A nice surprise

A profile of yours truly is in the latest edition of our library newsletter. Unable to resist being at least a little tongue-in-cheek, I completed the sentence "Ask me about..." with the words "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Well, the newsletter is now hot off the photocopier.

I had a thought that patrons might come to the desk to ask me about the novels rather than the television series, which would be a bad thing since I don't read the novels.

No-one has yet taken the bait, however.

One morning I walked up to my desk and there was a withdrawn Buffy novel on my chair. I asked one of the catalogers, since they are the ones who decided which books get withdrawn. Then I asked the woman who wrote up my profile. Finally I sent an email to the whole library to thank whoever it was who'd given me this present.

It was my manager. I think we'll keep him on for a while.

I'd rather be Casablanca

That's the movie which represents Make Tea Not War's love life. Why couldn't I have been that too, or at least a movie I've seen? I may have to rent this out now...

Your romance is more of a love that needs to bloom
within, just like Hedwig of Hedwig and the
Angry Inch. The film features an East German
transsexual who is seeking her "other
half" after constant betrayal. You must
love yourself before you can need another.
You're starting to realize this, along with the
fact that you don't need a significant other to
be a complete person. Your "other
half" has been inside you all along.


What Romance Movie Best Represents Your Love Life?
brought to you by Quizilla

The agony is over -Type and Type Design for masochists

My presentation was the middle one of three. The first guy did his presentation on Stinky Cheese Man, and it turned out to be a fabulous choice. Much more experienced in the ways of children's fiction than I, he'd found a book to talk about which had a great variety of typefaces and layouts, heaps of funny lines and ingenious page designs. AND he knew who did the typography, what the typefaces were and what was the ancestor of each type. I was just relieved he didn't also have a charismatic speaking style.

I was pretty damn nervous when it was my turn. To make things worse, there was something wrong with Chatterbox so the slides couldn't be presented on-line. Too late, I had realised that I could've picked an easier topic to do my assignment on. Once, I talked for a good thirty seconds before realising I had taken my finger off the CTRL key, which meant that no-one could hear me.

The guy who presented after me cheated - he picked an artist's book by a typographer whose aim was to present a variety of interesting typefaces.

I have come to this conclusion - there are many types of geeks in this world, and book-geeks are the ones who measure book type to the nearest millimetre; they are the ones who can talk for a whole fifteen minutes on how to make vellum from the skin of a newborn calf without saying "Oooh, the poor little calf"; they are the ones who prefer to describe a book's physical appearance using code rather than just taking photos.

superstitions about sneezing

I found this, which still doesn't answer my question of why we couldn't have roast duck at my mum's birthday - but it's still kinda interesting. It's a list of superstitions surrounding sneezes, from cultures around the world. Fascinating.

A Chinese custom, but not for the faint-hearted.

We all went out for Yum Char today, and towards the end of the meal one of my aunts started getting all fidgety. Before I could see it coming, she scrambled out of her chair to retrieve that piece of paper that all the waitresses put marks on - the one which is used to calculate the bill.

It was obvious there was going to be a fight over who got to pay the bill - there always is when Chinese take their friends or rellies out for a meal.

My aunt held that bit of paper tightly in her fist, and whenever I tried to take it away, the surprisingly agile seventy-something woman flicked it just out of my reach. My brother had an idea though, and this was one of those times when we were glad not everyone at the table could speak good English...

Despite that fact that we'd all stopped eating and there were plenty of leftovers, my brother announced that he wanted to get another plate of spring rolls - for his son at home, he said. We had to wait a long time for them to arrive, and in the meantime I kept trying to get my mitts on that piece of paper - unsuccessfully.

Then, the spring rolls arrived. My brother whispered in the waitress's ear that my aunt had the paper for her to mark - could she please hand it to him when she got the chance? My aunt caught on pretty quickly, but she was powerless to counter the attack. She had no choice but to give the waitress the paper, and my brother almost ripped it out of her hand in his haste. In the ensuing hilarity, somehow my mother got the credit for the ruse.

the right article at the wrong time

The evening before one is scheduled to do a presentation (worth thirty percent of the total grade for this paper), is not the best time to receive notice of what could have been an extremely useful article on presentations for librarians.

>:-{

At this stage all I have time to do is talk myself through the Power Point slides until I can speak without using so many "um"s and nervous pauses.

Chinese Superstitions

In an effort to find out why exactly it is not a good thing to eat duck at an eightieth birthday (or any birthday?), I'm looking into Google for answers. (If you know of a good book which has the answer let me know.)

This site didn't have the answer, but it did have this interesting thing to say:

"Beating a person with a broom will rain bad luck upon that person for years." Well, it'll certainly seem like bad luck on the poor person getting beaten up won't it?

Joyce Jue reckons that you have to serve noodles as the last dish of a birthday banquet - we didn't. I wonder if it doesn't apply to octogenarians?

Here are some I know Mum believes in:
- Don't talk about people after they are dead
- Don't give candles as a birthday present - candles are a symbol of mortality or something
- If your palms are itchy, you're coming into money
- If a stray dog wanders into your home, feed it - it's good luck
- If you sneeze a few times and you don't have a cold or hayfever or something up your nose, expect to receive mail from someone you haven't heard from in a long time
- Don't have duck on your eightieth birthday (but chicken is okay and roast pork with crackling and fish are must-haves)

I'm sure there are more than that which I've forgotten.

Fri-day and Fri-night

Field Trip
Our team had a field trip today, to another city library two hours' drive away. The van ride over was pretty bumpy, frustrating any attempts to catch up on sleep after a restless, wild-weathered night and an unfeasibly early wake-up time (6.30am).

The library building was quite impressive - it looks quite like the Wellington Central Library but bigger. The day's tour also included a rundown of their Summer Reading Programme; a walk through their impressive archives rooms and computer room; and visits to their mobile library (it has a couch at the back!) and a branch library. It was obvious that they had more money to play with than we did, even taking into account that the population of the city is more than twice that of the city our library is in.

By about 3pm, the affects of sleep deprivation started to really affect me - my eyes were just begging to be allowed to close and stay that way. I was also worrying about getting away in time so that I wouldn't be late for my mother's birthday bash. I will always be grateful that no-one tried to persuade me to do my share of the drive back - grateful for as long as I remember, anyway.


The Eightieth Birthday
It was actually a lot more fun than I'd expected. We had a booking at a small northern Chinese restaurant known to be frequented by the likes of Peter Jackson and the Chinese Ambassador - we ordered heaps of food and everyone seemed to approve of the quality of it. My little nephew made a game out of "tunneling" under everyone's chairs around the table, popping his head up to greet whoever's knees were in front of him and disappearing as soon as a digital camera came out of an aunt's bag.

It was the first time any of the aunts and uncles had met my boy, and I was pleased that they seemed to like him despite his lack of Chinese ancestry. One aunt told me he was hot stuff (though not in those words) and that our future children would be very attractive; my uncle, a smoker like the boy, bonded with him outside over a couple of cylinders of the toxic weed. My wee niece was everyone's plaything; they were all falling over themselves to give her hugs and kisses and make silly faces at her.

It was all quite cool, really.

The other big reunion

Too busy
This afternoon on the bus was a bit hairy - most of the good folks at the first old-folks home were on a Christmas outing, leaving some clueless skeleton crew (clueless in the sense that they didn't know to bring back the returned books and some afternoon tea things on a trolley). Not only did I not get tea and biscuits, but I had to haul a large crate full of hardback large-print books to the Home and bring the equivalent back again.

