To switch things up from the last post, I'll bust out the Manitoba Markers Month content first and then move to other concepts second. Keep things interesting, hopefully.
So! When I put out the call for marker subject matter, old friend (and personal outfitter) Nicholas Eckert requested "a desperate Winnipeg Jets fan" in keeping with the Bett-Mania going around the city at the time.
Heady times, those were! Despite the countless years now of dashed hopes and shattered dreams, Winnipeg hockey fans of all stripes lost their collective minds once again over an increasingly ridiculous series of unfounded rumours (Bettman is coming! Bettman is here! BETTMAN IS DRINKING AT MOXIE'S) until the whole sordid mess imploded on itself.
People searched high and low for any signs of his presence, for any sign of him in the airport or the arena or the eateries or the newsrooms -- but after a "scheduled" news conference failed to materialize and quashed the story yet again, there was much desperation and disappointment when it was firmly and decisively declared:
oh no little jets guy nooooooo :(
I had originally intended to draw this more quickly than I'd drawn the last couple of entries, but as you can clearly tell my good intentions didn't quite pan out. While I could blame it on the technical complexity -- there turns out to be a very good reason that people don't usually hand-letter custom fonts -- I will admit instead that my focus was somewhat compromised by my unceremonious return to unemployment.
Yes, dear friends, James Hope Howard is once again on the market! The job market, that is. (Well, and the singles market too, but that's not a particularly new development so it... what? Oh, sorry. Back to something you'd read.) My originally-three-month term position as a Librarian of Red River College has reached its conclusion, and I really must say that it was seven of the best months I've ever spent; few things are quite as professionally rewarding as the opportunity to do exactly what one has been hoping and training for, and I couldn't have had my first contract with a nicer organization.
I enjoyed a great deal of invaluable experience from a wide variety of angles -- coordinating an entire campus library, providing multiple forms of personal library service, delivering multiple full-length classroom presentations for up to fifty students at a time, leading a very successful marketing team, scheduling and deploying staff, diffusing crisis situations, personally evaluating and cultivating the entire reference collection of a major educational institution, so on and so forth -- but what really should be recognized as one of my personal career highlights is, of course, getting editorial control over the Word of the Day Board.
Yes, this is how you know that I'm moving up in the world, and I am nowhere near gracious enough to properly express my gratitude and appreciation to Red River College for the time I spent as its employee. Much obliged, RRC! Let me know if you need anything.
But, life goes on! I'm once again between jobs, or underemployed, or whatever the best applicable euphemism is, so I'll be scouring the papers and browsing the job sites and beating the bushes to see what (or, because I'm not ruling anything out, where) my next gainful employment will be. On the other hand, this does mean I have a lot more time on my hands at the moment, so with any luck my productivity for this very site should pick up a bit for the foreseeable future. I'd certainly hope so, at any rate!
So keep watching this space, true believers, and I'll do what I can to keep bringing you reasonably interesting content in a reasonably timely manner. And if you happen to run into anybody who mentions a pressing need for an accredited Librarian, hey, send 'em my way! This may seem a strange venue for personal promotion, but heck with it, it is a rough economy.
6 comments:
As a former Jets fan, I hope we don't get an NHL franchise in Winnipeg. Bettman can come visit if he likes but he doesn't need to drop off a failing team so we can keep it on life support till a more lucrative market reopens. I used to love the Jets. I stood in the middle of Portage and Main on that fateful day and pledged my money but now I have no love of the NHL. Now a professional franchise is just a drain on resources, money sent out the community, never to return. I would rather support the local arts and local businesses.
We will miss your witty and often hilarious word of the days.
Why didn't they keep you on FT? Maybe Bruce felt threatened LOL
Here's a job opening you may be interested in:
Head, Collection Development
LN3 (Librarian 3)
Regular/full-time
Manitoba Culture, Heritage and Tourism
Legislative Library
Winnipeg
http://jobsearch.gov.mb.ca/jow/advancedResult.action?postingType=0&category=0&jobType=0&lang=0&department=0®ion=1&sort=postedDate&curPageNum=1&ID=725#position
Pfft, nothing's ever threatening Bruce's job. He could leave for a week and the entire Princess campus would collapse inward on itself in a maelstrom of projector failures and panicked instructors.
No, it really just came down to budgeting, and the current economic climate is a really terrible time for budgets all around. Much like managing an NHL team in the modern salary cap era, there's only so much money available for so many staff, so you can't (and don't necessarily need to) hang on to your developing prospects when you have salary tied up in successful veteran contracts.
What a strained analogy! I should get that checked out. You get the idea, though. It was just business, nothing personal, and I'm cool with that; I have enough management training (and, obviously, more than enough experience with the GM modes in sports games) to keep a realistic perspective on the situation. And it may not be a great market for journeyman two-way centers right now, but there's bound to be a roster spot somewhere down the line.
I'm mixing sports and management again, aren't I? Sorry. That's actually profoundly cliched in management discourse, so I should probably keep a lid on it. (I'd hate to lose my hard-drinking common-man reputation, after all.)
Thanks for the heads-up, Anonymous!
This picture lives up to my expectations. Well done. :-)
As for Librarian, is your degree considered all well and good in the states? If so, might I recommend a university that just completed a new thirteen-story library last summer and opened a new student gathering place on Monday? It's a bit of a drive, and there is that visa process and all, but the head guy here's a library science major too and we love him to death.
For serious? Hey, yeah, hit me up with some details!
My degree is fully recognized by the American Library Association -- in fact, that's most of the point of having the degree -- so I'm pretty well good to work anywhere, although as I say that it reminds me that I'm an idiot who still hasn't even applied for a passport yet. Man, I gotta get on that.
So, yeah, keep me posted!
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