No more Assignment

Finally, finally, I have done with and finished with my assignment. It's taken me about six hours just to get the referencing to my satisfaction and for a final proof-reading. I'm not going to look at it anymore, even though I won't hand it in for another hour. I feel reasonably good about it, but I can't say it was easy (or exciting, for that matter).

The boy's birthday was low-key. We went out for Peking duck, then came home where he played computer games and I worked on the assignment. The we watched part II of I, Claudius (where Caligula kills Uncle Tiberius to claim emperorship, marries his own sister and ingests her unborn child) while he gave me a back rub.

Meanwhile, have fun looking at the Four Word Film Review, which I found at the Gateshead Library Weblog.

Just a few disconnected points...

It's very disconcerting, when one is sitting on the toilet, to hear loud grunting just on the other side of the wall.

It's the boy's birthday today. I'm getting him a tattoo. My assignment is due tomorrow, but of course finishing it tonight is out of the question. Just as well I"m working on Saturday, because that means I have a few hours off tomorrow morning to finish the report.

I'm in charge of the displays at the library - booking of space, that is. Apparently someone took a booking for this week (a month ago?) and didn't bother telling me, except to write it down on a portion of wall-planner which I never look at anyway. I've got a double-booking and I'm stressing.

We rented out I Claudius parts 3 and 4. That's five hours of DVD to watch before the weekend. Thank goodness I'm in the middle of a study break.

Only five days to go till we go on holiday!

The end of Angel

We watched the final episode last night. It was a good way to finish really, with Angel, Ilyria, Spike and Gunn in a last-gasp fight against a mob of ugly, hooting demons. I was a bit disturbed about Lorne killing Lindsay though; the latter may have been an evil dude, but Lorne's a singer not a fighter.

It really does feel as though the show's had been canned came all-of-a-sudden (and just as it was turning out to be good and dark). There's a flurry of loose-end-tying in the last four or five episodes, so even though I didnt know what season we were watching it became quite obvious it was heading towards a final.

I'm going to have to re-watch them all, I think.

A love affair with...stationery?

This might sound weird, but I really like those little spiral-bound, hard-back journals that you see in the stationery shops. They're about A5 size, usually have lovely designs on the covers, and the pages are lined but otherwise empty. I remember when I was a kid, I loved books like this even though there was nothing in them to read. Maybe it's the possibility of creating a great written moment that it represents. Maybe I'm just a little strange. But I know I'm not on my own, because I mentioned it once to a fellow library school student (an archivist), and he did that nodding-in-recognition thing.

A bit of fresh air and exercise

The new fence is looking good, with just one section to go plus a 'cap' (the bit that goes on top to give it a finished look). There has been a large pile of dirt outside my front door for the last few days, due to the builder digging holes and putting posts in; I'd decided we could dispose of the dirt by transferring it to the back yard (thereby filling in the big dip that's been there ever since a plumber dug it up to fix the sewer pipe of a house two doors up).

Because we're going away next weekend, I realised we'd have to get moving on this task, or have a big pile of dirt/mud/concrete remnants outside my front door for at least the next four weeks. So I had to interrupt my Saturday morning activity of reading the paper in the sun and looking at the job ads, in order to shift dirt.

We don't have a shovel, and we don't have a wheelbarrow.

I started out with a plastic dust pan and a plastic bucket; after five or six trips though, I could imagine how someone watching would utterly crack up with the silliness and inefficiency of my methods. So I borrowed my sister-in-law's shovel and got another bucket. By this time, the boy was up and only slightly hung over; he took on the role of transporting the buckets. It still took about two hours in all, and by the end of it my boots were so caked in mud I was probably wearing a significant portion of the dirt pile.

But it's not over. Tomorrow we're going to put the concrete bits around the dirt bed we've created, so that it looks as though we have a bordered vege garden-in-waiting rather than a shallow grave.

Till my holidays

one more week to go...one more week to go... one more week to go...