Then, at the second old-folks home, I had about ten elderly patrons both on and off the bus, to select and issue romances and family sagas to - all at the same time. I sure could've done with some back up. Then when it was time to pack up for the day, it took a good fifteen minutes for the laptop to log off.

And the boy is home again...
The boy arrived back in the country at noon today. No sign of the Levis or Clinique foundation I'd asked for, but I did receive two great souvenir t-shirts (one says NYPD on the chest and the other is a Yankees t-shirt, made in Taiwan).

Coming straight home to greet my long-lost love meant missing the only gym session that I could fit in this whole week, but there's no sense in being totally anal about stuff like that is there? Damn, but it's good to have him back, and not a day too soon because tonight's the night to put the rubbish out.

If only humans were always as nice to animals...

Dolphins protect a group of swimmers from a great white shark. I hope these creatures never end up in a tuna net.

Emily Strange

I came across this site and realised it was what a classmate was talking about, when she first saw my Bad Kitty t-shirt.

Initially it sounds a bit teenage, yet it reminds me of that character in the Ghost World movie - the girl who's really sarcastic and cynical and too intelligent for her own good.

I found it at Well dressed Librarian
Actually, I don't see myself as being anywhere near this fluffy. But the last two lines came true for me :-)

You Are a Lace Bra! Dreamy, romantic, and ultra-feminine You're a womanly woman who makes guys feel like men Your perfect guy is strong, determined, and handsome With a softer side that only you can draw out What Kind of Bra Are You? Take This Quiz :-)

Measure your chances of dying from a horrible disease, here

Well, your chances of succumbing to diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis and stroke anyway.

Created by the Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention, and sent to me by our resident archivist.

I did the diabetes test and scored above average on the likelihood of getting adult-onset diabetes - but I already knew that anyway. I didn't need any more bad news, so I haven't yet done the tests on the other conditions.

It's quite simple to do and easy to understand. Perhaps it's even over-simplistic, but hey, life is probably a lot simpler than we humans try to make it...

The Big Reunion

Tonight was the first big dinner with the whole family - my mother, the aunts and uncle who'd come over from Hong Kong and Auckland, my brother, his partner and their two kiddies. I know I did a bit of a rant and rave earlier about feeling pressured into spending more of my precious non-work time with them than I wanted - but it was genuinely nice to see them. It's actually been approximately nineteen years since I last saw the "rellies".

They all looked older of course; they're in their seventies by now. They told me I looked fatter, but I'm pretty sure that was meant as a compliment.

There was a huge spread of food - soy chicken and roast pork with crackling (Cantonese style of course), little won ton-like dumplings and stir-fried capsicum with bits of chicken. I surprised myself with the relative ease with which I joked with them. I thought I'd be much more awkward; unlike my brother, I never felt that close to them. It's a bit like socialising with one's old school headmaster - you can be friendly but you can't really relax.

The atmosphere changed once my brother and his lot left to put the kids to bed. The conversation turned to my mother's difficulties with getting around and with housekeeping. I was told that in Hong Kong, it's quite acceptable for the offspring to hire a housekeeper or cleaner for their aging parents.

They had a point. Mum is getting that way and there's always a chance that Mum wouldn't want to go live with my brother. It's certainly well worth looking into.

The Other Big Reunion
The boy rang up last night, sounding a little unhappy. The ex-wife is getting him down, and he can't find another place to stay because it's coming up to Thanksgiving. So the result is that he's coming home two days early. Being purely selfish about it, I'll be bloody glad to see him.

A clever-clogs book for clever-clogs people

I've just managed to finish The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde. Perhaps I should have started with the first in the series, because it took me a while to warm to the characters. Anyway, my overwhelming impression of this book is that it's very, very clever.

Fforde has incorporated tons of humorous literary references into this imaginative story of Thursday Next, literary detective, and her adventures in Book World. I can imagine that readers who are already familiar with the works of Austen, Dickens, D.H. Lawrence and so on would find it a huge chuckle. I got a chuckle here and there, but I'm certain that I missed a large number of in-jokes. My saving grace was perhaps knowing enough about computers to enjoy the software upgrade references to Book World's upcoming Book Operationg System. Despite my handicap though, I enjoyed it enough to finish the book and check out the previous one, Lost in a Good Book.

Oops

I must apologise to my boy, for accusing him of stealing my nail clippers. I looked everywhere except where they're supposed to be. I hope he forgives me. Meanwhile I must've trimmed off enough of the keratin stuff to do some scratchy damage to any unsuspecting epileptic who might have a fit on my living room rug...

Looking for love on the Trade & Exchange?

I'm going to tell you about a blind date I went on. It was years ago, well before my boy was even a newly-minted immigrant.

There was this friend-of-a-friend, quite a bit younger than me, who was keen to meet someone. I wasn't averse to meeting someone nice either, although putting an ad in the local buy'n'sell newspaper wasn't how I'd hoped to do that. She wore me down though, claiming she was far too shy to advertise alone - too shy, in fact, to even ring up and place an ad at all.

This was possibly one of those times when I could have said "No".

I agreed to put in an ad for both of us, in the Trade & Exchange. The request was for two attractive men aged between 25 and 35 to meet two attractive women in the same age group. There was other stuff of course, to suggest that we were also highly intelligent, interesting and more than slightly sexy.

My friend was hoping for replies from men in their twenties, and - despite the fact that I was about 34 - so was I (this preference comes from experience - men my age seemed to let themselves go and get boring). I was a little disappointed that all the younger men who rang to leave messages, asked for my young friend; the men who wanted to talk to me were in their forties.

Eventually I called someone back, only because he had a nice voice. I don't remember his name, so I'll call him Lonely of Featherston. I let it pass when he told me he was single because his wife of twelve years had run off with another bloke. Then a little alarm bell went off when he mentioned that he liked Celine Dion. I silently chided myself for being so shallow. We talked further - he made leather jeans for a hobby, which he sold to friends. A strange hobby, I thought, but once again I let it go.

My friend had already selected a candidate to meet with at the pub the following Friday, so I took a gamble and arranged to meet Lonely of Featherston at the same time and place. That's when he said he hoped I didn't mind all-over tattoos, and that I would be able to identify him by his shirt with the large red dragon logo on it. By this time I felt I couldn't really back out without seeming rude (now I'm older I realise it's okay to be rude if you really need to).

I met him at the pub on the Friday. He was a skinny white guy in his late thirties, wearing leather-covered jeans and a shiny shirt with the promised dragon design. I lasted five minutes before I made a really feeble excuse and left the table.

Now, if it had turned out that he looked like Samantha's boyfriend from Sex and the City, I probably would've stuck around - at least until he brought up Celine Dion again.

p.s. My friend's blind date ended up meeting and falling into unrequited love with our mutual friend.

Nine tenths of the law

The boy has taken to using my face moisturiser. I wasn't all that happy about it, because I was the one buying it and it was thirty bucks a bottle (admittedly less than half as costly as that nice but criminally expensive Lancome product). On one of his pre-New York shopping trips (the staff at the Calvin Klein counter really love him), he actually took a detour to the cosmetic counter and bought a bottle of moisturiser to take away with him. Well that was gratifying.

But he didn't buy his own manicure set to take away; he's surreptitiously packed mine. This wouldn't be a big deal, but I'm an occassional eczema-sufferer who must always have trim nails. Removing an eczema-sufferer's nail clippers is like distributing thumb-tacks on the floor of an un-medicated epileptic. If I'm all scratched up and blotchy when he gets back it's his own damn fault.

Still miss him though.

