Is this the end?

Here's where I am right now:

1. Sitting at my computer in Syracuse, sighing loudly.
2. In limbo between graduation and a cross-country move to Albuquerque.
3. In between two houses: one under contract and another not even thinking about being sold.
   
4. In the doldrums.

So I've completely lost my sense of humor. (Which, some might say, is not lost if it was never had to begin with. And surely the having it to begin with is up for debate in some circles.) At any rate, Gonnabe Librarians is languishing with me.

But here's where I'm going:

1. To Albuquerque, NM! The driest, sunniest place on Earth!
2. On a job hunt! In the Land of Enchantment! Where it's always sunny!
   
3. Into a totally awesome new home! In dry, totally-never-humid Duke City!
4. I am heading, eventually, out of limbo and maybe back to dancing flamenco and maybe into a library. In (say it with me, now) Albuquerque!

Here's the Albuquerque flag, which is probably the coolest state flag of the 50:


Here's the thing I would like to know: now that I'm out of school, but still unemployed, am I or am I not officially a librarian? Does the title come with the diploma or the job? Because I'm having an identity crisis, here. Luckily, I'm still taking one class (Metadata, which by the way I love so much more than Databases, but I freely admit that had I not taken (most of) Databases I would probably be ready to tear off my arm and beat myself over the head with it right now. But maybe not. Maybe I'm giving Databases too much credit, and myself too little, because I always liked metadata so that's probably why the class sort of makes sense to me)---

Where was I? Librarian title.....diploma or job.....identity crisis.....ah, yes. I'm still taking one class so I still feel in the loop. Actually, limbo is a loop, too, isn't it? A whole other kind of nasty, testing-of-the-patience, grinding-of-the-teeth kind of loop. I guess I'm loopy. (LOL!)

The point? I'm not sure what to do with this blog because I may no longer be, in fact, a gonnabe librarian. I may actually be a plain old librarian. So, what to do? End and archive? Rename and plow on? You may think I'm asking for advice, but since I've let good ol' GL sink into oblivion my expectations are low. So I'll just sign off by pointing to an article called Dances of the Planets (pointed to, first, by Mental Floss) that is all about loops, which I think is wholly appropriate right now and, btw, pretty spectacular. (Be sure to check out the numbers, even if you are not that person who does things like check out the numbers.)

And there's the word "dance" in the title! And it's just like my favorite childhood game, Sprirograph! It's a sign! Of what, we may never know, but holy moly--all this pointing and looping must be leading me somewhere.

A Librarian Framed

So I needed a new pair of glasses because I wear my contacts 24/7 and was like, "My eyeballs are going to shrivel up and I'll look like one of those shrunken apple heads, except it'll be like I only shrunk my eyeballs." The girl at the optometrist seemed pretty cool, pretty with it, pretty hip, and I'm a world-class ditherer, so I asked her advice. She immediately pointed to this pair of frames and said they were her favorites, and that they were small so they'd fit my ridiculously narrow face. She didn't say ridiculously. But it is ridiculous.

So I got the glasses and the girl at the checkout counter said they were her favorites, too. So I'm thinking, BOOYAH! I'm cool.

But here's the thing: I TOTALLY look like a librarian now. Then I wondered if they knew, like with ESP or something, that I'm going to library school in the fall, or if maybe they thought I looked like a librarian already, so the glasses complete me. (Now I have to call them Tom Cruise, because in case you were buried under a rock in 1996 and don't know, Rene Zellweger completed him in Jerry Macguire. My family'll just luuuvvvv it when I run around the house yelling, "Where are my Tom Cruise? I can't find my Tom Cruise because I need my Tom Cruise to see where my Tom Cruise are!")

So then I'm like, "I've gotta see if these make anyone look like a librarian, or if those damn women just thought I'm a total nerd and are snickering about selling the crappy librarian glasses to a loser." Here's the test I came up with:

Glasses on a bear










Glasses on a pig

Glasses on my dog









Glasses on me with a cowboy hat

Glasses on a head of lettuce

Yeah. I'm totally ready for library school.

Wannabe Librarians, Up Close and Personal

P.S. Do you know how many superhero librarians there are out there? Prepare to be dazzled!

Noah Wylie played a librarian adventurer:


Batgirl was a librarian (am I the only one who didn't know that?):


And Jet Li played a librarian ninja (or something to that effect):




There are plenty more, including the one for the NJ State Library, so the MSLIS program should definitely think about a superhero future librarian mascot. After all, look at the university letters:


They're the first two letters in the word "superhero!" It's a no-brainer.