The new fence is looking really good. I just have to buy a new mailbox now, because the one I bought six months ago won't fit the new fence. At five feet high, it's almost high enough to stop anyone my height from peeking in - unless they really want to. I suppose the main thing is that it'll stop rubbish from blowing over into my front lawn, and into the porch (which is cleverly designed to trap any in-blown rubbish, leaving the front doorway very un-auspiciously untidy).

The boy is out tonight getting plastered with his friends and workmates, so I suppose I'll make use of the free time to finish my assignment.

Time for cake I think.

personality profiles

This morning the whole library team (minus the team leaders) attended a Team Development course, which just finished an hour ago. I was surprised when the course leader took out a pile of paper and told us they were our personality profiles. These must have been gleaned from our answers to a questionnaire which we'd filled in a couple of weeks ago; I thought they were only supposed to show what we, as a team, thought of our performance.

We each had a graph showing how we scored in leadership styles like:

Complete - likes to get things done, and on time
Coordinate - delegates
Direct - authoritative (bossy?)
Evaluate - analytical
Explore - searches out information and ideas from lots of places
Harmonise - likes to keep everyone happy
Implement - good at getting started on tasks
Innovate - creative, ideas person

Anyway, I scored high on Evaluate (no surprise, since I have a science degree and used to be a computer programmer), Complete (I do like to get things done), Harmonise ('cos I'm so nice and sweet) and Direct (this was the big surprise - I don't see myself as the order-giving type).

Sadly, Innovate was my worst score, confirming my fears that I would never have made it as an artist or designer. It also makes me wonder whether my ideal occupation might have been 'accountant'...

a mid-life crisis or something

The boy is turning 35 next Monday, and I think its making him a little depressed. I keep telling him he'll always be my toyboy, but that doesn't seem to work. So he's going out for a boy's night out tomorrow evening, leaving me at home to cough my guts out, surf the 'Net, work on my assignment (which is due next Tuesday), and possibly watch Zoolander again.

He seems restless, though fortunately he's made no mention of shiny red convertibles or dressing like a teenager.

He did threaten to move us to Silicon Valley and get a top job at Microsoft, though. While I'd miss my friends and family, I'd probably get over it if I get to be a lady of leisure...

bad biscuits

I've decided it's safe after all, to eat the biscuits provided by one of our Mobile Library customers, a nursing home.

It's something they do just to be nice; the bus turns up just before afternoon tea time and a woman brings a tray of tea, coffee and biscuits.

The first time I did this bus run, I drank some tea and ate one of their homemade cookies. This resulted in a careful, yet brisk, walk to the toilets at the next stop. I thought it was a coincidence, or perhaps that something I'd had at lunch had been a bit off. The other library staff member who was doing the bus run with me was dieting, so she hadn't been eating their biscuits for weeks - she was fine.

Then it happened again the following week and I knew something was up. I stopped eating the biscuits, and stuck to the tea. Once I stopped eating their biscuits, I stopped having to mince sheepishly to the toilets at the medical clinic an hour later. I checked it out with another workmate. She warned me not to touch their biscuits.

Then something happened a few weeks ago which made me rethink the whole bad-biscuit thing. I had a work-experience schoolgirl on board for the afternoon. I forgot to warn her about the biscuits. She ate two of their Mallowpuffs (that's a big marshmallow on a biscuit, covered in chocolate). I watched her really carefully, waiting for a change of complexion or a desperate urge to get off the bus....but no. Nothing happened to her at all. So I had one. And I was fine.

Since then I've been scoffing their afternoon tea biscuits without physical discomfort. Perhaps it was only the homemade ones and the stale ones. So it's safe after all...I think.

(Update on my cold - like you really wanted to know - I'm a little tired of sounding like a drowned man when I talk.)

Holidays

We decided to spend out time off in Nelson, so I've had a first time go at booking flights on the Internet. It wasn't so bad, and hasn't hurt yet (wait till the credit card bill comes in).

My cold is still thriving - every time I cough I have to quickly and surreptitiously check out my clothes in case something has landed on them. Its going to be one of those long-lasting ones, I think. But I still have a couple of weeks to get better so thats good.

