finally (even if i don't know where anything is)

so, i have been talking about remodeling my living room for years. Had it all planned out (and, believe it or not, this wasn't my plan) but have been thinking that the next day would be the perfect day to procrastinate day after day, after day. My sister, who i suppose has grown quite weary of hearing about this project, is visiting, apparently, with the express purpose of tackling this job herself.
I go to work, take naps, whatever only to find more and more of my living room gone. Now all that is left is the tv and its accouterments, the sofa and some pieces of cat furniture. I have no idea where anything is (and, since most of my clothing was spread all over the living room, getting dressed has become quite an adventure.) Yesterday i went to retrieve the cat food from my trunk and found some things stashed there.
I still have all my masks up (and i suppose i shall not take them down until after the carpet is ripped up and i am ready to paint. The first pictures here are of my entryway.

I have masks in every room my house. I began collecting them about twenty-five years ago because of my theatre major, my love of Shakespeare, and the fact that i believe they are unique. All told, i have no idea how many i have as there are still some packed away (over 200, i believe.)

So this is the current state of my living room (i'm planning on trashing the green curtains for blinds, although i suppose they match the plant.): the carpet is probably over 25 years old and has had too many cats live in it over the years (the entry way is completely ruined by former feline residents as well as my own sixteen-year-old feline who thought that because the odor was already there that was the place to go. I am afraid of what the state of the sub-flooring there is but once the damage has been mitigated i plan to replace it with tile in the hopes that it will be easier to clean)


I have never been a huge fan of red (everything i like tends toward the cool side,) but, as of late i've been obsessed with all things red (and i'm trying to go to the cool side of red.) I hope i don't hate it once i have to live in it...For my carpeting i have always wanted to do carpet tiles because of the beasties and the clumsiness of their owner, but found myself turned off by the colors, textures, and lack of ability to install padding underneath. FLOR finally came out with a solution to the first two and i decided to sacrifice the third to the greater good. I was thinking of doing yellow blinds for my window so that the living room was all primary colors but i'm not sure how that whole effect will go. I do have a celestial (blue sky, yellow stars, moon or something similar running throughout my house so the yellow is there, but then again yellow is from the wrong side of the spectrum and yellow hasn't grown on me like red has.

Ikea provides my desired sofa and chairs (time to relegate the futon to the basement~and only if Ikea would actually PROVIDE the sofa and chairs so i didn't have to use my imaginary cash...) I have decided to pack away my hundreds of cds instead of displaying them since i have everything on iTunes now and then i might actually have space in my tiny living room for the furniture.

I still have black furniture/accents remaining from my early household fantasies of every room a color accented by black and the dark grey was the only color i liked in the styles i wanted.

After i complete the living room, my next wad of imaginary cash will be devoted to installing a platform in my bedroom (i am becoming too old and crickety to launch myself off my beloved futon~and though i still love to sleep on it i need it to be a bit higher off the ground~i could also use the extra storage space drawers would provide.)
this is my current bedroom look with the usual feline decorations.

if you could only see the ENTIRE bedroom you would get a sense of the type of mess my sister had to clean up in the living room...

My mother told me that when i got a housekeeper i would have to learn to put up with people putting away my stuff. And i said, "But mother, i have no more imaginary cash to spend on a housekeeper." To which my wonderful mother said that she was going to pay for it (she never did my housework when i was growing up~i suppose she is tired of visiting me in chaos...
Although i love my family for all their help i hate that my migraines prevent me from doing much myself and feel so guilty that others have to do it for me.

(and once upon a time i had matching lamps~i have a replacement shade somewhere but i know not where.)

I am much too picky to ever accomplish anything!

thoughts?

goodbye to you (or should that be I?)

So i watched her for a while and then i was SO over it (and i must admit i'll watch ANTM occasionally (mostly on Oxygen. Speaking of which, just caught the "petite", most of the models were 5'7", season and couldn't help that notice that all of them wore flats during judging, when in other seasons they have been told they must learn to walk in heels~did the producers tell them to do that so that they would look even shorter? Or do all of us shorties just detest heels?) I think my favorite contestant ever was Alison, broken-doll, Harvard (or as her internet fans/discoverer know her, Creepy Chan.) Besides the strange fascination of it all, there is the fact that Nigel is so gorgeous (i've also always found it more than a bit hypocritical that she makes her contestants do all sorts of things like pose with animals and in the nude that she had barred from her own contracts.)

When i did watch The Tyra Show i was always so annoyed that she would ask her guest a question and then interrupt them before they got to the answer (and it always seemed to be with someone that i REALLY wanted to hear the answer (tho i'm sure she did it other times, i just didn't care to notice.)
Her ego always shone through...

and supposedly she fired Paulina because Paulina's ego was too big, how could her ego be bigger than Tyra's? I like Paulina (even if i have no idea what she's really like~she's blunt and honest AND she's married to Ric Ocasek {gotta love the Cars! [and i do!]})

I'm not sure if i'll miss her or not (i'm thinking not, as i haven't seen her for quite some time...)

