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Filling In

So, Philip, you didn’t post anything new in between the end of July and mid-October. What’s that about?

Well.

One, I got a little burned out on reviews. I try to space them out so that I’m not struggling to catch up and actually give each ARC the time and consideration it deserves, but sometimes the publication schedules mean I’m not able to do that. As you may have seen, I’ve now added two new ones.

Two, as much as I love the Renaissance Festival and the time I spend there, it is exhausting to add 16+ hours of work to each week for two months. An extra 64-ish hours of work per month, including extra driving, and less time with the family means that I have to re-prioritize on the fly quite a bit. So I did what I usually do at the end of Faire season and took a couple of weeks of vacation to spend with my kids before the school year got started again.

Three, we got ducks. Like, no joke. We own ducks. Five runner ducks (we started with six of them, but one of them didn’t make it to adulthood). We got a duck hutch from my in-laws (it had been in the yard of their new house when they moved to town) and got it assembled, and now the ducks have a nice shelter to live in set up in our back yard. Mr. Flappy, Randall, Mangocheese, Jessica, and Six are approaching egg-laying size, and they have eaten all of the problematic insects that are trying to eat our garden. It’s really a win-win. I’ll admit that I’ve grown rather fond of them in such a short time, and the kids love them too.

Four, I lost one of my favorite people in the world in August. We had known for a while that Dan wasn’t likely to make it through this year, but it didn’t make it any easier to say goodbye. I’m grateful that I had the chance to sit with him, share some memories of our work at the Renaissance Festival together, and tell him that I loved him.

Five, it’s hard to find time to write for funsies when all of the above is happening.

And that’s all without the regular library work and the world burning down around us.

So yeah. I’ve not had a lot of time to dedicate to writing. Sorry. It sucks, but that’s life, I guess.

Anyway, it’s mid-November now, and I’m finally getting back to writing some reviews and starting on some new stories. I’ll keep trying to get some fun stuff put together. Lately, I’ve been playing a lot of Minecraft and Magic: The Gathering with my kids, and kicking ass up and down Olympus in the early access version of Hades 2.

Oh, and big changes on the work front. More on that soon!

Janus: Looking Back, Looking Forward

I couldn’t sleep the other night, so I went back through my photos app and looked through my pictures from the last year. Overall, 2023 was pretty good.

I got to see a couple of my favorite bands in concert (Dethklok and Ghost) and got to add two new bands to my live experiences (Amon Amarth and BABYMETAL). I re-read the entirety of One Piece and fell in love with the manga all over again. I got to revisit Hyrule and the realms above and beneath it in Tears of the Kingdom, and as recently mentioned, found sheer joy in Faerûn via Baldur’s Gate 3. I got to take #MediumChild for a first movie theatre experience (Across the Spider-Verse was just spectacular). I got to catch back up with a dear friend after he came out of a coma, and take him to go see Patrick Stewart talk about his career. I had to say goodbye to a beloved summer job, but got to start in a brand new field that I’m staggeringly good at in its place. I got through over two hundred books, thanks largely to manga (looking at you again, One Piece) and audiobooks. I got to review some absolutely incredible new books. I took a trip back to my home town with my whole family for the first time, and got to celebrate my cousin’s wedding. We had the chance to spend Christmas with my dear spouse’s family, getting everyone together for the first time in five years.

I don’t know what 2024 will bring. V and I are coming up on our 7th anniversary. I’ve been at my current library for just over 7 years too. #LargeChild has been learning to play Magic: The Gathering, and so I’m brushing up on a game I briefly learned almost fifteen years ago. We’re playing the Commander format, and V and I were gifted Doctor Who-themed Commander decks at Christmas, so it’s a chance to turn it into a family activity. We’re playing D&D in-person again, and V is back with chaos gnomes. This time, though, instead of playing their equally creepy bard twin, I’m playing a tiefling fighter who serves as their bodyguard. He looks like Lemmy and sounds like Brock Samson, and I’m delighted every time I get to play him. I’ve got a stack of ARCs to read (okay, it’s not technically a stack, because they’re digital, but you get the idea) and then finish reviews for, and I’m optimistic that Alecto the Ninth will be added to that pile before year’s end.