All work and no play is making my eyes go all funny

Panic set in towards the end of last week when it really hit me that I have only a week and a half of non-working/sleeping/gyming/family hostessing/mother's taxi-driving time, in which to research, write up and present my assignment. I've responded to this by checking out, oh, a dozen very large books on typefaces, typography and book printing so I can bulk up my work with details.

I've only been staring at those books for two hours and already my neck is cracking like - I dunno, those scenes in the movies where the hero cracks his neck a lot before beating someone up...

I don't know which is more appropriate - valium to calm myself down, or mega-caffeine pills to speed up on the speed-studying.

All those times when Buffy's pals spent all night at the books looking for demon-identification tips - you'd think their eyes would go all funny too. But they were always bright-eyed and ready for demon-hunting action in the morning. Not I.

Happy Anniversary to this blog

This blog had it's first birthday on Monday. I'm not throwing it a party, and won't be giving it any presents. But thanks for hanging out with me :-)

Quiz Night

Since I don't have anyone to come home to for the next week and a bit, I decided to join our library team for the LIANZA quiz night. We didn't dress up, though a couple of other teams did, but we did come up with a prize-winning team name. Boguns' Heroes. (For my own personal definition of the word "bogun", see this post.

My best effort was in correctly matching four of Zeus' offspring with their respective mother's (or, in Athene's case, the oriface from which the offspring was born i.e. Zeus' forehead). My worst was telling the team scribe that Eurydice was the girl who had to spend every winter in Hades - it shoulda been Persephone.

Our team came sixth out of nine - nothing amazing but we beat the other two teams which were from public libraries. So you could say we won our category.

Anyway, I'm all tired because my boy woke me up at 3am with his phone call from New York, and I haven't done any study tonight because of the Quiz Night. That's why I'm blogging instead.

Oh yeah - no sign of The Little Shit this afternoon. I was almost sorry because I had a large black umbrella ready to fend him off, and one of the sterner librarians had come along for support.

A tissue (gezundtheit)

Today, I inexplicably succumbed to hay fever. Inexplicable because I normally get it all-year round anyway and have the nasal spray to deal with it. I had the morning off (went for a walk, ended up in town, bought stuff), and when I got to work that familiar annoying tickle in my nostrils showed up. It's not a good look to be constantly pushing and pulling at one's nose, though it didn't seem to put off the kids signing up for the Summer Reading Programme. I had to keep swerving off to the Information Desk because I know there's a box of tissues there - possibly the only tissue supply in the whole library.

Use of public money to fund personal stomach-stapling is bad
I'm so glad that ACT is allowed to fire Donna Awatere-Huata. Knowing that she was still on her fat MP salary even after being found guilty of misappriating charity money, really appalled me. Now I can say nah nah nah nah nah...

Tonight's my second night on my lonesome. I've joked about having wild parties while the boy is away but I've become so accustomed to not having wild parties (and so much older and less able to stay up past 11pm) that I know it ain't gonna happen. It'll be early nights with one of my books, hours at the computer either researching or reading blogs and really crappy cooking (my own). Without my regular dose of loving neck- and back-rubs, I'm afraid I'll be rather Quasimodo-like by the time he gets back...

The reluctant hostess

The aunts and uncles from Hong Kong will be arriving on Monday. My brother has already sent me a schedule for the next two weeks, and it looks quite a lot like a tour schedule. We're at the the morning market so it must be Sunday - that kind of thing.

I suggested that, since they are here to see mum, not the country, we should give them heaps of time for lounging around. Perhaps let them have their mornings and only take them out some afternoons and evenings. They're seventy-somethings after all, and some of them aren't terribly mobile.

I'm planning on fighting familial pressure to spend all my non-working (and some of what should be my working-) time being a gracious hostess, by pointing out that:
(i) I have no paid leave left this year, and
(ii) I still have to study (including an assignment - already - due right in the middle of their second week in town.

There's no point in saying I want time to myself, since that isn't a particularly valid option in my family.

Have you had your chuckle yet today?

Mak's account of beyond-the-envelope family discussions nearly made me wet myself.

He's so lovely...

The boy left for New York this afternoon. We talked briefly on the phone at midday, but I won't hear from him again probably until tomorrow sometime. What a pleasant surprise to find, on coming home, that he had already put out the rubbish and recycling before he left. He's so lovely (sigh).

Meanwhile, The Little Shit Incident continues to haunt me as my manager asks whether it's okay for him to bring it up at the Council-wide meeting tomorrow. Apparently this kind of thing has never happened here before (though it's a different story at the Winz offices where the benefits get handed out - or not). My manager wants to be sure to confirm what one is supposed to do in such a situation. For example, if I had retaliated by throwing a heavy book in The Little Shit's face, would I have gotten into trouble? How much force is an employee allowed to use to protect herself when threatened by violence, or attacked? How does one call on the Library Avenger for help - by taping an "A" to one's window at night?

I knew it!

A flirt and a charmer I may be, but beauty-obssesed I definitely am not...
Thanks, Meme Freak.

You are 67% Libra

How much do you match your zodiac sign?

Do I see what you see?

Geez - all this time I thought that I didn't have a bruise on my cheek, but at least three people at work today told me they could make out some faint blueness. I can't make it out at all. I had my eyes lasered about four years ago, and my vision has gone back to shortsighted - though to a much lesser extent. So it's possible that I just don't see it because my eyesight's not as good as theirs. It kinda makes me wonder what other unsightly bits people see when they look at me. Perhaps all those pimples, moles, warts, birthmarks and freckles aren't being disguised by the application of foundation after all (don't be scared, I'm just exaggerating for effect here).

It takes me back to my teens, when I was already really shortsighted but just didn't realise how bad it was. I'd look in the mirror and be totally content with the soft-focus glow of my reflection. Regularly wearing the corrective spectacles plunged me into bouts of the blues; it was then that I noticed I wasn't as easy on the eye as I'd thought.

It gives deeper meaning to the saying "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", doesn't it?

He's leaving.....on a jet plane

My boy's leaving me - just for a week and a half, mind. He's off to New York to visit his wee daughter, whom he hasn't seen for maybe two years. He's looking forward to seeing her, but apparently not so looking forward to seeing her mum (and I should bloody hope not!). I'll miss him, sure, but the silver lining is that I'll be able to spend more time studying (or watching Star Trek episodes) without worrying that I'm neglecting him. I should give him my shopping list before he goes, too - some Clinique foundation, some Levis jeans...

Retail therapy as treatment for post-bashing trauma

I've been very surprised indeed that my face hasn't come up bruised from Friday's unpleasant incident. I've always bruised easily, (which is one thing I envy Buffy, apart from the fact that she's gorgeous, has truly legendary friends and can stake a vampire with a flick of her wrist) and was expecting tell-tale yellow and purple patches by now. So, no visit from the local police photographer.

I also went shopping; that always helps. My spoils include:

1. One interview-friendly jacket (y'know, just in case), just right for summer interrogations (are you sure that library book already had a tear on page 55?...)
2. Two Angel DVDs; now I'm only one away from a full Season One collection
3. One Emily Strange t-shirt - it's not as cool and alternative as the Bad Kitty t-shirt but it's a close second.

I've almost forgotten it happened.

She's a boy!

Bloody hell. On the front page of the Dominion Post today was an article uncovering the real bizgirl.

That is, Natalie is a bloke.

It's news because the blog won the Netguide Best Personal Blog award at an award ceremony last night. The audience was expecting it to be collected by a girl in a slinky dress (she does after all call herself "international librarian of mystery") and was more than a little surprised when a very male-looking person claimed it.

