training day

Yay - I'm going on a display training course on Thursday. The bad news is that my boss is going too, so I have to behave. The other bad news is that I've been volunteered to get a bunch of books and equipment together to take to the course (which is in another city). The good news is that one of my workmates, who is also going, agreed to do some of that. The bad news is that she didn't seem happy about it. The good news is that it's from 10am till 4pm, which means I get a sleep-in and an early finish to the day. The bad news is that one task which I normally do on Thursday mornings will have to be completed on Wednesday evening, after my last class of the trimester.

That's it, really.

Oh yeah, one of my workmates was surprised that I was younger than she thought >:-(

Everyone else nearly fell off their chairs at surprise that I was older than they thought :-)

Local boys make good

The Flight of the Concords have been signed up by a US television network - the same one responsible for Friends and Seinfeld. Nice one!

happy birthday to me

Today I am a (forty-year-old) woman.
Does that mean I now have an excuse to let myself go?

This is what I mean by cowhide... 

Cowhide fetish

- My CD tower is painted with a black and white cowhide pattern. It even has two little horns at the top.
- I came very close to buying a sofa on the basis of it's cowhide-patterned upholstery.
- I have a slightly furry mini skirt in a cow-hide pattern. I don't wear it any more, but I used to wear it a lot.

And to top it off, the boy has bought me a pair of fluffy house slippers in genuine cowhide, for my birthday.

It's only natural (gas)

For the last few days now, I've smelled natural gas whenever I'm outside the front door. In a potentially foolhardy case of "out of sight, out of mind" (or in this case, out of smell), I kept forgetting to do anything about it. It was particularly strong this morning though, and I could even smell it inside the house. So I called the city council, who told me to call 111 (that's the emergency number).

The Fire Service arrived a couple of minutes later, bearing two firemen (one of whom was the spitting image of that guy from the TV show The Guardian - yes Virginia, there really are cute firemen).

It turned out that the gas pipe which has been poking out of the front lawn all these years had somehow lost it's cap, and was leaking either gas or the odourant which is added to make leaks detectable. However, it wasn't a danger to the boy (who is in the habit of lighting his cigarillos as soon as he steps outside the house).

Solution? They plugged it up with bits of soap which I fetched from the bathroom, and promised to put some pressure on the local gas supplier.

Christians, eh?

The boy has come up with another doozie of a website. This time it's an article telling us that the pyramids of Egypt are in fact humungus monuments to "the Lord". I sincerely hope no poor schoolkid tries to cite it in his or her homework...

more peculiar phrases

Yorkshire is a pretty cool place. It's the home of yorkshire pudding (a mixture of animal fat and flour which is baked and served covered in gravy), those cute and fluffy terriers, a brilliant and famous Monty Python skit ("When ah were a lad, we lived in cardboard box on middle'o'road...") and massive pig farms. I remember years ago I went to Wakefield (...which is in Yorkshire...) to visit a friend I'd met in Hawaii (you get that when you travel a bit), he asked me how I could handle travelling on my own and being "on my tod". I looked at him funny, until he explained that it meant "on my own".

These memories all flooded back to me this morning when I was perusing the news, and I read this article about a training course for foreign doctors who're practicing in this lovely and friendly part of the UK. Despite their excellent English skills, they were bemused by patients complaining of sore "lugholes", constantly feeling "jiggered" or an unreliable "doofer".

But he looks different in the movie...

We had lunch at an organic food cafe today - they do yummy sandwiches and the boy loves their corn fritters. So, evidently, does Andy Serkis, the man behind that crazy, tortured LOTR character Gollum. He and his entire family were seated at the table right next to ours. And I didn't even realise until after we left.

I bought the Star Trek DVD set, the boy found copies of Interview with a Vampire and Nosferatu, and we checked out the Buffy books (nothing I didn't already have except maybe the one about Joss Whedon).

On our way back to the car, I was busy rubber-necking outside the window of a designer clothing store I used to like browsing in (back in the days when I could afford to buy from there), when the boy nudged me and whispered softly in my ear, "We just passed Andy Serkis again and you didn't even notice".

The White House

Wanna see a spoofy White House website? I'd heard about this one a while ago and never got around to looking for it. Well, here it is - White House - found at No Milk Please: The Little Things.

Star Trek

Okay, I've decided - I'm going to buy myself the Star Trek Season One DVD box set.

The boy isn't going to watch it with me (which is hardly supportive, considering I've forced myself to sit through Star Wars DVDs with him), but I don't care. Captain Kirk without a shirt on is not a turn on (hey, that rhymned!), but that doesn't matter. Star Trek was a milestone in television history, and not only do I want to see all the episodes again (I've never been geeky enough to be a 'trekkie' so I don't know them all off by heart), but I'm really keen on seeing some of the background stuff - the interviews and so on. I very nearly bought it today, when I was on the scrounge for some lunch, but decided to wait until the weekend so I can go with the boy and watch him roll his eyes.

library life

Most mornings when we pick up all the books that have been lying around the library, we find about six or seven books on cats. Often the same books turn up on consecutive days. We have a cat person.

I think the university library's distance service is great. It means that as long as I can use their catalogue, I don't have to go through the frustrating process of actually physically locating the books I want. I now have seven books on the subject of "work teams" from that library, to go with the four I borrowed from the library I work in. I have become the person I used to detest when I was an undergrad - the one who gets all the relevant library books out early on, thereby making them pretty much inaccessible to anybody else. I should hate me. >:-0

My day finished at 1pm today, as I'm working on Saturday. This meant I had to leave a challenging reference request for someone else to do (find a picture of a particular sculpture by a Wellington artist called Guy Ngan). Not only was I sorry that I couldn't finish the task (when I finish at 1pm, I finish at 1pm), but I felt like I'd let down the customer. Then again, I figured it's better than rushing him and kicking him out with a "Sorry we don't have anything on him" just so that I could leave on time, isn't it? So there was no call for the guy to tell my replacement that I was passing the buck. Right?

a list to live by

The boy sent me this list; apparently a certain irascible US soldier was given a very long and detailed of things by his commanding officer, of things he must not do. The soldier's name is SPC Schwartz, and his list includes some real beauties. Some of my favourites are:

#26:Never tell a German soldier that 'We kicked your ass in World War 2!'

#106:I may not trade my rifle for any of the following: Cigarettes, booze, sexual favors, Kalishnikovs, Soviet Armored vehicles, small children, or bootleg CD's.

#156:I will no longer perform 'lap-dances' while in uniform.

#184:When operating a military vehicle I may *not* attempt something 'I saw in a cartoon'.

#210:Must not make T-shirts up depciting a pig with the writing "Eat Pork or Die" in Arabic to bring as civilian attire when preparing to deploy to a primarily Muslim country.

Apparently he is no longer in the US Army.

long distance pizza

The on-campus students in the MLIS programme are treated to a "pizza lunch" at the end of each trimester, to celebrate the end of, well, each trimester. So far I keep missing out, because the lunch is always scheduled for a day which doesn't suit me (since I work in a completely different city). All the same, it's not fair and we distance students should be able to celebrate too. If Interflora can deliver fresh, delicate flowers all over the world, surely Hell's Pizza can work out something similar...

Buffy galore

I quite like this Buffyverse discussion group, called Above the Law. It's got a philosophical bent to it, which is why I like it :-)

Samurai Girl??

Apparently there is going to be a movie based on a Japanese anime, about a blonde cocktail waitress who's the reincarnation of a Samurai warrior - called Samurai Girl. I agree with Angry Asian Man - it doesn't sound like a good idea to me. Mostly it sounds like a Buffy rip-off; the least they could do is make the heroine an Asian woman for a change (one who speaks perfect English and smashes all those tedious 'delicate Asian flower' stereotypes).

Daylight Saving part deux - Greg the Bunny

What should have been a minor adjustment to my bodyclock seems to be wreaking havoc on my sleep patterns;last night I was horribly tired and in bed by 10pm. Much to my frustration though, I couldn't get to sleep at all. I lie there listening to the deep booms coming through the wall from the boy's computer, filling in time by thinking of everything in the world which could possibly stop me from falling asleep (this wasn't on purpose, you understand).

Finally, even after the boy had turned down the bass on his computer and I had read another three essays in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy, I decided to get up and make toast. While I ate the toast, I discovered Greg the Bunny.

Greg the Bunny is the funniest thing since Family Guy. It's sort of a piss-take of showbiz, like a much more cynical and un-family friendly version of The Muppets (in fact, The Count from that show does guest spots on Greg). The wonderfully deadpan Eugene Levy plays the director of a children's television show, Seth Green (of Buffy and That Seventies Show fame) plays his layabout son, and Greg, the show's new star, is played by a cloth puppet - I mean, a "Fabricated American". It's chock-full of great lines like the one about how, even though there's much more tolerance in modern American society, humans "would still rather use us to clean their car than let us go out with their daughters".

It's so great that I may have to stay up until 1.30am every Tuesday morning to catch it (or work out how to programme the VCR).

It'd bad enough that you can't live forever

but you shouldn't have to worry that your coffin might not fit your grave...

Apparently there really is skill in gravedigging.