Just another bunch of YoSafBridg thoughts you probably have no interest in!

little ways to annoy me

1. snowing on my car (which is in my carport, after all)
2. refusing to let me into your lane even though there is room for you to either speed up OR slow down (i mean how much harm does it really cause you?)
3. make a right turn from the left lane or a right turn from the left lane (when both are clearly marked.)
4. riding my bumper and when i move forward to allow you space getting back on it (if you're going to ride my ass, at least pull my hair...) Were you not in Driver's Ed the day they discussed the amount of car lengths you were to allow between you and the car in front of you? I might just allow my car to roll backwards...
5. running your red light causing me to slam on my brakes in my green light
6. honking at me once you've decided i need to turn into traffic (i know how fast my car moves as well as its capabilities, and it is my decision to make how reckless i want to be at any given moment...) or if i don't advance on the green light the millisecond it changes (i once had a friend pulled over and ticketed for just such an action~the officer told him the horn was only to be used for emergencies and that didn't quite qualify.) In fact honking at me at all (except in an afore mentioned emergency when my course of action might kill me or you (or our respective cars) might just annoy me to the point where keeping you from your destination becomes my greatest mission in life (can we say road rage?)
7. honking (those quick little beeps to let someone know you're just driving by their house or those long annoying ones to let your roommates know you've just arrived home, or those long annoying ones to tell someone to come out to the car, perhaps after ten minutes or so of repeated honking you might want to go inside to see what's keeping them) next door to my own house especially when i am critically migraining in my living room. And honking your horn repeatedly outside a public library to tell someone inside the library to come out is completely unacceptable (do you get the idea i am not overly fond of horns? I am also no hypocrite, i never use mine {except in emergency situations of course...})
8. asking me what i did to my (slinged) arm. I have no idea (my collar became mysteriously fractured {though the doc did suggest it was my multiple personality acting up}), i have a nerve infection, and possibly something else which requires a very expensive MRI.) Not that you would know that but i am wearying of the entire fiasco...)
9. and yes it hurts
10. telling me to smile, i will smile when i damn feel like it, don't tell me what to do (this is especially annoying when you add "life's not that bad," you have no idea what is going on in my life; maybe it IS that bad.)
11. trying to provoke a smile (you also have no idea how stubborn and oppositional i really am, the more you push the less i give.)
12. friends asking me how i am (not so much because i am so often terrible but because i feel almost guilty telling you that, yet again, and like i'm trying to elicit sympathy~i really don't love to complain even though i am so very good at it...)
13. not looking at me when i am using my finger to point you in the direction of the location you asked me for and heading off in the complete opposite direction when you do look (i once had to tell a woman quite slowly and explicitly to "look in the direction i'm pointing"the fifth time she asked me and then walk over there as she wondered past it.)
14. in general, not listening to the answer to your question as i give it to you either by asking the question and then wandering away from the desk (or answering your cell phone before you give me the chance to answer), or interrupting me to ask the question i am in the process of answering, or letting your mind obviously wander even if the answer is very short, or just not listening to me at all, did you really need to know the answer? By about the third repetition becomes incredibly difficult to control my words, voice, and tone.)
15. not even asking a question but rather standing in front of the desk smiling at me when i ask you if i can help you (and yes isn't a question in and of itself, i need more information if i am to actually help you~i am not a mind reader.)
16. asking another staff member the same question you just asked me simply because you didn't like me (often times you ask a third or fourth staff member because you keep getting the same answer from each one.) And i have to suppress a smile when the second staff member sends you back to me because they don't know the answer or because i am the one in charge.)
17. Teens telling me to "just relax" because they are doing what i just asked/told them to do and they are showing no evidence of doing so.
18. i can't relax because they are not relaxing me
19. and when you ask me why i am so annoyed it is because you are so annoying (but i do love it when you are so totally misbehaving, disruptive and disturbing to other patrons that i finally get to ban you from the library and have the police come ticket you for trespassing during the proscribed period of time.)
20. using the phrase "excuse me" just BEFORE you do something extremely rude (as if it really does excuse you.) This former form of manners has just become another irritation.
21. stupidity/ignorance, in general is not that annoying (most of the time...) but complete unwillingness to learn is (especially if you are just using it as a reason to get me to do everything for you.)
22. constantly disconnect me from the internet, causing me to buy a new router which might not even solve the problem.
23. my mom asking me if i am speaking clearly into the telephone as if i were some kind of idiot who doesn't know how to use a telephone (and if i didn't wouldn't it have been my mother's responsibility to teach me long, long ago?) Please, just tell me that you can't hear me or that i am breaking up and i will take the appropriate action. (and while we're on the subject while it doesn't annoy me but quite amuses me when my one and only sister leaves me a message and feels the need to add "your sister" to her greeting of it's me, as if i wouldn't recognize her voice.)