Oh.. and I still have to book us a room for at least the first two nights...the boy says that homestays and bed'n'breakfasts are out because the rooms won't be sufficiently sound-proofed :-)

Goodbye to smoky kitchen

Finally, my builder friend has gotten around to rebuilding my fence. He's also going to put a hole in my kitchen wall so that we can install the extractor fan. The old blown-down fence was an eyesore, but at least it wasn't literally an eyesore.

Whenever the boy used the overn (roasted kumera - yum), the whole kitchen would fill up with smoke. Pretty soon, we'd have to get the kitchen door open to let the smoke out, which led to the adjoining lounge going icy cold.

My builder friend is an interesting guy. A builder most of his life, one day he decided to take singing lessons. Now he's an amateur singer and actor, and a photographer as well.

I call it a Chinese work ethic

I've had a cold all weekend. Its not surprising, because a) it was a long weekend, b) it was beautiful weather all weekend and c) it's coming up towards my two-week holiday.

I was in a quandary over whether to ring in sick this morning, or brave it out like the thoroughly reliable and conscientious little worker I am. I didn't want to cough and splutter over the customers. I didn't want to have to lift crates of books with a fever. But I didn't want to miss the very last (morning) class of the trimester, nor take a sick day only about three weeks after the last time I did it (although that was only a half day, and I took that time to take my mum to the doc).

Against the boy's protests, I got dressed for work and got in the car.

I rang in sick during the mid-class break, managed to contribute to the discussions without spluttering over anyone, and came straight home.

But now I feel guilty, because I've started to feel a whole lot better. This might be because I'm just quietly sitting around, mostly outside in the sun. But the fact that I feel okay now, but am taking a sick day, makes me feel a bit of a fraud. Maybe I have to make myself hoarse for tomorrow, so the workmate's will be convinced...

Its been an Angel weekend

Due to the normally inconvenient combination of me having a cold and it being a long weekend (Queens Birthday, that is), I was able to get through the Twin Peaks DVD (the pilot and episode one) in plenty of time to get into our newest batch of Angel episodes. I don't even know for sure which season we're on to now - Four, maybe?

Anyway, the two favourite episodes so far:
1. Spike becomes fully corporeal again. We find out more of why he and Spike hate each other so much (its a father/son kind of thing). Both realise that either one of them could be the champion mentioned in the Shan Shu prophesy, in which it is predicted that a vampire with a soul saves the world from an apocolypse and is given life as reward. Angel and Spike have a big fight, and Spike wins (more of the father/son thing). Now Angel has something else to brood about...

I like how this episode really brings the Spike vs. Angel rivalry to the fore. In a way, Spike really is a better person than Angel; firstly, because he was capable of feeling love even before he got his soul;secondly because when he does 'good' things it isn't because he wants salvation. On the other hand, I feel sorry for Angel because he really is cursed by his soul, and besides he never tried to rape Buffy.

2. A young woman with super-human strength and a large cleaver (this is not a typo and I didn't mean 'cleavage') escapes from a mental institution. She turns out to be a Slayer, one of the ones 'created' following Buffy and Willow's trick in the very last episode of Buffy (in which all potential Slayers become actual Slayers - I wonder if I can keep capitalising the 'S' in Slayer if there are lots of them?). I was overjoyed at the presence of a Slayer in Angel, albeit a mentally unhinged one. Geeky Andrew, along with small contingent of Slayers, has been sent by Buffy to claim psycho Slayer as their own. Angel realises that even Buffy doesnt trust him any more now that he's working for Wolfram and Hart.

I think it would be great to have more of a Slayer presence on the show; now that the Angel gang are corporate grey-area good guys, it might play out like a Buffy vs. The Initiative scenario (without the mad scientist). Plus it'd be good to have a powerful female on board.

Interesting that Fred is now not only a theoretical physicist, she's also a coroner. Like the Professor in Gilligian's Island, she's the architypal (and higly unlikely) super-polymath - hey, just because a person's really brainy and good at one thing doesnt mean she's good at everything else you know. It's not like they don't have the staff, is it? Surely such a big firm would have it's own supply of specialists, right? I was a little disappointed with this turn of events.

