Archive for April, 2007

Champlain Shootout

April 26, 2007 · By Megan · Filed under hockey

Last weekend, a team of half Black-Icers and half Storm-Chasers headed up to Burlington, VT for the 7th Annual Champlain Shootout. After some stumbling around, we dubbed our joint team the Ice Storm (yes, shocking that it took a long time to figure that out - apparently none of us are remotely creative.)

Our first game, Friday night, was against the Saratoga Storm. We won 2-0, which was pretty awesome. The next day we played two games - against the VanKleek Hill Griffins (they were from Canada) and against the South Windsor CT Saints. The Griffins beat us 4-0 (ouch) and we beat the Saints 1-0.

After all 8 teams had played their three games, there was a 4-way tie for second place. Based on points against, we ended up in the 3rd place game, against the VanKleek Hill Griffins again. (It was good we didn’t end up in the 5th place game, since we’d have had to play the Phantoms, who are in our league here in the Boston area. What fun to drive 3.5 hours to play a team we played 4 times this season! Fortunately that didn’t happen.)

So in the 3rd place game, we ended up being up 4-1 at one point. We got a little overconfident, and they turned it on some. Then, one of their centers really turned it on. She blew past me a couple of times down low and scored. Grrrrrr… We ended the game tied at 4-4. Rather than leaving it as a tie for 3rd place, we played a 5-minute sudden-death overtime period. No score after that either. SO THEN we actually went to a shoot-out! Can you even believe it? Lib, Amy, and one of the Storm players (Ann) were our three shooters.  Ann scored, neither Lib nor Amy did. Unfortunately, one of the Griffins scored as well. So after the regular time, overtime, AND first shootout, we were tied 5-5. At that point, we went to sudden-death shootout. Our first shooter missed, and then theirs snuck a puck past our goalie.

IT WAS SO FUN! Even though we lost, the game was fun, the overtime was amazing, and the shootout was a blast. All three teams we played were very nice teams - this tournament was incredibly clean and non-chippy. I enjoy that.

The other really fun part of the weekend was the fact that our friend Jill flew up to Philly to spend the weekend with us. We haven’t seen her since last July, and it was great to spend some time with her. I wish we got to see her more often….

So on Sunday, we drove back to Manchester, NH to drop Jill at the airport, and then we headed to Amy’s sister’s place to eat dinner (barbequed steak tips) and to get the dogs. When we were about 2 miles from the house, Amy’s cell phone rang, she chatted for a minute, and she turned the car around. I looked at her quizzically and she said, “Otter ate our dinner.” Yup, Otter ate 2 pounds of raw, marinated steak tips. AND HE DIDN’T GET SICK. Stomach of freaking steel, I tell you!

And Maggie rolled in the dead porcupine (again). Last night I found the last quill, stuck in her back footpad. Silly dog. Turns out that she found it again today and rolled in it again. Sigh again… I don’t think she’s quite as smart as she thinks she is.

No photos of the Champlain Shootout by me, but eventually you might find some here.

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Adult Women Hockey Players who Blog

April 16, 2007 · By Megan · Filed under hockey

In an attempt to bring my day-job and my sports obsession together, I’ve been scouring the net, trying all sorts of search terms, in an attempt to find the blogs of adult women who play hockey, as opposed to adult women who are hockey fans. I have to tell you - it’s not been easy! I spent the better part of today while watching the Boston Marathon searching. So far, this is what I’ve come up with:

Do you know of any more? Let me know and I’ll update the list.

Tags: women’s hockey, hockey blogs

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An Open Letter to Job-Seekers, Updated for 2007

April 12, 2007 · By Megan · Filed under library

Way back in 2004, I was on a search committee which, I can only assume, ended up hiring a librarian. Honestly - I can’t remember what position it was for, but since I adored everyone who I worked with at my last job, we most likely hired someone absolutely fantastic.However, that experience led to a bit of a rant, entitled An Open Letter to Job-Seekers. I encourage you to read it, ponder it, and then come back here to read a few updates for 2007.

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Are you back? Great.

As I think about how I could update that letter, I’m struck by how incredibly relevant all the advice I gave in that rant still is. At MPOW, we recently had some of those elusive entry-level openings - and we got the applications to prove it! The candidate pool was really strong, which tells me that there may be a few things going on these days in librarianship:

  1. We are graduating too many people from library schools who want to work in academia. (Another rant for another day - and I admit that I’m as guilty as the next enthusiastic librarian in recruiting people to the profession when the market is like this…)
  2. The people who are going into librarianship now have very clear reasons for doing so, and are working hard before, during, and after graduate school to make sure their experience will eventually help them find the job they want.

