Note from Suburbia

Five weeks ago, I worked at a location on the other side of Staples Mill Rd. from My Lib. I passed a particular intersection with only three "live" businesses. I don't recall that the fourth lot, which had featured a closed gas station, showed any signs of change.

Today, as I slowed for the red light at Staples Mill, I said "holy cats, where did that Panera come from?!" Okay, it hasn't opened, but the exterior and signs are ready for the first day of business. It's as if it sprung fully-formed from the head of suburbia. It represents quite a spiffy gentrification, chain-ification, of a crossroads I used to think of as a not-so-spiffy neighborhood, and the last vestige of suburbia before Staples Mill takes you into the country.

Cubicle Makeovers! Cookery!

Hints for cube makeovers in this cool-looking book. I like my library cubicle since I am by a window and since the walls are . . . . hunh. Not the usual beige or gray -- I think in the blue-green family. My GS office cubicle was quite terrible (except for cool cube-mates).

I am such a library nerd that I named my MSWord folder for recipes "cookery." Yet, when I go looking for tasty dishes I've typed up, I can never find it. Anyway. Here's a nice online exhibit of cookbooks, 1541 - 1931 (Kansas State U.).


Capital City weather: rainy, windy, 30s

Local University Library Way Ahead of Ivy League

Columbia has begun serious collecting of graphic novels; VCU's comic arts collection goes back years. Oh, you kow what, though? I bet Columbia's collection circulates.

Media

Burton Alice in our future. So . . . Johnny Depp as the Cheshire Cat?? No, Mad Hatter, clearly.

The timing is interesting, given that Frank Beddor's Looking Glass Wars series is bound to come to the screen in the next several years.



Shout Out to Marky Mark for going through the door counter at My Branch a couple of extra times yesterday. . . .
Capital City Weather: So, I went to the Old West-End Mall yesterday, parked on the top layer of the two-level deck, got what I needed and got out a little after 11. After baking in the sun for just over an hour, the car was a little oven. I almost put on the A/C, but made do with the windows open, listening to "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" on the radio. The Teen says the official high temp, reported at the airport, was 80 degrees. Happy Global Warming Christmas!

Fruit Spritz Cookies

Bake at 375 for 10 minutes
Makes about 10 dozen cookies

4 ½ cups sifted regular flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
dash of salt
1 ½ cups butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons thawed frozen orange juice concentrate

Sift flour, baking powder and salt.

In another (large) bowl, cream butter with sugar until fluffy light; beat in egg and juice concentrate.

Stir in flour mixture, a quarter at a time, blending to make a stiff dough [my stand mixer isn’t big enough to cope with this much dough; I blend the last quarter or so by hand].

Use cookie press to make cookies; space about an inch apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Decorate with colored sugar, nonpareils, etc. Bake at 375 until firm but not brown, about 10 minutes. Remove from cookie sheet to wire racks to cool.

Baking Day

My Mom's fruit spritz cookie recipe totally rocks. I always gear up for doing spritz with drama and resignation, based, I think, on a year using a different recipe. Or maybe it was that terrible plastic cookie press I had for a while. Oh, and since I wrote "finish blending flour by hand" on the page, I haven't burned up a hand mixer or gotten dough all the way up the beaters and onto the kitchen wall . . . . Hmm. Maybe I actually have years' of experience!?!

Anyway, the first set of trees looks perfect, and the one that broke coming off the sheet tasted great -- a dense buttery cookie, with a hint of orange. Mmmm.

Capital City weather: light snow (no accumulation) all of yesterday morning; clear and upper 30s today.
On the Muzak at Ukrop's: Christmas carols, which my bagger sang to
At the Byrd: "Bourne Identity," I think it was.

What I Didn't Say

. . . . when, upon entering My Branch, Area Lib F patron said “We obviously spend too much money on libraries”: - “If you want to see not-enough-spent, go live in the City.”

No, We Don't Do That

This librarian won her bout of "no, we don't do that"; sadly, I caved and just did it rather than protract the conversation. My patron wanted to know "is there space on the gossipcrew"? The what? "Gosselcru." I told her wasn't sure what that was, and that we don't do research for patrons, but I would help her sign onto a computer -- and she needed to wait until I helped the patron with an a: drive problem.

Digression: Yes, our PCs still have floppy disk drives. I told her that most don't work any more "because they are outdated." "Well what am I supposed to use?!" Um, have you heard of CDs? No better yet, go buy a $10 flash drive and join this century. So, after I let her know that most don't work, and after I walked by her to pick up some of the mess in Children's and casually asked her "is that working okay?" she still had a freak out because she had typed an online application and couldn't use a: to attach her resume! It's broken! I went ahead and took her disk, copied the file onto my flash drive and we attached it to her application from there.

I took my time to make sure that it worked, and turned back to the mumbler. "Gospel cruise" turned out to be what she wanted to to find. She can't use a computer -- "just do it for me. I just need a printout." I googled it. Ma'm, there are over 1 million and a half matches for that: I can't do your research for you. "No, no! Just print it!" I put her off again and checked on a teen - twenty-something who I knew didn't need help; I tried to will the phone to ring. No luck; I had to go back to Mumbler. I started to read the top websites: One Love, Gosepel Fest Cruise, Black Cruise Week. . . . She wanted the first one, and she wanted the ports and room rates. "So I hafta call them to book it? Do I need a credit card?" I don't know, read it yourself I said thrusting the papers at her. I am not doing it for you. "I am not a travel agent," I actually snapped. I gave her her prints and took exact change from her; I did not take the "Thank you, baby" she left behind her.

I kept stewing over the incident, and only felt worse when it occurred to me that someone who can't work a PC, who may not have a credit card, and who wears holey sweats and some kind of shoestring hairband may actually not be in any position to pay the $900 - 2000 that remaining rooms are running.

Confession

I withheld some helpfulness tonight. Whenever I can, I give step-by-step directions and let the patron do all the clicking. Tonight we had lady doing her kid's project on Egypt while the child jumped up and down and talked to the computer game she was playing. Momma wanted to know how to print out hunks of info from the internet so she could print it as the child's project.

"Well, if you just print all that, that's plagiarism; that's stealing. Probably, the teacher wants your daughter to write the picture captions in her own words."

I walked away. The daughter kept summoning me back: "She want you." I showed her how to cut and paste into a Word document, but I just couldn't do all the extra stuff I might do, like generating suggestions of ways to tackle the problem, since: A) I don't like grown-ups doing homework for their kids and 2) I don't like to support plagiarism.

Back Yard Birds

Last Sunday, we pulled up the fish pond, rearranged some plants, put in some new bulbs, and put up the bird feeders. Juncos and squirrels found it right away, followed by the mourning doves and house sparrows. This morning, we also had goldfinches!

Read: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie. It's a humorous book about a kid's tough life. With pictures!
Watched: Paprika.