three things about today

maura @ 7:50 pm

1. Today is St. Patrick’s Day and I accidentally wore green. Usually I don’t — green is my favorite color so I wear it lots of other days, and also since I am 15/16ths of Irish descent I figure is it really necessary? Except that today I forgot about the date and picked a green blouse primarily because it’s short-sleeved and it’s been 100 million degrees at work recently and I had a class which meant I’d be pacing and waving my arms around for 75 minutes. And then I got to work and remembered and thought: doh.

2. When we got the kittens last Memorial Day they were about 2 1/2 months old, so we arbitrarily decided that March 17th is their birthday. Happy Birthday cats! They are still mostly bundles of fun, except when they chew electrical cords and eat Gus’s lima bean plant and scratch my record jackets (which I noticed this morning and which MUST STOP).

A couple of weekends ago we went to a giant pet store to get them some new toys. The best is a long feather on a stick that is very serpentine when wiggled. There’s also a small blue mousey thing with catnip that has already inspired growling and dirty looks. Rock on.

One of the toys came on this helpfully labeled card:

Duh.

3. Today is also the birthday of my job. Happy Birthday, job! The past year has gone by almost in an instant. And I still love it. Definitely worth the investment in tuition to library school. Go, nerds!

yes, alright, i can, with sunburned lips

maura @ 10:37 pm

Where I’m not:

1. Throwing Muses/50 Foot Wave, Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY

Yeah, so it turns out that I was kind of lying when I said I wasn’t all that disappointed not to be going to this show. Of course, it doesn’t help that I’ve had the 50 Foot Wave records on repeat this whole week. I’d listened to them a bit a while ago but hadn’t much recently and holy crap they are amazing. Much harder than Kristin Hersh’s solo stuff, and even harder than much Throwing Muses, but in a wall-of-driving-guitar-and-drums way rather than an intricately-woven-guitar-and-drums way. I like it. Which makes me even more mopey because 50 Foot Wave don’t play out much and I’ve never seen them live, bah.

But it *is* late, and I’m already exhausted. For whatever reason Spring Forward is really kicking my butt this year. Maybe it’s the morning darkness, but this has been a long week. Who’s idea was it to move the time change up to March, anyway?

2. ACRL National Conference, Seattle, WA

Yes, the biannual library nerd-a-thon! It’s far away and expensive and inconveniently right in the middle of our semester, so I decided not to go. CUNY follows the public school holidays which means that our spring break is in April, not now like everywhere else. (Which I don’t hate at all, actually, since it makes childcare easier.) Also I thought that this would be a really busy week for instruction in our library.

But it turns out that we don’t have that many classes this week (we’ve scheduled most for after midterms, in a week or so). And I’ve been thinking a lot of research thoughts recently and really jonesing for an academic conference. Yes, had you any doubt about the depth of my nerdiness, I’m pretty sure I just dispelled it.

So I am using twitter to follow the conference. I guess living vicariously isn’t so bad. And it is much, much cheaper.

i strap on my ear goggles and i’m ready to go

maura @ 9:04 pm

1. My son, the poet

Recently for homework Gus had to choose a fruit, eat it, and write a few descriptive sentences about it in his homework notebook. Here’s what he wrote:

Shiny as a ruby pond, this fruit holds the stars.
Once bitten, it clangs as a ruby, oozing a texture of sweet, ripe juice.

Can you guess what fruit he was eating?*

2. My son, the rapper

I have a new computer! If you want to be amazed by advances in computing technology I highly recommend waiting nearly 7 yrs between machines. This one is very, very fast.

One night last week Jonathan asked me to test out Mac MAME on the new machine. You know, the app that plays all of those old ROMs from video games of the ’80s. Scrolling through the list I picked Burger Time (somewhat at random: there was a whole mess of Atari sports games and this was the first thing my eye caught after them). I played for a few minutes, then Gus came in and was instantly enthralled. It’s kind of a classic dumb ’80s game, but also it’s quite amusing to walk the little chef guy over the patties while the hot dogs and eggs chase him.

Gus wanted to play next, so we set him up and away he went. He’s apparently internalized Jonathan’s constant, low-level, semi-silly rhyming,** because in the midst of playing he busted out with this rap:

Eggs and hot dogs, on my tail
I think I want some, ginger ale

There may have been more to it, but I was laughing too hard to remember.

* raspberries, of course!

** I should talk — the other day I came up with a rap about IRB. Maybe I will share it someday (after I get IRB approval for my research project, of course!).

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).

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.

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?

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.

i’ll write you a postcard i’ll send you the news

maura @ 9:38 pm

It’s the last day of January, so it’s time to get those Groundhog’s Day Eve resolutions in. What’s that you say? You’ve never heard of Groundhog’s Day Eve resolutions?!! You must be one of those organized do-gooder types that make New Year’s resolutions, harrumph.

Yeah, so I couldn’t get it together to do the resolutions thing in January. I mean, I made them, but I didn’t really stick to them. So in the spirit of Bill Murray I am giving myself another chance. And I’m posting them here, too, so I will a) remember them, and b) feel some small amount of public shame when I think about slacking on them. Let’s see if it works.