"well i never felt more like singing the blues...

~Daniel Ash (Blue Angel)

here i sit, awake again, headaching and with a new mystery abdominal pain that has had me wishing for death going on almost two months now.

not such a great mood i'm in.

why drinking the entire bottle of shiraz might not be the best idea

You may find yourself driving down the freeway drunk (and i really do try not to drive drunk, but occasionally when judgement is shot and you call your ex up just to talk and he wants you to come over it seems like a good idea at the time) and lost looking for your ex-boyfriend's house which is on the other side of time, rarely visited and somehow always hard to find. Sometimes it seems that you have slipped into an alternate universe going round and round (or not round and round but always going in the wrong direction that only gets you more lost and doesn't seem to provide a turning point until you are much further north or west than you should be and you discover things with names like micro motels(isn't a motel itself usually small enough?) where once you get in the driveway you can't find your way out for hours.) And you are grateful for your iPod but it keeps playing and even though you want to give up and go home you can't even seem to find your way there either.

Call the ex and call the ex for help and guidance and finally stumble your way there without ever getting arrested (even though he was the one with a suspended license.)

And it is nice to be with someone who knows you well and who you can be comfortable with (and in the morning he even knows/remembers how you take your coffee and offers to make you breakfast.) But you can't help wondering how exactly you got here and want to leave.

But i always live my life with no regrets!

what do we need librarians for anyway?

not that i’m asking, of course, (that would be a little self destructive, don’t you think?) but a number of people do some to wonder such a thing, especially as budgets are crunched and administrators begin to investigate where they can cut costs…

The latest kafuffle concerns the elimination of the "librarian 1" positions in the Marathon County Public Library. One of the four positions is currently vacant and the others will be collapsed into three customer service/librarian positions which the current librarians will be offered (at $10,000 less per year) or they can apply for a lead customer service/librarian position (along with everyone else) that job pays what they currently make. I suppose this is a much better deal than many people are getting in this time of recession and unemployment, but i find the reasoning for the cuts a bit off: that libraries are becoming more like community centers (not necessarily a bad thing, but they are still libraries) and that their demands are for less complex, detailed work; mainly simple customer service and computer assistance. I have said before and shall repeat myself here that the public has a hard time differentiating between those who simply work in a library and librarians. They don’t really understand what librarians do or that they really need them (coincidentally enough, i just had two gentlemen ask me questions {one for a book one for computer searching [paid database~not internet} which required research only a librarian could perform...). Just because times are changing (and we must change with them, there are new expertise's to be learned but at the same time we must exercise the old~and remind people why they need us). As librarians we do a poor job of self-promotion and if we are to retain our jobs we need to do better…

Here’s John Berry’s opinion from March’s Library Journal:

Blatant Berry: The Vanishing Librarians

It looks like the “transformation” we seek for libraries and librarianship may turn out to be more of a “deskilling” of library jobs than an enhancement of the profession. More and more working librarians are “managed” by a new breed of library leader. Their model for the new public library is that dehumanized supermarket or the chaotic disorganization of the largest Barnes & Noble.

As this process unfolds, the once professional responsibilities of librarians are being dumbed down into the duties of retail clerks or the robotic responses of machines. Our circulation desks are disappearing. The humans who once greeted and discussed with patrons our wares and services as they dispensed them are being replaced by self-service. Those circulation clerks are either being terminated or sent to work elsewhere in the library.

Our reference services and the desk from which they were delivered are gone, too, replaced by wandering “librarians,” with or without an MLS. They are supposed to be proactive in searching out patrons in need but are too often summoned on walkie-talkies or terminals to come to the aid of only those who ask or to respond to the few inquiries that arrive online. Of course, we need fewer and fewer of these librarians, because patrons are urged to do it all for themselves, via Google, PACs, or whatever they discover through our terminals or their own laptops and PCs.

Our catalogers began to disappear with the takeover of that function by OCLC, the nonprofit that aspires to be a corporation in this brave new retail library world. The standardized result of the effort is bypassed by patron and librarian alike, as they turn to the more friendly Amazons, Googles, et al., for the less precise, more watered-down “metadata” that has replaced what used to be cataloging. Apparently, users don’t miss the old catalog, except as a familiar artifact, which is testimony to how low this dumbing down has taken us.

In the new model, that most sacred of our professional duties, the selection of materials to build services and collections, is turned over to either small centralized teams of two or three librarians and clerks, or in extreme cases to an external vendor, usually a library book distributor.