I always thought it was suspicious that someone on a mere librarian salary could afford to dress herself in World.

The Little Shit

One of the library bus stops is in a relatively rough part of town. It’s not like there are drug deals going on outside the shops, or prostitutes at every corner – it’s just a bit more low-income, with a bigger share of recent immigrants than the rest of the city. It’s the stop where gloomy-faced B. nearly always shows up to collect her senior fiction and browse the Woman’s Weeklys. It’s where the bald English playwright comes to borrow from the Talking Book collection. It’s also where I got punched in the face this afternoon.

The kid, whom I’ll refer to as The Little Shit, is a skinny African kid who looks maybe twelve years old. He was hanging around the bus, but not coming in. Finally he did come on board the bus. The Little Shit asked to look at the soccer book which I had only just this minute checked in and shelved; I gave it to him. Then the other two people on the bus left. It was a couple of minutes before I had to leave this stop and drive the bus back to the main library. Then The Little Shit, who’d been polite though slightly strange, asked me about the CDs, etc. – normal stuff that kids on the bus always ask. Anyway, it turned out he didn’t have his library card and I couldn't wait for his sister to show up with it ‘cos it was already time to go.

And that’s when he socked me on the cheek with a strong right hook.

He scooted out the door before I could grab a dictionary and hurl it at him, and I’m embarrassed to say that I immediately lost my temper and called him a “little fucking bastard”. More than once, and really quite loudly the second time.

I was sooo angry. So angry that I did what I often do when I’m really angry. I cried (and that’s even more embarrassing – why couldn’t I express anger by simply beating him up?)

Back at the library, I told my boss, who really looked after me. She went with me to the police station where I gave a statement (and realised just how un-prose-like my speaking style really is), offered to do my Saturday shift tomorrow (of course I said yes, I’m a big softie but I’m not soft in the head) and made me promise to ring her tomorrow and assure her I’m okay. (She’s usually way too motherly for my liking, but this time I really appreciated it.) The rest of the library staff were really supportive too – I got lots of concerned murmurs and a second offer to do my Saturday shift tomorrow.

I came straight home instead of going to the pool – I needed to tell my boy about it and hear him offer to “kick the shit out of him” and indeed that made me feel a lot better.

dry with a capital "D"

Considering how appealing The Art of the Book sounded in the prospectus, and how engaging the first class was, the readings we have to do are as dry as dust. Surely even a scholar should be able to write interestingly about a subject as fascinating as books-as-objects. Or maybe there's a job for the Carl Sagan of bibliography, if there is one.

Actually, that's something I'd really like to do - rewrite dry-as-dust texts to make them readable, understandable and fun. Unfortunately this would require in-depth knowledge of these texts in their original, dense form. Life is too short.

ugly bridesmaid's dresses

No Milk has been to a wedding in San Francisco, and one of his post-post links is this one about ugly bridesmaid's dresses.

I've never been a bridesmaid, so I've been spared the potential horror of wearing something embarrassingly unflattering in public, captured forever in the wedding photos. Maybe Kiwi brides are classier (or kinder); in the last few weddings I've either attended or seen photos of, the bridesmaids wore elegant, understated gowns which wouldn't have looked out of place at the Oscars.

car trouble

Yesterday morning I was on a mission to get into town for a quick (and secret) appointment and then go on to work, hopefully not getting in too late and thereby attracting concerned looks and questions from my boss. Speed was of the essence.

Rushing about so much that I forgot to take my gym gear for later, I was shocked and stunned (a cliche, but perfectly accurate in this case) to see that some idiot had parked across my driveway. Normally when this happens, nothing makes me jump with glee more than getting the Parkwise guys over and watching the offending vehicle be towed away. But this morning I had no time for such fun. Fortunately I was pretty sure the person who'd parked there would be found in the double-storey house opposite. And she was.

As if that wasn't bad enough (I was almost late for my appointment), I had a problem when I was ready to leave town and go to work...

My car was parked in a car parking building, and at the time there were no other vehicles there. When I returned an hour later, my car was flanked by fat four-wheel drives (or four-by-fours or SUV, depending on where you're living). I couldn't get my car out.

Actually I could get my car out, but only with the help of the parking attendant who directed my eight-point turn. It was not a good day to have forgotten to wear anti-perspirant.

I was half an hour late to work. Just as well my boss didn't show up till midday.

vampire watermelons and spider phobias

The boy sent me this Wikipedia article about vampire watermelons. I was very skeptical, and there's always a chance that upon revisiting the site I'll find it's been 'corrected'. But if it's true, then isn't it fascinating! According to the article, it's an old Romanian thing which also applies to pumpkins and anything else left outside after around Halloween. Halloween pumpkins would certainly make more sense, knowing this. But watermelons? Apparently they aren't too scary to Romanian folk because watermelons don't have teeth.

One of my co-workers has a spider phobia - this explained why she sent a library patron to me, to colour photocopy some pictures of spiders. But the amusing thing was that she felt compelled to wash her hands after having to handle some books on the subject. (We all know books are great germ-carriers anyway, so it wasn't wasted effort.)

local hero...kind of

I don't actually know Sandro Kopp, but I feel as though I do in an acquaintance-y kind of way. He's a painter of nudes whom I came across in a prospectus for an art school, way back when I was considering going there. I really like his nudes - they remind me a little of Lucien Freud - and now I find that not only was he an elf extra in The Lord of the Rings, but he's also going to play a centaur in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He doesn't look beefy enough to me, to play a centaur, but he certainly could pass for an elf.

The Grudge (the original one)

We saw this last night on DVD. You can tell it's by the same guy who made Ring, because some of the same motifs are used - the loud ringing phone, the distorted photographs, the blurring of the border between tv/video-land and real life, the dead who come back...

It'll give you the heebie-jeebies too (full marks for creepiness), but the story doesn't make as much sense as the plot of Ring did (and Ring's plot didn't give much closure either). It'll be interesting to see how the American version works out, whether it tries to spell out an understandable story line for Western viewers.

bonus!

Due to a major balls-up in the roster, I'm working half an hour less than I should. It's only half an hour earlier than normal, but - due to the fact that I had rostered time off this morning to make up for working this coming Saturday - my total work time for Monday is...four and a half hours. Woo hoo!

(small pleasures...)

There's money in them thar first editions

I was finishing up on the reading I've had to do for the first module of my course 'The Art of the Book', and there was one thing left to do before the class tonight. I was to pick a favourite book, and search online for all the various editions it's been publshed as, including finding the market value for first editions and so on.

My favourite book is Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy.

I wasn't expecting to be able to find much, and sure enough I didn't. As far as I could tell, there has only ever been one edition (2003), and it's not worth any more now than it was when it was first published.

So, racking my brains for a more likely candidate, I though of The Golden Bough. It's a book I haven't even seen a copy of yet, much less read. But it is a book I've been looking for on and off for the last year, ever since a similarly mythologically-inclined library patron recommended it to me. It turned out to be a fairly good choice, because there are lots of editions of this book, most of them being variations of the 1922 abridged edition. There are several editions before that, too.

It's left me wondering why the 1890 first edition was just two volumes while the 1906 edition was twelve, for one thing. I do know that someone is selling their third edition copy for one thousand dollars US.

good food, bad food

What a small world...
On Friday night we went out for curry 'n' fireworks with some friends (it was Guy Fawkes night). I'd arranged to meet one of my friends at a local Irish pub; spotting him, I went over and found him sitting next to a guy he'd just met - who turned out to be an old tramping buddy from my university days. I then found out that his girlfriend at the time, whom I also knew, used to go to school with my friend! We missed half of the fireworks on the harbour, but what we saw of them was great. I just love fireworks.

