Eating (and everything else!) in Austin for ER&L 2015 Attendees

In just one week I’m heading to my first Electronic Resources and Libraries meeting – I won one of the DLF/CLIR + ER&L Cross-Polinator Awards for this year! I’m really excited to go to a conference that’s a bit different than my standard, meet new people, and learn some new things. I’m also really excited for FOOD in Austin – I lived in ATX way back in 2010 and have family and friends in the area, so I’ve visited a bunch, too. Here are my recommendations for eating and other Austin activities for first-timers:

Tacos or DIE, taken at Torchy's in 2010.
Tacos or DIE, taken at Torchy’s in 2010.
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2014: A Picture A Month

2014 was a pretty jam-packed year for me, work and non-work-wise, but I’m still pretty excited that it’s 2015 – I’m looking forward to another year filled with working long hours on projects I’m passionate about, traveling, writing things, trying new foods, etc etc. Here’s a picture from each month in 2014, as a sort of summary of how much work and fun can be packed into a single year:

January 2014: My first North Carolina snow!
January 2014: My first North Carolina snow!
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So This Is Commencement

I finished graduate school two months ago, and sometimes it’s still hard to remember that I’m not going back in the fall – to be honest, I already miss going to classes and writing papers! Some commencement-grams, including silly-sleeved gown, and brag-y photo of the thesis award I won:

commencement
Can you tell that my Dad made me pose immediately after leaving commencement?
award
Silly as it is, getting nominated for and then receiving this award is probably my most proud moment thus far in my life. My advisor and readers are amazing women who really pushed me to do better.

But now that graduate school is well and truly over, I’ve set some summer/ fall goals – some things I wanted to do during school but never had the time, things I want to accomplish in general, and some things that I just think would improve the quality of my life. In no particular order:

  1. Re-read all of the books I was assigned in class and thought were really interesting, but had to skim a bit. The top of this list is Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, followed closely by Ross Harvey’s Digital Curation: A How-to-do-it Manual.
  2. Speaking of reading, maybe finish all of the titles I haven’t gotten to yet on the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels list?
  3. Learn to play that ukulele I bought 2 years ago and promptly put away in a closet.
  4. Update this blog more regularly!
  5. Learn to ride a bike, finally.
  6. Present at a conference.
  7. Publish – in professional organizations newsletters, journals, on my work’s blog, wherever!
  8. Pare down closet and bookcase to essentials – I own way too much stuff…
  9. Make sure to keep in touch with everyone who’s moved away and I miss, with my favorite old professors, with my cousins, with former coworkers and bosses. It’s so easy for me to get busy and forget to do this.

The Desert of the Thesis, or How I Learned to Live on Coffee Alone

Writing a thesis is designed to drive one mad, I think – this is my second experience with The Thesis, having written one in undergrad as well. My undergrad thesis similarly made me do crazy things (I once took a 3 hour long nature walk in the woods in the middle of the night, as a break from editing, and let’s just say I’m not normally an outdoors person), but the bar has really been raised with this master’s thesis. Here’s a list of things I catch myself doing that make me feel like a loon:

1. Whispering “tell me what your ultimate point is” to books while at various different libraries. One of my secondary source texts has a remarkably forthright passage that starts with something like, “The ultimate point of this book is to: 1. blah blah, 2. &c.” Ever since reading that, I began wishing that all these authors would just tell me what their most pertinent thoughts are, in one sentence preferably, so I can determine whether to spend my valuable reading time on that resource.

2. Napping in my carrel at Widener Library – I always thought it was weird that people left pillows in their carrels, especially since it’s not a 24 hour library and you can check out books directly to your carrel so it’s not a matter of not being able to fit all your sources into a backpack or something. Why not just go home to nap? But now, as I get closer to my full draft due date, I find myself thinking that the pillow-people are geniuses, and I’ve started thinking about borrowing my carrel-mate’s pillow to doze off. It just feels more productive to nap in the library, y’know?

dimcarrel

3. Eating while walking. I’ve long been a fan of portable foods, and would often eat a Nutella waffle while walking to my bus stop when I lived in DC. Now that my time is at such a premium, I’ve really stepped up my eating-while-walking game and have added hot dogs, cheeseburgers, and burritos into my rotation. I don’t think this is particularly crazy (although some of the looks I’ve been getting say otherwise), but there is this weird downside of occasionally finding rice in my coat pockets. Now, what would be crazy is trying to eat a delicious Darwin’s sandwich while mobile:

darwins

I’m sure I’ll have more to add to the list before May 1st…