Yesterday was my day off, and I celebrated by not going online at all.

But what a day! I brought my car into the garage close to my house for an oil change, and ended up spending a lot of money (more than I wanted to!) to get my brakes fixed. I also need a power steering flush and a transmission flush soon, as well as new tires within the next six thousand miles. Yay. But I got the oil changed! And my brakes aren't squeaking any more, so that's a nice change. I'm planning on getting a new-to-me car soonish, probably as soon as I get the raise at the end of March and can afford to add a car payment to my monthly total of expenses. The Neon has hit 100,000 miles, which is a lot for any car!

I was sulky all of yesterday about the car, so I wound up just staying home watching TV while I waited for them to fix my car. So I haven't accomplished a lot of packing and I'll be moving in one week! Yikes. But I did get to enjoy an episode of The Rockford Files. I love James Gardner. And the credits are just so awesome!

And today is a very dismal fall day -- rain from Hurricane Ivan, I think. The Baltimore Book Festival is today, and I would not want to go outside to look at book-related things. It's one of those days where I don't want to be at work -- I just want to go home and curl up on the couch with a book. (I finished Unnatural Death and am now starting The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. Unnatural Death was good, but my favorite is still Clouds of Witness, so far!) My day actually didn't start out so good -- I put together a crockpot meal* which took longer than I thought it would this morning. So my schedule was all thrown off. And I stopped at the Congress to get coffee -- only to realize that my dollar bills were in my pants pocket instead of my wallet. Luckily, the guy told me to just come back later with the money. The coffee was awful, and not even two packets of sugar could make it paletable. Yargh.

My new librarian list-serv is actually on a kind of interesting topic lately. It's all about how the hiring process works, and why the academic/public library won't hire you. I think it's all pretty understandable, and if the applicants were to read anything about job searching/hiring in libraries, it wouldn't be a big surprise. (But then again, I've actually been to academic hiring presentations, talked to an academic librarian who was on the hiring committee, been hired myself, and done several interviews! Plus I have a mom who used to be in HR.) But they mentioned that often times before interviewing someone, they will Google them. This is where having a common last name would be great. With my "special" last name, it's really easy to find out that I used to be an big fan (and even wrote, gasp!, [award-winning...hee...] fanfiction!) of Remember WENN. Fortunately, that's pretty much all that you can find. And if I do ever get around to taking down my old site, there won't be much else left. Except the cached images.

Anyway, it's always fun to Google people. I did that to people I knew in high school and was very, very amused with the results of one of them. This girl who was the co-valedictorian in my high school class was going! to become! a heart surgeon! She even got a big old scholarship ($20,000!) because of her articulation of her career goals. She went on to a private college in Indiana (famous for its fighting mascot). I found her resume online last year -- it's not up any more, sadly -- but she did not become a heart surgeon -- instead she got a degree in accounting or something like that. Ah, that amused the hell out of me. I guess you can go back to high school -- but only if it's to laugh at someone else.

Right-o, I should be getting back to work.

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* Maybe you want to make my (hopefully!) delicious crockpot meal. It should taste somewhat Italian-y and is chockfull of protein, fiber, and veggies.

Italian Inspired Crockpot Goodness

Ingredients:

1 cup brown rice (not instant!)
1 can tomatoes with Italian spices
1 can white kidney beans
1/2 onion, chopped
8-10 mushrooms, sliced
6-8 carrots, chopped
3 chicken breasts, cut into chunks
1 turkey Italian sausage, sliced
1 cup warm water

Mix tomatoes, kidney beans, onion, mushrooms, and carrots together. Do not drain cans. Add salt and pepper. Place rice in the bottom of the crockpot. Pour veggie mix over the rice. Place chicken and sausage on top of veggies. Pour water over. Add salt and pepper to taste. Put lid on crockpot and cook on low for eight hours or so. I'll let you know how it turns out as soon as I try it!