Thursday, March 29, 2007

Cheap Stuff

10:25 a.m. / 10:25

I thought since
Velocibadgergirl named me as one of the two people she went to Goodwill with last Friday, maybe I ought to show what I got.




All for less than $20.00! Unfortunately, though, I have discovered that the green sweater has a small but very troublesome hole in one arm, and a button on the pretty striped blouse was damaged in the wash, meaning I will now have to go on a quest for a new set of buttons, which will probably cost more than the blouse. The CD, in case you're curious and can't tell, is Apollo 18 by They Might Be Giants.

Since I'm already on the subject of cheap stuff, I'll add that I got the library's old, but complete, VHS set of Twin Peaks for just $1.00 per tape. That's even cheaper than Goodwill! I do work for the library, but this was pure luck. I just happened to be browsing in the "book nook" at the main library downtown when I was there for a public event.


Wednesday, March 28, 2007

From Ireland

11:55 p.m. / 23:55



I have never been to Ireland, but I have things that came from Ireland, like ancestors and playing cards. Actually, I have to wonder if the playing cards originally came from, say China, and then moved to Ireland where friends of mine bought them to bring back to the U. S. of A. for me. They're fairly detailed so the picture is actually a bit useless if you don't click on it for a larger version. Sorry about that. Anyway, I thought I should share these before the end of March, the month during which we Americans obsess over all things Irish and pretend-Irish, like shamrock-shaped Mardi Gras beads and green beer.

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Monday, March 26, 2007

Imaginary Stress

11:45 p.m. / 23:45

I have a lot of imaginary stress this week. In other words, there's a whole bunch of stuff I feel like I need to be doing, but none of it is quite totally obligatory. In no particular order:


Sunday, March 25, 2007

200

12:40 p.m. / 12:40

This is my 200th post. My 100th post was back in November, just over four months ago. It took me over a year to reach 100; way more than four months. Hooray for less slacking and more blogging!

Gmail Theater

1:30 a.m. / 01:30

I do dearly love gmail, but I'm not sure what to make of this. It's either awesome or awful.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

My Cupcakes Are Photogenic And I Have New Shoes

10:10 p.m. / 21:10

Actually, I was told my cupcakes really aren't photogenic, but I think they look damn tasty. Take a look for yourself:


My new green shoes arrived today! I should have them broken in by next Saint Patrick's Day.



Public Service Announcement

9:45 p.m. / 21:45

This is going to be very random, but I believe it needs to be said.

Do not paint over hinges. As a general rule hardware on doors and windows probably should not be painted, but hinges turn out especially bad. Think about it; hinges are moving parts. The paint is going to crack and peel on your hinges, making them look bad, long before the rest of the door. In both of the old homes my parents have owned, most of the hardware was painted over at some point. It's annoying; please don't do it.

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Sunday, March 18, 2007

Happy Saint Patrick's Day (Late)

12:40 a.m. / 00:40

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

(Late.)

I celebrated by baking awesome chocolate cupcakes with Irish cream icing and shamrock sprinkles. I put on my Everyone Loves An Irish Girl t-shirt and took some of the cupcakes to the library where I work. The boys working were dressed up for the holiday. One was dressed like a leprechaun, and some others were wearing kilts. Yes, I said kilts. One had put on nearly every St. Patrick's Day pin I'd left on the staff room table the day before.

Later I hung out with some of my awesome friends, and now I think I'm going to crawl into bed and try to watch
The Matchmaker before I fall asleep.

Oh, to see Animal, Beaker and the Swedish Chef sing "Oh Danny Boy", go here.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

I Like Pi And Pie

11:30 p.m. / 23:30

Yesterday was Pi Day. I am not by any stretch of the imagination a math geek, but I'm a bit partial to Pi because geometry is the kind of math that I am best at. So, these three people and I went out to eat pie in celebration last night. I had a slice of pecan pie, and took a second home for my mom. Today at work I decided read Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi: A Math Adventure by Cindy Neuschwander, but it wasn't all that great.

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Question of the day: Why would someone shoot off a fire extinguisher in a book drop box?

Monday, March 12, 2007

Please Don't Make Me Wear Peg-Leg Jeans

3:00 p.m. / 15:00

For something like five years now, I have seen hints that 80's fashion might be coming back. As much as I dreaded it, I even figured it was inevitable, since I had already seen a 60's revival, and then and even stronger 70's revival. I have to get off-subject here already to tell you that I continue to think it's hilarious that when I was a freshman in high school, everyone thought the 60's were really cool times and that the 70's were really uncool. Yet, by my senior year That 70's Show was a hit and we were all buying cloths that made my mom say "Oh, that reminds me of when I was in college!".