Family blahs...
Yesterday was the kind of day that makes me fantasise about leaving the country, freeing myself from daughterly duties forever. My main worry is that I'm going to just as much of a pain in the arse when I get to my mother's age; if my boy leaves me by then I won't be able to hold it against him. According to his partner, my brother has apparently been showing signs pain-in-the-arseness too. It's a kind of fixatedness they have, which results in major tantrums if they don't get the half-price bargain they really really want right now. I think that my brother's partner and my nephew are the two sanest people in my family right now.

Dicing with porcelain-hugging...
Then there was a house-leaving barbeque last night; a past brush with the deadly cryptosporidium has left the boy extremely wary of barbeque food. I bought a couple of pork steaks so that at least I would have something to eat. It was very ironic when the boy caved in to temptation but chose to eat a sausage instead of one of the steaks (hello...it was the sausage that did you in two Christmases ago...).

Relatives en masse

I found out a couple of weeks ago that a bunch of relatives are coming over from Hong Kong for a visit - my uncle (my mum's brother), his wife and my aunt (my mum's sister) have taken advantage of some cheap airfares to come to New Zealand. So they're stopping off in Auckland to visit another aunt and the four of them are coming to my hometown to visit my mother.

It's going to be a houseful of seventy-somethings.

My brother was complaining that they could've chosen a more convenient time to make the journey; he's an architect and in the middle of the busiest time of his working year. For me of course, there are only two three-week periods of the year in which I'm not juggling full-time work with part-time study; this is not one of those times. Still, it would be nice to see them, and we'd be bad hosts if we didn't at least try to spend as much time as possible showing them around the place. For two of them it will be their first time ever in this country.

It was a revelation to realise that they are all here to celebrate my mum's eightieth birthday, something which the birthday girl herself denied wanting to doing anything about.

My brother has arranged a late lunch meeting at my mum's house today, to work out among the three of us how we are going to keep everyone entertained. Perhaps I'm paranoid, but I interpret it as a meeting to bully me into doing the bulk of the driving. I should have told him that the two of them could just work it out themselves and let me know later - that's what they usually do anyway.

Unfortunately, the boy isn't going to be around much of the time - he's going overseas for ten days to visit his wee daughter. So not only will I miss his support, but the rellies aren't going to get to meet him.

email fiends, unnecessary lists and the challenge of making church history look interesting

For the second time in as many months, the Information Management department at the university has succumbed to some sort of e-mail virus. My in-box keeps filling up with multiple copies of some meaningless piece of mail, sent from the university; I can't delete it all in one go without also deleting the stuff I want to keep.

Plus, I think I've joined a couple of Book History-related dscussions lists too soon. So far I've received about ten e-mails about the history of Jane Austen's Emma.

I've got two displays to put up next week, one for an Anglican church and the other for a Catholic rest home. The use of fake religious relics would be tacky. White is a nice, Christian colour - but not terribly interesting (unless I add gold, then it might become tacky). At least they aren't going to incite any religious warfare, I suppose.

no accounting for taste

I don't understand it, and I probably never will. Why oh why oh why does the boy insist on buying DVDs of movies which even he admits are rubbish?

He came home with Van Helsing last night; apparently he just couldn't help it - he had to get it. And yet we both went to see it in town a while ago and I'm sure he was just a scathing of it as I was. Well, maybe slightly less. He certainly didn't rave about it.

The boy just has a habit of wanting to see films even if everybody he knows has derided it. I only narrowly missed being pressured into seeing the second Tomb Raider movie (the first one was one of the suckiest action movies I've ever seen).

If I'd just met the guy, and he revealed his taste for awful movies, I woulda dumped him then and there - so it's just as well for him I already fell for him by then, eh?

More Tim Tams for me.

Usually when I do the bus on Wednesday afternoons I'm accompanied by another library assistant, because there are heaps of oldies to help up and down the steps on this particular run.

My usual accomplice has been bitching for ages about the waste of resource in sending her with me; last Friday she got her wish - I was to do the run alone in future.

So today was my first Wednesday afternoon bus run on my own; obviously, this coincided with a busier-than-usual afternoon. The most worrisome thing was that I would have to reverse the bus for about ten metres without anyone to watch and ensure that I didn't run over an old biddy and her walking frame.

The most rewarding thing was that the nice people at one of the nursing homes brought out Tim Tams and tea to the bus, and the ex-accomplice loves Tim Tams (cookies with multiple layers of chocolate in various textures, for you North Americans).

Questions, questions

Yesterday's difficult request from a customer:

"I want to see a map of Poland as it was before World War II, showing all the towns. But I can't remember the name of the town I'm interested in."
(Not in the two books of Polish history, nor in the world history atlases).

Today's unusual phone request from a customer:

"I've got dog hair all over the flooring in my car, and using the vacuum cleaner hasn't helped get it off. Can you tell me how to get the dog hair out?"
(A quick answer, found on the Internet, was to rub it with your rubber-gloved hand or roll some sellotape over it). My boss overheard me and told me I should've just told him to come to the library for the house-cleaning books.

I think it might finally be summer. In my lunch break I went outside to read, and had to return indoors after a while because my black hair soaked up too much heat and cooked my brain (that's my excuse anyway).

The original celluloid blood-sucker

We watched Nosferatu on DVD last night. It was genuinely creepy; Count Orloff is damned ugly and not at all seductive like, say, Dracula; his shadow is even creepier than his person.

I did find the soundtrack a little distracting; it's a load of avant-garde music which is alternately spooky and simply peculiar. Also, knowing how old the film is was a distraction too. Every time I saw a scene of waves crashing I'd think "Those are waves crashing eighty-odd years ago...". I'd see young Ellen, the heroine, and think "She's no doubt dead and rotting in her grave by now...".

We saw Shadow of the Vampire quite a while ago - I think I should watch it again so I'll get the jokes.

October

Thanks, Pickwick.
Lots of this applies to me, but I certainly do care what others think (though I wish I didn't). Also, I only love children when they aren't being bratty, noisy and messy. Not sure about the outer beauty either. You'd have to ask someone else.

OCTOBER:
Loves to chat. Loves those who loves them. Loves to
takes things at
the center. Inner and physical beauty. Lies but
doesn't
pretend. Gets angry often. Treats friends
importantly. Always making friends.
Easily hurt but recovers easily. Daydreamer.
Opinionated. Does not care of
what others think. Emotional. Decisive. Strong
clairvoyance. Loves to
travel, the arts and literature. Touchy and easily
jealous. Concerned. Loves outdoors. Just and
fair.
Spendthrift. Easily influenced. Easily loses
confidence. Loves children.


What does your birth month say about you?
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The study break that wasn't

My current study break is three weeks long - that is, there are three weeks between the last class in trimester two and the first class of trimester three. But it's really so much less than that; the first week of the study break was spent finishing an assignment, and the last week will be spent doing the required reading in preparation of the next class which is next Monday. So, in all, I had a break of a week in which I could read purely for pleasure, research only the subjects I'm interested in and write for fun instead of for credit.

And the next super-sucky thing is that, over Christmas, I get a mere one and a half weeks off school.

One of those big questionsI wonder why, when I forget the key to the branch library, I don't remember I need it until I've already driven the fifteen minutes through the suburbs to get there from the main library?

Making Murphy's Law work for me
Considering how I've often been passionately interested in something right up until I commit to it by spending up on materials, classes, outfits or whatever...I should commit myself to being a library assistant at my library for forever - thereby ensuring an offer to work for big bucks at an art school library doing whatever the hell I like...

