let’s defend the things we say

maura @ 10:41 pm

Last night I deep-ended on researching day camps for Gus for this summer. After all, it is almost March, time to get on the ball! Because I am a bad parent have a life I did not stand in line at the crack of dawn last month to try to get him into the science camp that he loved but that is way too popular for its own good. But a fellow parent’s camp query earlier this week has sent me searching for options for this year of the crazy long summer (TEN weeks! Because Labor Day is so late and school doesn’t start til after! Aiieee!!!).

And I’m coming up short. All of the camps I’ve found are either:

a. too much semi-structured arts & craftsy schoolyard gamesy hanging out time
b. too much time on a bus going from place to place (this is less of an issue for us than for some parents, but I do see the dilemma)
c. too focused on one thing, which is usually sports (and only sports esp. will not work for Gus)
d. too expensive, too schedule-inflexible, too far away, etc. etc. etc.

All of this has got me thinking of my ideal summer camp for Gus. Why can’t there be lots of different activities, so that kids can try new stuff? Why can’t there be some nerdy stuff that involves science and nature? Why can’t there be a balance of physical and mental activities? (And at this point it occurred to me that I am kind of talking about Gus’s school, although I do think camp should be more physical and less mental than school.)

SO. Here’s my camp wishlist. Think of it as the mauraweb! summer camp, not coming soon to a city near you!

8:30-9:00am: drop-off (conveniently located less than a 15 minute walk from our apt)

9:00-9:45am: on alternate days: arts & crafts, music (pick any instrument you want, even drums [Gus's choice] or french horn [mine]), drama (kids who don’t want to act can sing in the chorus or paint scenery)

9:45-10:30am: something sporty: karate, tumbling, fencing, trampoline, tennis, rock climbing (these are the things I think Gus might like; your kid can do something else if you want!)

10:30-11:15am: swimming

11:15am-noon: change clothes, lunch

noon-12:45pm: drawing & writing, computers (programming, “educational” games)

12:45-1:30pm: something sciencey (experiments), naturey (dissecting stuff) or historical (reconstructing past stuff)

1:30-2:15pm: something somewhat less sporty like horseback riding or archery or croquet or lawn bowling or horseshoes

2:15-3:00pm: maybe a choice between more swimming (recreational, while the morning is instructional?) and playground

3:00-3:45pm: snack, games, reading, pickup

This day is probably not possible, esp. since I’ve left no time for the children to transition from one activity to the next. And children are known for their easygoing transitions (snort).

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it’s all here in writing

maura @ 9:42 pm

I am ripping my very first LP to MP3 right this very minute: Thomas Dolby’s second record “The Flat Earth.” So far it’s been a pretty easy process, though you have to press a button to indicate the start of a new track, which is kind of a drag (Jonathan swears that there’s software that senses the silence between tracks automatically, so we will probably look into that). But really the simplicity is amazing — huzzah for USB!

I’ve been thinking a lot about music lately, spurred mostly by turntable acquisition and following the prolific Kristin Hersh on Twitter. Throwing Muses are playing here in mid-March. We’re not going. It’s on a weeknight and our babysitter’s in high school and my mom is busy and it’s expensive and late and loud and…

And in some ways I am sad about that. They’re one of my favorites and don’t tour together much anymore. But I’m not as sad as I thought I would be, which is kind of interesting. You’ve heard me moan & groan here about not being able to keep up with music, not being able to go to shows, blah blah blah. Where has the time gone, why don’t I feel the same drive to go find the new stuff, etc.

The other day I was reading a post on Easily Distracted, historian Timothy Burke’s blog, about mass consumption and the economic crisis. In the middle of the post (reason #5) he writes about “saturation of personal ownership,” and one of his examples is music. Maybe one of the reasons that music sales are slow is that the old folks (i.e., me) are buying less music than they used to. And one reason for that is that we already have so much music, all of the music that we’ve bought over our lives thus far.

I don’t know, it’s not news or anything that I have a lot of music (and only listen to a fraction of it). But for some reason just reading that paragraph made me feel a whole lot better about my relationship with music these days. It’s no big deal if I’m not as hungry for new music as I used to be. I’m having a big birthday this year and I’m too old to worry about whether I’m cool (and I never have been, anyway, so why would I start now?). And just like everything else that there’s not a ton of time for now (hello, video games), I’ll have more time for them again in the future, I’m sure.

And as I slowly digitize my records, all of this old stuff will be new to me, anyway.

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talk to me mulu

maura @ 9:59 pm

Things I Don’t Understand, Fashion Edition:

1. Cashmere t-shirts

2. Sweaters with 3/4-length sleeves

3. Those Converse with two sets of canvas or leather outers and two sets of laces (see here, apparently they are called “doubles”)

4. Cashmere tank tops

5. Wool mini-skirts

Yes, I’m looking for sweaters online, how’d you guess? It’s Jonathan’s fault. I ordered these bee-yoo-ti-ful shoes and they came in the mail today. In between my exclamations of fondest endearment for these shoes I happened to mention that they’re available in red, and now he’s lobbying for me to return the very practical black ones and get the red ones. Which I’m not going to do (though maybe if I can find them on sale…). But that sent me to ebay to see if there are any fun sweaters around, because this librarian needs cardigans stat.

So, here we are! Where are you?

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the monkeys chatter away the hours

maura @ 9:42 pm

Tonight after dinner I said, “wouldn’t it be nice to have some decaf?” And Jonathan countered with, “how about half-caf?” I wavered for a minute but then thought, “what the hey,* it’s Friday, w00t!” And that’s why I’ll be using even! more! exclamation! points! than! usual! Hope it will not come back to haunt me in the form of insomnia later on tonight.

* There are very few work-related things that I will complain about (because you all know that I <3 my job), but one is this: on Friday afternoons it is impossible to get a cup of coffee. The bookstore closes at 1, and today even the cafeteria had stopped serving food + beverages by the time I got down there. They do have a coffee vending machine but I just can’t pay money for that stuff. Bah. So I guess I felt entitled to the extra caffeine tonight, too.

This was a pretty good week. Yesterday a student came into the library specifically asking for me! And I was able to help her, and she was grateful! (I’m a sucker for appreciative students, what can I say.) I was pretty good at keeping resolutions this week, too, though I did think of about 5 more work-related things that I could add to my list. But I didn’t add them! (yet) And maybe I won’t!

I got a fair amount of work done on my research day, too, though 2 article ideas are still muddled. I’m thinking that I might need to blag about them to try and iron them out. I’ve never really wanted to blag about library stuff here, but lately I am mulling it over and I don’t know where else I would do it so you might have to suffer through it at some point. I can barely keep up with this blag so I’m certainly not starting another.

And then there’s the tenure thing…should I be spending creative time writing something that will not “count” for tenure? I tend to be of the opinion that any writing is good writing, but it’s hard to keep nagging tenure concerns out of the back of my head. Of course, by the time I come up for tenure it’ll be 2015 and we’ll all have wearable computers with instant peer-review and flying cars, so I probably shouldn’t sweat it now.

Maybe I should try to wrangle an invite to join a group library blag somewhere. The academic library association has a blag and they put out a call for first year academic librarian blaggers last summer, but I decided not to apply because I was worried about the workload. But now I’m thinking that I should have because it looks like each one only writes about one post/month, if that. And I could totally manage that.

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