medical mysteries.....

My friend T (hey T!) is a switchboard operator for a big medical institution in town and over the years she has shared with me some of the HiLaRiOuS stuff people say when trying to find, pronounce, or otherwise describe their doctors and/or illnesses. T keeps a journal next to the phone in which to jot down these little gems....

• a lady needed to reschedule her GYN appointment because she was on her administration cycle
• a person was calling to schedule an appointment with a doctor recommended by her general internal revenue physician
• someone needed to have their scripture renewed

and the pièce de résistance (pieces?)

• a lady called to make an appointment for her husband to have his vaginal warts removed
• a man called to get the results of the autopsy he'd had done the week before

giggle to your heart's content...I do :)

night ya'll!

htw

the journey of 1000 miles (or degrees...whichever)

(take note that I wrote this at home yesterday and brought it in to work today to post it)

so Friday night, this would be 27th, I got absolutely hammered. Shocking, I know…I’m in the condo trying to recover my equilibrium (and some hydration since I’d recently puked my guts out) when I get a call from my roommate saying that the air was not working and she was going to stay somewhere else for the night. She had an acquaintance at church retired from the heating and air business and he would come over the next day to look at it…yada, yada, yada. I really don’t remember the hard and fast details as I was a bit sobriety deprived. Before you laugh and tsk, tsk me for my overindulgence, I’ll share that I haven’t done that in forever plus I took two Aleve with some water and ate a few crackers thus not suffering any ill effects when I woke the next morning either.

My brother had mentioned that the next day (Saturday) we would pack up and head to the state park for some beach time before we headed home in the afternoon so I put on a bathing suit and began loading the car. I wasn’t very far into it before Nana told me that they weren’t planning to stop after all. So I just had time to change my clothes and jump in the car before it was time to go. No time for a bath or anything (my homage to you KP!) before we started slogging it back to Alabama.

After a VERY long and hot journey in a small car when I was sleepy, I arrive home to a house that was approximately 15 million degrees. Roomie’s friend did show up and said one of the wires to the compressor looked as if it had burned out. Luckily for us, his stepson was in the heating and air business, unfortunately he didn’t answer the phone. The friend said he would call him the next day and to open all the windows and get the fans running.

Now I was saturated in sweat, tired, hungry, and ready to have a cold shower and a cool bed to sleep in. So I did what any other grown up would do and found a service in the yellow pages that offered 24 hour emergency service. The poor cats were so hot we were concerned that they would get heat stroke or something similar and they got dunked in some bathwater and left to dry where at least the fan could help cool them off. Wet cats are some of the saddest mammals known to mankind, eerily rat like and EXTREMELY pissed off :) Two hours later we were beginning to cool off and decided to get dinner from the Slabhouse. When we got back I found a catydid(sp?) on the ceiling and the fun ensued. A screaming broom attack took out the little green bastard and we settled in for dinner and a movie. Stephen King’s Rose Red was disappointing... Sunday found me in the recliner, reading biographies for the next book group meeting (See KT, I was working…sort of!). How was I to know that this brief idyll was not to last…?

About 3 o’clock Monday morning I woke up from a nightmare in which I was smothering, only to discover that I really was. Too much cover, not enough air. The air was out again. I was on the phone with the heating and air people before 8am and they came over again pretty quickly all things considered. The same problem had occurred except that it was a brand new cord that burned out this time…in only a day, day and a half. My poor heat pump was diagnosed with a weak compressor and I had to buy a new unit. Luckily I had a few bucks tucked away, albeit for another home improvement project that is now on the back burner, but at least I had it…I can’t complain about the timing.

So now, here I am again, sitting in the recliner, cooling off, watching a movie (Tyler Perry is always an entertaining choice) and wondering what to make for dinner. If I had internet access at home then I could post this entry now, but I’ll have to save it to my handy-dandy jumpdrive and send it out there on the morrow.

