Let's deconstruct some myths

Okay I would like to start deconstructing some myths. This was brought about by one thing but it might become a series.

If you follow me on Twitter you might have read that I started back to my dance class lately. I've never hidden the fact that I did belly dancing before but besides that, I have just said I take dance classes for a workout and it is just dance.

So, let me lead me up to what gave me the idea for my need to write this blog since I don't write that often.

I arrived at the dance studio tonight Dolphin Dance. Kristen had news about a former fellow student who moved to Washington state. Emily is being threatened by one person complaining and wanting to shut down her studio in Washington state because this one person does not think it is appropriate for the small town in which she lives.

You see the part I've left out and have kept very sheltered for a few years is Dolphin Dance teaches pole dancing and exotic dance for women. Yes, that means I know how to pole dance and up until now there were only two people that knew it.

I decided that after watching the news story from King 5 out of Seattle that I need to let this fact be known because of the stereotypes that people have about this form of dance and exercise that are not true. The longer I keep it hidden the more I'm doing to help perpetuate the myth.

Pole dancing in this environment is very liberating and builds great self-esteem for women. I have gained so much self confidence by doing these classes. I'm not a workout fan but any means but I look so forward to going dolphin dance truly makes working out fun. My core gets a great workout, my legs get firmed up and most of all my arms. It takes a lot of upper body strength to be able to pull yourself up and hang there or, my favorite, spin around. As an added bonus, my wonderful husband thinks it is ironic and funny that his wife who wouldn't let him have a 'traditional' bachelor party takes pole dancing.

So, I'm starting this as my small part in helping to deconstruct this myth. If you have questions leave me comments.

Ideas for future installations in this series I'm still working on, but you can leave comments for any of those as well.

Patience and Impulse

I've been growing my hair for about three years to donate to Locks of Love. I was planning on doing this in January and I showed pictures of what I thought it might look to my stylist tonight. Well, after having patience for three years, tonight I made an impulse decision and went for it and cut my hair off, roughly 14 inches.

This was something I had wanted to do for a long time but I had the patience to stick with it to get it to the necessary length to donate. Then three years ago (roughly, it is my story here) when my husband asked me to marry him I knew I could do this and marry him too.

For the past three years my husband has had to tolerate me asking him to look at females with short hair. It's not always a bad thing for a wife or girlfriend to ask her guy to look at other females but comparing her hairstyle and trying to determine what it would look like on their girl is normally not a guy's specialty.

I have also met many people during this time that have either donated their hair or have had a family member that have donated. If you are thinking of doing it or in the process of growing your hair to donate, I say keep going. There are many days that it seems like it will not grow or it will take forever but when your stylist makes that big cut and you can hold your long ponytail with your cute new style it will be worth it knowing you've done something small to make a big difference.

This is just one small thing that can be done to make a difference in someone's life with very little effort. I gave up choosing my hairstyle for a short time, but really, what is that in the scheme of something larger when my hair will grow back and I can always change how I look in other ways to express who I am? More importantly, who I am should be expressed by how I live, what I do to affect others, how I treat others, not what I look like or my current hairstyle. This is my reflection as I have a much lighter head, literally.

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10 Random Things

This is the bonus for Learn & Play. Here are 10 random things about me. For anyone that has not figured out who I am by now I am Melissa from the Help Desk. However that will soon be changing I will soon be in Organizational Development. More on that to come in a later post.