More of the usual

Emotional torture
Today I spent a whopping 5 1/2 hours doing daughter-ly duties. That's two hours shopping at the market (including one hour of my mother telling me what was wrong with me), one hour at the cemetary and another half hour at the supermarket. I settled down after I got home and went for a long walk up the hill and back, but it's days like these which make me consider telling the boy to get a job in Seattle.

Yeh-yeh's garden
My brother and my nephew came along to the cemetary to do the ancestor-worship thing; my nephew calls it "going to Yeh-yeh's garden" (or "going to grandfather's garden"). I think it's a cute euphemism, since it's essentially what we're doing. We go to the grave, we replace the dried up flowers from last time with a fresh bunch, and we kow-tow.

Angel revisited
We bought Season One of Angel yesterday, and watched the first half of it last night. I'm enjoying it the second time around heaps more than when I first watched it.

The curse of the culinarily inattentive traveller

Reading through the old travel diary I wrote when I was in India (many years ago), it strikes me that I’d spent quite a bit of writing effort in describing what I ate, how much it cost and how delicious it was. You know, I’m one of the few people I know who actually gained weight in India. Not so lucky was Sarah P, who was in my tour group; she got sick after her first dinner in Bombay, and over the remainder of the three week trip she never got to ingest anything more than chai and moderate amounts of plain, white rice.

It’s not as though I have an iron digestive system though, because I’ve succumbed to variations of Delhi Belly/Bali Belly/Montezuma’s Revenge/[enter your euphemism here] all over the world:

1. Right after I graduated from university, I went to China with my brother and my mother. It was only for nine days; I got sick right after a particularly delicious vegetarian lunch and for the next week I couldn’t go anywhere near food without going a nice Kermit-green.

2. I went to Paris with my brother and stayed in at a mate’s place. Our thank-you to the friend was a pot of homemade won tons in soup, created from ingredients at a local Asian supermarket. Not used to central heating (it was mid-winter), I didn’t realise that it would be extremely foolhardy to reheat and eat the leftovers which had been sitting on the stove for three days. This was on the last day of my stay before returning to Edinburgh; I was so sick and miserable that when my male flatmate got home I rushed out to meet him and garner some sympathy, in my underwear. Also, I missed Hogmanay, which I have always regretted.

3. Before I went on the Inca Trail, I was told that water boils at a lower temperature at altitude. Boiling water therefore isn’t sufficient to kill all the germs that make a person hug her toilet bowl. I ignored this piece of information because I didn’t get around to buying purification tablets. While I didn’t get really sick this time, I did have a queasy four days.

4. Back at home, I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve made myself sick with inadequately thawed beef and four-day old milk-and-sugar sweets which I bought from an Indian stall in a fit of nostalgia (yes, that was only this last week).

Meanwhile, Rough Guide has been a little harsh about various bits of New Zealand. I think the author's view is fair though, and I'm inclined to agree with him/her about Auckland and Wellington.

Habits, body fat, angry people and books (not at the same time)

It's got to mean something when just for one evening I can't seem to access my favourite blogs, nor post to my own blog, and I get all antsy and anxious in that tight-around-the-shoulders kind of way. What a relief when I tried again tonight and it was all a-ok.

After almost a whole year since my last fitness test down at the gym, I relented and said would get another one done. I haven't been particularly keen because, even though I've tried to go three times a week, I know that my exercise levels are lower than they were. What hasn't helped is that the boy, who is in charge of the cooking in this household, has been feeling a bit tired in the evenings and resorting to home-delivered fast food or supermarket pizza. My reluctance to have the results of the last ten months of gym attendance quanitifed was completely justified though - although I am much fitter than I was last time, I am also heavier and wider. I was not pleased.

I've been a bit unlucky with getting "difficult" customers in the last couple of days:

a woman who complained bitterly how bad she thought the library was (when pressed, all she could come up with was that it's not big enough and not open for enough hours on Saturdays);

a woman who somehow had two library accounts but only one library card (and so did her daughter. I didn't say so, but we blame her);

a woman who wanted to print off a file on a disk, and didn't realise that her Microsoft Works file would not open on the library computer because it only has Word etc., and doesn't have the Works-Word translator software loaded. She then spent the next hour re-creating a lengthy document on Excel, only to find that we couldn't get the file to print out properly (it's a long story, don't send me any fixes!). Red-faced and pissed off, she left in a huff.

I've only just realised that all those customers were women - I'm sure it's just a coincidence. Anyway, it was really draining.

I'm really enjoying Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, and Paul Linde's Of Spirits and Madness - the former is about a Greek family starting from the moment a brother and sister realise they're in love with each other, told from the point of view of their transgender grandchild Cal. It's really easy to read considering it's a literature award winner. The latter is a really interesting and well-written account of an American psychiatrist's time in Zimbabwe, trying to meld his own rationalist education and culture with the spiritualist one of the locals.

It's only a couple more weeks before I have to abandon the leisure-reading for the text books...

a little day out, a bigger day in

Despite my suggestions for a big long walk today, the boy once again turned our "big walk" into a stroll around the zoo. The zoo covers quite a large area, so there's a big of walking to do - but the Inca Trail it is not. Perhaps I was still feeling the grumpy after-affects of accidentally spilling my cup of hot water all over myself at McDonalds (why on earth do they put a tight-fitting lid on the cup of hot water and milk, but leave the teabag out?). The cutest things were the tamarin monkeys, little kitten-sized creatures with cream- or gold- manes, and the new red panda.

Afterwards I started to go into exercise-withdrawal, so I went for a walk to the video shop (in my defense, it does take about twenty minutes each way) to return the DVDs we got out last night. The Dawn of the Dead remake was okay, but I got bored.

The Station Agent was superb - it was a funny/sad film, not at all in the Hollywood tradition, with interesting, appealing characters: Fin is the trainspotting dwarf who moves to a tiny town, initially just wanting to keep to himself; Joe is a socially-starved Manhattenite (if that's the right word) who has moved to look after his sick father and temporarily take over his father's snack caravan; Olivia is the ditzy artist who accidentally runs Fin off the road. Twice.

Today I decided to make a start on doing something creative with my travel photos. I removed the best of the photos in the two albums which have that sticky back thing, then decided to leave them to flatten under a couple of acid-free pages of a sketchbook. In the meantime, I excavated a box full of my old travel souvenirs. Amidst the bags of shoes, a broken umbrella, an ancient Walkman and a small collection of never-used sex toys (they were a present, okay?), were the shopping bags full of old street maps and brochures around Europe and the travel journals from several overseas trips. I've decided to create some sort of illustrated travel diary, which will be a combination of stuff out of the original travel journals and the photos I've taken from that time. I doubt that, once it's finished, anyone will look at it except me. But the thing is to do it, so that I can remember what I did, what I saw, who I met, blah blah blah. This is important now that I don't get to travel any more.

Anyway, after typing out a selection from two weeks' worth of jottings in India, I discovered that - although last week's wrist injury doesn't affect my bus driving it sure as hell affects my typing.

on the news today

Play School was one of those kiddies' shows I remember pooh-poohing when I was a kid, just old enough to know it wasn't "cool" to watch it. Apparently a Play School reunion is planned, although Big Ted and Gemima haven't been answering their respective phones.

Horror of horrors, the British Navy has allowed a Satanist sailor to practice his religious beliefs at sea.