On the book front, I’ve finished three biographies: one a compilation of eight vignettes about royal brides entitled Crowned in a Far Country, one on the life and philosophy of Katherine Hepburn entitled How to Hepburn, and the last, Born on a Blue Day, about a man with a high functioning autistic spectrum disorder called Asperger’s Syndrome. Right now I’m trying to get through a biography of Madame Tussaud, of wax museum fame. It’s a little dry but I am learning a lot about the French Revolution and I certainly did not understand the complex role the wax museums played in the society of that time. However, as there were no newspapers, televisions, magazines, or other media/periodicals to give the public the glimpses into high society life that the last few generations have come to take for granted. As long as those high society people dressed down, they could often circulate among the public unrecognized and free. No Branjelinas, Bennifers, or any other combos to scintillate and scandalize. I was tickled by the fact that as some people went out of fashion and others entered in, Curtius and his protégé Madame Tussand simply beheaded the wax figures and attached a more popular visage to the torsos. I don’t know why that’s so funny to me, but it is. I could definitely see some benefit to that with respect to Geraldo Rivera… :)

Well, I’m rambling now so it’s obviously time to stop and see about dinner.

Night ya’ll!
htw

penultimate day at the beach :(

Here we all are, trying to decide what to do on our last day at the beach...do we head down to the sand, hit the town a few last times, eat more raw oysters (the count sits at 12 dozen for the trip so far), go shopping one last time??? The sun is not out strongly (possible showers?) yet so the beach is a definite possibility but last night's family beach-at-sunset walk revealed that the shore was awash with snails of some kind as well as beached jellies. They were fuschia-purplish and a little bigger than golfball-sized. I don't want to be swimming around with jellies and snails...bleck!

I've just heard that we are heading to the beach for the rest of the morning...here's hoping that the little pests are gone so we can swim a little!

mornin' ya'll!
htw

whirlwind day

we hit the ground running this morning with a trip to ZooWorld! I love zoos, I really do, and this is consistently one of the best I've been to. The animals are active and cute and only a little gamey smelling. They had a Bengal tiger show which was okay...the best part, they had a "splash zone." Before you ask, I'll just say that no water was in the picture. The announcer lady said if they stopped in front of you and lifted that tail straight up in the air...take cover. I very nearly was hosed one time but that particular weapon discharged a few feet to the left. It was very funny to watch people scattering when one tiger or another would back up to the fence in front of them. I saw some VERY manly kangaroos (surprisingly so for such a small animal), a mandrill WAY too interested in his female companion, a peacock taking a dirt bath and one of the stinkiest duck ponds it's ever been my priviledge to catch wind of. I took lots of pictures since, nerd that I am, I cannot pass up a trip to a zoo! I was disappointed in the petting zoo as there was very little to pet...if you can believe it, the goats weren't even very interested in the food we had to offer and usually a goat will eat anything put in front of it. Lots of tamarins and primates of various kinds and descriptions. Beautiful lions, tigers, leopards, panthers, and cougars. You just have to love the big cats!

I watched Shelby absolutely hose down her dad on the bumper boats! Since Dave and Conner were in the same boat, that boat was riding low in the back compared to Shelby's. While their water gun was shooting straight over Shelby's head, her water gun was grazing the top of Conner's head and hitting Dave square in the chest. It was aqua carnage! After that it was off to the go carts with the Shelby-Karen team squaring off against the Conner-Dave team. The track was too long for me to keep track of who won, but Conner informed me later that it was, of course, the boys team.

After that we dropped an obscene amount of money in an arcade then headed back over to the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum to use our movie tickets from earlier in the week. The line was just too intense the day we went through the museum, so we put it off for a few days hoping there would be a more convenient day we could go...and today was that day! The features for today were Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Haunted Mine. The chairs you sit in for this 4D experience look like something out of a science fiction flick...there's even a seatbelt involved (and boy did we need it!). Conner chickened out on the chair and requested that his not move. He also didn't wear the 3D glasses we had that brought the action right into our laps (it looked funny this way but I couldn't talk him out of it) and fans simulated the rush of wind created by a fast moving underearth traveling pod...you know, like you do when you travel to the center of the earth. There were lots of rail riding action, swings, drops, crashing through barriers and rotating effortlessly in zero gravity voids under the surface. The Haunted Mine was not haunted. There were some bats flying around with us at one point but I didn't rate that as unusual OR scary. There were several drops I did have to close my eyes on to get rid of the falling sensation...it was just too intense. The mind is truly a wonderful thing indeed to produce the feeling of movement just by the info received from the eyes and the sensations and sounds perceived by the skin and ears. I found myself laughing out loud several times just from the fun of it! ...so much better than the Chevy Show at Six Flags Over Georgia (or getting your feet cut off I might add to that)!

