June 15, 2002. Rainy weekend here, which is good, since I'm desperately trying to finish up the birthday/Mother's Day gift I'm making for my mom (her birthday is actually before Mother's Day, so yes, this is now about five weeks late). And contrary to what you think, Mom, this giftie has nothing at all to do with knitting. Really.

About an hour ago I said to Dave, "You know what would be really good right now? Chocolate pudding." I was just talking, you know? Ten minutes later, I hear rummaging in the kitchen. Half an hour later, I was presented with a cup of homemade chocolate pudding. Can you believe how lucky I am? I'm such a princess. Dave rocks.

June 14, 2002. I took the quiz at Find Your Spot to see what towns it recommended as my ideal towns. Here are the first 10 answers.

1. Burlington, Vermont The Enlightened Town
2. Johnson, Vermont The Heart of the Green Mountains
3. Williamstown, Massachusetts Old New England at its Best
4. Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts New England at its Best
5. Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin Black Hawk Country
6. Elkins, West Virginia City in the Forest
7. Middlebury, Vermont Progressive College Town
8. Brattleboro, Vermont The Hub of New England
9. Northhampton, Massachusetts Art Town Extraordinaire
10. Amherst, Massachusetts The Charm of Massachusetts

...and several more. But no towns in Maine. I've seen the results of other people who took this quiz, and none of them got any Maine towns either. Does this quiz know Maine exists? I love Maine! Why wouldn't at least one Maine town be recommended? I manually added Portland, ME to my list, just to make sure they did know it existed. Now I'm worried that my quiz answers somehow deemed me unworthy of the town Utne Reader called one of the most enlightened towns in America, since that was a fact that Find Your Spot prominently highlighted

.

June 11, 2002. The Simmons library information session was really interesting. I was sort of expecting it to discourage me, but it did just the opposite. They kept emphasizing how many librarian jobs there are, and how many librarians are going to retire in the next ten years, and how the number of MLS graduates doesn't even come close to the demand. The Simmons program itself sounds amazing, and I need to figure out if I could hack going down once a week and disrupting my life that much for two years. There's also an online program at Southern Connecticut State University, which might be a much easier way to go (plus, a bunch of their courses really appealed to me...History of Children's Literature? Hello!). There's a middle school librarian here in Maine who's doing the SCSU program, and I'm going to call her tomorrow and see how she likes it.

The most appealing part was when one of the recent graduates said something about how she loves being a librarian because it's a job where you have to learn a lot about a bunch of different things.

I had such a fun time taking the train down to Boston. It was so relaxing to sit and knit and watch trees and rivers roll by. It's been a long time since I took a train (well, it's been about 12 hours, I mean before that it's been a long time). For some reason I got random hysterical worry pangs as we were pulling out of the station: "What if we derail? What if something happens to Dave while I'm away?" but I'll attribute that to general life stress, since everything was fine. I loved seeing Ian and Ellen's new house, also, they really got a great homey house that has really good vibes about it. I told them that if they were anyone else, I'd be insanely jealous, but I was just so happy for them in their new house, and that they deserved such a great house, and Ellen said, "Well, it's your house too! It's your Boston house! You can always come stay here!" And this is why we love Ellen, among several other reasons.

Knit news, if you're interested: see the knit house card I made for Ian and Ellen, and view my progress on the 3/4 sleeve sweater.

Postscript: I talked with Dave after I wrote this, and he'd been thinking it would be silly for me to go back to school and continue working at my current job. I hadn't even considered quitting, because that seemed kind of selfish to make him work to put me through school (even though it would be shorter if I were going full-time). He was seeing it more as an investment in the future, and also pointed out that I might not do that well in a strictly-online program, since, when I was staying at home trying to find work last year, I started going fairly insane from lack of human contact. I think I'll apply to both Simmons and SCSU, and see what happens. I do like the idea of getting a degree from Simmons, I have to admit.