trumpets and fanfare!!!!!!

guess where I am....give up? huh? huh? huh?

I'm at home, in my pjs (it is midnight), Binky meowing in my ear to remind me that it is midnight and she needs her beauty sleep, and the internet is slogging away at the speed of light through my brand spankin new DSL modem and my brand spankin new DSL service. Yay! for all the hard work those AT&T people did last month getting all that DSL line put in so we can give them even more of our money! But who am I to criticize 'cause I was right there in the front of the line going "oooh pick me, pick me!"

I had dinner with Mrs Roomie and her new DH tonight then we watched a couple of episodes of Cops and made fun of a couple of mullets (thank god they were in FL!). AT 9:38 Mrs (preggers) Roomie wants a doughnut so we all pile in the car for the 20 minute drive to Krispy Kreme. I was tired but am now hopped up on sugar so what goes together better than a hot Krispy Kreme doughnut and DSL modem installation in the middle of the night? I can actually think of several things but I either don't have access to the necessary parties or it's illegal, so there you go!

Gosh, this feels like when I logged on to the internet for the first time in college. I've never sat where I'm sitting now (read: the county I live in) and been able to look at anything on the internet unless I went to the library. Oh, I had dial up once upon a time and could have had it all the time till now, but I work off of a T1 line at work. Coming home to dial up just wasn't going to happen. It's too bad they didn't have this while I was slaving away in grad school, I could have taken some online classes. Maybe I'll take some online classes for something else instead, something fun like Spanish or Zumba aerobics or the theory of pottery....anything as long as it isn't important to my job :)

I guess if I'm going to hang out with mom on the morrow I should get some sleep so I can be cheerful and in a good mood. I'd really rather go out on my brand spankin new service and see what kind of trouble I can get into but then I would be bitchy and cantankerous tomorrow and it wouldn't be worth it. Maybe I'll go see a movie tomorrow and I can sit here and look up showtimes without the mess of a giant $2.00 newspaper! The world is mine at home at last and you people are in for it now....bwahahahahahahaha!

htw

I hate to repeat myself....

....ok, that's not entirely true but certainly I don't like to repeat myself often. I posted this book review on my library's website too but I am just so excited about this book that I'll (mostly) shamelessly post the review here as well. This book has gotten some less than complimentary professional reviews which I'll not even link to here because I don't want to give them extra traffic. They are obviously snobs with no sense of common readership *raspberry*

So, without further ado, if you'd like to discover what umami and neuroscience have in common, READ ON!

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I have claimed loud and often that I am not a reader of nonfiction and it has been brought to my attention that this is not completely true. Apparently, I like narrative nonfiction (a.k.a. “creative nonfiction”; a.k.a. “literary nonfiction”) which Wikipedia defines as:

Creative nonfiction (sometimes known as literary nonfiction) is a type of writing which uses literary skills in the writing of nonfiction. A work of creative nonfiction, if well-written, is factually true and artistically elegant. Creative nonfiction contrasts with other nonfiction, such as technical writing or journalism, which should also contain accurate information, but is not primarily written in service to its craft.

I don’t like every narrative nonfiction work I come across but all of the ones I’ve enjoyed were/are narrative nonfiction. In other words, if all plags are plogs and all plogs are tregs, are all plags definitely tregs?

But I digress. The last few nonfiction books I’ve been really excited about were Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (2006 National Book Award winner for nonfiction) and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search For Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia (This book is so SMOKIN’ HOT right now that the 31 books in our library system have 72 holds waiting and the 5 audiobooks in the system have 12 holds. I field at least 4-5 questions per day about this title.) This is only a teensy bit of tooting my own horn for my good-book-sniffing-out talent and a whole lot of go-out-and-get-a-copy-for-yourself-and-see suggestion. On with the show!

I discovered this book by way of the library’s subscription to Seed, a science & culture magazine. I looked up their website, liked what I saw, and subscribed to their RSS feed. The blog site for Seed Magazine is called ScienceBlogs and has dozens of different topic sections. Among those, I stumbled across Jonah Lehrer’s blog, The Frontal Cortex, and enjoyed it thoroughly. That is also where I discovered he was about to publish his first book and there this tale ends but the book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, is just beginning its rise in popularity. In just over 200 pages, Lehrer shares A LOT of neuroscience that is surprisingly easy to follow due to the arrangement of the book as a series of eight vignettes. The eight people included in the book are Walt Whitman, George Eliot, Auguste Escoffier, Marcel Proust, Paul Cézanne, Igor Stravinsky, Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf. Lehrer looks at each person’s work and shows how they anticipated modern neuroscience. My favorite chapters: Whitman and his intuitive use of self and feeling; Escoffier’s understanding of the human palate and the then-unknown umami; and Marcel Proust’s grasp of ephemeral memory.