Daylight Saving

Daylight Saving is really hard work - especially when it starts on the day after a huge night (when I actually had a few wines and spirits for a change), and I can't have a sleep-in in the morning due to my daughterly duties (driving mother and groceries around town). So I had an early night last night (bed at 10pm Daylight Saving time, or 9pm real time). And yet I still wasn't able to get out of bed before 9 this morning. It's the first time I've been glad I have a late shift on the bus today.

I'm not sure about today, but Summer arrived yesterday; at least it arrived on my back doorstep, which must surely be the sunniest and most sheltered spot in town. I was stripped down to my singlet, but that walk by the beach had to be accompanied by two extra long-sleeved jumpers.

I think I finally have a handle on my assignment. Thanks to the boy, who is a senior manager, it became clear to me how much team dysfunction has to do with less-than-ideal management skills on behalf of the team leaders (and how much a manager depends on being able to get rid of employees who don't fit in). He then spent the next twenty minutes going through a chapter in one of my textbooks and telling me what a load of bollocks some of it was.

Wedding photos

Wanna see some photos from the wedding? Click here.

the magic of the Chems

My friend's wedding was yesterday - it was fab. I was dolled up in my best gears, the bride was gorgeous, the boy was on his best behaviour and my gang of best pals were all there. Being a half-Chinese wedding, there were over a hundred guests, and about seventy percent of them on the bride's (Chinese) side i.e. relatives. I'd been looking forward to the day for months, because I've been a bit slack with the socialising and hadn't seen my friends for ages. The joking around and yelling and insults made me come over all nostalgic - though not enough to wish to go back to that time. After all, time's passed and we've all moved on from being single and directionless to being (mostly) paired up and in the midst of multiple life changes.

I can understand why DJs at wedding receptions tend to play middle-of-the-road pop songs; they have to be sensitive to the tastes of a wide age-range and cultural-range, and it's safer to stick to Elton John, Billy Joel and Boney M than to risk alienating the guests by playing some of Prince's more risque numbers or anything that can be called drum'n'bass. Still, knowing this doesn't motivate me to get up on the dancefloor unless I'm hearing music I like to dance to. So we waited until one of the Grease songs cleared the dancefloor, then tapped the DJ on the shoulder and requested Abba, Tom Jones, Prince and the Chemical Brothers.

To my surprise, he actually played a Chemical Brothers number - Hey Boy Hey Girl I think it's called. Magic. It got the gang into boogie-mode, took the boy back to his E and rave days and even induced me to wave my arms above my head like a washing machine agitator.

Aren't colloquialisms wonderful

Tara's puzzlement over what the word 'pashing' means (see the comments in my previous post if you're curious) has inspired me to put together a short list of colloquialisms and their meanings:

hoon: a New Zealand term; generally a hoon is someone who likes to race around in his or her car and make lots of noise. A hoon is like a petrol-head, but petrol-heads are more serious about their automobiles. However, I like to use hoon to refer to a guy who's loud and jokey and probably a little obnoxious because he's drunk. When I was growing up, I had to distinguish between a hoon and a Hoon - the latter being a member of a Chinese family who still own a fruit shop just down the road from home.

your blood is worth bottling: I had never heard this phrase until today, when a co-worker boasted that she had received this compliment. Apparently it means that she's regarded as really quite valuable. The boy tells me that the origin of this phrase is in fact your sperm is worth bottling, which is probably English.

like throwing a sausage down Main Street:This one had me cackling all over the bus. It's basically an uncomplimentary remark about the state of a woman's pelvic floor muscles, and it's origin is bogun (see below)

bogun: a bogun is the same thing as a Westie if you're an Aucklander, or approximately a redneck if you're a North American. Characterised by tight stovepipe jeans, white tassled boots, stretch velvet and heavy metal music (which is as gross a stereotype as I'm willing to offer without getting beaten up next time I'm in bogunville).

Chook Night

I'm about to go to a hens' night - I've only ever been to two I think, and both were really very sober events.

In my mind, your stereotypical hens' night would include:
1. a sign around the bride-to-be's neck, which reads 'Kiss me I'm getting married' (or similar)
2. fried eggs (i.e. a rude display of mammaries squashed against restaurant windows)
3. loudness, drunkenness and shrieking
4. pashing at least one strange (but grateful) man

But tonight's, I think, is going to include:
1. intelligent conversation (perhaps descending occasionally into talk about offspring and home renovations)
2. really good food
3. small amounts of wine

It might be because the women are all in their mid-thirties or older, well brought-up Cantonese girls, and expecting to turn up to work on time in the morning.

Actually, I don't mind.

Way past my bedtime

I've been staying up late on Tuesday nights in order to watch Six Feet Under, which doesn't start until 10pm. Last night's episode was horrible to watch - it's the one where David picks up a hitchhiker who turns out to be a complete sociopath with a gun and a drug habit. It made it hard for me to fall asleep afterwards, so I wouldn't have gotten to sleep until well after midnight. The red-eye look doesn't suit me (especially when I wear green), so I'm going to have to start taping the show and watching it on the weekend instead.

I'm not arse-licking, but...

While my boss seems in some ways too much like my mother, I've come to appreciate just how good she is at people stuff. When you need to tell the recreation officer of a rest home that they're a little too demanding, she's the best person for the job. When negative feedback has to be passed on, she can do this without making it sound personal and put things into perspective as well. And I realise now that this is an ability which most of the people I work with, including myself, could improve on.

Enough navel-gazing.

This afternoon I had to deal with four teenages who were bored (it's the school holidays) and didn't want to read (...so what the hell were they doing in a library, you ask? I'm just about to tell you...). They'd been sitting at the non-Internet enabled computers all afternoon, using Painter to create silly pictures (including a remarkably good one of me wearing a frown) and then setting those pictures as wallpaper for the computers. They also found ways to make annoying beeping sounds come out of the computers. These guys are computer-literate to really make a nuisance of themselves; eventually I had to send the library manager out for a walk around the library so scare them off (he's not a scary guy, but then I'm only five feet tall and a conflict-avoider).

It's no fun being the killjoy.

I used to be a regular swimmer, but gave up for two reasons:
1. I used to colour my hair (blue-black was my favourite) and the chlorine would've killed it.
2. I get terrible goggle marks; they used to disappear soon after I got out of the pool, but my skin is no longer as elastic.

I went to the pool tonight, for a spot of aqua jogging, and re-discovered an ugly truth - at certain times of the month, when you're feeling a little bloated, avoid any activities which involve wearing something skin-tight (like a swimsuit) - unless you're okay with looking a little pregnant.

I can really sympathise

Someone hacked into a cable company's phone system and replaced their recorded message with something much more honest...

Taking work home - sort of

As a break from trying to think of faults in the way the teams work at the Library (for my assignment), I decided to make a list of all our DVDs. I've been burgled twice in my life: the first time was in the family home when I was a teenager; the next time was in the current house, just two weeks before I was due to go on holiday - but that's another story, one which involves an insurance assessor and a stereo I bought off my brother.

Anyway, I thought it would pay to have a list of our DVDs since they'd be amongst the things which most likely to get taken.

If the boy saw what I was doing, he'd tell me to stop being a librarian.
(But if I was being librarian-like about it, I'd be cataloguing them as well. It's hard enough work just listing all the titles.)

The boy's a homewares shopper

It's a difficult image to reconcile with his other image as a geek-perv (one who is compelled to browse computer games 'n' gear shops), but - lately, we've been spending weekend time looking for homewares. Not just the he-man stuff like kitset furniture i.e. stuff which presents an oppurtunity to use power tools; also items like wardrobe organisers and kitchen implements. For example, he spent twenty bucks on a vegetable peeler. On a peeler. As you'd expect for such a price, the handle feels nice in your grip and looks much more impressive than I ones I used to buy (two for two dollars at the Two Dollar Shop).

Not just an ex-biker and sportscar driver, nor just a geek with personality; we've been together for over three years now and the boy still surprises me with new and unexpected sides to his personality. Next I'll probably find out he once turned down a scholarship with the Royal Ballet or something...

Stress Management, if you can manage it

We were sent on a stress management course today. As soon as I sat down and said something to the woman next to me, I knew I was going to find her very annoying and irritating. Unfortunately I was completely right. She has a loud, high-pitched laugh and came across as a know-it-all. Mostly, it was because when I said I'd been told the course was very 'zen', I had to spend ten minutes explaining to her that it was a throwaway comment.

The facilitator was one of those women with soothing voices; maybe it's a prerequisite for a job like hers. Under her guidance, we spent an unnecessarily large proportion of our 2 1/2 hours on the basic stuff i.e. what stress it, what it's physiological symptoms are, and what everyone in the room has done to alleviate stress. Absolutely nothing new there. About fifteen minutes before our time was up, we got to leaf through our handout, which turned out to contained quite a lot of promising material about how to deal with stress in the workplace (as opposed to stress generally) - what a pity she didn't bother to go through it with us.

Well, if there is one thing I have learned from this course it's that at least one person in the world doesn't get stressed when she's stuck in traffic. She's obviously quite abnormal.