The resulting “destination” libraries resemble the cookie-cutter design of the grocery store, aimed at making sure everyone who comes in goes out with “product” (books, CDs, DVDs, or downloads). What the patron takes is of as little concern to the storekeeper librarian as it is to the supermarket manager. The success of the enterprise is measured in the number of products collected by patrons, now called “customers.” It is no longer measured in the usefulness or impact of the service on the quality of life in the community served.

Many of the American Library Association-accredited LIS programs that once claimed to “educate” the professional librarians who run these libraries have been invaded by faculty from other disciplines, a great many of whom are far more adept at the politics and pedagogy of academic survival than they are at the principled professional practice of librarianship.

Now the progress of this deskilling has come full circle. Having discovered that the manager librarians of these supermarket libraries need fewer and fewer professional librarians to staff their simplified operations, the governing authorities are beginning to decide they don’t need a professional librarian to manage them. Some have been turned over to successful business types from industry, some to lawyers, some to academic administrators or fundraisers, and some to professional financial managers.

The most surprising part is that so few library leaders have raised their voices in alarm or outrage at this erosion of the standards to which libraries once aspired. It is frightening to think that we will stand quietly by and watch as professional librarians disappear from libraries and with them the quality of the services and collections in which we once took such professional pride.

And here’s the ever-entertaining(don't always agree with her, but still love to read her) Annoyed Librarian

Library Jobs that Suck #4

There's an exciting opportunity in Wisconsin for anyone who wants to work in a library with a demoralized staff and a director who likes to demote or drive off librarians.

Wouldn't you just love to apply to be the new Customer Services Lead Librarian at the Marathon County Public Library in lovely Wausau, Wisconsin? I knew you would. Doesn't this sound
like a fantastic job:

"The Marathon County Public Library is seeking a highly qualified individual for the position of Customer Services Lead Librarian. This is a leadership position focusing on constantly improving the customer-library experience throughout the Library system. The ideal candidate advocates for [sic], researches, creates, develops, and executes innovative approaches, services, and products to meet diverse community and diverse customer needs using creativity and entrepreneurial leadership for the
Library’s system. This position works directly with library staff to improve their customer service and responsiveness skills.

"I only had to read through that advertisement once to say, "Wow! This job is HOT!" They're looking for highly qualified people. I'm highly qualified. They want people to service some customers. I'm great at servicing customers. That's how I paid my way through library school! And they have that great long sentence explaining everything the lucky candidate would get to do. The lucky candidate could advocate innovative approaches or execute innovative products, really just anything, as long as its "innovative." And all of us would probably like to work with that persnickety staff to improve their responsiveness skills. That staff must really suck if the library is advertising how unresponsive they are. Someone needs to go in and light a fire under their bottoms! Also, who wouldn't want to work for a library with a mission "to attract customers to discovery and fun through exploration and entertainment." Ooohh, ahhh, discovery and fun through exploration and entertainment! That sure beats this mission: "The Commonwealth requires the education of the people as the safeguard of order and liberty." Because it's fun! And entertaining! And about servicing customers! Yay!!!

And it would also be fun to work in such a well known library. Oh sure, I know plenty of you work in well known libraries such as the New York Public or Widener or something. But how often do you get to opportunity to work in an increasingly nationally recognized public library in a small place in Wisconsin? Not often. But this library is famous, or at least it should be among librarians. See the news stories here, here, and of course here. Perhaps not everyone reads the Wausau Daily Herald (and why would you?), but everyone reads the AL, at least everyone who's reading this right now.

So if you want to work in a "customer service"-oriented job (and from what I hear every librarian should want to do that because that's what we're all about!), then go ahead and apply to the

Marathon County Public Library. There you can work in an "innovative" environment where the director demotes librarians and cuts their pay and where whatever formerly professional staff are left will resent you until they can find other jobs. And when the last of them go, you can hire some even lower-paid and less competent people to take their place. Yay! And you can improve their "responsiveness skills." Yay!

This is like a dream job, isn't it? The deadline is March 24, so hurry up with that application! Tell 'em the AL sent you and your application goes to the top of the pile.

So I suppose that’s my PSA, blah, blah, blah rant for the day… perhaps i’m just feeling a little self-important and want to hang on to my job as well as my salary (tho i still believe in that M.I.L.S.)

how long would this one take to tap out?

for me?
I'm not sure i even want to contemplate...
It takes me forever to type text messages and appointments into my cell phone~even with t9 capabilities (maybe it's just a matter of age~much as i hate to admit it):

The New York Times, January 20, 2008
Thumbs Race as Japan’s Best Sellers Go Cellular