Today is my WordPress anniversary. I’ve been here for thirteen years today, and I’m grateful to all of you who still stop by to read. Take care of yourselves. I’ll be back soon.

A Shift

What? Something that’s not a book review? Shocking, I know.

It’s been a busy start to the year. By that, I mean the last two months have been chaotic as fuck. My library job is going well, but I’m doing some extra work on top of my regular stuff, meaning that I have a former part-time coworker and I’m in charge of handling her job duties until her replacement can be hired and trained. It’s been exhausting, but my manager is being very supportive and is trying to make sure that I have as much help as I need so that my teen services tasks don’t fall behind.

I’ve been playing through some older video games again this past couple of weeks. I finished a replay of Batman: Arkham Asylum and am almost done with Arkham City now. I haven’t played it since launch, so this is my first time getting to go through the Game of the Year edition special content, like the Catwoman missions. I’m also celebrating the release of Metroid Prime on the Switch by replaying the classic GameCube version. This will be my third (I think, maybe fourth) time playing through that one, and I’m happy to see how well it holds up, even before the remaster. Metroid Prime was the first game I ever played on the GameCube, thanks to a demo setup at Walmart when I was younger, and one of the first titles I purchased when I finally owned the system myself.

V and I got the chance to watch Clerks 3 last week. For the record, I never saw the original until I was in college. I had some osmotic knowledge of it thanks to classmates dropping references (“I’m not even supposed to be here today!”) throughout our theatre rehearsals. It wasn’t until the sequel was releasing that I first watched Clerks, just in time to play through Gears of War and catch the “My Love for You is Like a Truck” achievement. Kevin Smith remains a favorite film director, and Clerks 3 was no exception. From opening with a montage set to “The Black Parade” by fellow New Jerseyans My Chemical Romance to cameos from damn near every character from the first two movies, it was absolutely fantastic. Dante and Randal have not been figures in my life as long as some, but they’re still old friends at this point. Smith’s inclusion of his own experiences with a massive heart attack and the background of the creation of the original Clerks movie make for a spectacular capstone to the series.

One last bit for today. Season 3 of the The Mandalorian started last week. I’m on the Quest Me podcast recapping Mando and Grogu’s adventures every Sunday night at roughly 7:30 PM MST. You should come hang out with us. I’ve gotten upgraded from occasional guest to full-time guest host! It’s nerdy Star Wars fun.

See you soon!

2023

Okay. New year’s here again.

I got a decent amount of stuff done last year. Read a lot of books, wrote a decent number of reviews. V and I sold our first house and bought a bigger one to have room for all of us. I showed off my home bartender skills (twice!). We reconnected with some folks in my home town, and took some of the kids out there for their first ever visit to my parents’ house. I lost some friends, and made others.

And now, here we are in 2023.

I’m hoping to get more writing done this year. It’s been way too long since I let myself just dive into a creative project, even just quick poetry. While I’m looking forward to a lot of book reviews, I want to actually tell a story again. On a related note, I want to do more drawing this year too. I know that part of the difficulty I’ve had with creative ventures is the fact that I’ve had to split my attention with work and school and parenting and other work and other hobbies. Most of my original work in the last six months was dedicated to crafting cocktails for amateur bartending competitions. That was fun, and I hope to participate in one again this year, but it shouldn’t be my only outlet. It’s an expensive hobby, after all.

I’m planning to continue in my current position with the library, although I won’t say no if the right opportunity for advancement comes along. Last year, I participated in a leadership training program my employer provides, and so I’m feeling a little more prepared for that than I was before. The combination of that and my MLS makes me more valuable, I guess, depending on what openings are available.

