Monday, July 30, 2007



Me, as generated by the Simpsonizer.
I Still Miss WorldCup

When I bought this house, I told the agent my goal was to be within about 6 blocks of the art museum, WorldCup, and/or the Byrd Theatre. And I am. That, plus the rapid boutique-ification of Carytown, makes ours "officially" a walkable neighborhood, according to these folks. (Actually, it's the B+ score, "very walkable," not the top "walker's paradise.")

They have various sound disclaimers and reminders, including the fact that businesses may have closed or opened. Rostov's still appears in my list as the nearest coffee shop, though they moved nearly a mile away. I never visited "Wired," which filled WorldCup's Robinson St. shop, and it closed once that Starbucks opened in the old Fan Market.

Way more markets appear on the list than I'd have considered -- they're mostly corner markets in what I consider other neighborhoods. Except for Tokyo Market, none seem to be the fancy grocery - gourmet-to-go places that have popped up (then popped out) over the past 10 years or so.

Oh, and libraries are one one of the key amenities the program considers. Yay!

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Random

1. We have this patron who's kinda like Dwight, on The Office, and he's wandering around extra randomly today.

B. I still need to find a picture that www.simpsonizeme.com will take.

III. I'd also like to make myself a trading card.



Reading: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I know: finally.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007



Phiance took me to Natural Bridge this weekend!

Reading

Don't let my frequent frantic puttering around fool you: I am a lazybones at heart. Laggard. Bum. Sure, yesterday morning I did drain the fish pond and shop vac scum off the bottom in preparation for, maybe, some actual fish. Then as I chopped some green beans for a salad, the knife jumped out of my hands. I jumped back fast, but not quite fast enough. My knee took a cut that's not quite bad enough for a stitch, but is good and ow-y and bending my knee makes that worse. I prescribed lots of lallygagging, and even put off calling Dad until it was late enough for him to have left the house.

Instead of reading Silence of the Songbirds (I really shouldn't use the over-ride code to renew it again...) or even HP like all the other kids, I plowed through Dishwasher: On Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States. Probably, I wouldn't like Dishwasher Pete. He's a slacker and a job-quitter, yet I still wanted to find out what gig he'd land next, what crazy predicament he'd get into. He makes it through an entire summer at a resident camp, which did win points with me, but then promises to help with clean up and ditches the director after all. He is, though, a slacker with some standards: some infestations and heaps of rotting food are even more than any kitchen should tolerate and he makes stabs at improving the scene.

He includes brief essays on restaurant labor history and notes famous folks who had dish washing gigs. My few rounds with commercial dishwashers don't allow me that claim, I suppose: a few rounds in the dishroom in college (MacGregor, I'm thinking; or maybe 1837?) and turns at the helm of the one at CK.

I also read about one of our patrons, here. Generally not a chatty fellow, recently he had shown me a picture or two from his "cross-country trip using bio-fuel." That'll teach me to be skeptical of claims patrons make!

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Twinkle

I found the star from my teen treasure hunt the other day, while I was weeding. It was on a bottom shelf (they're not full sized; except for an occasional oversized book, laying flat, they are empty).

This morning, I hung it out of reach, from the ceiling. The view from our ladder was awesome!

Harry

The local paper mistakenly asserted that we will take holds for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We posted our rule, of course, but Children's Librarian and I feel glad to be working Friday, not Saturday, this week.

Go to Tales from the Liberry for some library-geek HP sharing.

At our branch, the "Website of the Week" is http://www.mugglenet.com/, and Scholastic's site is good, too. I think Children's Librarian likes the author's official site best.

An illustrated example of how it's a classic good-vs-evil tale on Bibliodiva's blog, here.

Capital City weather: a quick, but heavy thunderstorm passed over the Northside, flciking our power -- and outing the PCs for maybe 15 minutes. That's all it takes to clear the place.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Random Tech

Wired has some nice graphics to show us that the intertubes have not made us smarter. One of those "can you name the vice president and your governor" type quizzes resulted in fewer people who could.

Wow, via tech-ad-nauseum LibraryStuff, this commentary and reminder that not everyone plays at the same level.

Of course, those of us who spend the day teaching adults how to click a mouse knew that. It is, in fact, hard to know what solution to offer a patron. I often think of the patron I showed how to set up a blog -- that I am pretty sure he never ended up using. It wasn't the right thing for his project.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Proud of Our Patrons

Our (cool) IT guy says he's never seen a golf pencil shoved into a disk drive before. He took it out for us.

On Wednesday morning, the group home boys followed library rules and did not disturb others; the church youth group ran wild. I let an adult with the group home know.

Capital City weather: low humidity, around 90: gorgeous.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Cool Stuff

Dr. Doug's Big Fat Baseball Adventure. A Trip to the All Star game.

charlierose.com. The name says it all.
Monday At the Ref Desk

- The small triumph of looking to see if we had a Complete Works, or some such, for Oscar Wilde, so that the summer reading list-wielding teen didn't have to wait for The Importance of Being Earnest to come from an area library. We certainly did. With perhaps 100 items in the table of contents, I can see why every title wasn't added to the catalog record.

- Whattaya mean I have to do the Events Submission Proofing Checklist because the boss is on vacation? I am a good paper pusher and the thing makes no sense.

- Got a thought-provoking e-mail to our LibManager address. Why do hard questions come when the boss is gone?

- An ongoing struggle to describe the part of the county in which new library lies.

- Sign you up for a computer class? Sure. I'll log into the program while you find your library card.

- Two calls: the meeting room reservation system did not send me a confirmation e-mail like it always does. Did you deny my reservation? Um, no. I'm putting in a work order, now, to figure that out.

- By noon, I had set up the teen treasure hunt and tested it with Sweet Homeshooler. By 4:00, two or three other kids had played! By 4:30, someone had taken down the large paper gold star and its clue. Fathead. Can I go home, now?

Reading: The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

Monday, July 09, 2007

New Friends Teach You New Tricks

Flickr (it's library stuff; drop me a comment if you want me to add you as a friend).

LibraryThing.

Friday, July 06, 2007

Library History Geek Fun

A look back in time from ALA. (Safe for work, but song-that-could-get-stuck-in-your-head warning!)

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Annoyed by: broken PCs. Non-stop-chatters in library.
Embarrassed by: typo in an e-mail sent to lib. patrons.
Glad to be reading: Yiddish Policmen's Union, Michael Chabon.