Month: April 2009

I’m home again from my trip.  The train ride was long, but uneventful.  We had another exciting river trip yesterday.  Thankfully, we didn’t swamp this time, but we had to get out on several occasions to haul the boat over fallen trees.  We put in around 10:30 AM and took out just as it was getting dark at 8:00 Pm.  Long day.  Today’s a clean up day before work tomorrow.

So I’m out from home this week.  The Army Librarians are having their bi-annual conference, so I’m at that until Friday.  We’re in Southbridge, MA at a very nice facility.  The weather is a little cold and rainy, but really, there is no need to go outside at all.  The conference center has a pool, an exercise center and a good resturaunt.  The prices are affordable and there’s more high speed WiFi than you can shake a stick at.  I may venture out tomorrow if it stops raining though.

I took the train to get here.  I like travelling by train, although it’s not as pictureesque as it used to be, at least in the urban areas.  It is fun to come into the city centers to the train station instead of mooching around on the outskirts like you do when flying.

The most…interesting part of the train trip was the set of baby Yalies we picked up in Washington.  They sat a few rows behind me and chatted away for the four or so hours to New Haven in the loud gormless way of college freshmen everywhere.  It really wouldn’t have been that remarkable, except for the fact that they managed to name drop the school about three times a minute for the ENTIRE time they were in the car.  Well that and the arts heavy majors that they were discussing.  We had an actress, a composer, a playwright and some kind of musician.  Maybe pre-law majors are quieter or something.  It was nice to go around and see other students around the train working hard on post Spring Break homework.  I always love looking at other people doing homework.  It makes me happy that I don’t have any anymore.

I disembarked in Providence, RI and the first bus that passed me had an ad for the Hasbro’s Children’s Hospital.  It’s nice to know that the company supports its hometown.

I’ve decided that one of the things I like about my job is that little moment of intellectual free fall when someone first asks you a question.  You take a brief second while all the gears whir and click to determine if it’s going to be a challenging, lengthy search with many twists and turns or just one of the six routine questions you answer all the time, but the beauty of it is in the potential.  It’s especially fun when the person is all stressed out and you totally make their day by knowing EXACTLY what they want and how to get it.  So rewarding.

On the mundane update front, we delayed putting in the garden for a week as the forecast called for possible overnight freezing temps this week.  Spring in NC is often very blustery, as the warm and cool air swirl around before getting themselves sorted out.  This Spring has also been very rainy, a point that was driven FORCEFULLY home this past Saturday.  We took the canoe out for a shake down cruise down one of the local rivers.  Due to a combination of very high, very fast water, unfamiliarity with this particular river and human error; we wound up dumped in the 65 degree water twice in the first 40 minutes.  Thankfully we had some other folks along to help pull us out, but it was a more challenging trip than either of us had originally intended.  We’re going to try again in a few weeks, and we’ll definitely be practicing in the mean time.