And now for something completely different...we've actually had sunny weather most of this weekend. Bitingly cold, yes. But sunny.

I'm in the mobile phone club

After all these years, I now own my own mobile phone. I did have one in a previous job, but it was for after-hours support so it certainly didn't have pleasant associations for me. But I decided it would be nice to have one. Why? Because I don't have my own phone at work, and I'm never at my desk anyway - so it's really hard for friends and family to contact me. Because without one it's virtually impossible to have a private conversation during work hours.

Another reason I didn't get one before now was the imagined cost of buying and using one, too. But the boy bought one for me, because I'd mentioned several times in the last week. And now I have a teeny tiny Motorola and twenty five dollars of Prepaid talk time. I wonder how long that's going to last me.

'Classics', it is not

We went to see Troy last night, though not out of any genuine desire to see the film (not even the promise of shirtless Brad was sufficient could do that). It was a social thing, to catch up with a couple of old friends. I do sometimes miss those days when the gang would meet up most weekends for dinner, movie and coffee - mind you, in those days I usually chose the movie and it was usually an arty film rather than a Hollywood film.

Anyway, I haven't read The Iliad, The Eniad, nor The Odyssey, so I wasn't in a position to do any comparisons between the movie and the text it is supposed to be based on. I did know, via the newspapers, that the movie was devoid of actual divine beings. They also informed me that Achilles had been transformed from a man deeply in love with another man, to a ladies man. I also knew that the time scale was drastically compressed. So I tried to view it as just a story (although I would've liked to see Cassandra, the prophetess whose curse was that no-one would ever believe her, in there somewhere).

I found it a really frustrating story. When the Trojan priestess fell in love with Achilles, I wanted to yell at her for siding with the very guy who was instrumental in the ruin of her city state (yeah yeah, he saved her life). I wanted to shake Achilles and tell him to make his bloody mind up - fight on Agamamnon's side, or don't, but just stop being so damned fickle. I wanted to kick Helen and Paris in the shins for their extreme lack of foresight in running off together. I wanted to slap Priam for putting his belief in the astrologer and his bird signs, instead of the recommendations of a highly experienced and successful general (Hector, his eldest son).

Sometimes it felt like I was watching a tribute to the Lord of the Rings movies; this was during all the cast-of-thousands scenes of soldiers marching in formation with high volume stomping.

The best things about Troy? One is the that the film makers managed to avoid using any Matrix-style special effects in the fight scenes (makes a nice change). The other is the fight scene between Hector and Achilles.

It wasn't a bad movie, but it didn't have the hero-overcomes-all feelgood resonance of Gladiator (which I didn't love), its closest comparison.

Good names for girls

Unless my brother has not been keeping me up-to-date with family news, my new-born niece still has no name.

The boy reckons that Morgan would be a good name. He's a pagan and well-read in the old English beliefs, so it didn't surprise me; to me, Morgan was the sorceress who succeeded in defeating King Arthur. Outside of the Arthuric legends, she was probably an extremely powerful woman - perhaps a demigod. For some reason, when I try to picture her I get images of Medea (also an extremely powerful sorceress of divine parentage). A good name, I think.

I also think Josephine would be a good name. It's because her brother is called Benjaman, which is also an old-fashioned, multi-syllabic name. But I didn't choose it because of any association with historic or mythic Josephines (the only one I can think of is Napoleon's lover, and she doesn't sound like a particularly strong character); maybe it's because there aren't any negative associations - with me anyway.

Wickedness in Rome, weirdness in small-town America and vampires in LA

I have a bit of an entertainment overload going on this week; last Sunday we got out Parts I and II of that ultra-fab BBC tv series from the Eighties, I, Claudius, plus Parts I and II of Twin Peaks (of which I saw only the pilot, which I loved).

