i bought a toothbrush, some toothpaste, a flannel for my face

maura @ 9:31 pm

Once again we decided to take Amtrak to the great white north, and once again we encountered strange and potentially maddening delays. Actually we were all remarkably calm about it — maybe we’re just getting accustomed to the Amtrak craziness?

In this episode everything went swimmingly up to Springfield, MA, at which point we were told that a backhoe had struck a propane tank near the track somewhere north of us and the tracks were impassable. The plan was to put us all on buses between Springfield and Southern VT, at which point we’d get on another train and continue on our merry way.

It didn’t sound too bad at first. But then they told us that the buses wouldn’t be there for an hour. And then told us that AGAIN an hour later.

So we sat on the train at Springfield for nearly three hours. They’d closed the cafe car, which sucked, but there was a perfectly acceptable pizza + grinders (har — I couldn’t bring myself to ask for a hoagie) place near the station where I scored us some dinner. Gus watched The Neverending Story on the laptop (thank goodness for electricity on trains!) and Jonathan and I did a little reading.

We all cheered when the buses finally arrived, and hopped on and settled in with the Game Boy + books. When the driver started it up the radio was blasting Loverboy’s “Turn Me Loose,” which was utterly surreal. Dude, it’s a high school ski trip! It took ’til the end of the song for the radio to be turned off, so maybe it was the driver’s favorite?

The train station in Southern VT was a quaint olde timey place, all dark wooden benches and blissfully non-train bathrooms. There were two (2!) Thomas train tables with loads of trains. Gus and the three other kids (all of whom were well past prime Thomas age) seemed happy for the diversion. Jonathan and I were happy about the pretty decent coffee from a machine.

Once we were on the train again we SEEMED to be making good time. Still, we didn’t get in until after 10pm. Gus was still awake and Jonathan stauched the supercranky with the big guns: a new (to us!) Game Boy game. Lots of reading required, too — sneaky parents.

and also…

maura @ 1:09 pm

Jonathan is so famous! Check it out! (Don’t worry, it’s at 0:46 minutes in, so you won’t have to watch the whole thing if you don’t want to.)

hush hush, eye to eye

maura @ 11:25 am

Well, the writer’s strike is over, but of course TV isn’t really back to normal yet. I’m feeling much more ambivalent about TV than usual. At least about dramas. We netflixed that Razor movie thing (Battlestar Galactica) and it was kind of eh. Maybe there just wasn’t enough Starbuck. And Lost is back, but despite the fun flash-forwards it’s pretty eh too, enough so that we haven’t gotten around to watching the last two episodes yet.

Still, House has been okay. And I am looking forward to the return of The Office and 30 Rock. Maybe it’s just that right now I crave 30 minute comedies?

In other media news, for the past month or so we’ve been rocking family dinner + movie night each weekend. It’s been pretty fun — it’s amazing how excited Gus is by the prospect of eating dinner (and popcorn!) at the coffee table. We’ve seen some good movies (The Incredibles) and some lame ones (to parents, at least — yes, Lilo + Stitch 2, I’m looking at you).

We watched the hilarious mid-80s fantasy Labyrinth, starring our neighbor Jennifer Connolly and a delightfully campy Bowie. I’d forgotten how slapstick it is, right up Gus’s alley. Jonathan immediately re-watched the Flight of the Conchords ep where Jemaine appears in Bret’s dreams as Bowies of different eras, so funny!

Last night was The Neverending Story, another mid-80s kids fantasy movie. (Hey, it’s a lot of work imposing our nerdiness onto the young spawn!). He liked this one, too — in fact we are watching it again right now. But it’s a little more intense than Labyrinth, more serious w/some scary bits. I’m kind of wishing we’d waited on this, but I guess Gus is okay (other than requiring me to skip through the part when Atreyu’s horse dies).

Another unintended movie night consequence: the truly craptastic theme song by Limahl, lead singer of Kajagoogoo, has been looping through my head practically continuously. Why is it that I sometimes can’t remember what I read in the paper last week, but I can instantly summon up the complete lyrics of mid-80s Duran Duran and their cohort? In the immortal words of David Bowie as the Goblin King: “such a pity.”

mermaids waving

maura @ 10:25 pm

Today we had coffee right after lunch and right after that we made a printer stand out of two old plywood clementine crates. Yay for reusing!

First we just inverted the crates, taped them together and put the printer on them. But what had originally sent us down this path was our dissatisfaction with having the box of printer paper sitting out on top of the printer.

So Jonathan got out the sharp knives* and cut a little window in each of the crates, just big enough for our box of paper, which now slides in and out like a drawer. There.s even enough space behind it to stuff in all of the extra ink jet cartridges.

* I stay away from the sharp knives, because I’m a little clumsy and I like all of my fingertips.

Total time: maybe 30 minutes, from caffeine-fueled inspiration to finished product. Cost: free! (not including the psychic cost of stacking up the old clementine crates for weeks because I’m unable to throw them in the trash).

And the finished product:

i’m not making this up!

maura @ 9:54 pm

I sent this to overheardinnewyork.com last night, but who knows when or if it will ever be posted, so I felt that I had to share.

Earlier this week I was in Manhattan for a meeting. It’s fashion week, which means that swarms of fashionistas have taken over Bryant Park. I wonder if they are taking advantage of the Best Public Bathrooms Ever? Who can say.

ANYway, so I’m in line for a coffee in Bryant Park and a trio of fashionistas are behind me. They’ve got some goodie bags from whatever show they’ve just seen and are pawing through them. One pulls out a bottle of pink fruity vitamin drink or some such nonsense and says, “Yuck! Do you guys want this?”

After her friends reject the drink too, one responds, “Give it to the homeless. They need to hydrate.”

giving way

maura @ 6:20 pm

I worked at home (the non-library work) the other day. I hadn’t worked at home in a while, and it was kind of weird and unfamiliar. I listened to music on speakers rather than (my small white ipod) headphones (that make my ears hurt). I enjoyed food + drink whenever the need struck (sometimes consumption seems highly constrained at the library, because I can’t just be tucking into my lunch at the reference desk, for example).

I also drank way too much coffee, because there is no espresso-making husband at the library. None! Can you even believe it? And I bought some shoes (I chose the blue). I know, I know, but they were on sale! Needless to say, there is no pressuring-me-into-shoe-buying husband at the library, either.

(P.S. I am very excited about the shoes.)

adventures in printland

maura @ 4:32 pm

Or, The Incredible Shrinking Articles!

So, you know, I’m a crunchy kinda gal. At home we print nearly everything on recycled paper, by which I mean the other side of paper that already has printing on it. (Of course we buy recycled paper, too, whenever we need to buy shiny clean paper.) At work I’ve tried to do the same thing: when I want to print an article, I pop a few sheets of pre-used paper into the printer tray.

Last week I decided to take it to the next level. What’s better than printing on used paper? Printing on used paper AND setting the layout to reduce the article and print 2 sheets next to each other!

When it works out, it should look like this:

I’m not intimately familiar with the windows printing options (I have a mac at home), so I had a little trouble with the layout (“I had a little trouble with the scissors“). While my first attempt resulted in two pages per sheet, the pages were in reverse order. So I cut them apart and stapled them together to make a half-sized article, like so:

I went back to the printing options and messed around with the settings. And I thought I had fixed it, really I did. But instead, what I’d done is make the printer spew out FOUR pages per sheet, still in the wrong order!

I cut them all up to produce a charming mini-article (see my hand size for scale):

It’s like an academic zine! Conveniently pocket-sized — collect them all to share with your friends! Hard to file, though: I predict that they’ll get lost in the folders.