Trips to the beach and the pool have taken place while I sit here but maybe I'll catch up later. I'm still suffering from some tenderness from the sunburned legs plus the lasagna's almost done :) We'll see how the evening goes. I'm hoping another Phase 10 competition will take place before we go, that's fun too.

Our time here is quickly winding down and I must confess that I am not quite ready to leave. Normally I'm ready to go home after being away for more than two weeks but not this time. I petsat for a week and have been here for a week also and am NOT ready to go home. This is the first unobstructed time I've gotten to have with Shelby and Conner for at least a year (as Shelby unabashedly reminds me at every opportunity) and it hasn't felt like enough. She has to start school in two weeks (where did their summer go? mine was longer way back when...) and we won't get to do anything else :(

so sad ! ! ! woe is me ! ! ! woe is her ! ! ! the agony ! ! ! the depression ! ! ! (not the Great one of course)

evenin' ya'll!
htw

summer photos

I had my picture taken investigating the wound on this fake person and Conner wanted a picture too...unfortunately he was a little too grossed out to actually touch it (I did point out that it was a plastic mannequin but he wasn't buying it).

Me: "Show me horror! Show me afraid! Be suitably terrorized!"

Shelby: see photo above

the view from our condo...

:)

Losing the first tooth! This picture didn't turn out as well as I thought it would since he had several bloody tracts heading down his chin that haven't shown up here...but he's a cute little feller idn't he?

night ya'll!

htw

when I hit the big time.....

Which Author's Fiction are You?

Anne Rice is writing your life. Go you goth girl, go.
Take this quiz!








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I've got a GR8 biographer!

htw

hmmmm?

according to the quiz.....

You Are the Ace of Diamonds

You are a lucky person, and you always seem to find yourself surrounds by pretty, shiny things. You have a knack for success and money - though your skills can't really be learned or taught. You shine in a room, and you a have a truly sparkling personality. A true extrovert, you always are able to share a witty joke or the latest scandalous gossip. While you do have an eye for bling, you are also quite generous. A lot of wealth and luck comes your way. And you're not afraid to pass it on. A gamble you should take: Sports betting Your friends would describe you as: Captivating Your enemies would describe you as: Greedy If you lived in Vegas, you would be: A trophy wife or husband

What Playing Card Are You?

I can honestly say that this is the first time I've been described as a "true extrovert", perhaps the tides of my fortunes are changing....?
:)
htw

thoughts on the eternal sea

I am enjoying the beach SO much. This is just what I needed and I'm hoping I can go back to work and life with a much improved frame of mind and definitely more at ease. We have a book at the library called The Sea Can Wash Away All Evils. The main thrust of the book examines

the environmental crises facing the world's oceans from the perspective of
religious history. Much as the ancient Greeks believed, and Euripides wrote,
that "the sea can wash away all evils," a wide range of cultures have sacralized
the sea, trusting in its power to wash away what is dangerous, dirty, and
morally contaminating. The sea makes life on land possible by keeping it "pure."
(www.amazon.com)

The book is mostly just supporting the environmentalist cause and I'm not belittling the importance of that, but I am also interested in that other, cathartic facet that the ocean has. The first day we were out there the temperature was perfect, cooler than one would expect. I lay there with the sun baking the tiredness and burned edges off, the hiss and rumble of the surf like breathing...in with the salt and sand, a quick scouring of my crusty soul, and out with the remnant sludge of life.

Would it be too new-agey of me to say that my Pisces-ness has always held me in good stead with the water. I love swimming in any body of water although I am very cautious in the ocean...I am only too aware that we are nowhere near the top of the food chain in that environment. Unlike much of the world, this does not bother me. I don't get in the ocean early in the morning or late in the afternoon because that time belongs to another of Earth's creatures. Let them have it. The same goes for other dangerous environments like the desert, jungle, deep woods. Other creatures rule there. I just don't understand why people get so upset about the actions of animals who attack when we go into their realm. We don't hesitate to defend our households against intruders so why hold it against a bear, snake, or shark.

If the little sh!t (here, read "spider") happens to wander into MY house however, all bets are off. Expect to be dispatched with extreme prejudice.

