Elspeth tagged me for this meme. It was a lot of fun and I learned several things I didn’t even know about such as a fruit that starts with E.

Here are the rules.
The game is SCATTERGORIES … and it’s harder than it looks! Here are the rules:
* Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the questions.
* They MUST be real places, names, things … NOTHING made up!
* If you can’t think of anything, skip it.
* You CAN’T use your name for the boy/girl name question.
* If your name happens to start with the same letter as mine, sorry, but you can’t use my answers!

My name: Erica

1. Famous Singer/Band: Eisley
2. Four letter word: Earn
3. Street: Elm
4. Color: Ebony
5. Gifts/Presents: Emerald
6. Vehicle: Endeavor
7. Things in a Souvenir Shop: Erasers
8. Boy Name: Emmett
9. Girl Name: Esme (both names are from the book I’m reading Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer)
10. Movie Title: E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial
11. Drink: Eiswein (wine from frozen grapes)
12. Occupation: Electrician
13. Celebrity: Emily Haines
14. Magazine: Early Child Education Journal (one of the many journals the U of I library subscribes to)
15. U.S. City: Evansville, IN
16. Pro Sports Teams: Philadelphia Eagles (I have no idea what sport they play)
17. Fruit: Elephant Apple (http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Elephant_apple)
18. Reason for Being Late for Work: emergency cat barfing
19. Something You Throw Away: Earwax
20. Things You Shout: Eeek!
21. Cartoon Character: Elmer Fudd

My life has changed drastically in the last two weeks. I’ve gone from being a circulation clerk at a public library to a graduate assistant at the third largest academic library in the United States and the largest library at a public university in the world. These last five days have felt very surreal. I start classes on Wednesday and I’m sure it will all very even more surreal then. I’m taking Children’s Literature, Intellectual Freedom for Youth and the required class, Information Organization and Access. Of course, my excitement about classes started a few weeks ago when I was able to access some of the syllabic for classes online and found out the reading lists for two of my classes. I’m really excited about my two youth-based classes. When I was able to access the Children’s Lit list, I immediately checked out a few of the books for the first week of class and have already finished them. For my Intellectual Freedom class, one of the books for the first week of class is either the first Harry Potter book or any of the other ones if we’ve already read the first one, which is a perfect excuse to read the fifth book.

Knitting-wise, I’ve finished the Moderne Baby Blanket, have to give it a bath and then I’ll take some photos to show it off. It’s gorgeous and huge. I didn’t expect it to be 48 inches by 44 inches, but it will make the perfect lap blanket when the kid is older. Sewing-wise, I finished the baby quilt and just need to snap some photos and send it off. I started another baby quilt on Saturday that’s coming along nicely. As I learned with the last quilt, the top goes quickly, it’s the back and binding that takes a while.

Sorry for the photo-less entry. I hope to get the photos of the blankets up soon.

This past weekend, B and I had the pleasure of visiting Madison and La Crosse, Wisconsin. I’ll go back any day. Each time we’ve gone to Madison, I’ve enjoyed it even more. We were there just one day but made the most of that day just puttering around the State Street area, including spending a bit of time just wandering around a used bookstore. (The photo was taken in the children’s room of the bookstore.) And staying in a great bed & breakfast. I love b&b’s just because they are so cozy and welcoming. Then we headed up to La Crosse, Wisconsin to visit the former director of the library where Bryan used to work, who is now the director at the La Crosse Public Library. She gave us a great tour of La Crosse as part of the historic tour that she does as a side job. Then we talked libraries for several hours after the tour. La Crosse is beautiful, I can definitely see the attraction of living there. For a town that’s just over 50,000 it seemed like a much larger town. We were so impressed with their food co-op complete with a great restaurant on the second floor. I’d definitely go back to La Crosse for a longer weekend. On the road, I did manage to get quite a bit of knitting done. I worked on part of a secret project and knit one of the borders to the Moderne Baby Blanket. I’ve now completed three of the four borders and if I can stand the blanket next to the a/c window unit, I may have a finished blanket by the end of the week. I have a few tv shows from last week to thank for my progress.

Today we’ve been recovering from our travels and getting ready for the next week. This is my last week at the local public library and then next week I start training at the library on campus for my graduate assistantship. The transition that we’ve known was coming for several months is finally here and I’m so excited about it.

Several of you mentioned in the comments of my last post that you can’t imagine having a coffee shop in the library but it’s been great. The staff love it and it brings people in the library who want to read the paper and get a good cup of coffee. We have an area limiting where food can go, which seems to have worked well.

Since I’m starting library school, you’ll probably see more about library stuff here. Here’s an interesting article that I found regarding a library no longer using the Dewey system. It makes sense but at the same time there is a part of me that thinks, how will they ever keep track of all of the books but I guess it’s the same as separating fiction into genres, such as mystery, romance, etc.