Aaargh! The first Hooters restaurant has opened in China, encouraging young Chinese women everywhere to ask for breast implants as well as the ever-popular leg-lengthening operation at the plastic surgeon's office.

happy Diwali

All day today I'm been feeling unmotivated, un-energetic and listless - the perfect candidate for one of those multivitamin sales talks, I think. I'm sure it's the hayfever having it's effect on me, since I've been sneezing a bit too. A big mug of coffee mid-afternoon helped though, and we were able to go into town to have a look at the Diwali celebrations.

Despite my fears, it wasn't just full of non-Hindu tourists; there were Indian faces all over the place, including the guy who runs the corner dairy where the boy buys his cigarillos). There was a series of traditional dances on at one of the venues and we managed to catch the end of a men's performance, before the children took over. Those Hindi men sure know how to shake their booty.

Unfortunately, not only did we miss out on tickets to the Bollywood dance competition finals, but we missed all the heats too. I suppose that's what happens when you don't get hold of a programme early on.

Indian and Sri Lankan food stalls surrounded the competition venue. I took a chance on a roti and dhal combination which reaffirmed my belief that Sri Lankan cuisine is inferior to Indian cuisine (regardless of which part of the sub-continent the chef is from). I took home a box of Indian sweets, only on the way home I found out they are made by a local group of Hare Krishnas. I can only wonder whether the boy's Ganesh statuette was made in China...

Let down by the weather

Today is the first day of the first long weekend since Queen's Birthday back in June. This is obviously the reason for the lacklustre weather today, compared with the gloriously sunny and summer-like day we had two days ago.

That chill moisture in the air has meant that the family's latest attempt to visit my dad's grave for a spot of biannual ancestor worship has come to nothing. Nothing that is, except grumpiness; grumpiness on my mum's part because she gets all wired up when it's to that time of year but the weather isn't playing along; grumpiness on my brother's part because I know he'd rather be doing something else; grumpiness on my part because the two of them will arrange some time to call each other and decide whether it's windless enough to make the trip, but leave me completely out of the loop so that I'm sitting by the phone thinking "What the f*?".

Finally, just after midday I got the phone call to confirm that it's all off until the next forecast sunny Saturday. So - and this is getting to be a foolish habit - the boy and I went out shopping. I found some "sensible shoes" (see my previous post) in a red leather with straps and rounded toes; the boy went one better and bought two pairs of bloke's shoes. Then we went to an upmarket department store (the kind most frequented by people who think they have "old money" or a lineage that goes back further than us common folk), where he bought a designer wool sweater. Which he has promised to handwash himself and never never put into the laundry basket (because after that it transforms into a garment which will fit only me).

The extended Return of the King will be out on sale soon, but - hey, as though we don't have enough stuff to spend our money on...

Shoes, buses and television

My recent flirtation with high heels may soon be over, to be resurrected only for nights out with the boy. It's ironic really, because mostly I've been wearing heels because he seemed to approve of them so much. After the umpteenth foot rub and re-location of dislocated toes (apparently, though they didn't hurt that much), he advised me to start wearing "sensible shoes". I already have some flat-soled combat boots that I wear on bus-driving days, as well as some unfashionable but perfectly comfy boat shoes for summer bus-driving - I may now need to shop for some library-style flat-heeled shoes. It’s just a pity that I don’t see the styles around like the ones Sensible Shoes proudly shows off.

I had my bus-driving assessment today. I was on my best bus-driving behaviour of course, but I’m sure he expected that. Apart from the fact that I don’t seem to check the side roads enough when driving, he said that I passed with flying colours. He even seemed impressed with my hill-starts on narrow curvy driveways, my ability to pull over to the kerb leaving only an inch of space between it and the tires, and the way I handled the tight roundabouts. I also noticed that my hurt wrist has not affected my driving, so my bus-driving days are far from over. From now on I promised to be much more shifty-eyed while driving…

After the last few Tru Calling episodes, I’m going to have to take back my earlier rave. The first episode was creepy, because of the dead people in the morgue who open their eyes and talk. It was weird, because of the Groundhog Day effect. But as I’d predicted, these aspects have long worn off on me. It’s still interesting to watch, but for a different reason – trying to figure out how the dead person really got to be that way, and what Tru has to do to save him.

job hazard

Yesterday I hurt my wrist badly enough that today I've been feeling pain whenever I move it. Would you like to know how it happened?

It didn't occur during an altercation with a teenage computer geek overstepping the bounds of what's allowed at the library computers.

It wasn't caused by major haste to get outside of the olfactory zone of a particularly odorous patron.

I wasn't hit by a free-flying Shorter Oxford Dictionary.

I didn’t stumble and fall on the edge of the Information Desk during an alcoholic staff dinner.

It didn’t happen in ‘Nam.

I strained my wrist trying to push a teeny-tiny lever which is located underneath the driver’s seat of the library bus; a lever which is not only a long way to reach for me but which is also annoyingly stiff. All I was trying to do was push this lever so that I could swivel the driver’s seat around to face the back of the bus, so that I could sit down and face the patrons at the same time.

There will be an Occupational Health and Safety form to complete and send to the appropriate people, a doctor’s visit to make and possibly several subsidised trips to a conveniently placed physiotherapy clinic too.

I’m sure that in time it’ll heal almost completely, although on days preceding especially wet weather it will ache as though to warn me to pack my raincoat in the morning. But if I’m lucky I will get a week or two’s break from being a bus driver, allowing me to spend more time on other stuff (I’ll think of something).

"Home" again

We were watching the X-Files Season Four extras the other night, when I found out that the episode "Home" (the one with the chronically incestuous Peacock famil) had been banned in the States. So...did the Americans have to watch it on cable or what?

It is a personal favourite episode, though Small Potatoes is another favourite; that's the one where a less-than studly janitor is able to shape-change into any other person, including Fox Mulder, and nearly seduces Scully in the process.

And there are other favourites too, like the one at a freak show with a tattooed man called Enigma.

Make Tea Not War.: A business opportunity?

Make Tea Not War.: A business opportunity?

Now I know how law librarians are made...

last-minute friends

One of my co-workers is leaving the library, and town, to work in an Auckland library. Although, like me, she's into computers and science fiction (and the original Star Trek, no less), we've never become friends. In fact, I remember once bumping into her at a geek shop (Dick Smith Electronics, to be exact) in the weekend, and feeling a little slighted when she ignored me after an initial 'hello'.

Someone told her last week that I have a blog; perhaps because she's relatively new to blogging, she was keen to talk about blogging with me. This morning she even complimented my blog, then eagerly described a funny story to me (about a recorded episode of Rainbow, a children's show, which apparently sounds hilariously suggestive to adult ears).

While I don't feel like we've become great mates suddenly, I now feel slightly sorry that I'll be missing out on a potential friendship. This isn't the first time it's happened. I can recall several people who I never got to know at all until just before their leaving parties, when I suddenly started having interesting conversations with them and liking them.

What the hell is it with that?

Dreams

I bet I'm not the only one who has dreamed of her teeth crumbling in her mouth. Here's an interpretation.

Drinking seawater

I think I have the answer to whether and how drinking seawater can cause madness. Funnily enough, a similar question was already answered in The Straight Dope - "What would happen if I drank seawater?"; I managed to put in the wrong search words or something when I tried to find it.

That madness ensues is only implied though, in a quote from Bill Bryson which effectively says that the severe dehydration causes your brain cells (among other things) to break down.

Which leads me to think that the saying really ought to go "drinking seawater makes you really really sick and maybe die".

What're those books?

When I was chatting to Make Tea not War, she told me about her current favourite author who writes about a person who can enter books and change the course of the plots. I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the author; I want to add it to my list of books/authors to read next time I have a chance to read for pleasure (that is, after I've finished Middlesex, The Da Vinci Code and The Simpsons and Philosophy).