I wavered over reading this book because I liked the author and had enjoyed his blog posts but could not imagine neuroscience being an interesting topic. His easy writing style and use of analogies and anecdotes kept all but the most lofty talk of brain anatomy and neural pathways both palatable and accessible (a.k.a. I felt REALLY smart when I finished the book and could sort of converse about it). I told the library’s book group members about it at their meeting yesterday (that would be Tuesday now) and many of them were pretty excited about it! So, long story still long, learn about neuroscience this year by reading Jonah Lehrer’s Proust Was a Neuroscientist!

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So that was my review for the library's website, but since then I've typed up (for my own nerdy benefit) some of the passages from the book that I found most interesting. At some point I'll have a cohesive essay-type document from those notes but it is still a work in progress. I hope some of you will go out and get a copy for yourself!

htw

various and sundry

So, I still have not mustered up the cajones to attempt to hook up the DSL modem. I'm am sure it will be simple and straightforward (which, according to the accompanying reading material, it is) and I'll be devastatingly ashamed that it took me this long to get it hooked up. Oh well, I've lived through worse :)

I had my last PT session for the dastardly carpal tunnel syndrome today. The PT therapist finally came out and said that if I had not had any changes in the condition by now, I should go back to seem my GP and be referred to a carpal tunnel syndrome specialist. I'm hoping that means some surgery so I can get the feeling back in my fingers. It is über annoying when typing, trying to do something with the mop of hair on my head (I did get it cut off, did I mention that here? There is a macabre ponytail of hair riding around in a plastic bag in the back seat of my car because I've been too lazy to send it off to Locks of Love.), cooking, just about anything but I have an appointment to see my GP on Tuesday so hopefully I'll be able to put this whole sad episode behind me with a few weeks recovery. Am I too optimistic?

On the work front, we're gearing up for The Big Read in April! All the Jefferson County Public Libraries will be reading Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and I'll be co-leading 4 bus trips coinciding with TBR. We'll be stopping at civil rights-oriented venues in Montgomery and Selma as well as seeing the 2-act play in Monroeville which is based on TKAM. One of the events here at my library will be an evening book discussion of TKAM which we will be using to (hopefully) start a regular evening book group that would be MINE, bwahahahahaha! You know, since KT leads the morning book group :)

I started the senior's computer classes again Jan 3rd with our new 6-week format. I just didn't feel like I was able to teach them anything lasting in the 4-week class. So far it seems to be going well but I have one lady who clicks the mouse indiscriminately, doesn't know she's doing it and converses loudly with the gentleman beside her (who's trying to help) to the point where the other people can't hear me. I went over to them and tried to get their attention and they IgNoReD me! I'm saying, "Hey guys, the other students...," "Excuse me," "Could I have your attention for a moment?!" Finally, I put my hand in front of their monitors and yelled, "Hold up just a minute. The other students cannot hear me and ya'll have skipped ahead a couple of screens. If you can wait just a minute, we'll catch up to you and we can discuss what the problem is!" They both apologized, but the lady got up, said she had a lunch appointment and left...30 minutes early. I don't know if she had a lunch appointment or not, we'll see if she comes back next week. That's always the problem when there are 6 of them and only 1 of me and everyone is at a different skill level. Hopefully everyone will come back next week and we can get on the same page.

What's been going on with ya'll?
htw

don't give up!

I'm still here, we've just been busy, busy, busy at la biblioteca!

On the home front, my brand spankin' new DSL modem for the brand, spankin' new DSL service came in, but I have not had the courage to try and hook it up yet. I will attempt this tonight maybe after I get home from dinner at KT's house. After that, LOOK OUT! you guys will be so sick of me it will not even be funny!

evenin' ya'll
htw

googles for today

"holley house furniture"--I was pleased to see that my blog accounted for the first several entries here before you get to the real Holley House Furniture in Albany, Georgia.

