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).

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.