So given those things, what advice can I give you now that’s different from then? A few nuggets of wisdom, gleaned mostly from the part of the search before search committees even decide who they want to consider as the top third of the candidate pool:

  • If your classmates are all a bunch of dips and are applying for the same jobs you are, you’re coming to the job search from a disadvantaged position. In that case, you MUST figure out how to stand out from two crowds - that of your school (association is a bitch) and that of the entire candidate pool. Consider this when making a decision about where to go (if you can). Talk to recent grads of the schools you’re interested in and find out if they and their classmates are whip-smart, or a few crayons short of a 64-pack. If you’re limited by geography and all of a sudden get that sinking feeling about the school in your area, consider one of the fine distance education programs out there.
  • Being fluent in technology is no longer a preferred or optional qualification. If a job ad asks specifically for technology skills, please don’t talk to me about how you can search DIALOG. I don’t care if you can search DIALOG; search is no longer a “technology”. What I care about is if you can understand how RSS works and why it might be important in libraries. I care if you can get into code (html or xml) and poke it and fix it. I care that you bloody well understand that relational databases can be incredibly powerful and infuriatingly limiting all at the same time. I care that you are excited about the prospect of learning about these things if you don’t know much about them yet.
  • PDF people, PDF. Don’t upload your resume into the online application system as a Word document, but rather send it as a PDF. Why? I’ll tell you why. I prefer to see things in Word in page layout view, 75%, with spellcheck and grammar check both turned on. When you prefer to work in normal view, 150%, with grammar check off and I open your resume/cover letter in that view, it jars me. I have to adjust it until I can read it. Then I get to look at all sorts of green squiggle lines (resumes + grammar check = nightmare) and red squiggle lines (Word hate names, acronyms, and misspellings.) If you simply save your resume and cover letter as a PDF, we have no such issues. The other thing I’d suggest you do before PDFing it is to put your resume and cover letter into ONE word document, and then save that as a PDF. Name it something easy, like YourName-CollegeName.pdf. See how that works for both of us (and your references, to whom you will send your resume, cover letter, and the job ad)?
  • Speaking of, please, for the love of God, be careful about who you ask to be your references! And do them the favor of sending your cover letter, resume, and the job ad when you apply for the position, perhaps also with a personal word or two about what excites you about the position. It will serve you well in the long run to ask someone who is articulate and organized to serve as your reference. Note that this means you may have to avoid asking your “absent-minded professor” types. This underscores the advice I gave in 2004 about getting as much relevant experience as you can, even if it’s not in libraries. That way you diversify your potential reference pool.

So for now, that’s it. Good luck job-seekers of 2007! I am so happy you decided to become librarians. It’s a great profession and I know (the bulk of) you will keep us moving in the right direction.

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Twitter and Second Life

April 12, 2007 · By Megan · Filed under life, tech

There are all sorts of reasons I’m not going to delve into Twitter or Second Life. Rather than blather on and on about them, I’ll just say this:

I spend too much time online anyway, and would rather not find another way to chain myself to the computer.

That is all.

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Black Ice v. RI Panthers (4-6?)

April 12, 2007 · By Megan · Filed under hockey

So the final hockey game of the season - what a heartbreaker! We were playing a team we’d played several times before - a team that had beaten us more than once (0-4, 2-5). It was going to be a tough game and we knew it.

My memory of the game itself is a little fuzzy - I do know that they got particularly chippy (I’m looking at YOU #20) and we were getting banged around a lot. At one point down in our defensive zone, one of their wingers was harassing my goalie, getting into the crease, and the like. In my zeal to “remove” her from said crease, I apparently dropped her into the net and got my first penalty of the season for interference.  Later in the game, another of their wingers, who I was tangling with behind the net, hauled off and punched me in the helmet, twice (although in a way that the refs couldn’t see - sneaky little $@#%.) Needless to say, I was a tad bit annoyed by that, but managed to get myself off the ice before complaining too loudly to the refs, or retaliating in any way.  (This all foreshadows the game later in the evening…)

We ended up losing a tight game (I forget the actual score - maybe 6-4?), but Amy and Michelle were both hot hot hot in the scoring category!  Amy even managed to get herself a hat trick (2 goals, one assist). I think it was the first hat trick anyone had on our team all season - there being that massive goal drought in the middle of the season and all…

After the game a few of us went to the 99 for drinks and dinner, and then came back up to the rink to watch Coach Steph in goal for her B-level team, also their last game of the season. It was a good, tough game - Steph was making some awesome saves out there - and her team was up (I think… my memory is fuzzy because it was a couple of weeks ago.) At any rate, one of the opposing team’s defenders and one of Coach’s team’s wingers got tangled up near the blue line. There was a bit of pushing, stick-under-the-arm hanging-on and whatnot, when all of a sudden, one of the opposing team’s players totally piled on - and there was an all-out brawl among 4 or so folks on the two teams. I’ve never a.) seen women fight like that, b.) been more embarrassed to be a woman hockey player, and c.) laughed so hard at people being SO BLOODY STUPID. Numbers 3 and 4 into it both got thrown out of the game. I forget if the refs even ended up calling the original penalty that started the whole thing. Coach just stood down in the goal, shaking her head the whole time. I’m just glad nothing like that happened in our game earlier - what a horrible way to end the season! So after all the drama, Coach’s team ended up winning.

And that was the last time this month that I played hockey. So far, I’m missing it dreadfully and horribly and in 19 ways to Sunday. This coming weekend Amy and I are heading - with 3 of our teammates, our good friend Jill, possibly Coach Steph, and half of another team - up to Burlington VT for a tournament. I’m SO EXCITED. After that, it’s just a couple of weeks until summer hockey starts. Then life will return to normally scheduled programming - 2 nights of hockey a week, smelly gear in the basement, washing machine running constantly, and me being able to eat more food than I can now and not gain any pounds. I can’t wait.

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