Anyway, all this talk to say that the ocean is right outside the window (although it is a punishing 70 STEEP stairsteps down to the beach), the color is beautiful (seaweed is present though), the sound of it is delightful and soothing, and the sun is bright. I plan to go back home refreshed, smiling, and ready to make changes for the better.

mornin' ya'll!
htw

wesley-baker central

the highlights of the trip so far:

• due to my penchant for car sickness, I drove my own car down here and Shelby rode with me (and kept me awake after the Potter-palooza!). We made movies on the digital camera during which time I learned about the dastardly troll doll epidemic where they squirt ginger ale out of their eyes, turning their victims into ketchup packets....a fate worse than death indeed...
• Conner lost his first tooth, I got a great photo of him holding it up triumphantly with blood running down his chin all the while....classic.
• We played Go Fish and when Conner's turn came around he asked me, "Aunt Holley, do you have any K's?" he is such a cutie patootie
• We made an alligator sand sculpture but it swam out with the tide....
• the first day on the beach, there where strange little slugs all over the beach which Conner delighted in throwing on me.
• I've read two books and am half-way through the 3rd
• my brother turned 43
• my brother and I have eaten 6 dozen raw oysters up to this point (which, hopefully, more to follow
• a massive 4 hour Phase 10 game took place last night in which I got my @$$ spanked like a rented mule...Rachel "Big Fish" Baker took the prize!
• my poor legs are crispy critters right now...that'll teach me not to neglect them with the sun block

:)

htw

greetings from the beach

we are all finishing breakfast and greasing up for a day in the sand...the sun is shining fiercly despite early morning showers. There is alot of icky seaweed in the ocean but I have persevered and gotten in anyway...lots of bathing suit washes have been in order :)

Getting hassled about bringing my laptop on vacation but how else am I supposed to support my raging blog habit :) I'll share more funnies later :)

mornin' ya'll
htw

Potter-palooza, ending hour

it is now 6:52...a mere 8 minutes until we enter the final hour of Potter-palooza. Most didn't sleep. I just spoke with two teens who have not yet slumbered and I fear for the safety of the world :) My 6 year old air mattress deflated in the middle of the early morning (not to mention the 3 hooligans who had pilfered my fart machine and were running amok with it!) so me and my 30 year old back had to abandon ship for softer pastures. I've had about 3.5 hours of decent sleep and am about to go tank up on coffee for the upcoming drive.

mornin' ya'll!
htw

p.s. the highlight of the evening: the older kids (10th graders) were making up endings to the book (I screened a couple of them and there were indeed proposterous) and sneaking up on unsuspecting readers to blurt out the untruths...screams were heard by all :)

it could have turned out so badly...

...but was hilarious instead :)

rodent smackdown

;)

Potter-palooza, hour 9 of 15

The kiddos have now had Deathly Hallows for about an hour. Of the 15 we have, half are reading but the other half is still very much riding the sugar wave we've put them on. They've got laser pointers and are busy trying to blind each other. S has gone so far as to have a shirt over his face AND run about with the laser pointer...it's not like it's a pair of scissors so let the boy run, I say! The half that are reading are getting kinda pissed at the ones who are being loud and boisterous. T and I are ready to crash, but cannot quite figure out how we will ride herd on the wild ones and sleep at the same time. It's a mystery indeed, but one I am too tired to figure out right this minute. I'm just praying for 8am when all of our little charges will be whisked away in the parental carriage and I can grab a 20-30 min nap before the drive to the coast.
mornin' ya'll!
htw

Potter-palooza, hour 6.5 of 15

after an interminable beta-testing of T's Potter Jeopardy, we are now on what I firmly believe to be our 10th round of hide-n-seek....if we don't get to the movie soon, I may be dead anon. I did fair pretty well in the round I played, a much better showing than last year. While I was the first to be found, it took a solid 20 minutes and I'm fairly sure either D or C told the "it" team where I was, they both looked far too smug not to have.