By NORIMITSU ONISHI

TOKYO — Until recently, cellphone novels — composed on phone keypads by young women wielding dexterous thumbs and read by fans on their tiny screens — had been dismissed in Japan as a subgenre unworthy of the country that gave the world its first novel, “The Tale of Genji,” a millennium ago. Then last month, the year-end best-seller tally showed that cellphone novels, republished in book form, have not only infiltrated the mainstream but have come to dominate it.
Of last year’s 10 best-selling novels, five were originally cellphone novels, mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels.
What is more, the top three spots were occupied by first-time cellphone novelists, touching off debates in the news media and blogosphere. “Will cellphone novels kill ‘the author’?” a famous literary journal, Bungaku-kai, asked on the cover of its January issue. Fans praised the novels as a new literary genre created and consumed by a generation whose reading habits had consisted mostly of manga, or comic books. Critics said the dominance of cellphone novels, with their poor literary quality, would hasten the decline of Japanese literature.
Whatever their literary talents, cellphone novelists are racking up the kind of sales that most more experienced, traditional novelists can only dream of.
One such star, a 21-year-old woman named Rin, wrote “If You” over a six-month stretch during her senior year in high school. While commuting to her part-time job or whenever she found a free moment, she tapped out passages on her cellphone and uploaded them on a popular Web site for would-be authors.
After cellphone readers voted her novel No. 1 in one ranking, her story of the tragic love between two childhood friends was turned into a 142-page hardcover book last year. It sold 400,000 copies and became the No. 5 best-selling novel of 2007, according to a closely watched list by Tohan, a major book distributor.
“My mother didn’t even know that I was writing a novel,” said Rin, who, like many cellphone novelists, goes by only one name. “So at first when I told her, well, I’m coming out with a novel, she was like, what?
She didn’t believe it until it came out and appeared in bookstores.” The cellphone novel was born in 2000 after a home-page-making Web site, Maho no i-rando, realized that many users were writing novels on their blogs; it tinkered with its software to allow users to upload works in progress and readers to comment, creating the serialized cellphone novel. But the number of users uploading novels began booming only two to three years ago, and the number of novels listed on the site reached one million last month, according to Maho no i-rando.

* * * * *

The affordability of cellphones coincided with the coming of age of a generation of Japanese for whom cellphones, more than personal computers, had been an integral part of their lives since junior high school. So they read the novels on their cellphones, even though the same Web sites were also accessible by computer. They punched out text messages with their thumbs with blinding speed, and used expressions and emoticons, like smilies and musical notes, whose nuances were lost on anyone over the age of 25.
“It’s not that they had a desire to write and that the cellphone happened to be there,” said Chiaki Ishihara, an expert in Japanese literature at Waseda University who has studied cellphone novels. “Instead, in the course of exchanging e-mail, this tool called the cellphone instilled in them a desire to write.”
Indeed, many cellphone novelists had never written fiction before, and many of their readers had never read novels before, according to publishers.

* * * * *

Written in the first person, many cellphone novels read like diaries. Almost all the authors are young women delving into affairs of the heart, spiritual descendants, perhaps, of Shikibu Murasaki, the 11th-century royal lady-in-waiting who wrote “The Tale of Genji.” “Love Sky,” a debut novel by a young woman named Mika, was read by 20 million people on cellphones or on computers, according to Maho no i-rando, where it was first uploaded. A tear-jerker featuring adolescent sex, rape, pregnancy and a fatal disease — the genre’s sine qua non — the novel nevertheless captured the young generation’s attitude, its verbal tics and the cellphone’s omnipresence. Republished in book form, it became the No. 1 selling novel last year and was made into a movie.
Given the cellphone novels’ domination of the mainstream, critics no longer dismiss them, though some say they should be classified with comic books or popular music. Rin said ordinary novels left members of her generation cold.
“They don’t read works by professional writers because their sentences are too difficult to understand, their expressions are intentionally wordy, and the stories are not familiar to them,” she said. “On other hand, I understand how older Japanese don’t want to recognize these as novels. The paragraphs and the sentences are too simple, the stories are too predictable. But I’d like cellphone novels to be recognized as a genre.”
As the genre’s popularity leads more people to write cellphone novels, though, an existential question has arisen: can a work be called a cellphone novel if it is not composed on a cellphone, but on a computer or, inconceivably, in longhand?
“When a work is written on a computer, the nuance of the number of lines is different, and the rhythm is different from writing on a cellphone,” said Keiko Kanematsu, an editor at Goma Books, a
publisher of cellphone novels. “Some hard-core fans wouldn’t consider that a cellphone novel.”
Still, others say the genre is not defined by the writing tool.
Ms. Naito, the novelist, says she writes on a computer and sends the text to her phone, with which she rearranges her work. Unlike the first-time cellphone novelists in their teens or early 20s, she says she is more comfortable writing on a computer.
But at least one member of the cellphone generation has made the switch to computers. A year ago, one of Starts Publishing’s young stars, Chaco, gave up her phone even though she could compose much faster with it by tapping with her thumb. “Because of writing on the cellphone, her nail had cut into the flesh and became bloodied,” said Mr. Matsushima of Starts. “Since she’s switched to a computer,” he added, “her vocabulary’s gotten richer and her sentences have also grown longer.”

