3 more days....

....to ALA!

For those not in the know, that's the American Library Association, the national professional organization for librarians. The annual convention is in Washington D.C. this year! I have never been and am terribly excited about seeing all the stuff that, to this point, I've only seen on tv. Will it look the same I wonder? I sure hope not. My flight leaves at 8am Friday morning, my mom is seeing me off at the airport to I don't have to pay 80 million dollars to get it out of airport hock when I get back, and I am trying to map out my packing strategy. I'm a really bad packer...I start off with a plan, panic and throw everything in the poor suitcase resulting in zipping difficulties. I'm hoping that turning 30 will have some affect on the situation but I won't be holding my breath.

I get motion sick so I can't read a book or magazine on the airplane (damn it!) but I did check out some PlayAWAYs to take with me so I can listen to one...The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook (I've read some of the monographic version. It's entertaining) and The Canterbury Tales (...because I'm an unabashed nerd. Live with it.). I thought about loading up my Mp3 player and taking it instead...I'm having a hard time deciding between the two of them. Usually I just wait till the last minute and make an impulsive decision. I'll probably go with that plan this time too.

I was going to get some major shopping done today by getting all the travel size stuff I like to take, a new pair of shoes to complement the inordinate amount of walking I'll be doing, a little of this and a little of that. Instead, all I managed to accomplish was the pre-travel pedi and mani. It was a truly inspiring morning despite my lack of initiative and I'm now sporting a color of blue on my toes that would make an overpriced sport bike proud...think The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift blue. The name of the color (and I may just have to go back and buy it) is Blue My Mind ;D How cute is that?

Anyway, this is a long way to travel virtually just to hear about my toenail polish, but I can't go to a national conference with UGLY or BORING toes! The very idea! I've made it my personal mission in life to rail against the negative image that continues to plague my profession. Alright, I do admit to wearing my hair in a bun, but only because it's too hot to leave it down, and it is a messy, unneat bun! And I do suppose that my fav sneakers COULD be construed as "sensible" but I'm ready and willing when one of the major shoe manufacturers wants to make librarians their own brand of sneaker. Hey, if it's good enough for Michael Jordan, it's good enough for us! What would we market them as though? Air Librarians? Reebooks? Saucarnegies? Libroks? I'll have to give this some serious thought.

I will be taking my laptop to ALA (can you believe the hotel we're staying at charges $10 a day for wi-fi?) so if you can stand it, you'll get to read about all the great events I'm going to in D.C. If you can't stand it, piss off as usual! ;D

¡Buenas Noches!

htw

first manta ray born in captivity

an artsy fartsy moment

so true...so true

T, you'll enjoy this...and agree, no doubt :D

It's scary how true this is! To get your personal addiction to Laurell K. Hamilton started, visit your local library or bookstore and start with Guilty Pleasures....enjoy the ride ;)

Buenas Noches!

htw

a quiz I will pass along

my niece sent this to me and all of her friends:

Okay, here's how it goes: Make a email and send it to ALL your contacts saying, "What's your dream?" And write it and at the end write "Pass your dream on to everyone you know."

What's your dream?
My dream is to ride a gelding that looks like this: http://www.breyerhorses.com/products/product.php?item=702
Why? Because every year in my county here in Alabama, we have a horse show. Mom says she used to enter our late quarter horse into it. Well, I've always wanted to enter a horse show with a horse like the Breyer model. I have told you my dream. Pass your dream on to everyone you know.

I have chosen to answer her on my blog so that (hopefully) more people will have the opportunity to answer if they so desire AND it's a great question that doesn't seem to get revisited very often after say....middle school. Around then it morphs into "what do you want to do when you grow up/graduate from high school/graduate from college, etc.?"