We are letting them count through the overhead page system, screams resound at regular intervals, and we just put out fresh candy and double-stuff oreos...midnight, here we come!

evenin' ya'll
htw

Potter-palooza, hour 1 of 15

I just arrived at work and am about to begin helping T get everything set up. We're playing Potter Jeopardy, watching movies, playing hide-n-seek, and the kids get the special t-shirts T had made that say, "I survived the Deathly Hallows." We have to keep all this magic going until midnight when I have a special game set up for the kids to have to FIND their copy of Deathly Hallows hidden in among the library's other 100,000 volumes...I didn't make it easy on them BWAAAHHHAAAAHHHAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

don't worry, I won't bore you with details every hour, but I will do updates. I have to have something to keep my awake. There'll be no rest for the weary as I will be driving to Seagrove Beach tomorrow morning. coffeemountaindewcoffeemountaindewcoffeemountaindewcoffeemountaindew

:)
evenin' ya'll
htw

new obsession

Surely everyone is acquainted with my obsession for Guillermo del Toro's El Laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) as evidenced by past postings...? Well, I checked out some DVDs to watch while I'm petsitting and found, on our little library shelf, El Espinazo del diablo (The Devil's Backbone)! I was thoroughly creeped out by this older del Toro flick, to the point that I had to turn some lights on, watch a Pixar movie, and stare with dread into the dark when I finally went to bed. It wasn't even that scary towards the end, pretty bloody though. I guess it's just those glimpses of the dead boy out of the corner of the eye and moving purposefully underneath the water that were extraordinarily creepy. The dead boy was not the bad guy, but it was iffy there for a while.

Like El Laberinto, El Espinazo was subtitled but I did not find it very distracting to read and watch at the same time. The head mistress of the orphanage markets herself as a cold-hearted bitch to the young boys she has to ride herd on, but she's a softie and her heart aches because they are so isolated and the boys never have enough to eat. Her companion, Carsares, loves her but suffers that love to be unrequited as he suffers from.....um.....ED? if you catch me? Carsares seems to be a physician of some kind and acts as doctor for the orphanage, but he keeps a collection of preserved fetuses suffering from deformities (apparently maintained in a potent mixture of spices and rum of which he occasionally takes a drink and also sells for its restorative properties.....bleck!). The collecting is definitely creepy! I haven't quite figured out how that figures into the story other than providing the title, but I'll get it sooner or later.

In a fit of del Toro-inspired frenzy, I 1-clicked all his movies I could find off of Amazon...ah, how easily a hundred bucks flows out over the net when you 1-Click....it should be illegal but then I would be sad :(

Ah well, you can't take it with you :) Off to the pups, Tucker and Cole are ready to go out I'm sure.

Aren't they adorable?!?!?!!?

This is Dixie (or, as I like to call her, Dixie Pixie) and Belle (she looks almost exactly like a cat I used to have named Loki). I just finished babysitting them yesterday and started with Tucker and Cole yesterday evening.

evenin' ya'll

htw

cruisin' along

with the end of school, and I admit it freely, I find myself retreating (much like a turtle) into hermitry (that's correct, I looked it up). My recent flood of petsitting jobs only exacerbates the issue. I spend large amounts of my time with emotionally undemanding (relative to humans anyway) companions who don't require me to talk. I can sit and read, watch tv (always a treat...Mike Rowe *puuuuurrrrrrr*), or wander around the internet at will. No phone calls (mostly), no visitors, blessed isolation. Katie will get on to me later, we've had "talks" about my tendencies towards introvertedness (I didn't look that up). I don't suppose my therapist would have anything supportive to say about the habit either. He's always getting on to me, well that's too strong a word, encouraging me to get out more and make new friends. If Melissa (or one of my other friends) drags me somewhere and I find myself in a group of strangers I can usually cull some out of the herd to hang out with, but getting into the group is the hard part. I don't easily mingle with new people, tending very much towards the wall or any other outermost fringe I can grip for the ledge that it is and wait for it to occur to someone that "Hey, that girl over there looks like she can hold her own in a conversation, maybe even tell a joke or two. Let's go talk to her!" My heart says it will happen but my brain knows differently but that damn wall has its own magnetic field and once I get sucked into it, it is impossible to break free!

That being said, the Art on the Rocks for August (maybe September? I'll definitely have to check...I'd hate to reinact that scene from Legally Blonde, only in a toga instead of the bunny) is gearing up for the Pompeii exhibit coming in October and all attendees who come dressed in a toga will be entered into a drawing for a Vespa! I am so going to get my fat @$$ in a toga...the Vespa will be MINE...

night ya'll
htw

thespian afternoon

Yes, that's right friends...I appeared onstage downstairs in the meeting room as a suspect in a mystery ! ! ! It was the Crime Caper, a gerbil was missing, a bookplate was stolen, library employees were being questioned as persons of interest, and there were maybe 60 detectives to our 6 suspects, one of which was the gerbil Macie. I never quite figured out exactly what a gerbil would do with a bookplate were he/she to get his/her little paws on it, but that's what the detectives were for.