As things currently stand, I’ll be returning to my position at the Colorado Renaissance Festival again this year as well. I’m looking forward to another summer of piracy and not sleeping enough. I may see about using some of my vacation time in the middle of the season this time around, though, rather than just working 7 days a week for 2 months. I think that V and the kids would be grateful. Honestly, so would I. I love doing the whole thing, working the festival, but it’s exhausting and stressful for the whole family.

There’s a lot of books to look forward to this year. As it stands, I’m most excited for the following:

1.) Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire. Every January, I’m 100% here for the next book in the Wayward Children series. These novellas are beautiful and heartbreaking, and I can’t wait for this one. It’s out next week.

2.) Don’t Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones. This one is a sequel to 2021’s phenomenal My Heart is a Chainsaw, and a slasher spectacular in its own right. It drops on February 7th, and is shaping up to be the exceptional middle child in a horror trilogy.

3.) The Witch King by Martha Wells. I’ve read all of the Murderbot Diaries, but I’ve not tackled any of Martha Wells’ fantasy titles before. This one comes out in May.

4.) Alecto the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. We don’t have an official release date for this one yet, but I’m hoping that it will still publish on schedule around September. I need to know how The Locked Tomb Series ends, and I need to fall in love and get stabbed in the back by Muir’s prose at least twice along the way.

5.) The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon. I’m absolutely hooked by the concept of this one. AI deities and dead cities and Evangelion references, oh my! Look for it at the end of June.

I’m pretty pumped for a lot of movies this year too. John Wick comes back to theatres, we swing back across the Spider-Verse, and Nicolas Cage plays Dracula. I’ll probably stick to DVD/streaming releases for most things, but the timing of John Wick 4 might just be enough to tempt me (albeit masked) back to the theatre.

Then there’s the video game side of things. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom comes out just in time for my birthday, so you can bet that I’ll be revisiting Breath of the Wild between now and then.

Anyway, I’m coming up on twelve years of posting here, so thanks to those of you who have been around the whole time, and welcome to those who are just starting to pay attention to my ramblings. I’ll have book reviews starting soon. See you then.

Unpacking

So, we moved.

Sold our old house and bought a new one across town (and it took a minute, too, because the housing market here is fucking ridiculous). Got more room for me, V, and the kids. Commutes are still well within workable times/distances. We’re in the process of unpacking, and it’s probably going to be a bit, but that’s okay. We’re planning to stay put for a while now.

It’s a little weird, honestly. I have a tendency to be very much a stereotypical Taurus and get very set in a place or a set of behaviors, and in the last couple of months I’ve been upending a lot of that. Now that I’m not in the same house I was in for the last five years, a lot is starting to change for the better. Granted, I’ve been doing new things in old ways, so there’s that. Old habits, etc. But I’ve been trying to get myself into some new rhythms. A new work schedule, more time at home with the kids. Time to get some yard work and other home improvement tasks done on the weekends.

Right now, it’s a lot of figuring out what goes where, and with my and V’s combined book collection, that takes quite a bit of doing. Not going to lie, this was the worst move I’ve gone through in the last fifteen years. This was mostly because we had two weeks of limbo between vacating the old house and getting access to the new house. I couldn’t just load one box of books, move it, unload it, and then reuse it. Stuff had to get moved into storage, then out again later in the month. It was a lot more logistically difficult, and quite frankly, I burned myself out really hard by doing 90% of the lifting/hauling by myself (my many thanks to my father-in-law and my friends who helped with some of the boxing of stuff and the lifting of my desk). V and the kids helped as much as possible too, but the timing made it difficult for V to take off of work when I was able to. I’m done doing the self-moving, though. Next time, whenever that may be, I’m hiring pros. Insisting on doing as much as I can by myself is another one of those habits I need to kick.

But hey, the house is coming together really well, and we’re all feeling much better about the whole thing. I’m getting some more reading and writing done, and looking forward to the years we have to come. It’s going to take some time to get decorations and whatnot in place, but it’s great to be building a new home for me and my family.

