every time we go out of phase

maura @ 9:04 pm

This weekend has been very stupendously great, even though we just did perfectly normal weekendy things. I’m not quite sure how it managed to be so excellent, but I wish we could bottle it for repeat use. And we accomplished a lot, too!

Saturday: cleaned the house, grocery shopped, went to the Cherry Blossom Festival at the botanic gardens with the neighbors (where Gus + our neighbor joined the thousands of other little scofflaws wading in the muddy creek), had dinner with aforementioned neighbors, and I finished writing a paper (yay!).

Today: finished the cleaning, took the extra recycling to the Food Coop (5 months’ worth!), went to the playground, resisted the ice cream truck (with no whining!), had a diner cheeseburger lunch, went to a birthday party (J+G) and the gym (me).

Of course the above was liberally sprinkled with Nintendo, but also with lots of reading courtesy of the 10 new (used) books we picked up today from a free books box on a stoop on our walk home from lunch. Thank you, anonymous residents of Park Slope, for bringing Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (a library fave), two Arthur, one Tintin, and one Magic School Bus books, and assorted other good reads into our lives.

Maybe it’s the spring is finally here thing. Or the getting outside more thing. Or the clean house thing (well, for me at least). I hope these good vibes carry on over to the week, too!

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i’m still blustering through

maura @ 8:08 pm

I have two more things to do and then the semester is over. How crazy is that? Then I will be 80% librarian, 20% non. That’s a pretty good ratio.

I’ve mentioned before how much I love library school, right? It’s been excellent. I’m learning cool new stuff every day, meeting interesting people, going to fun places (well, fun for those who love libraries, at least!). But I’m also getting a little antsy, more and more ready to have a job again. I love the variety of my days + tasks, classes + internships, but sometimes the running all over the place is tiring (thank god for the unlimited metrocard!).

On the other hand, I’m a little sad to only have 2 classes left. The other day I was asking a friend what she’s taking in the fall and she mentioned a class on scholarly communication that one of my favorite professors is teaching. So I took a look at the fall schedule. Why? Why did I do this? I’ll be finished in August, it should not matter to me! But I found myself wistfully looking at the classes offered in the fall, constructing an imaginary schedule for myself.

I am a giant nerd, I know. Which I guess is a huge part of why I want to be a danged librarian in the first place. For the learning. And the cardigans.

What’s the point of all this? I’m not sure, but I hadn’t blagged for a while and I thought you might miss me. Also I wanted to reassure you that I hadn’t spent the past few days cleaning my keyboard. We’ll return to our semi-regular posts about semi-interesting stuff next time.

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something never ever to tell a neat freak

maura @ 6:18 pm

Did you know that you can gently pry up each key on your white and clear iMac keyboard and use a q-tip to clean out all of the accumulated gunk down there? You didn’t?? Well, now you do!! If you’re like me, the acquisition of this knowledge will temporarily paralyze you, enabling you to do NOTHING else until you’ve pried up a few* keys and cleaned ‘em out. Here’s an OCD tip for ya: the space bar is the gunkiest. And another tip: don’t forget which keys go where!

* Okay, more than a few. But less than all, honest!

You may well be asking yourself, I wonder what events precipitated this cleaning frenzy? And so I will tell you.

The other night I was meditating in the living room when I heard a clinking-glass-thunking-something-dropping noise. When I finished with the counting breaths thing I went into the study only to learn that a full glass of wine had spilled on Jonathan’s keyboard. Aiieee!

Luckily he has another keyboard, of course. But he decided to see if he could save the winey one. First he ran water through it for a good 15 minutes to rinse the wine out. Since Mac keyboards have a clear back you could see all the wine in there getting pushed out by the water, which was kind of cool.

He left it overnight to dry, but of course it wasn’t dry in the morning. So he did what anyone would do: wrapped it in a towel and popped it in the oven! Kids, don’t try this at home. He baked it at 170 degrees fahrenheit on and off for two days, til the last of the moisture was gone. Mmm, crunchy!

After the bakin’ was done his space bar was acting wonky, so he pried up my space bar to do a little testing. And that’s when he found the gunk, and shared it with me. A whole new opportunity for spring cleaning!

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hey world, check me out

maura @ 8:53 am

You may have noticed that we’re all redesigned here at mauraweb! today. And even updated to the most spanking-new version of WordPress, woot! I couldn’t be happier with the new look, the result of much hard work courtesy of the mauraweb! technical team. Leave a comment if you like it, too; the tech team loves praise.

With only 2 weeks left in the semester isn’t it just the perfect time for me to get sick? Of course it is! The worst thing about having a cold is the relentless body maintenance. What I want to do is sit somewhere soft and warm and do the work I need to do. What I have to do is blow my nose, get up and get more tissues, drink lots of water, get up and get more water, get up and go to the bathroom (from drinking all of that water). It makes me cranky, like Pee-Wee in the episode when he’s sick. Maybe I’d be less cranky if I had house-shaped slippers!

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once in every lifetime there comes a lot like this

maura @ 8:09 am

The theme song for the Young Ones has been popping into my head at odd moments over the past week or so. Why? I do not know.

And even more randomness from the universe: not one, but two people yesterday gave a shout-out about the librarian tatoos at Archie McPhee. I’m soaking in it!

And now, A Concise Answer to the Question “Why Do I Hate the Car?”:
Time spent driving from Gus’ school to my internship yesterday: 25 minutes
Time spent looking for parking: ONE ENTIRE HOUR

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it’s day 10…

maura @ 7:31 pm

…of Gus’s 11 days of spring break. I should have something at least mildly entertaining to say, a quip about kindergarteners in Fort Lauderdale, perhaps. Or a humorous blow-by-blow of our family vacation to Washington D.C., during which it SNOWED in APRIL (how’s that for material!). But I’m tired and mildly sick (Gus’s cold finally rubbed off on me) and I still have a ton of work to do.

So I leave you with three things:

1. Thanks to Jonathan, I’m a hobo!

2. My least favorite things from our D.C. trip (besides the weather): the insect zoo was closed for renovation, and there was a line for EVERYTHING. Because the entire damn nation goes to our nation’s capital over Easter weekend, duh.

3. My favorite things from our D.C. trip: these sculptures and this book at the Hirshhorn.

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just a second

maura @ 8:16 pm

Honest, that’s all the time it will take to post this, then back to the homework for me. But this is literally the physical embodiment of a Steven Millhauser story (possibly “The New Automaton Theater”). Watch the video! You won’t be disappointed.

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