Now, i have always harboured dreams of being a novelist (though the dreams grow dimmer with each passing year)~but if it ever happens it certainly won't be happening thisaway (i don't know that i can imagine a bigger nightmare.)

Though i do recall seeing some kind of news piece about the younger set adapting/evolving a different set of thumb dexterity to us oldsters to deal with things like cell phones, video games, and the like (and apparently there is something to that, as it says Chaco could compose much faster with her cellphone "by tapping with her thumb"~can't imagine that, myself~though evolution doesn't generally function in that manner OR that quickly, but what do i know~not a hell of a lot, really...)

where "the cocktail waitresses dress like librarians"*

Here’s a little place to visit for all those librarians who constantly bemoan our “image problem” (or maybe not, considering the whole kerfuffle that occurred a few months ago when a New York Times article came out about how a brand new breed of librarians are making it "hip" to be a librarian) and i'm sure it's all offensive, sexual objectifying, enforcing a whole other stereo-type, and all sorts of other stuff i find the whole thing to be a bunch of stuff and nonsense; and as one of my library school professors pointed out once "exactly how many librarian jokes do you hear? It's not as if we are a hated, maligned profession like say, lawyers or doctors.") I always wanted a little more infamy than fame myself; you know what they say "as long as they're talking about you {though i always want to know exactly what they're saying.})

Anyway, if you're ever in Las Vegas, and are feeling the urge for a certain kind of entertainment you might want to stop by a little place called "The Library" where "Military, police, and firefighters are always free" (don't know about librarians) and they have nice little touches such as bookcases near the entry, and, of course, gorgeous librarians. Check it out. And power to the information professionals!

*but, of course, we all want to know how *those* librarians dress don't we?

Almost Complete Randomness; or Navigating the Narrow Straights; or Things that make you Say Fuck, take dos...

(probably not the best of ideas) to blog while in a state of slight inebriation

Thoughts come so quickly its almost impossible to tell if they are actually thoughts

shall i just start rambling on?

Okay, i will:

1. I’m either losing my hair (thinning AND more importantly STRAIGHTENING out) due to

2. I don’t remember how it used to be, once again, due to

3. Advancing age (i hate the idea of straight, thin hair~though everyone else tells me that my hair does not look that way…)

4. How many cocktails do you think were created because all the liquor stores were closed or you were too drunk or lazy to go out (or who makes all the wacky liquor laws anyway {teetotalers?})

   1. grapefruit and rum (because you have no vodka except for the red pepper kind) is really, really vile and must be dumped down the sink even if that is a form of alcohol abuse

   2. mix the remaining amount of grapefruit juice with the Herding Cats Chenin Blanc/Chardonnay South African vineyard you’ve been saving because the name of the winery is so very cool but now you’re entirely desperate

   3. and then it is on to ginger ale mixed with the white wine because the point is to get drunk and expel the headache; not vomit up the alcohol, thus rendering the whole thing mute (and further alcohol abuse)

   4. admitting to whoever is out there on the anonymous internet what your at-home habits actually are

   5. you put the lime in the coconut…

      1. you don’t want to waste all of the wine so:

      2. Captain Morgan’s Parrot Bay Coconut Rum

      3. a dash of lime

      4. and Baskin Robbins Daiquiri Ice (a flavor you fell in love with way back in the childhood days before you developed the seduction of “real rum” but just because you hated sweets, and still do…

         1. which brings us to:

         2. the fact that you are so wide now you are not fitting into clothes you used to and when you were in the hospital recently you didn’t know how much you weighed because it really isn’t healthy to constantly weigh yourself but shouldn’t you go to the gym once in a while

         3. even though you haven’t paid the gym bill

         4. and they do have a scale there...

         5. and the problem isn’t your diet but your exercise

      5. (and by the by) the Daiquiri Ice/Rum/Lime with tiny ice cubes IS the perfect drink

      6. And isn’t it interesting that alcohol seems to act as a stimulant in your system instead of a depressant like it does in everyone else’s? (So that you can have all that excess energy to make a fool of yourself????)

5. Shall we give you an update on the library customers/patrons/users because we haven’t discussed them for a while and my/your (what person are we talking here anyway?) attention span is only so long?