To Eleven

It’s my WordPress Anniversary! I usually forget the exact day I started this whole project, and so it was a pleasant surprise to see the notification that I’d made it back on time when I signed in today.

I’ve been writing here for eleven years, as of today. In the last year, I finished my master’s degree and welcomed another child to my and V’s family. I’m looking forward to having some time to dedicate to writing things for myself (and all of you lovely readers) during the next year. I’ll be catching up on some media that I’ve missed thanks to school, so stand by for some upcoming reviews. First up is going to be Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin, shortly followed by John Scalzi’s The Kaiju Preservation Society.

I’m in the middle of buying a house right now. It’s not a fun process, per se, but it does have its own sort of charm. We’ve been in our current place for almost five years, but with the arrival of additional children since moving in, we’re out of space. Thanks to buying our current home, we’re in a decent place financially to be upgrading, despite the volatility of the housing market right now. This does add somewhat to the general disorder of life, but that’s part of things, isn’t it? Wouldn’t change it for the world. Hello, sweet chaos…

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for sticking around for the last eleven years. Let’s grow and change and improve ourselves together, shall we?

Dispatch From Library School #15: The End, and Other Stories

Final papers are submitted, and grades are in.

With a 4.0 GPA for my last semester, I’ve completed my graduate school career with a 3.83 cumulative average. My status has moved from “Graduation Pending” to “Degree Awarded,” and my actual physical diploma will be mailed out within the next few weeks. Now, I can rest.

You know. Sort of.

You see, yesterday was my first day back at work in almost three months. My parental leave/FMLA time has come to an end, and so I’ve begun the long process of getting back into the rhythm of the outside world. My Tiniest Child arrived in October, and I’m already missing being at home with all of the kids. It’s almost a month since the last school paper was turned in, and I’m still trying to make peace with the fact that I didn’t really do a lot other than take care of them during the last few weeks. I didn’t really need to do anything beyond just being Dad. It was peaceful.

So, what’s next?

I mean, ideally I’ll keep working in my current position in Young Adult Services until a titled “Librarian” position opens, and throw applications at them for the next year or two. I have no plans to leave the area within the next decade, so I’m perfectly content to keep working where I am. The shift in position would be nice, of course, and include a pay raise, so I’m not going to say no to an opportunity to move up.

This is the end of the Dispatches From Library School, but I’ll be able to return the blog to more of my standard content of book reviews and original fiction/poetry. I’m pretty excited about not having to spend every spare moment trying to carve out concentration time for school. Thanks to all of you for sticking around.

Dispatch From Library School #14: The End is Nigh

It’s November 30th, and I’ll be finishing my last projects for grad school within the next week. My final research project is due on December 8th, and that will be that. I’m conditionally approved for graduation, with the condition being that I pass my two remaining courses for the semester. As I’m currently sitting at a 96% or better in both, I think I’m going to be okay.

This is kind of surreal. Two years ago, I threw myself into this program with a heavier course load than I needed. I did it because I wanted to test myself and see if I could handle the full-time schedule on top of full-time work and a new baby at home. I made it, but it’s not been easy for me or for my family. I’m ready to see the end of that extra stress.

I’ve not written a lot about school this semester. I’ve been struggling a lot on my final research project. While I got approval from the library to poll my teen patrons, I didn’t get approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) until a few weeks ago. As soon as I did, I got my surveys printed out and set out in the teen area at my library, but it was almost a month after I’d hoped to be done collecting data. While I have had access to other data sources, the core idea behind my research was to see how COVID had impacted my teen patrons. Without their input, I felt like I was missing the entire point. I got pretty heavily depressed for a few weeks while I emailed updates back and forth, trying to get everything that the IRB requested. I was starting to feel like this whole thing had been a waste of time.