I had the challenging part of Hans Barth: loyal janitor/handyman of the fullington county public library, uncle to Danny Barth, and suspect in the theft of a bookplate designed by children's author Mark Teague. Last time I had a part they made me a knitter AND left out part of my script so the kids were asking me questions and I was giving answers contrary to what I should have. At one point Kat and I were yelling at each other, "I gave you back that shawl!" and "I didn't get any shawls from you, dirty liar." "You stole the gold! I know it!" I'm sure it was more entertaining for the kids that way anyway :)

This time I was ready with my A-game! I had my greasy Red Line Oil Racing hat, my yardwork gloves, a tool belt with a hammer and wrench, a coiled extension cord over my shoulder and a scowl. Also, every construction worker's friend, a remote control fart noise maker. I'm that into playing my part, people! All the kids were gathered around the tables, intently searching for and recording each piece of evidence and I would ease up close behind them and press the remote then jump back and say, "oh my god!" pointing all the while. It was pretty funny for the guys, the girls were just confused. It was a humbling moment for me as I come from a scatological family where that would have been hilarious, but it tanked at the mystery. Either they weren't old enough for it to be funny, or no one farts around here. All the staff thought it was pretty funny at least. I'm going to see how I can sneak the remote into the next staff meeting we have. I think it would be very apropos for a loud fart to echo into a cone of silence at the boardroom table, what do you think?

htw
*pfffffft* see, that's funny!

OOTP

The movie was FaNtAbUlOuS ! ! ! Dark, action-packed, exciting and sad...I really should read the books :) Harry is growing up so much, along with Ron, Hermione and the ever deceitful and icky Draco Malfoy. K says his dad Lucius is hot, but I don't think so. The platinum blond thing only looked good on Legolas...I think it was the ears that pulled it off. Plus, Lucius is an evil cotton-headed ninnymuggins (sorry, we watched Elf last week)!

Anyway, gr8 action scenes, tension and suspense at toxic levels (and it left you that way, no wrapping ANYTHING up at the end IMHO) and a definite sense that life has only begun to get crappE for our angst-ridden hero....poor Harry!

htw

OOTP Madness ! ! !

Yours truly will be a chaperone for tomorrow's library-sponsored trip to the movies for our library's Teen Advisory Board. I'll have to clean out the little Kia and be on my best behavior :) Imagine it...me, a chaperone *bwahahahaha*

I would be lying through my teeth if I said I wasn't über-excited about getting to see Order of the Phoenix the day (not counting sneakpeaks) that it comes out! ...and let's not forget movie popcorn either! Since I'm all caught up on the movies, I'll be ready for the adventure tomorrow!

In other news, my friend Audrey should be a new mom sometime tonight or early tomorrow! It'll be her first child and everyone is very excited about the new little girl on the way. It'll be her first child, so congratulations in advance A!

I had another celebratory dinner with some friends during my dinner hour tonight. We had blue corn nachos and raucous conversation. It would have been perfect if not for the fact that I had to come back to work. We close at 9pm and that just seems so far away now! Especially since I've been at work since 9am this morning. It's unusual to have to pull a 12 hour shift at the library, but not unheard of. The annual Harry Potter night will sometimes warrant it AND we are doing another lockin this year...the Potter-palooza!....on July 20th. Our top 15 points-earners for the Summer Reading Program get invited and we will entertain them until midnight when they get a free copy of Deathly Hallows. Some read, some sleep, some do a little of both. Personally, I slept but I did have to work the next day so I just got up, washed my hair in the sink, got dressed and slogged through the rest of the day.

I don't anticipate that it will be quite that bad this time. I'm off on Friday so I can sleep in and maybe get a nap in somewhere too. We plan to have some hide-and-go-seek action going on and I desperately want to make a better showing than last year. They didn't even look anywhere!....just walked over to where katie and I were hiding and giggled at us! I was horrified! I used to be so good at it when I was younger! I shamefully admit that I've already been scoping out some possibilities in our department...I CANNOT be shamed so again (though I more than likely will *sniff, sniff*) As a last ditch effort to hold them off until midnight, instead of just handing them out, I took about 30 minutes to hide all the copies throughout the library and they all had to find them. One young man had a mild asthma attack, but he didn't tell us about it until the next morning so I don't count that as a problem. We have to have dealt with the crisis in situ for it to count :)

So, I'm officially declaring that this will be a problem free lock-in!

