Fuck Yeah! Um, Hooray for Funding. With Decorum.

On random occasions, I feel the need to check my Outlook's junk mail folder. Mostly because everything that ends up in there is, indeed, not junk. Only I rarely check it because most important things make it through, and it's usually the odd listserv junk that gets in there. I've been meaning to check it for a couple of days, and I'm very glad the bug bit me today to actually do it. What did I find in there, you ask? Oh, nothing much. Just an email note that I won another faculty development grant. Like the one that saved my financial bacon for ALA. The gist:

Congratulations! The Faculty Development Committee has approved a grant of $1000 to provide funds for travel expenses related to your presentation of "Dance, Dance, Library Evolution" in Monterey, CA, October 18-22, 2008. An official award letter will arrive in a few weeks, but I wanted to let you know as quickly as possible that your proposal had been funded.

So, yes, I would have received an actual paper letter, and it will likely be here before the week is out, since this email was sent on the 6th. Either way, this is a really great way to start out the week (if you follow my other blog, you'd know this has been a big few days, poetry-publication-wise already). So, no thanks to Outlook for eating my email, but yay for the Faculty Development Grant Committee, who gave me much needed moneys despite my having gotten a grant in April. I applied because I thought presenting at Internet Librarian (with Rudy as well as for the pre-conference mentioned in the letter - both were mentioned in my application) was important enough that I'd throw my hat in the ring again, despite knowing that recent winners are sort of pushed to the back of the line.

My first reaction (having just bought expensive plane tickets) was to holler fuck yeah!!, um, something completely inappropriate to yell in a quiet academic library. But this is a real boon, and deserves a yell, because even with InfoToday covering the registration, it's still a prohibitively expensive conference, and as a po' professional in the early stages of my career, I have to say that my university - as well as my Dean and my colleagues - have been enormously generous with funding and time so I could pursue this sort of thing.

Yay, supportive University faculty colleagues! Yay, awesome conference (this will be my first IL)! Yay!!