When I finally got the email containing my official IRB approval, the relief in the house was palpable. It was amazing how much better I felt, and I realized just how wrapped up in it I’d been. I hadn’t been able to focus properly on anything, and suddenly that block was just gone. I feel like I’ve been a different person for most of the last two years, and I’m finally going to get to be me again.

I’m still on parental leave, since Tiniest Child is almost two months old. I’m looking forward to a few weeks of vacation time to just hang out and enjoy the holidays with my family before diving back into work in January. Some day soon, I might start remembering what free time feels like.

Now I haven’t just been doing school work this semester. I’ve been doing guest work on the second season of The Sudden But Inevitable podcast discussing the classic anime series Cowboy Bebop (and I’ll be back soon to talk about Netflix’s live-action adaptation thereof). I’ve been working at my library (up until the beginning of October, when Tiniest Child arrived). I’ve been playing Metroid: Dread (two complete playthroughs at 100%, now learning some of the speedrunning quirks). I’ve not been attempting NaNoWriMo, because I do still have some semblance of sanity. I worked through a bunch of classic slasher movies (Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Children of the Corn, Scream, Candyman, etc.) during October. I got my COVID-19 booster shot. I spent time with my kids, just playing with Duplos. It’s been pretty damn good, but it’ll be better once school’s done. Stay tuned.

Dispatch From Library School #13: Summer Vacation Edition

It’s July, and I’m most definitely not actually in school right now. While I decided not to take summer courses so that I could work at the Colorado Renaissance Festival again, I am still doing some work toward my degree.

I’m taking LS600 through Clarion this fall, and building on the research project ideas that I started back in January. This will be the actual implementation of the plan I crafted during the Spring 2021 semester. I’d planned to ask local teens about their experience with COVID-19, and the impact it had on their use of virtual library services. However, there was some uncertainty back in April about whether or not I’d be able to distribute the survey to teens through my library.

Last week, I got the best news regarding my research. I’ve been granted approval to have 1.) physical copies of my survey available in our libraries and 2.) a digital version of the survey on our teen website. Additionally, I’m in the process of having the survey translated into Spanish for a wider reach. My utmost thanks to my coworker, M, for assisting there. It’s been a long time since middle school Spanish class, and even at my most fluent, I couldn’t have done this without help.

Now it’s time to submit my application to the Institutional Review Board for official clearance from the university to move forward with my research project. I’m really excited to be able to continue my plans for my degree, and also to be able to conduct some research that might be beneficial to my home library as well.

Classes will be starting again before I know it. I’ve got three left to knock out before graduation. Let’s do this.

Dispatch From Library School #12

The countdown to the end of the semester is on. We’re wrapping up the last few weeks now, and my focus is already shifting to this fall. My big capstone project is underway (sort of). I’m drafting a proposal for a research study that will have to be cleared by the university’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) before it can officially move forward. As part of that, I’m pursuing clearance from my library to conduct a survey of a group of our patrons. If I get it, I can carry on as initially planned. If not, I’m going to have to rework pretty much my entire plan for data collection… So, fingers crossed that I get the okay from my library.

There’s still a lot to do this semester, but my cataloging class has me feeling a lot better about my understanding of Dewey and MARC. Even if I never end up in cataloging, I’m happy that I decided to dive a little deeper into it over the last few months. With basically one week left, I’m happy to be going into a review session.

So, what’s next?

This fall, I’ll be taking LS600, Research in Librarianship; LS588, Preservation and Conservation of Library Materials; and LS549, Genre Fiction and Reader’s Advisory. I’m pretty excited about these classes. They’re all with professors I’ve studied with before, so I don’t have to worry about getting to know a new teacher. I’ll also be applying to graduate in December. I plan to continue my work at my current library after graduation (I have to keep working here for a while, since they’re doing some reimbursement for my tuition), though I’ll be able to begin applying to librarian positions that open.

I’ll likely drop one more update here at the end of the semester, but for now, I’ve got to get to finals prep. I’m looking forward to a little more free time over the summer.