10 Random Things

1. My sister is my best friend thanks to my mom telling us someday your sister will be the only thing you have. She currently lives in Baxter, South Carolina; which is the Charlotte metro area.
2. My favorite dessert is ice cream. My favorite flavors are Cocoa Zin and other seasonal flavors from Jeni’s. From Handel’s I like Chocolate Cake Batter and Chocolate Handel Pops.
3. My nephew who is 11 no longer wants to talk to me on the phone instead him and my husband share a bond over Star Wars. I’ve seen the movies but I can’t follow Clone Wars or anything beyond knowing very basics sorry Mike and Dennis.
4. I currently have long hair however I am on the lookout for a short hairdo. I have not had hair to my shoulder since I started college. I let my hair grow for my wedding and now let it grow longer to be able to donate it for Locks of Love. Currently my hair is 13” from the base of my neck so now time to decide what style.
5. I’ve lived in Columbus my entire life. I planned on moving at different points of my life but have never seemed to be able to leave. I love Columbus for all of its good and bad points. I love walking around at Easton in Christmastime, walking around campus, the fact you can O-H, etc.
6. I received my masters from Kent like many of my collages here. I never set foot on the KSU campus to receive my degree so instead of attending graduation I went and got a massage. I still believe I made the right decision.
7. My mom wanted to call me Holly or Heidi, my Dad said Holly sounded like Christmas and Heidi sounded like a pet. Well, a few years later later when I was 2 and my sister was 6 we got a miniature Schnauzer. Guess what we named her, Heidi. Her full name was Happy Heidi of Holly Hills.
8. I went to my first outdoor rock festival concert this year at the young age of 32. The tickets were first year anniversary present to my husband and we went to Rock on the Range. It was quite the awakening for me. When we were listening to Boba Flex and closer to the stage than my comfort level I got hit in the head from a flying bottle. So, I got to visit the First Aid booth. I wanted to talk to people that I saw throwing stuff that to see if they understand the consequences of their actions and if it hits someone it really hurts. My husband didn’t let me and reasoned if they had and alcohol or substances in their system they might not be level headed.
9. I love wearing heels, boots, and cute shoes. However due to injuries lately I have not been able to wear my cute shoes as much or my co-workers will give me a hard time.
10. I started OSU as a double major, vocal music performance and molecular genetics. I was pre-med and trying to be a well-rounded student. I did my volunteer work over at Grant while I worked for Ann in CFD. I learned, for one, I was much happier working in the library, and two, I couldn’t deal with patients when they were a person. Basically, I could pick a different major or it would change me to be a different person. One that I didn’t know if I would like, so I picked a different major.

If you want more information about me look for me on Twitter and Facebook.

Completing Learn & Play

Wow, this is the end really? At first it seemed very far away and now the end is here and I have a few weeks to spare.

I enjoyed this program. I knew about most of the tools and sites in the program but I had not used all to their full potential. I never thought I would like twitter and now I want to get an iPhone so I can Twitter more, okay that not the only reason.

The main thing I enjoyed about this program is the sense of community. Because I am in a support area sometimes there is a disconnected feeling but this has seemed to bring everyone together. It doesn't matter how department or location we can all related to doing Learn & Play together.

The negative side is of course remembering all of these password and username combinations that I have now created. Beyond that I don't have a negative.

I would definitely do this again and I am looking forward to doing Helene's bonus for L&P that she listed in the APLE/SR newsletter.

So keep watching for more post and come follow me on Twitter.

MOLDI

First, I will say that I have used MOLDI in the past and I like it. The only thing I find amusing about it is the acronym we sometimes come-up with funny acronyms. So back to talk about digital media. I am very excited that as of Monday, Nov 10 MOLDI will be compatible with iPod's!!! This is wonderful news.

I found one audio book and one ebook that I checked out from MOLDI. The ebook I selected is Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization and the audio book is Made to Stick Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.

I've used MOLDI in the past and assisted customers in using it. I think the common question that customers have is how to return the digital items early. Which is easier to do with different types of items. Why do customers want to return the digital items early because you are limited to 5 at a time and they want to checkout new items.

If you haven't heard yet there is a machine at Main Library for customers to use with the Overdrive software already loaded on it. I know this information has been shared but the more distribution points for getting information out there the better.

Podcast

I use podcast normally in my iTunes at home so I haven't tried using it in Bloglines before. First I found some podcast directories with funny names. This is notable to me because if you have a funny name or odd name I'll remember it so I'll remember podcast pickle over some of the over generic sounding directory sites.

From the Pickle site, I found Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing it is added to my Blogline but I've included the link above in case anyone reading this is interested in it. The lesson this feed was the difference between cement and concrete. I picked this feed because I'm a math and science person I know that it not the normal for us library folk but grammar is not my specialty so this feed will be useful to me.

Libraries using Podcast
I think using Podcast for libraries is great. I've search one that stopped updating theirs in June. I found a University library that appear to be done once a quarter. I found other libraries both public and academic that started strong and called theirs a weekly update but they don't have a update for over a month. I started this section with names but removed the names because it seemed that was very common. If a library takes this one I think it needs to be current or your customers are not going to care about your feed.

YouTube

YouTube

I think that about sums it up doesn't it. Okay, seriously I love YouTube, YahooVideo and GoogleVideo. I use them for trying to find out how to cook something sometimes but normally I use them for music. When I can't remember who sings a song or want to hear something right now I go to YouTube.

Why not to go to YouTube. The things I dislike about YouTube is I normally go to YouTube to look for one thing and plan on spending about 5-10 minutes there. Then about an hour later I'm still on YouTube that is my complaint about YouTube is it is too much fun.

This is from Pink the song Dear Mr. President. You can take the song anyway you want but I think everyone should do their part to help.