Posts

Posted on

Oxford


shannon Says:
October 18th, 2005 at 1:47 pm e
Awesome! If you make it to Oxford (hours train ride from London) you can go to the Bodleian Library and visit the various haunts of people like Lewis Carroll, Tolkien and all sorts of famous literarys (as in pubs).

Believe it or nay, fair reader Shannon,  I have BEEN to the Bodleian library in Oxford. I was studying abroad in Dublin. I had two days in the UK. Where did I go? Oh yeah. The only library in the world that makes its patrons vow not to set the books on fire.

En route, I was lectured by an unamused train conductor on the correct pronunciation of Oxford. According to the man in the hat, it is not pronounced (imagine a thick midwestern accent) AAHHXFERD, as we kids insist, but rather (imagine a thick plank lodged irretrievably netherward) UHXFERD. This remains my only real memory of Oxford, so perhaps I should return.

Anybody want to hook a sister up with Bodleian backstage passes? In return, I promise to tell you the (two-drink minimum, not work-safe) story about my deadly encounter with the MSU library masturbator.  

Posted on

Recent goings-on, presented in rhyming couplets

1. An identity crisis might ensue,
Skipping the SLA meeting for a workshop on XHTML2.
*Sorry SLA. You’re great and all, but semantic, accessible, device-independent webpages whoop your ass.

2. A morning dogwalk at six.
Instead of eating the cat, he just licks.
* Dogfriend Odin has been staying with us. He thinks the cat is veeeery innnnteresting.

3. While lining the attic with insulation,
Five thousand spiders in formation.
* Bravely, I battled on.

4. Attempting to recall possessive case,
I call the hotel in Spain. Hablas Ingles?
* I apparently suffer from Fear Of Spanish. Que Oy.

Posted on

I’m going to see London! I’m going to see France!

britmusm.png

I’m going to London! And Spain! (not France – that was just to make the title funny) There’s a nifty-looking XHTML2/Xforms workshop in northern Spain next month, and we’re going! To Spain! And London! For two weeks!

I love mixing vacation with geeking!

If anyone wants to meet me in London and spend a few dozen hours drooling on the British Museum’s documents room, let me know. I’m making a beeline for the handwritten Jayne Eyre manuscript, and I’m not leaving until I achieve enlightenment. Or at least a higher state of consciousness. Or a sore butt. Whichever comes first.

Chris is also going to a Neilsen Norman Group workshop, hence the London stopover. I’ll just be sponging off the hotel room and bopping around for five days trying to drink as many IPAs as I can wrap my head around.

More on all of this later. Right now, I’m going home to celebrate by putting up some storm windows and raking leaves.

Posted on

Serenity

serenity.jpgGet thee to Serenity. It required some monumental orchestration, but we got there Saturday and spent the rest of the evening saying things like "Woah" and "Damn".

Go. Go now. Then go again. Then buy the Firefly dvds in case you haven’t already. Ogod this was a cool movie. What are you doing sitting there? Look up film times!

Posted on

Speaking of sloth…

Sloth woodcut

Here’s some baby sloths. (thanks Kafkaesque)

These sloths remind me of the time I went to a residence hall library program with my friend Ryan “Galaxor Nebulon” Hughes. (Hi Ryan! Where the hell are ya?)

They had brought in a bunch of rainforest animals to the residence hall to, I dunno, promote reading or something. There were a bunch of snakes and fuzzy things, a scorpion, and a two-toed sloth. At the end of the program, the audience was invited to come up and pet the animals. Ryan decided that he should pet the sloth. Ryan HAD to pet the sloth.

I kind of lost track of Ryan after he went up to the sloth, and when I found him again he was bleeding. Ryan had been bitten by the sloth.

As you know, the sloth is the Slowest Mammal in the World. It is known for moving only 5 or 6 feet a minute. Yet here was Ryan, bleeding. “It looked so cute”, Ryan said. “When I saw it open it’s mouth, I thought, oh! it’s going to do something even cuter! I didn’t know it was going to BITE me!”

I believe to this day Ryan has a scar. From sloth.

Let this be a lesson to you.

Posted on

Puppies and kitties are the antidote for midday sloth

Puppies and kitties rescued from New Orleans will make your day. I went to the humane society today on my lunch break to pet the cats because of these photos. Now I’m scraping cathair off of my sweater with scotch tape.

In other news, Chris and I will be gracing Ann Arbor with our presence next Thursday through Sunday for the annual School of Information CIC Thingamajig. We’re driving straight to Earthen Jar and are not coming out until they run out of that lovely cauliflower-and-curry thing. If you are in Ann Arbor, I want to see you. That means you Alexandra. And you Mihir. And you, whoever else is in town that I don’t know about.