friday. So, while the post is already written, I waited to actually upload a clip till Sunday evening.
Saturday was busy, as I took my mother, aunt and older sister to Kleve, just across the border in Germany. My younger brother moved there a few weeks ago and I decided to bring my mother (and the rest) to see his place and a little bit of the town for herself. All three ladies have mobility challenges (my mother uses a walker these days) so I had to drive the few hundred meters from my brother’s apartment to the Jewish monument in Kleve…
… and then even drive my mother a very short distance to the pedestrian area where we sat down for an ice cream. Next time we’re bringing a wheelchair. It was a nice visit, though, but a long drive (almost two hours there and another two hours back again). I was at home again at 6 pm and too pooped to do much else, so Mr E drove us out to a lake near our house where we had dinner outside, just the two of us as the kids were out…
I’ve quite fallen in love with it, so am keeping the light for myself after we finish with it and won’t claim the cost from my employer. So, Saturday was pretty full and of course, too early to upload my Meet cute Monday clip. I figured I’d have time on Sunday evening.
So, Sunday… my nephew from Israel and his sister, my niece studying in South Korea, are in The Netherlands for a visit. My nephew was going to spend the night with us while my niece is staying with my older brother. Nephew bunking here meant we needed to tidy the place on Sunday morning. In the afternoon on to my mom’s where I picked them both up. We all had fun reconnecting at our house…
We went out to dinner in our hometown and then spontaneously decided to go out and see that animated Spider-Man movie in Den Haag. I took the four cousins…
The story was, well, another superhero story but the visuals were really great! There was so much going on and it looked inventive and cool. For that alone, it was worth it. It ended on a cliffhanger, though, which… ugh… I didn’t like.
After the movie we walked my niece to my brother’s apartment and then my nephew, kids and I drove home again. Got in just after midnight and we were all pretty much pooped. I didn’t even think of uploading that Meet cute Monday clip, I just wanted my bed!
I took a few hours off work this morning, dropped nephew and mini me on the train to Amsterdam where they were meeting up with my two nieces and another nephew who’s studying here in The Netherlands, but further up north. I then dropped Junior and his suitcase off at a friend’s house. He’s on a plane now with three friends of his, on his way to Gran Canaria for a week-long holiday. Mr E tracked the take-off of his flight and will probably now still be tracking it.
I drove straight on to work, was there at 11.30 am. My colleague left at two pm and I’m on duty on my own till five pm. It’s really quiet, though, as the school year is nearing the end.
And yes, this is the library! We are in temporary housing and our books are outside in big containers until we move into a brand new library this summer. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, it’s quiet and while I do have work to do, I thought it’d be more fun to quickly blog my Meet cute Monday post. And then I remembered: I’m at work and the clip is on my home laptop! So, I can’t post that after all and wrote this post instead. If I don’t get around to posting it this evening (and I suspect I won’t), I will save it all up for next week… I told Mr E that next weekend I will be doing exactly nothing and I should have time for it then.
So yeah, I had a very packed but fun weekend but bottom line is: it looks like this week’s Meet cute Monday will have to wait till next week.
The Book of Esther 