1. Be more realistic.
Kind of an overarching goal. I tend to make a huge list of things that no human could possibly accomplish within the unreasonable timeframe I’ve set, then get mad at myself for not finishing them. Watch me practice this resolution with the very list of resolutions I’m creating!

2. Get control of my infostreams.
I’ve had marginal success with this one, actually. I moved all my feeds into google reader, and I’ve been able to get most of the NY Times scanned each morning (tho sometimes the Science Times has to wait til after work). But there are 126 unread items in my google reader right now so obviously this one still needs work.

3. Start meditating again.
For some reason that I can’t quite fathom I stopped meditating about a year ago. Which was dumb, because it helped me sleep better and was great for dealing with stress, too. So I need to get back to that.

4. Floss in the mornings (as well as at night).
This is a little thing that always feels like a big thing but really is the right thing so I should just do it!

5. Find some sort of volunteery thing to do with Gus.
There was an article in the Times about family volunteering a couple of years ago. It’s been on my mind for a while, and I think this is the year to do it.

6. Carve out more time for reading + writing.
Blag, journal + even maybe some other casual writing (maybe even about libraries). And try to start making a dent in my 100+ book reading list.

Okay, in the spirit of #1 it’s probably time to stop now. We have a movie to finish before I have to meditate!

i dropped the ice pick

maura @ 11:57 am

Last Monday both Gus + I were off school/work for MLK Day, so we headed up to the Met to meet a friend of mine + her kids. Arms & Armor, mummies and chicken nuggets in a taxi-shaped box: what could be better for a snowy Monday? We spent a long time hanging out at the Temple of Dendur. It was late in the day so everyone was kind of tired, and the snow was falling in that slow magical way (in which it almost seems to be snowing up), so we sat down and gawked for a while.

There’s a small sphinx sculpture right next to the reconstructed temple, and it didn’t take long for Gus + my friend’s son to start asking questions about it. What is it? Why is it half-person half-lion? And so on. I made the mistake of mentioning something about the Riddle of the Sphinx* and suddenly that was all they could think of. What was the riddle? What happened to people who couldn’t answer? Why did the Sphinx ask a riddle? What was the answer?

After a few minutes of trying to pull the half-remembered shreds of my 9th-grade Bible, Myth and Epic class out of my head it became clear that the kids weren’t going to give it up. Usually when I don’t know the answer to something I tell Gus that we will look it up on the interwebs later, but then I remembered that I have the whole internets in my pocket. Iphone to the rescue! I fired up the Wikipedia entry for the Sphinx and suddenly all of their questions were answered (especially the gory ones).

(EDITED TO ADD [can’t believe I forgot to mention this!]:) So apparently this incident convinced Gus that the answer to every question is always available via the iphone. The next morning he asked me how many gallons of water a swimming pool holds, and when I answered that I didn’t know he came back with, “look it up in your phone, Mommy!”

I feel like I’ve done a lot of incidental evangelizing for the iphone lately, esp. the ubiquitous interwebs and the ability to carry lots of books around features. All of which is making me think that I need to read Rainbows End again. If only the iphone could extend time, I’d be all set.

* Q: What goes on 4 legs in the morning, 2 legs at noon, and 3 legs in the evening?
A: (Hu)man(s) — we crawl as babies, walk as adults, and need canes when we’re elderly.

still listening to wax, i’m not using the cd

maura @ 10:00 pm

Last week we got a new TV. I know what you’re thinking: hey, anti-consumption hippie girl, what’s with the big purchases?! Of course there’s no real excuse. Our old TV works just fine. We almost decided to keep it, actually, even despite the HDTV change next month. We tend to watch most of our TV on the computers, so the real idiot box is typically used for video games and DVD watching.

BUT, our old TV is REALLY old, like 16 yrs old or so. It could get a driver’s license if it didn’t live in New York City! And it’s kind of broken — many of the buttons have been pushed in (though the remote still works). And a huge energy user. And of course it’s not HDTV-ready, either.

Once we agreed to get a new TV, the family technical specialist suggested that maybe this was a good time to jettison some of our other old, semi-functional audio/visual equipment. My ol’ reliable receiver, a college graduation gift from my dad, actually completely functional (if a giant power suck). The DVD player (a few broken buttons) and the 5-CD player (doesn’t play CD-R or MP3 files, sometimes acts wonky). My old turntable needs a new belt, and I got a USB turntable for Xmas anyway.

Okay, the speakers are perfectly fine. And I will miss them. But apparently we can run everything through the TV: new DVD player (plays CDs, CD-Rs and MP3s), old VCR, my USB turntable, and our 4 (ahem) video game consoles. Well, probably only the Wii and the PS2 will be hooked up full time; we don’t play the N64 and Dreamcast often. Lots of space (and power) saved, w00t!

It’s still kind of freaking me out to think of listening to music through the TV, but I suppose I’ll get over it. I haven’t even had the chance to hook the turntable up yet. One of my resolutions is to try and find more time for music, which I miss (subscription to the indiepop-list notwithstanding), and which seems to have slipped out of my life so gradually that I can’t even figure out exactly how it happened. Hopefully this new setup will be the kick in the pants I need.