Mask Test

Stella helped me test out a craft foam mask for a costume program we're putting together for the public library. I think it might be a little big for her...

But darn if she doesn't look fabulous!

Norfolk

We spotted a mermaid in Norfolk! Unsurprising, since it's on campus and we were on our way to a meeting... but fun nonetheless. Actually, if you sit right in front of this particular mermaid, you can reach 3 Pokestops at once... so we sat there for a little while.

Summer Reading (and a Postcard!)

Being in a library all day means we are definitely doing the Summer Reading Challenge!

This book is actually for book club.
We're reading westerns this month.

Summer Reading Challenge Bingo!
I put mine on my office door so people can watch
my progress. Stella and I haven't finished a book yet,
but it only started on Monday, so we have time.

Bonus: We got a postcard in the mail from Anana & Haylie's
trip to the Detroit Zoo! (We got it a little while ago,
but I kept forgetting to take a photo of it.)

Stella in Augmented Reality

I've been playing with some augmented reality (when you view something through a mobile device's camera and it adds something that isn't there in real life) to use in a scavenger-hunt-style library instruction activity. Today, I tried it out on Stella:

When I scan the "trigger" of Stella on my desk, the app adds the "overlay" of the speech bubble!

The library activity is more like scanning printed icons for databases and printers and other library services and resources, and getting information about them and answering questions about them, but this was more fun than that.

Library, and Finishing Touches

Last night, one of my coworkers held a program I wanted to attend in our library, so I stuck around after work. That meant I had some spare time to wander the library with Stella and show her a few highlights!

Our glass art "fireplace." It's not actually warm. And it's not Chihuly... It's a local artist
inspired by Chihuly.

The very beginning of what we call "Main Street."
The wall on the left is the public library's adult fiction,
and it stretches the entire length of the building
(which, according to reports when we opened a few years ago,
is a football field).

Then, we had this morning off, so we frantically worked on some of the finishing touches to my cosplay for this weekend, which PerfectlyBohemian correctly identified as being from Attack on Titan!

Fabric glue to fold the edges of the patches under,
and binder clips to hold the edges in place until it dries.
I would have sewn them, but I didn't plan ahead,
and sewing would have gone over some of the drawing.

And the BIG patch for the back of the jacket.

This will be one action-packed weekend! Stella is in for some treats.

Book Club

Last night, Stella came with me to my book club! We're a small group that meets in the library I work in (but it's not just staff members, it's open to the public). We don't pick a single book for all of us to read... we pick a genre each month. This month was graphic novels, one of my specialties!

On the left is Fables vol. 1, the book our fearless leader read for this month.
The paper Stella is sitting on is my trivia quiz (we do one each month, in the theme
of the genre we read that month) and I blew everyone else out of the water for once (7/13 right!)
And the mug is a Christmas present for an attendee who hasn't been able to come for
a few months so she got it last night. It has a bunch of first lines from famous books!

MLA 8th Edition

Stella gets to see a bit of my nerdy librarian side tonight. MLA (the Modern Language Association) released their newest edition of their citation/style handbook this month, and I've been eagerly awaiting my personal copy in the mail. (I wanted one I could write notes in and highlight things in, as opposed to the library copies we ordered.) I look considerably calmer than I did when I first cracked it open, but here I'm reading it with Stella:

Kind of a weird thing for an LV to be a part of, but I promise, this is one of the highlights of my year, professionally speaking.

Regional Automotive Center

Stella and I drove to Chesapeake today for a meeting in the school's Regional Automotive Center, which I had never been to before. They have this neat (huge!) mural of a timeline of the history of the automobile industry. (One of my coworkers was nice enough to give Stella a boost for the photo!)

Dolphin - TCC

I think I've mentioned these with all my LVs, but Stella is new to Virginia Beach. In Norfolk, there are mermaid statues all over the place, decorated in different ways by different local artists. They tend to mark major landmarks (the new library, the art museum, the hockey team's arena, the small music venue, the college I work for, the medical school, etc.). In Virginia Beach, we have dolphins. There are way less dolphins... I only know where three of them are, but I'm trying to find more of them.

This one is in front of the admin building at the campus of the community college I work at! That's our logo on its side. It's covered in those little flat-sided glass marbles. And there's Stella, balancing on its nose!

New Horizons Conference

Stella and I have had a loooooong day! We got up at 4:30am and left Virginia Beach just after 5am, drove across Virginia lengthwise, and arrived at our hotel in Roanoke at about 9:45am. Then we hopped a shuttle to the conference hotel and attended our first day of New Horizons, a conference for all the community colleges in Virginia.

We got there just in time for the box lunch.
While we ate, we studied the program to decide
which sessions to attend.

This is the little digital sign for MY session!
If you can't read it, it's The iPad-Based Library Classroom.
After hearing about it, Stella is excited to see the actual
classroom when we go back to work on Monday!

Diligently taking notes during today's
keynote session about student success.

I think now, we need some room service and junk TV in our hotel room, and an early bedtime!!!