New York, Two Things About:

I am reading Rudolph Delson's Maynard & Jennica, a splendid novel, set in New York, about nothing.

The picture for October in our historic NYC calendar is Grand Opening, Radio City Music Hall, 1932. Ah, yes, October: a fine month for grand beginnings.

Capital City weather: 79, clear
At the Byrd: Spiderman 3 and something else.

Things My Mom is Right About (abbreviated list)

You should ask if they have your size in the back.

Break in your new high heels.

Do you have at least one other thing that goes with?


People I Know

My dreams of making Style's Top 40 Under 40 were dashed in '06 when I, ah -- turned 40 never having received the call. As a grown up, I shouldn't hold that disappointment against the fine folks I know who made the list this year, so: Way to go, y'all!! Bravo to Christina! She and our mutual friend and I have done things together a few times, including going to the grand opening of the Forest Hill Target a while back. Elaine just rocks! I guess she technically married into my crowd, but, whatever. And congrats to John, who I've met a couple of times -- he's a more distant friend-of-friend.

Speaking of Target, while getting the Teen an appropriate outfit for a fancy field trip to D.C., I ran into Jeanne B., who I run into in Carytown or at Target about every year or year-and-a-half. Which was cool, because Richmond Magazine (article available online only to subscribers) did a nice profile of her earlier this summer, and I hadn't made time to e-mail her congrats.

And then there was this morning, when I was going to be about 5 minutes early for my doctor's appointment, only -- what's this? They aren't on the directory anymore?? So I come home, call, find they moved about 6 blocks away from the old place. I arrived 5 minutes late, and even more stressed and annoyed than the doctor's usually makes me. I had tunnel vision when I burst into the large house-turned-office and grabbed the sign-in clipboard. I sized up what the questions were by looking at the name and time and whatnot above the first blank line: Hey! I know someone with that unusual last name! And look! There she is across the room, smiling and waving.

I'm no Top 40, but I do know some cool people, and I am pleased to run into them at local events of various levels of glamor.

Happy Mountain Day!

This week, Capital City weather's a little far into the 80s and 90s for Mountain Day. Hopefully, it'll be more seasonable for moutain week (aka honeymoon) in October.

Reading

I set a work goal to read more across YA genres. If I decide to be an easy grader, I met it already! I keep my list on LibraryThing. If I get tough on myself, I'll read one more religious-spiritual. And though the reading plan I used didn't have a category for the Gossip Girls end of "romance," I probably need to read one of those, too. And maybe some Holly Black or Stephenie Meyer.

Anniversaries and Observations

It seems that September 19 is not only Talk Like a Pirate Day (see also); in addition, it's the birthday of :-) .

Capital City weather: 80s all this coming week

Sports Page

Though they lost Thursday night, when we went, the RBraves took their division's wild card offer and became Governor's Cup champs! The Braves and Bulls both played well, with some excellent defensive pitching -- until our starting pitcher, throwing a perfect game, was pulled for a weak relief pitcher. Apparently, we get to blame the big Braves and a pitch-count rule they impose on their AAA team.

I remember dinging the 1994 race being surrounded by fair-weather fans who barely knew how the game is played. It really annoyed me. This year, our seats were on the upper section, but at the rail and aisle, so that cut that sort of thing way down. Some loud girl behind us did tell long stories that made her giggle at herself about how anyone who has ever been her roommate has been "engaged in, like, six months." But after a while, she and her gals moved back a few rows.

Meanwhile, a season ticket-holding source reports this from the box seats:

"We haven't been here all year" (why the **** not?)

"Do they play nine innings?" (No. It's like little league, they only play six)

"They really missed the boat, not building the new stadium in Shokoe Slip. It wouldn't have cost the city hardly anything." ( Grrr)

Now the RBraves take on a team from Sacramento for an IL champion title.

Entertainment Page

Having wrapped up our observation of Summer of Shell, we found September wanting for a theme. We've gone with the less catchy "Hitchcock Movies the Teen Really Should See."
-North by Northwest was a little less plodding than I remembered.
-I adore Rear Window, and the jaded NextGen kid definitely got into it by the end, shouting at Grace Kelly to "get out, get out!" when she's in the murderer's apartment. But can we talk about Miss Kelly's clothes? Wow.
-This past Sunday, we watched The Birds. Eeeee. That's about as tension-filled a movie as I can take! I am not a fan of scary movies. Some of the bird screeches are really terrible, not at all convincing -- but that fluttering, especially at the end, is right on! Eeeew! Don't open that door!! The Teen liked this one, too, I think, but as a big watcher of Animal Planet and the like she wanted to know why the birds were acting like that, "what's wrong with them?"

Edutainment

A Library Science quiz game, here, looks like library school project from almost 10 years ago! It's not fancy, but it is fun.

I Like Having Three Ref Staffers on Friday!


Because I can do silly things like this:

New Friends Teach You New Tricks
(I Hope)

Okay, thanks to peer pressure from Vampire Librarian, I am joining LibraryLinks. I think I figured out how to get Flickr to host the LibraryLinks logo and how to write the html for that. The list of participants (which was just cut-n-paste) looks kind of weird on Firefox. I'll have to open Explorer and see if it's better that way.

By the way, the VL has two interesting links to stapler sites. I thought our patrons take their right to staple seriously: others have whole wikis devoted to the subject. For the record, at my branch we let them staple, have a paper clip or two in moderation, borrow the scissors, borrow pens, and take some tape. I get a little begrudging about highlighters and white-out. Sometimes pens don't come back, but then again, so many are left behind, we're Even Steven.

Random Question: If "metadata" is data about data, what's a blog about blogging?

Capital City weather: hot, humid, drought-like. Have I made the joke about September being the fourth month of summer, lately?
On the Muzak at Ukrop's: "Voices Carry"
At the Byrd: Johnny Depp as Pirate, III

Online Education Database ranks library blogs, here. I read, like, two of those.

For now, I'm not so into people Musing About the Profession, networking, and positioning themselves. I like funny ones. I like ones that make me say, Yeah, that happens to us, too: glad we're not alone! And, in a way, I do learn stuff from those, in that the stories of others often model ways (good and not so) to handle crazy (yet typical) library situations.

Ups n Downs

Enjoyed catching up with the G-Gs, of Boston, and other Val pals a week ago.

Brought down by this website that gathers prices of for-sale houses. Can we afford a slightly bigger house in our approximate neighborhood? Not right now.

Brought way up by canoing and birding at York River State Park yesterday!

The forecast called for clear and low 80s, so I said, Let's go hiking. Phiance said, No way: kayaking! So we compromised on canoing. (I can't get over the Girl Scout-y hang up that I should learn how to do something before I just hand over some money and say, Sure, we'll take a kayak for four hours.)

We canoed out to the York River, then back up into the windy, tidal, fiddler-crab laden creek on the property, and had a floating lunch. From the canoe we saw only a few birds, so after returning it, we followed a short trail in the woods and spotted a nuthatch, redstarts, and a pileated, among others. We had such a good time, we finally got these passports to help us keep track of where we've been -- and earn some cool trinkets.

Counting down to the wedding.

Looking up movie times to go see Stardust.