But now back to my concern that there might be an 80's revival. It's no longer a concern, really, it's now more like a truth. I spent an unusual amount of time at the mall Friday morning, and oh, no, the 80's are back. There were girls (much younger than me-- some schools were out last Friday) wearing leggings under their skirts, or skirts with bright diagonal stripes and uneven hem lines. And then there's Claire's. It's just full of big, bright, often neon, plastic jewelry. Yuck. I think the store actually had more scary stuff than the website, but I picked out a few items to show what I'm talking about.



I think every girl in my kindergarten class (S.B. kindergarten class of '87) had one or more bracelets very much like either the one above, the one below, or both. I know I had a heart bracelet that featured different colored hearts making a rainbow around my wrist.

Above and below we have loop earrings with tiny prints. I declare them weird, especially the pair above.

Neon body glitter: 80's meets the present.
Neon nail polish. Oh, no, that's not tacky at all.
Animal print combined with neon; does it get any worse?
I remember the neon (or sometimes pastel) paint-splash prints of the 80's fairly well, because... well, I liked them at the time.
Leg warmers! Need I say more?

Maybe this is old news to some people, but I was blissfully unaware, for the most part, until now. Can we get this over with quickly and move on to 90's revival?


Saturday, March 10, 2007

You Cannot Be Serious

9:20 p.m. / 21:20

You cannot be serious.

This is probably my most-used phrase, or sentence, really, when I'm at work. Normally I refrain from blogging about work, but for some reason I'm in the mood tonight, so I shall briefly (maybe) share two incidents during which I thought to myself "you cannot be serious" today.

Incident One: I was checking in movies at the front desk when a lady walked up and sat a bag on the counter. She said "I'm returned these and I'll need a new sack when I check out". Okay, I could deal with the somewhat early demand for a new bag (I happen to hate the word sack... no reason, just do), but since I was busy with the movies I asked her if it was just books in the bag. She said yes they were all books, and since movies take priority over books for check-in (there are reasons for this, but it would just bore you if I took the time to explain) I asked if she would mind putting them in the drop box. Her response? "Oh, I thought you did that". No, no, no... that's why we have the drop box. Hello! Allow me to state the obvious: The drop box is there for library patrons to put their return items in because a lot of the time we're too busy to just stand around waiting for people to return things. I don't remember ever seeing this lady before, so maybe she usually goes to one of the little bitty branches that have drop boxes, but don't really use them much because they just check everything in right away. I don't know, but I just thought that was a weird thing to say.

Incident Two: This is the one that actually angered me, although I remained calm at the time. There is a woman who is trying to have her daughter's fines waived because her other daughter called to renew the movies that caused the fines, but was only told she had no movies on her card. So, now the family is blaming us, because we didn't guess who's card they were on. Honestly, if it had been me, especially since I'm familiar with this family, I probably would have asked the girl if they might be on her mom or sister's card, and checked them too. But it isn't an obligation. If you call us and say "My name is Jane Smith and I want to renew my movies" and we say, "Well, Jane, you don't have any movies out" and then you say "Oh, okay", that's the end, really. Also, the mother told me that she was informed about the result of the phone call right afterwards. Why didn't she call us herself, since she's an adult and she had to know those movies were on somebody's card? I told her, as politely as possible, that we consider it the patron's responsibility to keep track of what items they have checked out on their cards, but that she is welcome to contact my supervisor on Monday and discuss it with her. I really like helping people, but there is a line somewhere between being helpful and being a pushover. We cannot be pushovers!

Okay, I'm done now; thank you for your patience!

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Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Coco The Colossal Colon (Etc.)

11:15 p.m. / 23:15

I've seen flyers around town with a camouflage print advertising an event called Combat Cancer. This is almost funny, but then it goes on to say the event will feature Coco the Colossal Colon. Coco the Colossal Colon?! What? Coco is a big, fake colon that kids can crawl through. Seriously. Is that not hilarious? I somehow can't help but wonder how Coco Channel would feel about this. It's maybe kind of cool, too in a way, but... oh, if you could only see the flyer. You can see the Coco the Colossal Colon web page!