On a sadder note, when I got back to work I found out that our designated IT Help guy has cancer and the prognosis isn't good. Sure, I could never understand anything he said, and he had a habit of doing stuff to the network without telling anyone, but that isn't enough for a death sentence. Poor guy.

Grey day

Typical. After several days of sunny weather, I finally get a day with a proper lunch break; only today it's too cold and yucky to go for a walk.

I really like Thursdays; on Thursdays I only have to spend ninety minutes at the Information Desk and I don't have to drive the bus. This leaves me plenty of time to work on updating the Library website, currently my favourite work task. Funny how you leave a career/place behind in search of something different, only to veer back towards the career/place you left behind. I also like Thursdays because it's the one day of the week when I'm always home by 6.30pm - all the other days I'm either working late, doing my class, or trying to make my 3 gym visits per week.

I got my first Management assignment back today - the one where I had to write a strategic plan for a make-believe public library. I was relieved to find that I'd not only passed, but almost got an A. I'd like to believe that it means I'm management material, but that's like saying that all business graduates would be good at business.

Apparently, earlier this week in the bus I cut someone off. This kind of thing normally leads to a few swear words on the part of the aggrieved tail-gater, but when the bus is painted all over with the library logo you just can't get away with it. I had to back down with my tail between my legs (so to speak), and promise to be more cautious next time. Fair enough, one can't be good at everything, eh?

Disgruntlement in the ranks

In a bid to dig up dirt about the place where I work, I've been eager to listen to the whines of my co-workers. Rather than try to figure out what's going right with the teams in the Library, it'd be far easier to pick up on what's going wrong. It seems though, that I've scratched the surface of a large and pustular wound, because I'm finding an awful lot more dissatisfaction around the place than has been obvious to me. I suppose I'm been so self-absorbed that I just haven't noticed that one of the professional staff is no longer sure what her role is, and that relations between a certain other high-up staff member and the IT department is less than blissful. Fortunately my assignment isn't just about finding where the nasty germies are; I also have to work out how to make it all better again. Well, fortunate because I'll get a chance to think about positive things but not so fortunate because I know it's not going to be easy.

Is scrapbooking sad?

The notion of spending hours and effort on making elaborately decorated books of family photos always seemed to me to be a past-time for people with too much time on their hands and not enough future to work towards. Image-wise, I would have rated it along with quilting, needlepoint and line dancing. These activities seemed somehow uncool (that's just my personal opinion so no hate-mail please!).

The library stocks quite a few scrapbooking books and magazines, an indication of just how popular a hobby it is, for the locals at least. I found myself leafing through a stunningly-illustrated book on scrapbooking travel photos and seriously considering giving it a go:

- I have a thing about books, especially beautiful books. A good scrapbook is a little like an artist's book.
- I have a ton of photos, including about a thousand taken during the year I back-packed all over the place, travel journals and scrapbookable mementoes.
- It's a creative outlet which might be as satisfying as writing a memoir (and has more chance of being looked at, even if only by one's mother).

Perhaps if I stick to travel themes and avoid cutesy stuff (like baby photos) I could produce something to be proud of. It'd also be an excuse to unearth my yellowed travel journals and re-read what could be embarrassingly poorly-expressed thoughts.

Or maybe it'd be too time-consuming and cost too much in fancy acid-free paper and decorations.

If only I had the time to find out (sigh).

Like a tattoo on an aeroplane's bum

A guy came in holding what looked like a series of quiz questions. Each question was illustrated with the picture of an aeroplane's backside, and he needed to know the airline represented by each plane's insignia. I told him I'd look in the catalogue, and that it sounded like we needed to find an Airlanes of the World kind of book.

And sure enough, we have a book in the library called Airlines of the World, complete with pictures of airline insignia. Truly a book for plane-spotters.

The next assignment

I have to write a report on what's dysfunctional about the team I work in, and how to fix it. I did a Google search on "library team dysfunction" and the first search result was an ad about erectile dysfunction....I should've guessed...

Two thousand words

This is my very first evening jacket - not so shiny or fluffy, but the first I've ever bought for the purpose of wearing to a wedding.

And...

this is the top I'll be wearing to the wedding. I know that wearing red at weddings is supposed to be a no-no, but for me it'll be a nice change from wearing black.

The troll under the flyover

Seattle is so cool for it's public art. There is even a website dedicated to it. I was last there about six years ago (hi Mike!), but this was my favourite then. Can you see the actual car under it's left hand?

Balzac made her do it

I finally got around to watching Balzac and the little Chinese Seamstress the other night. The boy has little appetite for dramas, so I had to wait until after we'd seen The Man with Two Brains and Kombi Nation (though I suspect the latter comedy was still too real-life for his tastes), before he retired to his computer games and left me to watch the movie I really wanted to watch.

Balzac is a French/Chinese collaboration, based on the novel by Dai Sijie; he also wrote the film's screenplay. It's set during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and is about two young men from Chengdu who are sent to a remote village in the Phoenix Mountains for "re-education".

Their daily duties include lugging enormous lidless baskets of human excrement from the village latrine to the fields, to be used as fertiliser. They fill those baskets pretty full, and the path to the fields is more than a little steep and slippery...

They befriend, and eventually both fall in love with, a girl of the same age - a seamstress who lives with her tailor grandfather. She knows of a guy just completing his re-education who has a hidden stash of foreign (and therefore anti-revolutionary) books; the lads steal it and the books turn out to be by the likes of Balzac and Dumas. They read the books to their new friend, whose mind soon turns to curiosity about the world beyond the mountains.

Amongst the horrible bits (one of the guys gets malaria and the local cure is a good thrashing with a choice of sapplings) and sad bits (the girl gets pregant; she's under the legal age for marriage and abortion is only legal for married women so she gets an illegal one) is a bit which is both horrible and funny - the village chief has a rotten tooth and demands that one the boys, whose father is a famous dentist (albeit a counter-revolutionary one), fix his tooth. The scene in which the fledgeling dentist is trying to drill the chief's tooth, with a home-made drill powered by a sewing machine treadle, is priceless.

And best of all - unusual for a Chinese movie, Balzac doesn't have a weepy ending. After the desperate tragedies of stories like Raise the Red Lantern and Red Sorghum (you have to be in the mood for Zhang Yimou), one in which nobody dies is quite a nice change.

When a blog hits the headlines

Belle du Jour blog is no more. It's not often that a blog gets in the news, is it? I used to read Belle du Jour occasionally myself (and I'd hasten to say it's not just because it's the online diary of a real, live London call girl; it's because she writes really well...) so I'm sorry the author decided to end it. Mind you, with a book deal and a possible something on the telly it's not as though she's simply going back to pre-blog life. I wish her well.

In sickness and in health

My boys' got a cold and he's being all pathetic about it. What it means is that I have to go out for beer/wine/port because he feels too bad to go out himself; it also means that he's even less able than usual, to answer simple questions like 'Do you want to go out on Saturday?' or 'What shall I bring back for your dinner?'. The women's mags all tell me that men are like this, although I don't know about anyone but him (my brother was demanding all the time when we lived at home, and I didn't notice it getting any worse when he was sick).

I had the afternoon off today, to make up for having to work this Saturday; I took the opportunity to go into town and pick up the evening jacket which was being fitted for me. To tell the truth, the jacket may not have been altered at all. The staff had clustered around me at the time, pinched bits of fabric and pinned them, they charged me eighty dollars for the labour and I had to wait a week and a half before I could bring the jacket home. But, now that I'd tried it on, I don't know whether it fits any better than it did before. So to make up for the disconcerting idea that I may have been scammed, I bought a black lace sleeveless tanktop with red underlayer to go with it. And some perfectly fitting jeans (except they're too long of course). And some foundation and concealer.

When I got home and told the sick boy I'd been shopping, the poor guy thought I'd been looking for Interview with a Vampire on DVD (which is on his list of must-haves). I momentarily felt bad that all my retail therapy this afternoon had been completely selfish, but moments don't last long.

the trouble with boys

This article, about the serious gender imbalance in China due to it's one-child policy and it's citizens' preference for boys, makes really me mad.

Well, not the article per se, but the whole situation. It kinda makes me think "they made their bed, let them lie in it - let 'em die out 'cos it's all their fault for believing girls to be so worthless".

Of course, what'd really happen is that females are kidnapped to be sold into wifery and it could be their fathers who reap the (monetary) benefits. Reminds me a little of Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale.

I found it at Angry Asian Man.

Things I learned today

1. That the sentence ‘Violet caught a bogey today’ means different things to different people
   
2. That it takes a lot of patience to clarify with a confused old person as to what the hell she’s talking about
   
3. That, sufficiently distracted, I can forget to eat
   
4. That I’ll be picking my boss up from the airport again next Wednesday, and driving her to work (but I did get a petrol voucher so that’s okay)
   
5. That the staff at Christchurch City Libraries get paid time off to attend library school audio-conferences (and I don’t)
   

I saved the bus from the bogeyman

Sounds rather heroic, doesn’t it?

What I did, in actual fact, was rescue the bus, the customers and ourselves from being splattered by a two centimetre long nasal bogey hanging from the right nostril of a differently-intellectually-abled (or whatever the politically correct term may be) man. Two centimetres doesn’t sound all that long, but in snot terms it’s practically half way down the guy’s chest.