Good night!
htw

monday ruminations

As the lightning strikes and the thunder booms here, I’m wondering how much longer the library will have power. Our lines are notoriously fragile little creatures, but hey, at least the generator gets a regular workout…we’ve gotten more rain in the past 3 days than in the past 3 months it seems but not enough, and not soon enough, to keep the Chilton County peach harvest from sucking this year. I haven’t found even one I thought was worth buying. They’re all yucky and golf-ball sized when we’re used to at least baseball-sized peaches or larger. Maybe I should buy them anyway just to support our local farmers….oh well, maybe next grocery trip.

My first weekend school-free was fantastic! I took my stepmom out for lunch (Happy B’day!) on Saturday and had a Potter Movie Marathon the whole weekend. I got all 4 movies watched so I’m as up-to-date as it is possible to be without reading the books. Was that the collective gasp of horrified Potter-heads I heard? Sorry folks…it’s on my to-do list along with a million other pressing matters.

Ah, children are screaming downstairs, it is nice and humid up here (which will soon warrant a call to the HVAC people no doubt), and the day is way too far from over. Burnout seems imminent at this point but maybe I’ll be more myself tomorrow. WAIT JUST A MINUTE…here comes our usual HVAC guy! Can I read my own mind or what?! Hopefully this means the swampiness will soon be gone from the air. I don’t just say that for myself people, it is detrimental to the books to go through these cycles of humidity too! It is an invitation to mold, mildew and other creep crawlies (silverfish are insidious creatures!) to set up housekeeping and begin to destroy the collection.

Oh well, enough b!tching and complaining! I had a great weekend, only spazed out a little bit from phantom homework, and got geared up for OOTP!

Here’s to a gr8 week!
htw

even I sniffled at this....

when Stephen King writes a eulogy for your character, you know you've made it big...

ok, it's not exactly a eulogy, but it brings up the same somberness

Thanks for the find, Katie!

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arrested for GUI...grazing under the influence

I'm still giggling about this :) I don't remember the name of it, but I'm convinced I've seen this in a John Wayne movie. T, is this one of mom's movies?



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FINALLY ! ! !

Check out this great NYT article on my generation of librarians...reading this made me almost wish I lived in Brooklyn so I could join the Desk Set....almost :)
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fun stuff from D.C.

*gasp* Is that a shark in the wave behind me?! I should have run this by Jake first so he could photoshop one in :) Next year's conference is in Anaheim so they had this artificial wave set up as a free photo op. Katie and I took advantage of it but I didn't see too many others having such fun. Getting on the surfboard was the hardest part. The wave itself is made like a bouncy moonwalk that kids play in, the surfboard was velcro-ed to two metal posts in the middle. It was tough and EXTREMELY ungraceful, but I got up there. Luckily, Katie went first and that's how we discovered the velcro. She didn't notice until she stepped on the end of the board getting down and it flew up and very nearly whacked her in the back of the head. While she didn't face-plant into the trough of the wave, it was a hasty dismount complete with a few squeals. My only regret is that I didn't have my camera ready....


Katie, me, and Erica goofing off at the Google booth on the exhibit floor. I purposefully visited the booth that day because I was wearing my "Librarian: The Original Search Engine" shirt where "librarian" is written copying the Google font colors. The reps working the booth were delighted, or they acted like they were anyway :)

The Library of Congress was created by (what else?) an act of Congress in 1800. It was housed in the Capitol until 1814 when British troops (the buggers!) burned the building to the ground. This was the point at which President Thomas Jefferson, then retired, offered his personal library to help rebuild our country's national library. Congress accepted his offer in 1815, gave him $23,950 for his 6,487 books, and laid the foundation for a national library. The new Library of Congress officially opened its doors November 1, 1897.

That being said, I thought this was a pretty racy fountain to have out front of the national library of the United States of America, right across the street from the Capitol. The men sculptures were covered at the waist, but not this lass...hmmmm....tell the truth, this looks like an Herbal Essence commercial etched in stone doesn't it?

:)

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some fav sites from D.C.

I was pretty proud of this slightly off center photo of the Jefferson Monument (Memorial?)! I still haven't quite got the hang of my digital camera and all its bells and whistles. I really need to take a digital photography class so I can take better photos.