It's just so hard to think seriously about cancer when you're looking at something with camo print excitedly announcing you should mark your calender for Coco the Colossal Colon. I'm sorry, but it's a very cheesy flyer.

Just to be clear, even though I think Coco is bizarre and funny, I understand that colon cancer is serious. I actually lost my paternal grandmother to it before I was even born. I would have liked to have had her around as a kid, and now too, so anything they can do so that this doesn't happen to more grandmothers and granddaughters, etc., is great.

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My toilet is in the dining room. I just think it's fun to say that. Go ahead; call me weird. I'm telling the truth, though. The downstairs bathroom (a.k.a. "my bathroom") is having major work done. It's going to be spiffy when it's done, but for now... my toilet is in the dining room.


Since my parents' bathroom is accessible only by walking through their bedroom, I have a special ink pen that lights up blue that I've been given to find my way past my their bed when I have to go up there at night. My dad suggested it because it's bright enough to see where I'm going, but if I accidentally wake them up, the blue light won't be as bothersome as if I'd turned on the ceiling light or brought a big flashlight.

But it feels silly. Actually, I sort of feel like a character in some long, adventure-saga video game, holding up my magic pen to guide me through the darkness. Do you know how many fire-breathing kumquats I had to kill to get this thing, man?!?

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I spent a little time this morning considering moving to an all-female island after the following events:

1. I opened my bedroom door while still half-asleep to find... another door. My dear, dear dad thought it'd be funny to lean the the door from the bathroom linen closest (currently chillin' in the dinning room with the toilet) against my door frame, so I'd have to move it to get out. I was not amused.

2. I arrived at work to find that one or more of the bookshelvers (a.k.a. "the boys") had spent part of their shift last night crafting a pen-and-pencil mobile to hang from my locker (which is nearly on the floor, so hanging of mobiles doesn't go well). They think I'm a total freak because I devoted some free time yesterday to A) sharpening all the pencils B) throwing out pens and markers that don't work C) redistributing the remaining resources so there will actually be pens and pencils where pens and pencils are most needed.


Fun Thingie

12:30 a.m. / 00:30

Later I'll probably put this in my sidebar, but here seemed good enough for now.

Read my VisualDNA Get your own VisualDNA™

Thanks velocibadgergirl!


Monday, March 05, 2007

Ramblings... Mostly About Books

11:55 p.m. / 23:55

Over the weekend I finished Three Junes by Julia Glass. I have to confess right away that I did not enjoy it as much as I thought I'd enjoy a book that won the National Book Award. I did enjoy it; just not as much as I thought I might.

The book centers around a Scottish family, over a long period of time. It's a book in three sections and the middle and longest section was my favorite. The first and last sections were necessary to support the middle section, but it was what I most enjoyed. The third section felt like an epilogue in a lot of ways, but it also started new story lines that then felt a little chopped off when the book ended.

The first section is told in third person from the point of view of the father, Paul McLeod, while he travels in Greece and thinks back on his wife's recent death and other family matters.

The second section is told in first person from the point of view of the oldest son, Fenno McLeod, who lives in New York. He has gone back to Scotland for his father's funeral. The family issues in this section are certainly very interesting and probably would have drawn me in on their own, but it was Fenno's reflections on his friend Mal and the end of his life that really hooked me. Mal died of AIDS in the in the late 80's or early 90's, which for a gay man of those times seems almost stereotypical, but his character is too well developed to be a stereotype. Fenno, also gay, has managed to avoid "the plague", but he's done so by not hardly living at all.

The third section returns to third person narrative and is from the point of view of Fern, who is not a member of the McLeod family. She appeared in the first section on Paul's trip to Greece. Fenno and his brother Dennis meet Fern through a friend of Fenno's, but no one ever realizes the have a connection-- Paul. It sounded like Fenno and Fern were going to become friends, though, so maybe they figured that out later.

A little while ago I finished Forever In Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares. It was about par for a Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book. It felt like this might be the last one, but then I thought that at the end of the third book, so who knows?

I'm reading and enjoying three different books right now; hopefully I'll be reporting on them soon. Somewhat related to my current reading, I've been accused of having an obsession with India. This isn't really this first time. So I'm wondering if maybe I do have an obsession with India. But is that so bad?

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Friday, March 02, 2007

Sadness

8:45 p.m. / 20:45

I was going to order a pair of these for St. Patrick's Day, but guess what date the website says they're back-ordered to? 3/17/07! Nooooooooooo!



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