You won’t believe this — I am about to actually post a stitching update! Okay, well, maybe I haven’t done any stitching, but here is a stitching picture
All the work i’ve done this week for the Cross Stitch Magazine Database & Blog has made me really nostalgic for stitching. I have not stitched in a long time, but I am feeling like it may happen again soon. As part of my self-motivation, I decided to take a picture of my WIP that I’ve been working on off an on for two years now. It is a design by Julie Hasler. It appears in her book, Native American Cross-Stitch, as well as in the 2nd issue of Cross Stitch Gold from 2001.
Since the last time I took a picture, I can see that I’ve made considerable progress. There was a good month last summer where i was working on it pretty much everyday, so that had an impact. This weekend I plan to go through my floss that I have for it and fill in some gaps; I know the last couple of times I did pick it up there were certain colors that I did not have, so had to jump around a lot. I don’t like doing that in principle if I can help it. I’ll share an update when I actually start working on it again.
Happy Memorial Day to everyone out there. I am posting this just a tad bit late, but I had a great weekend and have to share. My weekend started with some house cleaning – I rearranged our bedroom and cleaned up the rest of the house as well. Managed to get the whole apartment except for the kitchen. Then, after resting, turned my attention towards doing some genealogy.
On Saturday afternoon, we took Kaleya to see her friend’s dance recital that was put on the by Nashville Dance Company. Can you imagine anything cuter than a group of 4-year old’s on stage? The costumes were so cute! Of course, there were older girls too, but the little ones steal the show.
Sunday afternoon was spent in the sun; we took Kaleya over to a friend’s place to enjoy the pool. Kaleya wore herself out accordingly and had so much fun in the pool. It’s been almost a year since she’s been in the water, so I’d love to start getting her more acquainted. Maybe next year we’ll do swimming lessons. From yesterday, I think she particularly enjoyed trying to get used to the lounge chairs.
My Sunday evening, and all day Monday was consumed by my Cross Stitch Magazine Database. I’ve been wanting to revamp the site for some time, and while I still have plans to do some cool Web 2.0 stuff, I figure it is better to go in steps, so I made some changes and reduced the level of complexity of the back-end and redid the site. Right now it’s really a test of the application I’ve chosen, but I think it may work out. The URL for the site is http://www.xsmagdb.com. With my new streamline processes in place, it makes it much easier to accept contributions for others. Look out for a future post about that.
But alas, all good things must come to an end right? It’s back to work tomorrow. I love what I do, but when I get opportunities like I’ve had this weekend to really focus on the things that truly relax me, it can be hard to let go!
This weekend was my professional organization’s annual conference. This year it was in Chicago. It was a very quick trip, I flew in on Saturday and flew out Sunday evening, but though it was short, I was quite busy the whole time.
One thing I did get to do was meet more of my family. Sadly, my maternal grandmother’s youngest and last brother died on Mother’s Day. He lived in Chicago and the funeral coincidentally enough was on Saturday. While I did not get there in time to go to the funeral, I was able to visit with the family Saturday evening and I met his wife for the first time and his kids. I truly enjoyed the hours I was able to spend with them and though for the sad event, as with my paternal grandmother’s funeral two years ago I strongly felt that we must take advantage of these moments to re-connect with family.
While I did not get to do much else, I was able to walk to the nearby Millenium Park during lunch yesterday. This is a beautiful park. I especially enjoyed “the bean” – this big silver, shiny bean shaped sculpture that reflects the Chicago skyline when you look at it from the right angle. This is a picture off Flickr – this thing is GORGEOUS in person!!
Shameless plug for my library! Our medical center has a YouTube channel, and recently posted this video about our website, MyHealthAtVanderbilt (MHAV). MHAV allows you, if you are a patient at Vanderbilt, to log into the site and access parts of your medical record (such as lab test results, immunization data) and you can send messages to your physician, access your appointment and billing data and more.
One of my responsibilities at work is working with my colleagues to integrate links to consumer health information throughout the MHAV website. This means for example, that if you are looking at your lab results and don’t understand what they mean, our library provides links to websites that help explain the lab test procedure and what the results mean. We also link to and create a variety of information resources to help patients undertand their health data. This is a very rewarding project to be involved in.
This week in fact, I have been working with some co-workers in putting together a poster to present at our professional annual meeting this coming week about our work to add information targeted to kids through MHAV.
So, without further ado here is a video about the site and how it works. Just a small glimpse into a little bit more about what I do at work!
My sister is now a college graduate! Here she is with her two roommates (who are cousins to each other) after the ceremonies yesterday.
And, here I am with her and our aunt.
Kelli graduated with her B.A. in Anthropology and plans to take a year off and apply to Vanderbilt’s Peabody College next year to pursue a Masters in Education. Meanwhile, she’ll be moving to Nashville and be working at my library for a year! So, upcoming posts are going to be more likely to include Kelli too More pictures are here.
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