The day went a little something like this.
Woke up at 4:30. Got all dressed up.
Yes, makeup was included.
Yes, my hair was down.
No, I didn't wear the boots.
Met up with the Queen of the Known Universe and the New Guy and left around 5:10 in our awesome truck.
Photo courtesy of the Queen herself.
I brought my music adapter so we could plug in our playlists. It was mostly country - by the Queen and I - with some oldies thrown in by the New Guy. It was actually amusing though because she turned on the truck when the New Guy pulled in the parking lot and She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy came on the radio so we blasted it and were singing like maniacs. Pretty sure it weirded the hell out of him.
It was a fun start to an amusing ride.
So we're on our way, and we decide to stop at McDonald's for coffee. And we thought we knew where it was but again, it's dark and we're more interested in our playlists than the road so we drove right past it without noticing. We actually ended up stopping at the Starbucks in my boyfriend's town.
That was approximately 5:55 AM.
Got my chai tea latte, the New Guy got some juice and we were on our way.
Was a fairly fast drive, and we found the place on the first try...sort of. I mean, we had to make a u-turn but after that it was smooth sailing.
I mean, technically it was the second u-turn of the day, but still smooth sailing.
The place was super fancy.
Yes, apparently I am one of those people.
Learned a lot throughout the day so that was good.
In the morning they did this demo with a 3D printer and some other cool gadgets. They actually showed us this webpage with a bunch of failed print jobs, it was highly entertaining. Superwoman and the Boss's Boss's Boss's Assistant were right in front of me and thought perhaps we could get one with a grant.
I'm gonna keep bugging them until we do, my teens would love it.
Unless of course it's me that has to submit the paperwork, then I'll have to think about it.
The next session was more fun gadgetry - Raspberry Pi and Arduino - want those, they are sweet.
After that we took a break to check out the booths. The New Guy and I went through and grabbed a bunch of free stuff - creepy cat bags included - and took pictures with the cast of the Big Bang Theory.
The cardboard version.
Last year they just had Sheldon, this year they had the whole cast, it was awesome.
Got a hug from the Library Goddess and caught up with a bunch of fun GA friends before I was forced into a picture with what seemed like half my class and two of the Mizzou professors.
Guess which newsletter that's going into. Yep. That's right. The one I used to be in charge of.
And had to scramble to find pictures for.
NLA season was easy though, there was plenty to work with. It was the off-season that makes you flail.
After the picture I escaped to learn about new online tools to use at the library. That one was packed, it should've been in a bigger room, but how can you tell really what's gonna be popular and what's not beforehand? Sat by the Queen, made colorful commentary and then we were off for lunch.
Also got lost on the way there, but that wasn't our fault. Google maps and GPS had it wrong. The Queen ended up getting out and asking the gas station attendant where it was. I was glad we decided to take the truck. We could have walked but we would have just ended up walking in circles for even longer.
Carlos O'Kellys, had fajitas. They were awesome and I couldn't finish them.
We stalled a bit before heading back but made it before the keynote speaker had started. We actually sat against the back wall, also highly enjoyable.
She was really good. I wasn't expecting her to be good, I was kind of dreading it actually. Keynotes can drag on if you don't have the right speaker. But she was funny, which I also wasn't expecting. She was in politics and from the title it sounded like it was gonna be all about government stuff, but it wasn't about the shutdown at all.
Though she did reference it once or twice for comedy. We mostly talked about advocacy and what it can do for our libraries.
She did bring up a lot of amusing stuff. Apparently they did this survey about what was more popular than congress. One of these things is not like the other, name the item you think is less popular than congress:
Cockroaches
Ebola
Lindsey Lohan
France
It's France. Strangely cockroaches, Ebola and Lindsey are all more popular than congress but for some reason we take issue with France.
Makes perfect sense, right?
We also learned a lot about rat poison and bars. Two separate stories, neither were hers.
After the keynote I listened to current and past library students talk about the program. I enjoy sitting sidelines and making colorful commentary as I'm going through it as well. It's always fun to hear what they have to say. We were missing a major element to that equation though, the Authentically Amazing One and Only KB so it could have been even better. Had to take a picture next to an empty chair to photoshop her in.
Last session of the day was about technology in special libraries.
I went for two reasons: 1 because I'm doing my practicum at a special library, but mostly 2 because I wanted to make faces at the presenters who just happened to be some of my cool classmates.
The whole event felt like some weird family reunion, I kept running into classmates and old professors. It was good to see them all again.
That was the last session of the day so after even more pictures we hit the road to head back in our cool truck.
Here are a few of my favorites quotes from the day:
Me: "She has excellent taste in music."
Queen: "I wish I knew her before the accident."
if we were in an accident the medics would see our stack of awesome CDs to choose from.
Me: "I like his pink hair, he's like the anti-president."
seriously, our nebraska library association president has pink hair. he's awesome.
Speaker: "I know I look young, but I have 25 years of experience....yesterday was my birthday. I turned 30."
cool, hey wait...
Speaker: "I got a Master's in Legislative Affairs, it's not what it sounds like."
Queen: "I bet the field research would be fun."
more colorful commentary from the back row.
"Rat poison, we hate it when kids lick it."
that's always a good thing to say when asking for funding.
"I, state your name here."
"I, state your name here."
"That's the first time that's happened."
see, librarians can have a sense of humor. shocked the politician.
"Gotta find that damn McDonald's."
and we did!
The last one is my favorite, the Queen and her daughter had a conversation earlier about birds that sit on the telephone wires and if they can listen in to conversations.
Me: Damn government birds.
And that was my day. Here are a couple of songs that made our playlists:
Truck Yeah - Tim McGraw
this was our theme song. it was both the first and last song played during our drive - sexy tractors didn't count as we were still stationary.
yes that is garrett hedlund in case you were wondering.
Pickup Man - Joe Diffie
see, I liked Joe Diffie before Jason Aldean came around and sang about him. just throwing that out there.
sorry. not a fan.
So that was NLA 2013. For previous years go here:
2011 Green Bags and Nametags
2012 Day One - the Full Monica
2012 Day Two - Fake it 'til you make it
Legitimate pre-midnight post. Holy crap tag in use.
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