Does anyone know the author or one of the books? Otherwise I'm gonna have to ask her directly.

Spare time

Last night I didn't sleep a wink. Well, maybe just a couple. But in the end I was sitting in the lounge at 4.30am because I'd gotten bored with tossing and turning in bed. I watched Six Feet Under which I'd taped from last Tuesday, had some toast and a hot drink, and eventually returned to bed when my feet got too cold.

So I was dead to the world when my alarm went off this morning. The boy was really concerned that I should stay in bed, so he rang my boss to say I wouldn't be in. But after I woke up again mid-morning I realised that if I let myself sleep right through I'd be hopeless tonight when it's time to go to sleep again. So I got up.

I do love web-surfing; it's like an easier way to browse countless magazines. I revisited The Straight Dope, and posted a question that bugged me over the weekend -

Does drinking seawater really make you insane, and how exactly does this happen?

While awaiting an answer, I offer you the reply to the question of how much wood can a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood..., apparently a classic from the man's collection.

This is one of Vince's many demo displays. Note the lack of actual library books (those would go on a separate podium or table though). He's used the irrigation hose for hoops, and attached posters to them. Apparently you can stick brochures and things on the hoops in addition to the posters. 

This is what my library displays have tended to look like. Granted, it isn't easy to find exciting pictures of computer equipment, and no-one was willing to bring in their hardware. But basically it was up in an hour or so...  

This is what my first "real" library display looked like. I had heaps of time to get stuff ready, and was encouraged to spend money to buy decorations. I was quite proud of it... 

a sigh of relief

I have my assignment almost ready for handing in tommorow, and then I'm academia-free for about four weeks. I'll be able to get stuck into Middlesex, which was one of my birthday presents (I also got The Da Vinci Code which means I'm going to have to read it after all).

It was an eclectic collection of prezzies, including CDs by Ray Charles and the Newmatics, a girl beach bag, an assortment of stationery and a belly-dancing kit. When the latter was unwrapped, there was a fair bit of encouragement on the part of the guests to make use of the equipment inside (a long, thin veil, four finger-cymbals, some forehead jewellery and a CD of appropriate music - and a set of instructions), but it's been too long and I don't think my hips would thank me for it.

It was a surprisingly sober event, though holding it in the afternoon may have had something to do with it. And one of the few people who did drink was horribly sick in the bathroom sink (you know who you are and it's okay).

But I have found a fellow-blogger in one of our visitors, and she's pretty cool so that'll be addition to my sidebar in the near-future. It's Make Tea Not War.

jazzyhands

This story of two lads and a peep show had me cackling in quite an unladylike fashion. Try it, it's the October 16 post at jazzyhands.

the worst thing about having a birthday this time of year

I remember the first time I held a party for myself in my own place. It was an outdoor day-time event, and I'd borrowed my best friend's boyfriend's barbeque for the occasion. Too bad that, as is usual in Spring, the wind was howling, the clouds threatened to open up and it was cold enough to keep the heater on.

The highlight of that party was when the neighbours thought putting the barbeque under the lemon tree constitued a fire hazard, and called the Fire Department. Fortunately I knew that the fireman knocking at the door wasn't the stripper I'd been warned about.

Last week the friend who recently got married rang me to say that she and her new husband were on their way to my birthday party. I was glad she rang, because she was a week early.

This afternoon, I was trying to finish my assignment which is due on Tuesday (talk about terrible timing), when the doorbell rang. Different couple, this time only one day early for the party. They left their juice and chippies with me, but didn't stay long - I suppose so that they'd have something to talk about when they come back tomorrow. Then again, they'd been unfortunate enough to turn up just when the boy was making funny noises in the bathroom so maybe they were a little uncomfortable...

We went out to dinner at a Singaporean restaurant, with a couple of friends. I ordered a whole fish (as you do - no, really you do. It's good luck or long life or something). Just to gross them out I told them about how the fish eyes are quite a delicacy. Then I flicked out the fish's left eyeball, dug around the socket and put some of the gooey stuff in my mouth. Well, S. was pretty disgusted - in fact she had her eyes covered - but P. was surprisingly keen to have a go at the other eye. I was impressed.

Anyway, the worst thing about having a birthday at this time of year is that:

a) it's Spring so the weather is really dodgy and my hayfever always threatens, and
b) it coincides with exams and assignments, so I can't really relax in time for the festivities.

So now you know.

Sex, craziness and real life

I'm the self-made editor of the library's book reviews page. My workmates send me their recommendations, and I publish them (judiciously edited, if necessary) on the web site. I've always intended to publish my own recommendations, of course - but mostly I've been reading textbooks.

Currently I'm reading a memoir called Running with Scissors, by Augustin something-or-other. It's really quite readable. I don't think it'd be a good choice for the website though, because it's about the thirteen year old gay son of a delusional poet who goes to live with her psychiatrist - who happens to run a very non-conformist household. The children are completely out of control, the psychiatrist invites his patients to live with his family, the place is a mess...

It's also got some really distasteful stuff in it too - like when the boy befriends the family's older, mentally unstable, gay adopted son - who rapes him and then falls in love with him.

I suppose that's where the book's title comes in.

merchandising for libraries, being mistaken for 41

Vince showed us some pretty impressive displays - impressive because he used relatively ordinary materials, such as garden hose, balloons and gold ribbon. He showed us how to make our displays more three-dimensional and how to make podia (assuming 'podia' is the correct plural for 'podium') of different heights for the books. All very nice, as long as you only have three books to display.

Seriously, it was actually quite inspiring and made me wish I was given more time to do displays. Normally I have maybe two or three hours in the whole week in which I don't have to be at a desk, on the bus, or whatever. So I end up frantically photocopying pictures out of books and stapling them up on the board, fifteen minutes before opening time.

Surprisingly, we got morning and afternoon tea, and lunch provided - this is extremely uncommon at courses held for public service employees. My only criticism was the severe lack of fresh water in the room; I was pretty dehydrated by the end of the day.

We had a family dinner tonight at my brother's place. Mum supplied the food, my brother and his family supplied the venue, and I provided the reason.

As per normal, my brother's present to me was something he wanted for himself - this time it was a Tom Waites CD (last Christmas it was a Red Dwarf DVD). He also told his partner that I was 41, which later lead to the hasty replacement of the '1' candle with a '0' candle on the cake.

My nephew was very sweet - he played with me all evening, asked me to tuck him into bed, and said I could take one of his balloons home with me. Ahh...

world famous in my little circle

I just found out that two of my workmates have blogs. One them was moaning that nobody leaves comments on hers, so I promised to be the first and had a perve in my lunch break.

Baby bloggers, don't be surprised that you don't get any comments, if you've only been blogging for a week.

The other workmate wouldn't tell me what her blog is called, because she's paranoid about anyone reading it who knows her. This actually makes sense - I've told taxi-drivers things that I've never told a good friend (nothing really spicy, mind).

So why blog? I do it so I can pretend to be Carrie on Sex and the City (except I'm not fashion-obsessed, don't look like her, don't live in New York, don't drink cocktails - any more - and didn't have to fall for an old guy with a foreign name who lives in a hotel).

yeah, that's me

(I found this at Sensible Shoes.)

I am Progressive Girl Click on the picture below to read more: Take the 'What Kind of Girl Are You?' quiz at CookingToHookup.com

philosophy works

Tony shares a secret to inner peace. You know, there's something to it which really appeals...

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).