One of the things I managed to learn in Librarian School is that you can (and probably should) research everything. So about an hour into The Food Poisoning, I got online and found a bunch of handy tips, which included such things as “drink tons of water” (no matter what happens to it afterward).  The handy tips seem to have helped, and I’ve now worked my way up to drinking ginger tea WITH HONEY. The best part is I can rest assured that I’m vomiting in a reasonable and well-researched way.

Who knew the bathroom floor could be so comfy? Thanks, McDonald’s baked chicken salad!

I am in The City this week, visiting friends and shopping. I’m currently being sniffed by this dog, and am looking forward to watching the final game of the World Cup this afternoon at a pub where folks actually care about football. Go France! And Italy! I don’t care as long as the footwork is amazing!

Lizz and I went sari-shopping (sort of) in Jackson Heights yesterday. I was thinking about trying on one of these, but the whole process was way intimidating, and I felt like a cultural-appropriating jerk. Plus even the ugly saris were over my budget. Still, wow.

If any enterprising readers want to go shopping or Darwin-exhibiting between now and Wednesday, send me an email (ericaATlibrarianavengersDOTORG). I’ll be bopping around all day while everyone is at work.

Even nature sancturary libraries have problems with unruly teenagers hanging around in the parking lot.

These geese are at the awkward stage between being yellow fuzzy poofballs and tall feathery adults. As a result, they listen to emo music and wear heavy eyeliner. Someday they will grow up to be pâté.

The hot news this weekend is that we got a new kitty. I swear, I just went to the pound to pet the cats. But there she was, a four-year-old fluffball with a penchant for laps. She only has about six teeth, so she looks surprised all of the time. We’ve been on the Maine Coon rescue list for several months, but nothing had really come up. Then I found the cat of our dreams sitting in the Humane Society three blocks away. We named her Plover.

We brought her home Friday, and I spent the weekend doing cat-integration. There were about five minutes of fur-wrenching, then a truce was called. Now the house is swarming with cats. Two cats can make an impressive swarm.

Last week I met a swarm of digital librarians. My work hosted one of Cornell Library’s Digital Preservation Workshops. I helped show off our homegrown catalog and a/v player (which generates spectrograms that you can muck around with!) and our very-exciting-for-library-geeks data entry application. So man, can I just say? Talking to digital librarians? Very exhausting. You guys? Pretty intense. I found myself saying things like “Why yes, the animal behavior table in our data model IS tied to the hierarchy nodes in the taxonomy tree”. And then I went home and drank.

ARCIMBOLDO, Giuseppe
(b. ca. 1530, Milano, d. 1593, Milano)

The Librarian
c. 1566
Oil on canvas, 97 x 71 cm
Skoklosters Slott, BÃ¥lsta (Stockholm)

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Today I animated a vector image of a woman singing for an educational flash animation illustrating the difference between the larynx (humans) and the syrinx (birds).

What did you do at work today?

In my travels, I discovered that WikiCommons has a nice-if-random collection of GNU public licenced images, which led to a debate with Cow-Orker Rafe on the proper pronunciation of the word “Gnu”. Turns out we were both right. Geeks pronounce the operating system “G-noo”, and English majors pronounce the wildebeesty “Noo”.

Noo! Noo!

One of my role models when I was a baby geek was Kim from the comic strip Doonesbury. She coded nude, geeked out, talked in binary, and awed all in her path. Now her daughter Alex is coming to Cornell. Girl can crash at my place anytime. We’ve got wireless. If she wants, I can introduce her to other local fictional characters in town, like Stephen Titus George from Fool on the Hill.

Humbert Humbert, however, can just stay the hell away.