Thanks to quick action (reaching for the box of tissues and thrusting one into the perpetrator’s hand, whilst at the same time not getting close enough to get anything on my hand), the man left with a dry face and a dry bus interior.

Babel Fish

In an earlier post, I mentioned the need for a babel fish to translate the mutterings of our lovable IT Help Desk guy into English. Well, it turns out there is a babel fish of sorts - well, more of an anti-babel really.

not a whinge, not really

I thought it would be a good idea to do a display in the Library of computer books; it would tie in nicely with the launch of our PC Zone, an area set aside for public computers with word processing and Internet facilities.

Unfortunately I wasn't organised enough to get an imaginative display together, so I had to rely on colour photocopies of pages from computer books. Most computer books don't have attractive pictures.

I did find a really interesting, slightly disturbing image which looked like the result of some careful merging of old, young, human and animal faces, using Photoshop. Too bad that the other members of my team thought it too scary to display, and replaced it with black and white photos of ancient accounting machines.

I had the idea of blowing up a circuit diagram to use as the background to a bunch of smaller pictures and random computer facts. I thought that a picture of a propeller-head would be tongue-in-cheek and amusing. None of that has gotten off the ground 'cos I've been busy.

And why was I too busy? The city council wants the Library to contribute dates of events to their community calender for 2005, so my boss asked me to present her with a calender of every single (weekly) Story Time, baby-play and adult reading event for the entire year.

But I'm not bitter.

Free Training

It seems that it's possible to get free on-line LIS training from a recognised tertiary education institution, although they don't offer a degree programme. They are the Blekinge Institute of Technology. Thanks, Mikael.

It's a Country and Western afternoon

Not that I'd normally listen to C&W music...I'm at the branch library all on my lonesome (but in a good way - it was busy up until half an hour ago) and the rain is coming down like the proverbial cats and dogs. The Emmylou Harris CD has been playing on repeat; that's partly due the small selection of music at this branch, yet it's kind of appropriate for the situation.

I'm on the phone to our Help Desk guy. I think he's trying to start up some services, but because of his general unintelligibilty I can't be sure. I wish I had a babel fish.

Absurdity as therapy

There's just something about really silly movies; never mind the lack of meaningful discourse or reflections on the human condition, just having a good childish laugh reminds me that it's nice to be alive, like almost nothing else.

From The Life of Brian to Flying High, The Man with Two Brains to Zoolander; if it makes me snort with mirth then a copy of it on DVD is welcome in my house.

I am going somewhere with this.

We hadn't been to the movies in a couple of months, and I was keen to catch up on some films which I'd heard about but hadn't gotten around to seeing. Touching the Void, Supersize Me and Fahrenheit 9/11 are still on my list of must-sees. But the movie we decided to go to today was...Dodgeball. I can't help it - Ben Stiller makes me laugh. It was a totally predictable plot, but Stiller playing super-vain owner of an exclusive gym/cosmetic surgery clinic was really pretty fab (check out his clingy lycra one-piece with inflatable cod-piece). Guest appearances by Chuck Norris, William Shatner and Lance Armstong were a bonus.

Watching Dodgeball lifted my mood and made me grin and chortle; I'll even blame it for making me giggle at the sign in the cake shop which read Dutch Custard Ring (well it sounded like a sex toy to me).

It could be the result of dehydration or...

I read somewhere that left-handed people are more accident-prone than right-handed people. Lack of sleep would have a similar effect.

Anyhow, it's certainly been an afternoon of mishaps.

On top of the problems we've been having with various computers and printers at the library, we also had a hiccup in the printer on the library bus on Wednesday. It was on and off between then and last night. So when I started up the laptop on the bus this afternoon, I wasn't terribly surprised to find that the printer wasn't working. I just apologised to my customers, saying that on top of the wireless connection being painfully slow, they weren't going to get a receipt either. In the time it took for a book's barcode to fully register on the system, I was able to place a sticker on the back of the book and put a datestamp on it.

It wasn't until around 4pm, just before the last bus stop of the day, that I realised I had forgotten to flick the power switch on the bus. Without the power on, the printer was effectively turned off and the laptop was running off its battery. I only cottoned on when the laptop screen went blank and stayed that way despite my frantically moving the mouse about, and the flat battery light went on.

It was only a couple of days ago that I'd confessed to having knocked out the side lights when I nudged the bus into a tall rubbish bin, while pulling over at the kerb.

Not to mention the time a pre-schooler got stuck in the bus door...I'd forgotton to twist the toggle which locks the step and the door; it ensures that if some button-happy tyke presses the (unforgiveably accessible) close button on the side, we don't end up having to deal with knocked-out teeth, concussions or tears.

And now for something completely different...there is this wonderful author/illustrator of children's books called Shaun Tan. He's written and illustrated a book called The Red Tree, and also illustrated a book by John Marsden, called The Rabbits. His illustrations are not just gorgeous in a kid's book kind of way - he really is an artist. The stuff he did for The Rabbits originated as oil paintings, for instance. The other distinctive thing is that the stories are really different from other kids' picture books - they aren't really cute. The Rabbit is a thinly disguised telling of the effect of white colonials on the native Australians (the Aborigines); The Red Tree, although it has a sweet ending, reads like a day in the life of a clinically depressed child.

The good, the bad and the stressful

The vagaries of foundation-buying
Which is better – foundation which is perfect for your skin but is a shade too dark, or foundation which is the perfect colour for your skin but becomes dry and cakey after an hour? I can look like either a Mediterranean wannabe, or a fish-woman.

Stress City
It’s hard being the first level support for when printers stop working and computers won’t connect to the network, especially when I can’t even get my own printer to work…In yesterday’s class we talked about stress and stress management. I had no trouble coming up with a long list of symptoms:
1. Sleeplessness
2. Negative feelings
3. Tiredness even first thing in the morning
4. Irritability

Although one of the items on my list of stress relievers may have been slightly inappropriate for a management class:
1. Go on holiday
2. Look through the job ads regularly
3. Go shopping

I say, thank goodness for the three B’s - the boy, the blog and the Buffy.

Speaking of which, I just found out that the guy who played Scott Hope in BtVS (her post-Angel, pre-graduation almost-boyfriend) is that really boyish dark-haired guy on Queer Eye. I read it in The Girl's got Bite.

Unweaving a tangled web

The powers that be decided that the cable holes in our computer table needed enlarging, so I was asked to get the workspace ready before a pair of carpenters turned up to do their thing.

For the last half hour or so , I've been crawling around under a table, uplugging five computers and a printer. The table was cleverly designed to maximise the chances of banging my head on in it when I'm underneath (twice, to be exact). By the time I'd done that, and helped out with a massive registration party of foreign students, I was more than a little hot and sweaty. To add to the comfort was the shrill music of twin electric drills accompanied by the pungent smell of fresh sawdust.

It was almost enough to make me break out in a combined headache and asthma attack (but not quite).

And so endeth Tuesday...

And continuing from the previous post, in the last hour at the desk before closing up, I had:

1. put a pile of books about the Olympics on the a table in the Childrens' area because after four weeks of it - the schoolkids...are...still...doing projects on the Olympic Games

2. inhaled a sandwich because I didn't have time for an afternoon break

3. tried unsuccessfully to get anything on our new computers to print out. Of course, the IT help desk guy came over and it worked fine.

4. muttered about all the fine-tipped pens on the desk which didn't have their caps on (some of you may think that's anal - I think it's common sense)

5. done a subject search on 'Ontario' which resulted in a book about Quebec (!)

6. been to the vehicle testing people, who won't give my a car a Warrant of Fitness because it needs work. Again.

7. finally fixed that darned library webpage - I have to edit it using a content management tool and it translated fonts and things really wierdly (wysiwyg my bloody foot!) - much frustration and puzzlement later, I got it so that it looks professional

Now I'm safely home and awaiting the Hell's Pizza delivery; then I'll sit down to watch Six Feet Under. Yeah, and perhaps read the a chapter of the Management textbook.

All in an hour's work

In the last hour at the Information Desk, I have:

1. rejected the offer of French-language psychology books from a
gypsy homeless guy called Adolphe

2. Found a history of the French in New Zealand, but not a history
of gypsies, for the same gypsy homeless guy

3. Listened to an irate patron tell me that she definitely returned
those books, absolutely, she can even remember the time of day when she did it

4. Found three classic novels for a teen who referred to them as 'classical'

5. Helped that little old lady on the Internet, the one who keeps trying to
use her Paradise login to log in to Hotmail

6. Fixed a computer's funny error messages by removing a library patron's disk
from the drive before restarting it

7. Miraculously fixed that sodding Library web page which was mysteriously publishing in a different colour, a different font, and with different spacing (WYSIWYG my foot!).

Golly Goth!

It's a case of life imitating art; to be more specific, life imitating MOO (Mothers Opposed to the Occult). Apparently American kids who wear lots of black clothing and pale makeup to school are getting into trouble for it with their teachers.

There'll be locker checks and anti-Goth folks'll be looking for fantastical weaponry.