1. That older crazy woman (i know it’s kind of difficult to know exactly who i’m referring to when i say “crazy”, as they all seem to be crazy and Paranoid, but what else can i do?) is back (well she has been in but i haven’t seen her and she’s calling [veterinarians-or-someone] to tell them that now it Has Been Proven That putting “those Microchips into dogs’ ears (they don't put them in the ears anyway) causes cancer (actually the jury still out on that one but somehow her business seems to be calling people and telling them what to do [and she would really like all of her phone calls to be private~even though she IS using our public phone~she always cups the phone and turns her back if i happen to move my chair anywhere near her~even though i can hear her perfectly well from my usual position] i couldn’t figure out if she was hanging up on them or they were hanging up on her)

2. speaking of paranoid, Mr. OldGuitarist has been in but he's not speaking to me and mainly seems to be venting his hateful fear on my manager

3. the mother with the autistic/ behavioral disordered kid continues to bring him in and i continue to experience anxiety (i have nothing to comment on here, i just wanted to get it out…)

4. the other night many, many children were running wild down the aisles and i was picking up books and i wanted to bop them on the heads with the books in my hands, and, if their parents showed any response whatsoever, say

   1. “Oh, i didn’t think they belonged to anyone. (since no one seemed to show any responsibility for their behavior)

5. I don’t think the parents of the demon spawn have jobs, because they are seen at all hours of the day in our library. The speculation is they live on public assistance and/or they travel around on the bus all day visiting different libraries…

6. MotherWhoHasNoSenseOfDiscipline has not been seen for a while (nor have her children)

7. Oddly enough i have Seen Mr. NeedsRap but he has not asked me for anything (could his ipod be full~and he doesn't know about smart playlists?)

8. i'm actually growing rather found of the MotherOfTheTwoUnrulyBoys (though i need to come up with a new name for her because she apparently only has one son~she hasn't brought in the other one since i kicked them all out and she is in a wheel chair and has some kind of disability~she does try and i grew kind of attached to and protective of her when some man thought she had abducted her son and was questioning her about his birth date and everything and she was feeling frightened and accused and i had to step in to defend her) and her son always stays with her now

6. Prego chunky garden style tomato, garlic and onion kicks ass!

7. If you have any problems with self-discipline, never live alone!!!

8. How many contortions do you think a sleeping body can be twisted into to accomadate three cats who do not like to be next to each other but somehow want to be next to the sleeping body?

9. How is it not as late as it feels?

late, lost, ailing, & pissed off

I know i've mentioned that i'm ill (very, very ill, thank you so much for asking~like wishing-i-were-not-alive ill) this week, but have i mentioned that i'm on vacation? Not that i had much planned other than trying to catch up on much needed housework (which, perhaps needless to say i haven't been able to do...) but still...

Anyway, it was so very convenient of me to schedule my vacation just in time for me to be sick (and more than one person has mentioned to me that i could actually take sick time instead of vacation time, which i could, but i with my little rampaging migrainey head, unlike most, have much more vacation time than sick time so it is all for nought...)

And, vacation or no, i was scheduled for a Readers' Advisory training this early morning, teaching one of my Chronic Conditions classes later this morning, and for the government employee sexual harassment/ethical training in the afternoon; there was just no other time to do it. So, this non-morning person drags herself out of her sick/death bed early in the morning to get into her borrowed truck (oh, i didn't mention that my car is in the shop getting its air conditioning, of all things, fixed, now did i? Well it is. The air broke sometime back in July or so and when i heard it was going to cost about $1000 (because the coils had crashed and melted or some such thing) of which i didn't have i decided not to fix it but then last week it started making this horrible whining noise and apparently the car no go without air conditioning so just in time for the cooler weather i get to get it fixed...) As i have mentioned before, i am no fan of driving, and this morning i was turning east right into the sunrise, at a height and an angle where i was unable to see a damn thing. I was rolling down the window in an attempt to see the oncoming traffic when the person behind me honks.

Honking horns are one of my biggest pet peeves in life. I once had a friend who was ticketed because he honked his horn at someone because they did not move quickly enough at a red light. The police officer told him that horns were only to be used in cases of extreme emergency. This is how i feel about horns, and if you honk at me often my biggest priority in life becomes preventing you from getting where you need to be, so think before you honk at that redhead in front of you. But this morning i was frustrated and couldn't see. For some reason i put some faith in the person behinds me and decided that if they were honking at me the way must be clear and i went barreling out into traffic. The way was not clear and i hear screeching tires and more honking horns as i bring traffic to a halt in both directions. I somehow avoided collision (though i realized that if there had been an accident that car behind me would be late to where ever they were going because they would need to fill out witness forms and the like so there would be some good done there.)

Anyhow, as i continue to drive east into the blinding sun, my migraine continues to build and i end up taking the wrong exit to library headquarters which i have, of course, been to many a time. I get lost and wandering some circuitous course through rambling neighboring streets getting ever later to my training. I finally pull into what i hope is an entrance to a parking lot (still being unable to see) go crashing over a few islands, am now twenty minutes late and with a raging headache and finally decide that it is time to call it a wash, turn around and go back home.

I make it to my class without incident.