I took about 10 pictures of the Washington Monument and the National Mall. This was my favorite view since it also had the Capitol building in the photo. I hated the inside of the Capitol building because I hate crowds and detest standing in line for 3 hours just to get patted down by a disinterested security guard, but the outside is grand!

Another of my favorites, the Vietnam Memorial. This was the statue dedicated to the men. The women's statue is further down. I especially enjoyed my visit here until the group of teenagers arrived and spoiled the view by posing in inappropriate (relative to the subject matter) ways with the statues. Nothing too off-the-wall or that I hadn't seen (and probably did in my own adolescence) but disrespectful of the tone of the place I thought.

There is a shallow gutter just at the bottom of the Wall and people leave flowers, notes (as pictured above), and other mementos in honor of those listed. I felt a little voyeuristic intruding on someone's private note but I took the photo anyway. Perhaps that makes me no better than the teens I mentioned earlier posing with the statues, but it was a powerful reminder of how this war (or whatever the politically correct term is these days) impacted the country and its citizens and continues to impact them today. There were Vietnam vets interspersed in the crowd, finding names and getting photographs, many with tears their eyes and some acting as docents to the monument. It was powerful to see in person what I've only experienced through books, television, and the internet.

What a moving image! There was more to the statue than this, but it was getting dark and this was the only one of the photos that turned out. My grandmother was a nurse all her life and my aunt still is. I guess Granny was too old and Aunt C was too young to have taken part, or it didn't happen for any number of reasons. I'm glad about that in some way. Everything I've read and seen about the conflict over there is so horrific.

Have I mentioned before that I love Abraham Lincoln? I often wonder to myself how things might have been different had John Wilkes Booth not reached his target. I've seen this monument all my life on the back of the penny, but that statue is 19 feet tall in real life, the grandeur impossible to convey by words alone. The interior walls of the monument are decorated with quotes from his most memorable speeches and they are carved into the walls. I took too many pictures that looked the same and couldn't make myself delete some of them so the best I could do was put just one here :)

p.s. I told E that if I'd been of his time, I would have given Mary Todd a run for her money. I mean, really....tall, dark, handsome, ambitious, idealistic, decent moral character (if history is to be believed)...what's not to like?

ooooooooooo

aaaaahhhhhhh

this was one proud photographer, let me tell you

How would you like this view from your back porch? This is the view George Washington enjoyed from the porch of his and Martha's home, Mt. Vernon. This provides only a small view of what you could see. Our tour guide (SHE ROCKED!!!) said that at some point, a law was passed (sorry, I can't remember the concrete details about this) that prohibited the development of any land that can be seen from this porch! Any little sliver at all. That encompasses about 4000 acres according to the informative lady! I could have sat there for the rest of the day and most of the next :)

Those were the REALLY great things I saw in D.C. I especially enjoyed Mt. Vernon and the history of it. It was chilling (in a good way) to be inside the house where he once walked, the dining room where he and Martha entertained guests who would go on to officially create this country. Wow!

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the ill-styled librarian, as promised :)

Notice, if you will, the man rings, red carnation (with stem) fastened to the Napoleon Dynamite-esque black t-shirt, stylish spectacles, and mullet. No wonder we librarians suffer from frumpy stereotypes with this kind of example running around!
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fun AND educational!

I'm thinking about doing my own Sorted Book Project contest and posting photos. This is a very clever idea and I've already got some titles in mind to start with, namely Pip Granger's Not All Tarts are Apple.
:-)
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spiffy new quiz

I got the link to this off my friend Erica's brand-spanking-new blog, Book Diva! I'm comfortable being the centaur :)

You Are a Centaur

In general, you are a very cautious and reserved person. However, you are also warm hearted, and you enjoy helping others in practical ways. You are a great teacher, and you are really good at helping people get their lives in order. You are very intuitive, and you go with your gut. You make good decisions easily.

What Mythological Creature Are You?

oh what a beautiful morrrrrning.........

I cruised in to work today, sipping my coffee, munching on my Nutri-grain waffle PB sandwich, tapping my fingers and nodding my head to the oh-so gentle notes of Rammstein issuing from my car speakers, thinking

there's no school today...................

.................or tomorrow

.........................................or next week

.......................................or next month

;D

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