Want to know more? Have a look at SF Goth, a San Francisco website devoted to Goth-dom.

It's genetic

It's true that as you get older you start to resemble you parents more and more. Well, that's my excuse for recently becoming a shopaholic and I'm sticking to it.

Yesterday I took my mum out for her weekly shopping trip; at the morning market she bought enough vegetables and frozen chicken to feed a houseful of flatting students for a week (though of course, students live on beer rather than meat and veges); later, at the supermarket, she bought FIFTEEN 500g packets of frozen beans and the same number of packets of pasta.

Sometimes, she buys TEN frozen chickens at a time, and returns for more in a fortnight.

She used to buy toilet paper in monster-sized 72-roll cartons, and laundry detergent in similarly-sized boxes. Mum has enough packets of Thai rice noodles for more than a year's worth of her churches pot-luck lunches.

Mind you, her rationale for this super-stocking-up behaviour is something along the lines of saving money by buying in bulk, and the security of knowing she isn't going to run out any time soon. She was, after all, a child of the turbulent decades when China was first invaded by the Japanese and then taken over by the Communist Party.

I don't have those excuses. For me it's probably just a self-rebellion against my normally sensible spending habits.

The Lair of the Liuzer

The Lair of the Liuzer is full of funny, and possibly even true, news articles. It's the first news-type blog I've ever enjoyed (not counting the Buffy- and Whedon- news blogs). Have a gander at the one about the benefits of drinking your own urine...

And more shopping

Today I set out with the intention of buying an evening jacket or coat - one that isn't black - to wear at my friend's wedding. I brought my new silvery stretch lace t-shirt with me, since of course the jacket had to go with it.

The boy was sleeping off his hangover from last night, which meant that I wouldn't have his style advice (which is actually mostly quite good), but it also meant I would be free to roam around as I wished i.e. I could pop into sales to look at jeans and boots.

Starting at one end of the shopping district and making my way south, I shopped non-stop for three hours. I found a great pair of burnt gold pointy-toed ankle boots for ten bucks at the Number 1 Shoe Warehouse (dumb name, but actually a fit description - I'll be returning to that one), but every jacket I saw was either too office-y or too Spring-y (and hence not a year-round item).

The last hour was spent at a designer shop, one which I'd never entered due to it's anticpated high prices and slightly snotty-looking atmosphere. The shop assistant was really helpful and patient though - not pushy as such but willing to show me whatever I asked for. Amidst the winter sale items and the spring non-sale items, I found a fitted jacket in a deep red textured fabric which really suited my skin tones but didn't suit the silver top.

I figured that a jacket or coat is pretty expensive and should last a while, so it doesn't make sense to run around looking for one which especially matches a relatively cheap shirt (one in a colour which won't go with anything else I have except my black pants).

So I bought the jacket, and next weekend I'm off to look for a top to go with the jacket!

Shopping is really hard work - all that walking, looking closely at clothes, trying clothes on...now that I'm home I'm all tired out.

post-Tru Calling Episode 1 and a smidgeon of sour grapes

Well, that was lots of fun. I wonder though how much fun it's going to be if every episode is another Groundhog Day in which Tru has to save a murder/suicide victim. It's now looking like a cross between Angel (helping the helpless) and Quantum Leap. I'll just have to wait and see I suppose.

My boy is out for the evening, at a work do. It's not that I mind him going out and having fun without me; believe it or not, I'd prefer to stay at home and catch up on my study most Fridays. However, it would be nice if he gave me a bit more notice when his boys' nights out are planned i.e. more than a day and a half. If I knew a week ago that I had a 'free' Friday night, I would have had time to call up my own pals and arrange a catch-up dinner or movie or drinkies. Hummmph..

Nice "creep" factor in Tru Calling

Wow. I'm so excited about episode one that I'm blogging about it during the commercial break...

Eliza Dushku shows this vulnerability (coupled with athleticism) which reminds me of Buffy; even her makeup is kind of reminiscent. So far the story is really interesting - a scarier Groundhog Day.

I was planning on watching the first half and then flicking over to TV One for What Not To Wear, but I think I'm going to have to stay for the whole show. And that's saying something.

Two more things to do before I die

While I was sweating away at the gym, I thought of a couple more things I want to add to my previous list:

11. Learn not to be hard on myself for being a flawed human being
12. Learn not to be hard on other people for being flawed human beings

That's all folks :-)

Ten things to do before I die

Usually it's 'Things to do before I turn 30' or something, but I figure I may as well (hopefully) give myself a bit more time...

1. Travel Europe and the UK again
2. Have a home which is warm even in winter
3. Have a child
4. Own an evening jacket which goes with an evening outfit and evening shoes
5. Be able to express exactly why I like a particular film or book (currently I just say it's the coolest thing ever)
6. Exhibit my paintings (and be happy with them)
7. Write something really really well
8. Something scary and brave, like save someone's life
9. Learn to ski
10.Understand abstract art

Bride and Prejudice

According to Angry Asian Man, the woman who brought us Bhaji on the Beach and Bend it like Beckham gives us a full-blown Bollywood remake of Pride and Prejudice.

Cool.

Creep-o-rama

There is one episode of X-Files which will always be lodged in my mind, and it's the one which still creeps me out now. The episode I'm talking about is the second one in Season Four, Home.

It's the one where Mulder and Scully investigate the discovery of a dead, malformed infant in a shallow grave...and are lead to the Peacocks - a family which has, for generations, played together, stayed together and bred together.

The sight of Mrs Peacock, limbless from a car accident a decade before and strapped to a board under the floor of her home, creeps me out even before she shows her deformed face.

The 'brothers' (the eldest of whom is also the father of the other two) are pretty ugly in a neanderthal kind of way. Listening to the eldest and his mummy dearest plot the family's regeneration in the boot of their car at the episode's end, is almost as appalling as watching the mother give birth in the opening scene.

Uggghhh!!!

"Your call is very important to us..."

This is certainly a morning for being put on hold. The folks from Epilepsy NZ still haven't shown up to put their display up and I've been trying unsuccessfully to get hold of them. The local rep isn't taking any calls, though so the display board continues to look bare and scrappy.

I also tried to get hold of Inland Revenue, to ask about getting some of my student loan repayment money back. This tried my patience even more - after being put on hold for approximately half and hour, I was told that I'd be put through to Student Loans, then I was on hold again. I persisted though, and after a couple of interruptions (like.. work and stuff), contact was made. Only it turns out that I've wasted all my time, because I should be talking to Payroll.

So I'm not going to wait in any more phone queues today.

The rampant consumerism continues

Not satisfied with spending my hard-earned dosh on evening wear, underwear and yet another Buffy book (this time it's the updated The girl's got bite by Kathleen Tracy), we went out again yesterday for more domestic wares. An hour and a half later, we emerged from The Warehouse (a chain of huge cheap-import stores housed in big red un-airconditioned buildings) with a large burgundy rug for the lounge, a kitset typist's chair for my study and a microwave oven.

And the rationalisations are...
- we needed the rug because the scrappy carpet in the lounge is not only ugly and coffee-stained, but it's also lacking an underlay.
- I needed the typist's chair because the computer sits too high on the computer desk. It was either buy a height-adjustable chair or take a hacksaw to the computer desk
- I've been looking for a microwave oven priced at less than one hundred dollars for approximately four years now. Originally I wanted one to heat my wheatbag, but now we need one because I keep forgetting to take meat out of the freezer ahead of time. This particular microwave oven was only about seventy bucks, so I really did have to have it.

I should be getting some money from work soon though - I'm fortunate that our newish manager (who is, coincidentally, studying for his MLIS) managed to get the City Council to agree to pay for library-related study. I hope I can put the money straight into the savings account though, instead of spending it.

That's spooky

I guess I'm a Violet both inside and out...

what's your inner flower?

[c] sugardew

I found it at Quiz Blog

Shopping for glamour

I did some research on FashioNZ, and found a couple for really great outfits by State of Grace. So, armed with printouts (I won't try to describe them; just follow the link and look for 'Ariel' on page 1 of the Winter Collection and Queen Mary bodice + Poseiden skirt on page 5), we went into town to look for something similar but cheaper.

What I ended up getting was something quite different. I got a silver stretch lace cap-sleeved t-shirt (one size larger than usual so it wouldn't cling, and on sale at less than forty bucks), which I figured I could wear with black pants or long skirt. I then had to look for underwear which wouldn't scream for attention from underneath, but that was fairly easy.

Pulled in the opposite directions of gunning-for-glamour (which goes for Librans) and being practical (which is probably a Cantonese thing), it's never been easy. This time it was so easy that the boy insisted we try a few more clothes shops in case I was on a roll. Well, I found a really fab strapless raspberry dress with a fishtail - but it would've looked better on me if I had a narrower waist, a longer torso and bigger boobs. And perhaps longer legs and a pair of Sex in the City-type shoes. It was at this point that we decided to go home before I started looking for corsets and tummy-flattening pants.

Loan-free

I paid off my student loan last week. It's not quite as impressive as it sounds, because my loan was actually quite small. All the same, it'll be nice to have that extra fifty bucks every fortnight (which was being automatically deducted from my pay).

