I had my first New York (State) moment yesterday on the way to work when a squirrel ran by me carrying a bagel. I can only assume he had a cup of coffee stashed somewhere.
Pirates of the Bibliotecha
Winter cometh. Rabbit-the-dog gets up early, and lately when I let her out she tiptoes around the frozen yard with an accusing look on her snout. We had her spayed last week, and she had to wear one of those doggie satellite dishes around her neck. I soothed her the best I could, but when I left for work the first day she pressed her head up against the door and whimpered. With the plastic cone on, it looked like we had suction-cupped a dog to our wall.
It has been a week of recovery for everyone. I’m coming out of an awful cold, which has re-introduced me to the joys of Allegra abuse. I’ve been self-medicating with hot toddies and delivery pizza. After five days, my head has finally deflated to normal size and my overabundance of phlegm no longer frightens the co-workers. Coming in to work sick is great if you enjoy people asking you “do you have allergies, or is that…(suspicious pause)…a cold?”
Our University inaugurated a new president last week, and since I now find myself with faculty status, I was able to march in the academic procession. Hundreds of over-educated people in silly clothes wound their way across campus in the cold. In our fancy schmancy regalia, it was a great big academic drag show. A whole crowd from the library showed up, and there was talk of staging a raid on the nearby Law School. We figured we could use our mortarboards and rapier-like wit as weapons and take over their budget.
Arr.
Ivy
First, I would like to officially apologize to Peter for talking his friendly Minnesotan ear off at the I.T. thing yesterday. Low blood sugar almost inevitably leads to leftist political rants. I’m sure I read this somewhere in the New England Medical Journal.
The window ledge skateboarders have not returned today.
Someone once pulled a gun on my friend Erin and demanded her skateboard. This was back in Flint, MI. She ran away, and now runs marathons in San Francisco.
At this point I would like to emphasize the Not-Flintness of Ithaca, NY. I feel confident that my library window skateboard boys are back in middle school today, snapping bra straps and setting off stink bombs.
I’ve been reading this book:
This fine place so far from home: Voices of Academics from the Working Class
Speaking of which, there sure is a lot of ivy in the Ivy League. It all turned red over the weekend, and it looks just glorious. Ivy can cover a great number of architectural flaws. Someone might consider planting some around Olin Library…
My Skateboard TV
Little skateboard kids have discovered the ledge outside my office window! One of them keeps tipping over. I’m thinking about making up some scorecards.
Joy! Connectivity!
The dead have risen, and my formerly disconnected home computer lives again due to the life-giving properties of the *Third* network card installed in a year. I strung up the dead ones and hung them on the bathroom wall. Hopefully they will scare off the bad networking demons.
I adopted a dog this weekend from a wretched pound outside of Toledo. She’s white, Golden Retrieverish, gentle, and quite full of fur. I keep following her around the house making little contented sighing noises.
The second in a paranoid series
Ah ha! I get it! They aren’t looking at me!
Let me back up. I work in front of a huge window. All day students walk by on their way to classes. About half of them stare into my office as they walk by. It is kind of creepy. I’ll get this odd feeling that I’m being watched, look up, and realize that I AM being watched. It wasn’t until today that I noticed a woman sort of tap-tap-tapping on her hair the way people do when they…look in a mirror. Yes, a mirror. Not in a window, but rather, at a reflective surface created by contrasting light levels.
I’m so relieved.
In which Metafilter links and I fret
EEE! I’m quite excited about being linked on Metafilter, but was it just me, or did some snarky person imply that the name Librarian Avengers is a possessive plural? I’m so confused. There aren’t even any adjective-noun agreement issues, and hello, avengers serves as a collective noun anyway. It’s like saying “dental hygienists” or “sports team.” This is really bugging me people. I’m wasting valuable rant time here reading linguistics texts and trying to figure this out. Besides, I stole the name from the Lesbian Avengers so am I really to blame?
Oh wait, I just realized that the snarky person was being snarky about the entry below mine. Never mind.
Hmm. Or maybe they weren’t. Hell.
A few weekends ago the charming Alexandra came out to visit. Although she, Pedro, and I all have degrees from the University of Michigan’s School of Information and took a few library and archives classes, none of us really consider ourselves librarians in any sort of traditional work-in-a-library way. This might be of interest to any of you potential library school students: Information School can lead you to choose strange and unusual jobs. Beware!
Anyway, while she was here we went out to a local sheep farm and met the nicest people, dogs, sheep, and pigs. We don’t really have access to stuff like this back in metro Detroit, so we got all excited and Alexandra took lots of pictures. And since Alexandra is a champion craftsperson, in a few weeks one of those sheep will be turned into a sweater or something. I’ve always thought that if some sort of Y2K event occurs, we are going to load up the bees in the Jeep and drive to wherever Alexandra is. She’ll take care of us. She would just knit up a nice four-bedroom house, and then cook a six-course meal out of acorns and dandelions.
If some horrible Y2K type event DOES occur, Ithaca is actually a rather nice place to be, considering the amount of locally grown food and the homebrew philosophy that sort of permeates the place. Mmm, homebrew. Gotta go.
Some library stories
We were walking around on our lunch break yesterday and found a really big feather. Next to the feather was a squirrel. By using Occam’s Razor, we determined that we had found a squirrel feather, and spent the rest of lunch trying to convince the reference department.
I got an email yesterday from a nice person who was curious about what exactly “library research” involves. Well, you know that little webcam on top of your computer? It only LOOKS like it’s turned off. Mwah-ha-ha-ha! Ha! Heh! Heh. ahem.