"i am homeless airport"--I don't know what to make of this and it made me kinda sad...

oooooo, I'm in for sure!

....My fav, Guillermo del Toro, has expressed interest in directing Deathly Hallows if he's approached :)

That would be AWESOME!

WTF....reloaded

I blogged a couple of weeks ago about a story out of Canada concerning a man who killed his daughter because she did not want to wear a hijab. Lo and behold, a possibly similar story appeared yesterday in the Dallas Morning News. The details are sketchy in the article but the evidence seems to point towards an honor killing over the two girls' dating practices. The two girls were shot multiple times and left in a taxi at the service entrance to a hotel. Unfortunately, the father remains at large so the police are continuing to investigate.

*sigh*

Book Award Reading Challenge

I just posted my 6th review in this reading challenge, check it out if you're interested!

1776 by David McCullough

htw

TSO, delicioso!

Well folks, I’m still in awe of my experience seeing the Trans Siberian Orchestra for the first time! To start off the night, I met my brother and his fam for dinner. We were going for P.F. Chang’s. I got there first and was charged with throwing our names in the hat for a table. They looked to be at full capacity, but I requested the table for 6, took the beeper with me and picked a portion of the wall to hold up. About 20 minutes later the beeper went off. I thought to myself, “that was quick” and walked back in. They had paged the beeper for me to come in so they could tell me that the wait would be 120-130 minutes for a table for 6. How pretentious! Just say it’s a 2 hour wait, you big DA! So I called Dave to tell him and we went somewhere else. We did take the beeper with us, but Dave was struck with some guilt so we took it back after we ate and gave it to some people out front of the restaurant waiting for a table. We had no way of knowing if they had summoned us or not, but the group didn’t seem to care and were excited about the chance to possibly cut the line ;-) I thought it was pretty funny myself. On to the concert!

The DJ’s on the radio station which hosted the concert described TSO as “the Phantom of the Opera meets The Who, with Pink Floyd’s laser show” and I must say that was pretty accurate. There were various kinds of lights, lasers and strobes with pyrotechnics also (things exploded, things spun, gouts of flamed rent the air and changed colors!!!) and THE BAND WAS ROCKIN’! At midnight, they had the ever-present balloon drop and these cannon-like things pumped millions of gallons of confetti into the air. Let’s just put it this way, the last concert I saw was Metallica at Lakewood Amphitheater in Atlanta. This was SO comparable, except the TSO played some Christmas music, none of the roadies flashed their boobs (or any other comparable body parts) to crowd, and I never once got a whiff of pot during the entire concert ;-)

At the end of the concert, after the balloon drop, I thought we were getting ready for encores and stuff. Some people had already left and more were making their way down the aisles when the lead TSO guitarist starts telling a story about his early years somewhere in New England. All of a sudden Tommy Shaw, the lead singer for Styx, is running out on stage, the band kicks in and we’re off for another 30 minutes or so with an impromptu Styx concert. The crowd went NUTS! This guy in front of us, who had sat placidly through the preceding 2.5 hours of concert, surges to his feet, nearly braining his girlfriend/spouse with a flailing elbow, screaming mindlessly and making the universal sign for “rock concert”: both hands raised high with pinkie, index finger and thumb pointed to the ceiling and ring finger and middle finger folded to the palm. I think a good bit of beer may have been involved as well. As we were 6 rows from the rafters, the surge to his feet slightly overbalanced the young man and he would have faced a terrifying fall to his grisly death had not the girlfriend/spouse grabbed his belt as he continued to show his appreciation for Styx ;-) It was fantabulous!!!!!!! We left the BJCC at about 1am and I headed back to the petsitting gig to let the pups out. No partying for me this year, too tired. Maybe next New Years ;-)

Was your New Year’s celebration memorable? Let’s hear it, then!
htw

! ! ! this just in ! ! !

PATRON: excuse me, is your fiction sorted alphabetically?

ME (in my head): no sir, they're sorted by the number of chapters...good luck!
ME (in real life): yes sir.

PATRON: the "w"'s?
ME (in my head): they're were they've been for hundreds of years. If you don't know the alphabet, why'd you ask?

ME: the shelves are labeled sir, but the W's are right there after the V's.

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I mean, REALLY! I did not attend the best schools in all the land, but they did manage to teach me the alphabet on the way through. What is the problem?