So I was kicking myself yesterday when I realised that I was supposed to tell the people over at payroll to stop giving the IRD my money. I got my payslip, and instead of a big fat empty space where the words 'Student Loan' had been - those words were still there and sitting next to a dollar figure.

I've heard that it's really hard to get one's money back from the tax folk; soon I'll find out for myself.

And now it's time for a cheap thrill...I was shelving some of the returned non-fiction this afternoon on the bus when I came across a couple of dinosaur books (as you do). It's so childish, I know, but I couldn't help sniggering when I put the 567.91 DIX right next to the 567.91 COX...

(umm... those are Dewey Decimal codes in case you haven't set foot in a public library for a while)

today's brain dump

Films
These are the film industry names which would make me want to see a movie (without knowing anything about it):

- Peter Jackson
- Ben Stiller
- The Coen Brothers
- Charlie Kaufman
- Johnny Depp (-ish. He's let me down a couple of times, though generally it's still true)
- Lars von Trier
- Zhang Yimou


Sleep
Oh, for some! Every evening I go to bed with one of my trusty Buffy books, reading a while before falling asleep. Every morning I wake up to the rude noise of the alarm clock, and I'm bleary-eyed, unrefreshed and possibly not quite fit to drive for at least another hour.

Playing dress-ups
A friend of mine is getting married early in October; between now and then I have the task of trawling the shops, looking for something suitable to wear. I don't like girly gear, I don't like exposing my legs, I can't walk in high heels and I don't have the bod for clingy clothes. I thought I might look for a strappy dress with a little jacket, plus some pointy-toed knee high boots. Or I might give up after the first couple of shops and settle for some of the ten-year-old stuff in my wardrobe (hoping it hasn't been mildewed to death). Oh, for the donated services of a fashion stylist and a couple of grand in spending money!

nostalgia

I got an e-mail from an Irish friend yesterday, someone I used to work with years ago when she was doing her travels around the world. Back then, I was a spirit-drinking early-thirty-something who participated in a major annual pub crawl with a gang of hard-drinking IT guys who really liked to wear ladies underwear occassionally. It was on one of those pub crawls - the theme was Village People and I was dressed up as a biker chick - that I picked up a toy boy fan. I was quite flattered to be stalked by the 24-year-old, who didn't pluck up the courage to come and talk to me until six whole months after that big night.

Boy, have things changed since then. Serious-minded, teetolling and hitched in all but name only.

Confession

It was me. I was the one who let the book-stealer leave the library.

Actually, I don't know for a fact that the woman was stealing anything. I do know that she set the alarm off when she left the building, that she kept on walking and that I let her go.

I tried to stop her - when I heard the alarm go off (and it goes off several times a day; usually it's a false alarm), I looked up from behind the information desk and she was already two automatic doors ahead of me. I had to walk right around the desk to get to the entrance/exit, stand in front of the inner automatic door for a second waiting for it to let me out...by then she was already heading around the corner. That's when I thought "I'm not going to go running down the street after her". I was probably also thinking that that would look undignified, that I was leaving the information desk un-manned, that by the time I got someone to help the woman would have gotten even futher away, that it was probably another false alarm.

True, she probably wasn't doing anything wrong except not stopping for the alarm. But she was moving pretty quickly for a short, round person - almost as if she was in a hurry. And the more I think about it, the more likely it seems to me that she was hurrying out of there with an un-issued book.

It made me feel horrible all afternoon. And guilty too.

Q and A

A friend of mine sent me an e-mail wondering why middle-aged men's nose- and ear-hair grows so thick'n'fast, at a time when head hair diminishes disturbingly quickly. I didn't know the answer, but being a library worker, I vowed to find out.

And I did.

In the process, I found a fascinating site called The Straight Dope. This guy, Cecil Adams, is syndicated in various newspapers, so you people in North America may know of him already.

It's a lot of fun. Go on, ask him something.

urgency

All this time I've been very lazy about exercising my pelvic floor muscles.T he boy thinks I should be doing it on a regular basis; he claims to do the exercises himself. Well I had to exercise 'em today.

I should always go straight to the loo after a workout, since I'll have drunk a litre of water and we all know that the body can't absorb that much water in one hour. I shoulda, but I didn't, and to cut a long story short I was out on Main Street with my boss looking for tulips to put in our Spring Festival display. My hipsters were pressing on my bladder but I was too shy to say I needed to pee (and this is something which has been with me since I was a child). Centuries later, she went took off to get her lunch before heading back to the Library. I made it back in time, but along the way I found out the hard way that the public toilets are locked and they should really take down the enormous sign pointing to them.

Home comforts

The boy has been testing out his new toy (the X-Box) on some new games. BTVS isn't one of them, which is a pity; although I have a natural aversion to computer games, I would have been interested to see how the TV show translates into an interactive activity - especially when it's being played by someone who knows his console from his ...other game equipment.

Now that my couches and cushions are all furry, I find myself touching them all the time - when I'm sitting on them and when I'm just passing by. Back in the days when you had to wear a dead animal on your back if you wanted the feel of fur, I might have had a tough time avoiding real fur coats (okay, maybe not so tough - fur clothing on a short and sturdy figure is a less-than-sexy combination).

To a more domestic topic: I got three loads of laundry dry in record time today. The winds weren't quite as gusty as they were last Wednesday (or I would have lost it), nor so strong that the washing wrapped 'round and 'round the four clotheslines until there was just one giant noodle of wet clothes and stuff. But there was certainly enough air-flow to whip most of the moisture out of the towels, undies, jeans etc in the space of about three hours. Spring weather ain't all bad.

Furriness

I do have a bit of a 'thing' for fake fur, though I tend not to wear it. I already had a fake-fur cushion which I bought on sale at half-price, and today I persuaded my boy to take me back to the same shop for a couple of fake-fur throws too.

They aren't actually throws - they're single bed covers - but they're perfect for my two couches. There's a purple one for the mango three-seater (we ran into one of the boy's workmates outside the shop and I think he got a bit of a ribbing for having a purple furry thing in his grasp) and a coffee-coloured one for the blue-green two-seater. Hopefully this will be the end of the fur-fetish.

Apparently there is such a thing as a 'furry' - someone who likes to dress up in furs (and I think there's a sexual thing impulse there too). I wouldn't go that far - fur is so fattening to wear - but the touch of the stuff is so...sensual. Not to mention warm.

Anyhow, the boy was warmly rewarded for his good work; I walked around town with him for ages looking for an X-Box (they're in short supply nationally!) and some games for him to play on it.

new book

oooh...My The Simpsons and Philosophy book arrived today. It's all shiny and thick and full of potentially life-changing (or at least interesting and amusing) content.

To be or not to be a hero

I've just started reading 'What would Buffy do?', which is a spiritual guide based on the characters of BTVS. There's a lot of material in there about redemption, sacrifice, forgiveness etc. I'm reading it because I'm a Buffy fan and because I'm a pop philosopher, not so much because I feel the need for spiritual guidance.

But then again, perhaps it's people who don't feel the need for it who are most in need of it...

I don't want to be a hero. I don't want to have to think of other people all the time. I don't want to care about everyone; there is enough on my plate just caring about myself, my partner, my immediate family and my friends. If anything, I'd like to care less about people outside this sphere - maybe because I feel powerless to prevent countries from invading each other, or corporations from polluting the environment. It's also because I want to live a simpler life, and it doesn't seem possible to live a simple life and care about everybody at the same time.

On the other hand, I do want to be a hero, because its such a noble thing to be. But if I was so heroic and noble, wouldn't I get all bigheaded about it and think I'm better than everyone else? And wouldn't that be ignoble?

a pain in the neck, a secret passion

Probably like most office workers and people who work with computers a lot, I have a problem with stiff shoulders and neck. I've added to this recently, by unintentionally discovering a new sleeping position which ensures that I have an extra-sore neck in the mornings. If I run my fingers over the left side of my neck, I'll find a tight little knot which defies all reasonable force (it is near the base of my brain, after all). It may be time for a pillow reassessment.

There aren't many shops to browse in near my work, and there is a severe lack of interesting clothing shops. Thank goodness for Stationery Warehouse, which has opened a megastore in the last couple of months. I thought I was alone in my lust for stationery (the gleam in my eye when I spot a particularly attractive journal or photo album, the allure of the sticky plastic decorative book covers, the pull of the trendily-coloured magazine files...), but it turns out that this isn't the case at all. Fellow bloggers and library students have gushed about fabulous unfilled, unlined books; even one of my more colourful co-workers (a tattooed, pierced, belly-dancing children's librarian) is equally turned on by great stationery. But I'm still not convinced it's something to tell people at parties.

Wild Wednesday weather

Last night I kept waking up to the sound of my house's foundations being tested. It was gale-force windy, and wanting everyone to hear about it. I kept an ear open for radio reports of the highway being closed, but it hadn't happened by 8pm so reluctantly I set off for work. All the way to work in the car, I listened to more radio reports; mentally I chanted the mantra "State Highway 2 will be closed". But despite all the wind, the torrential rain and the surface flooding, I heard no excuse to turn around and come back home.

