1. What is your job and how long have you worked for the Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries?
I’m the Administrative Assistant, and it’s been 19 months.
2. What is your favorite part about your job?
Learning new things.
3. What is your least favorite part about your job?
There’s nothing I really dislike about my job, nothing’s a chore.
4. How are you spending your isolation?
Having moved into a 140 year old home, my husband and I have been rehabbing it from the shell it was; it is livable but not complete. My list of projects for it is as varied as the subjects in a library. I basically can spin a wheel and pick a project!
5. If you have any pets or kids, describe them as your co-worker and tell us what they are doing right now.
I don’t have any pets, and my kids are both grown, but I have a husband. So my ‘co-worker’ is at work right now, but when he’s home, I’m the project manager. My co-worker is muscle and often needs motivation in regards to rehabbing our home.
6. What pantry meal are you proudest of?
Deep pan pizza – made it just this past Friday and it was magnificent. Jeremy (co-worker) recommended it. I had all of the ingredients. I started it on Thursday night as it is a no-knead recipe and rises slowly in the fridge. (I had made a no-knead dutch oven bread which was really good the week before and it was a perfect intro to this concept). I cook with my cast iron pan on a daily basis and it was the star of this deep pan pizza! Don’t even bother if you don’t have a cast-iron pan! A cast-iron pan is king! It was even better because it was picky-husband approved.
7. What are you reading/watching during your isolation?
Most of my reading and watching is centered around teaching myself ALL the things I need to know to complete my many projects: how to build a woodshed to season the wood we just felled in our property (why felled is the appropriate term?); is that the freshly cut poplar that smells like dog poop?! Yes, it is.
That’s part of the MO, you have to do a lot of research. I haven’t read for pleasure since we started the project 8 years ago. I watch a lot of home-related YouTube videos. I love it though, I love working with wood and renovating. I want to learn as much as possible about it all.
My boots didn’t make it through year six of the rehab. Can’t really understand why – they survived all the years since college, a few or so decades ago!
8. What is your hobby? Name your top 5 (hobby-related) recommendations and why.
- Designing and building things to fit a custom need, primarily from wood.
- Reclaiming, reusing, and upcycling old stuff for current use.
- Perennial gardening with a side of vegetable and annual gardening: Echinacea or cone flower, Digitalis or foxglove, Day lilies, Lavender or catnip, Liatris
- Crafting with my 6 year old granddaughter, nicknamed “the Hurricane”. She whips through, high high energy, then crashes hard. She’s very active. She loves crafting, she writes out what she wants to craft and bake with me.
- I love building and crafting things! I love working hard and having something to show for it. I feel like I missed my calling with all this rebuilding, I love it.
9. Where’s a favorite place you have traveled and where would you most like to travel to next?
I don’t have any aspirations to travel, I’m exactly where I want to be. I’m content. You can just leave this question blank, because my answer is too boring, but it’s the truth. [The interviewers do not think this question is boring and find it completely acceptable.]
10. What frivolous things do you miss about being out in the normal world?
Human contact, making jewelry over drinks with my friend, seeing people’s smiles rather than a mask. I miss routine – the routine of going to the gym and chatting with my gym friends, then work, then home. Routine is important, and it’s also important to allow for routine to transform to become a new routine.
This post was written by the Water Cooler Committee, Samara Cary, Paige Scudder, Elaina Vitale, and Samantha Wiebkin, for the Biomedical Libraries.