But then when i try to go to my ethics training there is some kind of Health Fair going on at the government center (i would comment on the irony, but i am in no mood). I drive around and around and around the parking lot looking for parking but to no avail. When i finally find i spot and run to class i have been locked out. Of course when i walk back out to my car there is parking everywhere.

It is back to bed for me...

up in the night

I remember way back in the dark ages (like 1993 or thereabouts) of the internet i would sometimes get caught up, wrapped up, taken away, whatever, by the many possibilities~the many linkages, for lack of better words (here and above)~but it was oh-so-different then. My computer was a monochromatic laptop (well, i did have a colour monitor i could hook it up to but it would have just been a blue screen full of text then...)

Anyway, back then linking was a much different thing than it is today~you could click on links, but they were all text based (not that there was much visual stuff going on yet anyway~except for some early experimentation with Mosaic) and once you clicked it was rather difficult (at least for me) to find your way back. I often found myself heading down "alleys" and winding up lost on some "dead end"~it wasn't the best distraction for insomnia/migraines (though the migraines didn't need quite as much distraction back then).

I didn't seem to waste as much time on the internet in the middle of the night then as i do now (or at least not following links). In some ways the ease of internet research and hyperlinking is a librarian's nightmare come true. All that research at the literal tip of your fingers. And it truly is endless.

When i was a kid (even further back in the prehistoric past) i used to love looking things up in the encyclopedia set we kept in the living room, one reference would send me to the next reference (or two, or three,) and so on, and so on... At some point i would tire of pulling books and flipping pages, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Things are so much, ahem, easier, in the computer age.

And it just plays right into the hands and heads (or is it the other way around?) of we insomniacs who can't quench the knowledge thirst. Tonight i was doing just a quick survey of "What's New?" over at Snopes and somehow here i am, about four hours later, with multiple tabs open, full of knowledge about the history of the AIDS epidemic (as well as a number of other pandemics~and when something is determined to be a pandemic) the difference in meaning between zoophillia, bestiality, and zoosexuality; what methemoglobinemia is; as well as many other incredibly useful tidbits (and who knew that there was such a thing as a cuddly little Ebola toy you could have for your very own? I certainly didn't, until now that is.) Now, you may ask, what the relationship is between these things. Perhaps there isn't a visibly direct link, but somehow or else each one of them led to the next (or quite a few others i've left out for the sake of some brevity.)

Sometimes i long for those dead ends.

"Why do most consumers...."

". . .purchase books only to read them once?
Because they could never
Rent them . . . until now!"

And i suppose most consumers have never, ever heard of libraries (where you can, gasp, check out books, and many other materials for, practically {there is that pesky little matter of taxes in most cases, and in my case, quite often, overdue fines, but that is an other matter entirely...} free) . . .imagine that!

*a semi Public Service Announcement brought to you by your semi-friendly but ever-sarcastic Rampaging Librarian

Of cliches and mid life crises

i've decided that a midlife crisis happens when you finally come to terms with who you are and your body suddenly decides that that is no longer who you are. For instance, i've always had MAJORLY Naturally Curly Hair that has always been at least a little bit moody (slightly like its owner)--when i was young i used to finish my bath and wrap the towel around my head and pretend the towel was my long, strait hair and flip it around and around because my hair was always too curly and too frizzy to flip! Now i come out of the shower and i have this stuff hanging from my head that acts nothing like MY hair--it just hangs there like the towel used to do. "Be careful what you wish for, Right? Which brings us to the matter of cliches--ever wonder how they got to be cliches? Because they're so Damn True!!!

I'm hoping this whole tragic thing is just a hormonal fluctuation, that all natural hair dye i tried out which was a big mistake, or some other temporary trauma and is in no way connected to this whole turning-forty thing!

It's so strange to have something that you hated for so long (or thought you did) be so wrapped up with your identity after you have lived with it all your live!

blah, blah, blah...

...has always been one of my favorite phrases (and much better, in my oh so considered opinion, than the (not-one-of my-favorite shows) Seinfeld-coined (or perhaps not coined but at least claimed) "yadda, yadda, yadda..." I often use it in the same sense as those Seinfeld folks--to fill in the, often boring or mundane, predictable details of people's conversations or goings on of my day to day life, etc., blah blah blah.

I once thought this was my own personal phrase (not that i believed it was such a profundity or anything, i had just not heard anyone else utter it) so imagine my surprise and elation/disappointment when i found a t-shirt with my grad schools name on the front and a big

BLAH!

BLAH!

BLAH!

on the back (i think in perhaps it was in place of RAH! RAH! RAH! medon'tknow it was just serendipity) i just had to buy it.

But lately it all just seems to be blah, blah, blah. Or perhaps, more explicitly just Blah.

so i drift through the days without even the energy to rampage...

blah

blah

blah