Luck was on my side, however. At 2pm, while I was sitting in the Mobile Library reading Janet Frame's To the Is-Land, one of the team leaders suddenly appeared through the doorway and announced she would take over my bus-driving duties so that I could leave early for home. It was something about problems on the motorway about half-way along - I wasn't really listening after the bit about my going home early.

And funnily enough, it was a breeze getting home. I could see that the river was high and brown; later, the sea was all churned up and a similar colour of weak coffee. But no Hawaii Five-Oh-type waves dumped on my car, as I'd seen happening to the South-bound traffic this morning. There was a bit of wind, but it seemed a mere shadow of its early morning self.

Not that I'm complaining - I'm home with a couple hours of leisure time to spare before my library class, and because I'll be doing this one from home I'm spared the post-class exercise of putting the laptop and various cables away afterwards.

a tempest, a home network and a fairly interesting article

It's pretty rough weather out there - I drove to the gym via the coast road, and a fair bit of seawater was dumped on my car along the way. Sort of like being in a car wash but without the big brushes.

Surprisingly, the gym was quite busy; it must have been all the frustrated joggers. Apparently it was less than five degrees Celsius at 4.30 this afternoon; it's certainly not very a comforting temperature now. In fact, the first time my feet felt warm all day was after I'd been working out for half an hour.

I am so glad I bought that queen-sized electric blanket.

Well, we're on high-speed Internet now. The boy went to Dick Smith's for a geek-shopping-spree, and the cable guy finally turned up. After half an hour's work by the cable guy, and several hours of hard work by my boy, both of our computers are now on a high-speed connection and on a wireless network too. Now we can both surf, and have a phone conversation, all at the same time. Along the way he found loads of software updates which my computer needed, so he dealt to all that; but I feel like a bit of a techno-cretin for not knowing to do this already.

This'll be boring if you aren't working in the library world (and possibly disappointing after yesterday's racier offering), but should be pretty interesting if you are - especially the bit about some US library school programes costing forty-five grand per year. It's a Library Journal article presenting some of the issues facing new library grads in the States. It constantly surprises me that people go straight from their first degree to Library School, without attempting to get any library work experience, and expect to get librarian jobs when they graduate.

Waiting for TelstraClear

reference-y stuff
The homework rush for Olympics information is dying down, thank goodness. I'm a bit sick of it already, and the actual games have only been going a couple of days. I did get a very obscure request for book on the "Orion mystery". At first, I didn't understand he meant the constellation, because he pronouncied it like "oree - in". So we started looking for astronomy books, and he waited until I'd led him over there before telling me he thought we should be looking for books on Egypt. I found the name of the book he was probably after - it's called "The Orion mystery" and we don't have it.

the waiting
Meanwhile, my boy has taken the day off work to wait for the cable guy to come by and set us up for Broadband. He was supposed to turn up "between 9.30 and 12.30", and this (rather generous) time span was confirmed twice over the phone and again in a message left on my voicemail. Confident that he'd be in the midst of it all when I phoned home at 12.15, I was a little annoyed (though not entirely surprised) to discover that the cable guy had still not turned up. I'm probably more annoyed that the boyfriend is though, since he gets a paid day off work.

selective memory

My mother rang up just before I went on the 'Net. There was a fruitless attempt at drawing me into conversation about the family, the batteries for her blood suger meter and whether I was dressing warmly enough for the weather, I told her I had to go and study.

She asked me what study I had to do. She seemed to have forgotten that I've been a part-time Library student since March. 'That's why I'm always so busy, Mum" I said ( but in Cantonese). She wondered out loud how I could fit in study when I'm always so busy. "Thats... why... I'm...always busy, Mum".

She's an old lady. She can forget whatever she likes.

Diversions

Nothing really interesting to report here: I'm more than halfway through Seven Seasons of Buffy and trying come to terms with reading negative criticism about Season 7. My headache went away but my tummy was dodgy. My assignment now looks like a strategic plan, but not a good one. It's been a freezing cold day with rain and wind, but at least I still have a roof.

Deadly Smurf. That's my Smurf name - what's yours?

The boy sent me this interesting (in more ways than one) report which he titled 'What happens when a librarian finds "naughty librarian" novels? They catalogue them ', found on memepool. But I warn you now... there is actual porn content. The funniest thing is that after each plot summary is a list of library stereotypes found and whether or not the library scenes were realistic...

feeling peaky

Perhaps it's due to the start of hayfever season, and the galeforce winds. Yesterday I was feeling pretty blah, and by the time I left work to go home I was feeling actively sick (in that about-to-throw-up kind of way). Plus my head was hurting really badly (in a it's-hayfever-and-I've-forgotten-to-use-my-nasal-spray-several-days-in-a-row kind of way).

Perhaps hayfever season, lack of sleep and lack of perkiness medication have all coincided with that certain mix of hormone levels generally known as PMT, have combined to make me less than an angel of cheer.

Whatever...I was feeling bad last night, teary, hurt-y and spew-y. The boy convinced me to ring a Library person and tell them that I wasn't going to be able to make Saturday morning.

So I've spent most of today working on the assignment, and listening to the bands on the Buffy CD. I so love The Sundays' rendition of Wild Horses...

Deadlines and distractions

Only last night, I realised that I have only three more weeks to complete and hand in my assignment. This is bad, because by this time last trimester I would have already re-written my essay several times whereas this time around I've only typed up notes and put them under headings. I haven't yet decided what my strategic plan (which what the assignment is) is actually going to be.

To test my self-discipline further, three of the four items I ordered from Amazon have arrived. So while I slave over my studies, the shiny new covers of What would Buffy Do?, The Seven Season of Buffy and Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the album will beckon. And when The Simpsons and Philosophy turns up on my doorstep I'll be even more tempted to engage in procrastinating activities.

I don't know whether it's the weather or what, but I have slept pretty badly over the last few weeks. Even though the boy tells me that I slept through, I'm still tired and groggy in the mornings. Either it's affecting my attitude to work, or vice versa.

philosophy right this second

Due to lack of motivation, I can't think of a single thing to write about tonight. I'm having one of those "why am I doing what I'm doing" days, and I can't answer this question convincingly.

So, as you do when you start questioning your life, I've been browsing through the questions and answers on Ask a Philosopher . Here's one of the more light-hearted entries:

10) Emran asked:
Why can we only use 10% of our brain?
============
Because the other 90% is for phrenology.
David Robjant

ho-hum

I just can't get motivated today. The most excited I've gotten so far is when, at 9.30, I realised that I'd forgotten to update the New Books page on the library website. It takes about half and hour (it's a labour-intensive process of cutting and pasting) and it had to be live in exactly half and hour.

I'm getting high-speed Internet access soon. It's a bit ironic that it takes so long to get through to the telecommunication company on the phone - but after four tries, I made it. System updates, firewall installations and anti-virus downloads, oh my!

the smell of roast pork buns

Every Sunday for the last couple of months, my mum has been supplying me with a bag of her own roast pork buns, made from her own recipe. They're really nice and they're filling, which makes them perfect for lunches at work.

The smell of them is distinctly noticeable when they're reheating in the microwave oven. My workmates are getting so used to the smell that I've been pressured to shout them some on my birthday. My birthday isn't for another two months, so if I keep some in the freezer every week I should have enough by then. This means I won't have to ask my mother to make some especially. This is important, because my mother doesn't make her roast pork buns for just anyone; for months after she first knew about my boyfriend, she gave me only a few at a time and instructed me to eat them at work so that he'd be denied access to them.

I suppose this makes sense if the act of feeding someone is an expression of love, eh?

Tama sent me this Guardian review of Flight of the Concords. They are a really fab and funny duo, and Jermaine has been recognised in one of the LOTR movies.

first chaos, then music

I thought it was pretty good going getting the Mayor to agree to be our celebrity reader for this morning's nation-wide Library Week reading of Oh Hogwash, Sweetpea!'. He'd only had about three days notice, after all.

When a lanky, middle-aged woman came by to check out the children's library, I thought that was all she was doing - just ensuring that our guest-reader had a nice, soft chair to sit in. By the time the entire class of a local primary school had filed in to join the assortment of toddlers already there, I wondered where the hell he was.

Apparently he couldn't make it after all, so he'd sent his deputy.

Well, at least we had a copy of the book for her to read, which certainly wasn't true a mere half hour earlier. Why hadn't I thought to check whether our copy of Hogwash was still checked in at the library? It might have saved an emergency trip to Books'n'More with a scribbled purchase order.

These are the CD's I'm listening to now that I've remembered that I can play them through the CD drive:

Acid Jazz Classics - various
London Warsaw New York - Basia
Tuatara - A Flying Nun Compilation - various
Heart Shaped World - Chris Isaak
In Love With These Times (another Flying Nun compilation) - various
Mix - Stellar*
Lounge-a-palooza - various
Blue Lines - Massive Attack
Tourist - St Germaine

It's been quite a while since I last bought any CDs.

She's boredom incarnate...

No doubt in every class there is at least one person who will go on and on about something which isn't really relevant to the subject under discussion; when this person talks, intelligent people roll their eyes and gird their loins in preparation for lengthy and boring noise pollution.