I've only just finished watching the I, Claudius (based on the book by Robert Graves) episodes, which culminate in the death of the cunning and evil Livia - she who poisoned most of her family in order to ensure her son's rise to the position of Caesar. It was so very cool to watch when it first aired (I can't even remember how old I must have been - young), and just as cool to watch it again now. Those Romans sure were nasty folk.

Anyway, the boy came home tonight with the recordings of the rest of the Angel series, which had been screening on TV4 before it was rudely pulled from air (the tv channel, that is). So, not only do I have to watch several hours of Twin Peaks before the DVDs are due back at the video shop on Sunday (that gives me only two days because we're going out to see that Brad extravaganza, Troy, tomorrow evening); I also have to (really, really, have to) watch the Angel episodes because..well..because I'm a fan and I want to know what happens.

This is making it very hard for me to find time to study and do my assignment.

All hyped up

When I arrived at work this morning, I thought 'hmm, M had better get his '60th Anniversary of D-Day' display up. It's already 2 days off schedule'. I also thought that my boss had better get her A into G regarding her display for Arbor Day/World Environment Day. Ten minutes later, I'd somehow agreed to do put up both displays for them.

I was supposed to be on desk duty from 10-11, then spend the next hour selecting a ton of books for the mobile library customers (each with their very own taste in literature).

Instead I spent both hours:
-picking staples out of two display boards with a dinner knife
-staple-gunning a stack of photos, maps, flags and D-Day stuff onto a curved, overly-hard display board (plus a display of large and unwieldy books on the subject)
-sorting through a dozen posters, photos, and Maori-language leaflets for the Arbor Day display
-creating a last minute banner for the latter, and printing off some explanatory text which I plagiarised from the Department of Conservation website (sorry DoC, I will add a citation when I can get around to it)

I was all hyped up, so much so that even my bladder was getting into the swing of things (provoking severe anxiety about a possible UTI - not very convenient when I'm due to be on the toilet-less bus all afternoon).

By the time I took an early lunch break, that feeling of urgency was mingled with those low-blood-sugar shakes I get whenever I let myself get too hungry. Six heated up won tons later, my stomach was full but I still felt all hyper. So instead of doing some study, or surfing the 'Net, I did some more work.

The afternoon bus round was much more relaxing, but by the time I'd got to the gym...My fifteen minutes of warm-up on the stationery bike was more like a long sprint.

Now, finally, at 9.37pm and after several minutes of frantic typing, I think I'm almost relaxed. I just have to do an hour of study first.

Cheap DVD players

We've had a few instances at the library where the patron returns a brand-new DVD (say, Finding Nemo or Pirates of the Caribbean), claiming that the product (which he paid five bucks to rent) won't play on his perfectly functioning DVD-player.

Well I know from experience that it's probably because his player is a cheap'n'nasty. We used to have a cheapie one at home, and encountered the same problem - always only with the brand new DVDs. The boy always fixed it by spitting on the DVD and rubbing on it with a bit of cloth (whatever he was wearing at the time). Now that he's splashed out on a more expensive Sanyo, we don't get this problem at all.

Well, I wasn't going to tell today's complainant to spit on the library's DVDs - who knows what abrasive fabrics he'll be wearing when the occasion arises - but I did try to find out whether he was the owner of an el cheapo DVD player. Perhaps he was just proud, or maybe he really does have a 'good' player, but he wouldn't own up to having a cheap'n'nasty.

So the result was that I'm taking two copies of Pirates home to try them out on the DVD player at home. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that his copy was a replacement copy; he'd already found the previous one faulty in exactly the same way.

What a pity it wasn't a movie that we haven't already got a copy of. I wouldn't mind seeing The Office again, and the boy refuses to buy it on DVD because watching it makes him squirm and stress. He reckons its too real to be funny!

sunset

Driving from the main library to the branch early this evening, I encountered an absolutely gorgeous sunset. The sky was still a vivid azure blue, and the feathery clouds were all orangey, yellow and pink, with purpley bits. Just before I turned off into a different direction, the sky and clouds were offset by the dark hills directly in front, and all I could think was - wow.

I thought all the best sunsets were caused by air pollution.