My dream...wow, I don't know. That's not to say I won't think about it and get back to the question, but I really have no idea. With graduation within spitting distance, the place where my hopes and dreams should be, used to be, has a lonely breeze and an abundant crop of tumbleweed. (BTW, did you know they pickled tumbleweed and ate it in the American Dust Bowl during the Depression? bleck! The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Eagan....GREAT book!) Okay, the ADD moment is over. Anyway, I don't know what my dream is. To be happy? Is that too vague; like the ill-advised praying for patience? I want to be happy. I want to lose weight. I want to continue to love my life's work as I do right now, for the rest of my life. I want my niece and nephew to grow up to be spectacular people, comfortable and happy in the lives they make for themselves. I guess that means I have some dreams after all but I can't think of any specific dreams like S has for herself. Maybe in a few months things will be different, but right now I can't even decide on a graduation present. One of my favorite patrons at the library has set me the task of thinking of something I really want for graduation (and he gave me what I thought was a stupendous spending range) and to let him know. I don't know. Not one single thing feasible thing comes to mind. I'd like a back deck on the house, a covered front porch, an outside faucet for a hosepipe, pressure washing to get the algae off the front of the house, gutters so I won't have to worry about the algae anymore, new curtains, a treadmill, someone on God's green earth to figure out how to get DSL run down one freakin' road in Bibb County, a monstrous SUV that gets 70 miles per gallon....I better stop, I've obviously strayed over into the realm of fantasy. Anyway, you get my point. If someone wants to give me a gift, then I want a gift. I don't want practical, useful, functional...I exercise my girly rights on my own consciousness and say I want a gift damn it! Now, if I can just think of one, I'll be set AND win a battle over my sense of responsibility. Not every time, mind you, but this one time.
Buenas noches!
htw

ooops from yesterday

the abrubt cuttoff of yesterday's post was due to the fact that the object of my diatribe sat down next to me and I clicked "publish" instead of "save" in my haste to avoid being found out
;D

my guilty conscious must have gotten the best of me.

more fun was had by all today, it's only 10:43am and i feel like I've narrowly avoided an aneurism (sp?), stroke, or heartattack. We've been (what else?) arguing about stupid $h!t for the past hour and 45 min, led by my nemesis. I will never, ever become a cast member on Survivor because the murder I'd commit would be on camera for the world to see....and I thought I'd just cruise through my last class. Has someone been praying for patience on my behalf??? Stop it! Stop it now! *stomps foot*

meetings

you ever have one of those moments in your life when you experience pure, unadulterated loathing? makes your skin prickle? if you had hackles, they'd be standing on end?

nice to meet you.

I like the teacher. I like most everyone in the class....except one person. And this one person is ruining my hard-won composure. It does no good to bad mouth anyone for their personality, I'm quite sure, if this person blogs, they are saying the same thing about me. It's like one of those nature films featuring the bighorn sheep during their "season". We butt our heads together, not agreeing, not compromising, not talking AND when another member of the group asked if we would be working together since the two of us had complimentary assignments, the person said, "I don't have time to do it tonight, but I'll get to it tomorrow." Now, technically there is still ~45 minutes left in class. WTF else did he have to do?!? I'm just really pissed in general right now. But I don't want to be labeled the squeaky wheel since, in a class of 11 people, this person will be responsible for a portion of my grade and may have cronies. You can't get away from cronies, they're everywhere...it's all very Survivor-ish (is that still on somewhere?) and I don't want to be the one at the end who is blackballed by their peers and award the money to someone else.
oops

wooooow!

Wandering through the eclectic selection of RSS feeds I subscribe to, Nonfiction Readers Anonymous led me to The Laundress, which led me to Wildlife Singapore. Their page dedicated to the Common Spiders of Singapore notwithstanding (T, you'll be proud! I made it through 2 whole pictures before I had to quit!), there are some great things to look at. The site has a link titled Animals A-Z with four categories:

• Mammals,
• Amphibians (Frogs and Toads)
• Reptiles I (Lizards, Terrapins, and Turtles)
• Reptiles II (Snakes only)

So click on over and learn what a Sunda Pangolin, a Lesser Mousedeer (how did that marriage get started, I wonder?), a Malayan Colugo, and a Slow Loris do for fun!

¡Buenos Tardes!
htw

which Dickens are you?

this would no doubt make more sense to me if I were widely read in Dickensonian (is that a word, or did I just make it up?) literature, but KT told me I had to :)

Here is the description from the quiz:

Esther Summerson, from the book Bleak House. You are the nicest person EVER! You have so many friends because you treat everyone with respect. You're also very idealistic and root for the underdog, which is ironic because you're mother is a Lady and super rich. You have many admirers but you don't seem to notice becuase you don't have very high self esteem. You end up marrying the honey of your dreams, Allan Woodcourt, who's a doctor! You go girl!

If you're dying to know your own Dickens character, take the quiz!

htw

This Just In ! ! ! ! !

further things they don't teach you in library school....

--exactly how you clean up a rice & broth combo of vomit from the carpet and computer keyboard....

Luckily, the patron's father cleaned up most of the solid stuff, but there was still plenty of rice and assorted fluids ground into the carpet. I was voting on carpet cleaning, but Y sprinkled some stuff, vacuumed it up, and said she'd check on it in the morning. I threw the keyboard away...just another day in Summer Reading hell and puting my soon-to-be master's degree to good use!

htw