The great thing about doing my class via distance is that nobody seems to like talking via the Internet conferencing facility. The lecturer talks; she has to. But most people will ask questions, or respond to hers, by typing in text instead. This means I have been spared utterly boring and wordy monologues of a particular distance student who shall remain nameless ('cos I'm nice, and I don't know how violent she is).

She prowls the MLIS discussion board, however. Every post she has written has been really verbose, to the point where my eyes glaze over after the first three or four words. I did try to understand what she was on about - the first time anyway. It's very impressive; the people I spoke to about it thought she must really know what it's all about. I reckon it's a fine example of communication at it's most perverse.

Dentist's time is tooth-hurty

It's been about two years since I last had a dental check-up; I'd been putting it off mostly because my usual dentist is not in the same city where I work. I've started getting those nagging "sensitive teeth" sensations lately though, so I can't put it off any longer. I suppose one more filling isn't going to make much difference to a mouth which is already full of 'em anyway (due to a flouride-less water supply in childhood, perhaps).

Cake
I wonder why, when I'm at the branch library all by myself on a quiet day, someone always walks in just when I've surreptitiously taken a bite out of my piece of cake? Maybe it's the secret dental police.

an Ah Hah! moment (not the Eighties band)

There I was, with two mostly-empty CD cubby holes in my tw0-week-old computer desk and very few CD-ROMs to put in them. Why on earth did I not think of playing my music CD's from my computer? Not only can I have music whenever I study or surf, but I have built-in storage space for it.

Although I'm not sure that I'll be able to study when music's playing...

Saturday is Retail Therapy Day

Not that I was feeling in need of any therapy; I was feeling perfectly okay this morning when I decided to walk into town and go shopping while my boy stayed home, sleeping off his hangover.

It's not often that I go all out and buy stuff without thinking really hard about it; I've always been that way. However, the boy is more of an impulse buyer and it's probably starting to rub off on me.

The sun was out, and I wanted to go for a walk. I also wanted to avoid my assignment for a little longer.

The first purchase was a queen-size electric blanket. How we survived for so long with a piddly little single-size one, plonked in the middle of the bed (with the resulting jostlings for prime position during the night), I really don't know. But now we'll have one which not only heats up the whole bed, it's got dual controls too - so I can sabotage his side of the bed when he pisses me off.

I also bought a fake-fur cushion. I've always wanted fake-fur cushions and a fake-fur throw - well, ever since I became aware of their existence anyway.

And clothes...I bought a nifty knitted, zipped cardigan in gothic black, a grey stretch pencil skirt which will look fab with my knee-high black boots, and a burgundy mohair-like sweater which comes with it's own nipple-hider i.e. a thin white singlet.

Back home, thirsty, foot-sore and a couple of hundred dollars lighter, I was able to do some study. But you know what makes a good study-break activity? Checking out the Amazon recommendations. I'll soon be expecting the arrival of The Simpsons and Philosophy, What would Buffy do?, The Seven Seasons of Buffy and Buffy the Vampire Slayer- the album.

I feel really good now.

It's not easy sitting by the public toilets

The library's public toilets are located just on the other side of our office, and exactly on the other side of a now-locked door from my workstation. Fortunately, I haven't yet had to listen to sleazy patrons having sex in there - perhaps they only do that when I'm on desk duty and too far away to hear.

Usually I just hear mums telling their toddlers to hurry up and wash their hands already, which is only very slightly amusing (though, thankfully, not at all disturbing).

Still on the subject of poo, it's been raining pretty steadily for the last couple of days and I'm actually quite pleased about it. Two days ago, I was driving around when I realised that I must've previously parked under a bird with diarhoea; there were splotches of bird shit all over the front and back windscreens, and the roof. The rain isn't going to wash it all off (and it certainly isn't going to offer a polish), but at least there'll be less of it by the time I get around to washing the acrid stuff off.

Still on droppings... every week I get one of my co-workers, who has little kids, to pick me out a picture book to read to a class of three-year olds on the library bus. I find that when the book has a toiletry theme the storytime goes down pretty well. Mind you, I probably laughed louder than any of them.

the library bus must get through!

There's a Mobile Bus stop at the New World car park, and although a sign specifically asks that shoppers leave that spot vacant during a very specific period of time, most times I find that I can't park the bus in the designated spot due to someone ignoring it. All it takes is for one shopper to occupy one of the four spaces I need, and I'm stuffed.

The last time this happened, I couldn't get my co-worker to get off the bus and ask, very nicely, the offending driver/s to move as she'd decided to drive herself to the supermarket and meet me there.

So I parked the bus in the middle of the thoroughfare, opened the hydraulic door, and asked the drivers to move. They were really really nice about it, and moved immediately. By the time I was back in the driver's seat though, their spots had already been taken by newcomers.

It was going to be a nightmare; on that unseasonally warm day I was working up a sweat running around trying to keep a stream of ignorant shoppers from invading my rightful bus park.

(My co-worker turned up eventually so it ended well.)

Let's try that again...the importance of dress-ups

I so hate it when I lose all my hard blogging work just because Blogger’s having a fit, and I can’t save my stuff quickly as soon as I see the error message because of some dorky flaw in the software which doesn’t let me select and copy my words….

Anyway, where was I?
I have realised why my efforts to inspire enthusiasm for Library Week have come to nothing. It’s because there has been no suggestion of dressing up.

The women at my library (there are only two men and neither of them suffer from this affliction) really love to dress up. Events which are organised by the library are most popular and positively acted upon, are those which act as an excuse to wear glamourous, frivolous or weird clothing. It might be Halloween Storytime, a Harry Potter-themed float for the Christmas Parade, a pretend Night at the Oscars or a quiz night with prizes for best-dressed. I did suggest donning tweeds, spectacles and hair up in buns for Library Week, but no-one went for it. It may have been due to the lack of tart-potential.

Tonight, while I was studiously sitting in my MLIS audio-conference, straining to hear the lecturer’s advice about our first assignment, I caught glimpses of the quiz participants. They were be-jeweled, be-sequined, fish-netted, pan caked, and stiletto-ed as they shrieked, yelled and guffawed in and out of the workroom where I was stationed. Although I was might irritated by the noise pollution, I couldn’t really begrudge them their dress-up opportunity.
But I will know better next time I want to get them interested in something…

The importance of dress-ups

Happiness is a well-drawn nude

I was quite sure yesterday that, since I hadn't done any drawing whatsoever for about five months, my first life-drawings would yield only crap drawings. To make it even harder, the model last night was a male (I find female bodies much easier to render).

Predictably, most of my drawings were crap. But maybe two were okay, not too embarrassing. It was also good to catch up with some of the people I knew from before - the ex-art student who's now working part-time so he can spend the rest of the time painting; the ex-hospitality professional who's now studying art part-time and enjoying non-hospitality hours; and Tama of course, who will be exhibiting some of his drawings next week at Olive Cafe.

It was two hours in which I was focussed on something other than how extremely busy I felt work-wise. It was very cool.

naked people and Pacific-style karate

The prodigal life-drawer returns...
Tonight I'm going to life-drawing; it'll be the first time in about five months, so I'm expecting to produce rubbish drawings. I'm going because I don't have to work on Tuesday evenings any more and, though I won't be doing this on a regular basis due to my studies, it'll be nice to see the old crowd. I'm also doing it because I promised Tama I'd lend him our copy of Phillip Pullman's Northern Lights.

Tongan Ninja
We saw a really fun movie in the weekend, Tongan Ninja. It's the work of the two guys who make up the comedy duo Flight of the Concords, and is a really silly satire of seventies-style martial arts movies. It's a whole lot funnier than Kung Pow, which bored me silly - the only funny thing about Kung Pow was the title - but I suspect it'd be a whole lot less successful outside of NZ than Peter Jackson's home movie, Bad Taste (because it's very home-movie). It's fun because the acting is so bad it must be on purpose; because the cast includes people like Raybon Kan (the funniest Asian I know) and stars of local soap Shortland Street; because it's cool to see places you know really well on the big screen; and because Jermaine Clements could've been good in Zoolander.

When does one kick little boys out of the ladies changing room?

It was a struggle getting to the gym and back this morning, and still get to work on time by 11.30am. Thankfully my new work-out programme is more intense, but shorter.

Afterwards in the changing room, I was a little uncomfortable with the presence of a couple of boys there; they looked about eight or ten years old. The sight of them made me stop in my tracks, then turn around and undress in one of the cubicles instead of in the main communal area where I usually go.

I'm used to seeing mums bringing their little boys and girls with them - they are normally toddlers and I figure that if it's okay with the mother then it's okay with me. But I don't really want to share a changing room with boys who are much older. Especially these days, kids seem to become worldly at a much younger age than when I was a kid. If I'd seen them with their mother, it would've been almost okay - almost. Perhaps I'm being prudish - after all, when I was in Germany it seemed that everyone just changed in front of each other. But if it's a case of 'when in Rome', then surely in NZ that isn't what people do.

Needless to say I didn't go as far as confronting the boys, assuming that their mother was somewhere around (and also being a conflict-avoider).