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.

we’re called pipas, the pipas show

maura @ 8:36 pm

It has been brought to my attention that yesterday’s post was a little sad sack. Sorry! I didn’t mean for it to sound like all my childhood summers were lame.

Due to my advanced age I can’t remember exactly what we did the summer after my first grade. But my sibs were toddler-n-infant-aged at that point and the house we lived in had a freakishly giant yard, so I probably did spend a fair amount of time playing outside.

One thing we used to do every summer is spend some time at the shore. My dad’s aunt lived in Ventnor, NJ (buy Atlantic Avenue and Marvin Gardens for the monopoly!) year-round. Visiting Aunt Peggy was always a good time. Often my slightly older cousins were there, too, and it was fun to raise a ruckus with them.

Aunt Peggy had a big old house with an awesome attic crammed with all kinds of stuff. She did not care one whit if we kids went up there and rummaged around, so rummage we did. I think I scored some nice stuff from the attic when I was older for a dollhouse* I built on the shelves of my bedroom closet.

* Jonathan wants me to add something about my using board game pieces with a flat base and tall pointy part as lamps, with toothpaste caps as lampshades, in my dollhouse, because I am still so totally impressed with my childhood self for inventing it**. So now I have!

** N.B. I don’t actually think I invented this — it just seems too obvious. But a quick Googling hasn’t found any images, so I can’t show you how obvious it is. Sorry!

She also had a garage stuffed with bikes, hula hoops, jump ropes, and more sand toys than you’ve ever seen. The weirdest was this funky tricycle with no handlebars. Kind of unicycle-ish, except it was more about balancing left to right than up and down and left and right. Man, did I ever feel like hot doody when I learned to ride the no-hands trike, seriously!

they don’t call us the marine girls, no

maura @ 9:52 pm

Yesterday was sort of a grumpy day. I’ve been rocking this head cold since the weekend, lots of drippy nose + sinus pain. Probably we shouldn’t have gone to Ikea on Saturday, but I needed (and got!) a chair and it was really cold and I felt too sick to ice skate (the original plan).

Wait, where was I? Oh yes, complaining. So yesterday morning it probably was not the best idea to stand outside in below freezing temperatures trying to sign Gus up for science camp. But that’s what I did. I got there 1/2 hour early and was #92 in line.

Yes, 92!!! And no, Gus did not get a spot. Apparently people at the beginning of the line had gotten there over an hour early (maybe even close to 2 hours early? though that could be a rumor). Between our normal morning routine and my illness I don’t think it would have even been possible for me to get out there that early. I kind of feel like it was a totally silly thing to do, to stand around all morning trying to score a spot at science camp. I guess I would have felt differently if I had managed to get Gus in.

I do feel a little sad, because the kid did love love LOVE science camp last summer. But it’s not like the alternative is bad: his other camp has swimming, the beach, field trips, the park, gymnastics, horseback riding, and loads of other camptastic goodness. I personally can’t remember anything from the summer I was 6 1/2 other than being pushed out the back door into the yard every morning, so I think he’s got it pretty good.

After the camp fiasco I went into the city for lunch with a friend, a trip which included a lovely subway over the Manhattan Bridge, treating me to vistas that I do sometimes miss. So the day got better.

speedweek

maura @ 9:10 pm

Woah, is it Friday already? How did that happen? I’ve had one of those weeks where things started in low then they started to grow.* In fact, I can’t even remember what happened this week. But I think it was all good things: talking about the library meetings last weekend, thinking about volunteering for a library association committee, getting close to finishing a big project at work, and using my day off to clean the whole house, which sorely needed it.

* I got How the Grinch Stole Christmas (DVD) for xmas. Yes, that’s right, not Gus, ME. Because it’s a good video! And now Gus understands why we read the book with Boris Karloff voices.

Maybe I’ve got subway lag. This morning I went to an interesting panel discussion on privacy + libraries. It was waaaaaay up in the top of the Bronx, a lovely campus and a nice subway ride (with some beautiful mosaics in the station). If a LONG subway ride — 90 min. each way.

As one of my rules in this whole job hunting adventure I’ve set myself a one hr. each way commuting maximum, public transit only (boo car!). Which is kind of a drag, because there are some good college libraries out there beyond that limit. On the other hand, it is frankly draining to commute for 90 minutes, even if you are lucky enough to get a seat fairly early on in the process.

On the third hand, it’s really cool to be able to take the subway to such faraway places. Not every day, but sometimes. I’ve yet to accomplish my transit geek goal of riding the A train from end to end (longest route in the system). But I did amaze + impress Gus today when I told him that I took the train almost to the end of the line in the Bronx! Six year olds, they are so simple.

you got 8 points when you broke my heart

maura @ 9:16 pm

Last weekend we here at team mauraweb! decamped to parts south. The boys hung out with my mom while I headed into Philadelphia for the American Library Association meetings. Over 10,000 library nerds in one place! It was pretty cool.

The meetings are enormously huge, much bigger than any of the anthropology or archaeology conferences I went to in my former life. I met up with some library school and work friends which was a nice balance between lurking in the back of the room at sessions in Anonymous New Librarian persona. Some of the discussions and programs were really excellent, totally right on, and I do feel more connected + inspired than before (if still pretty exhausted).

It’s always wonderful + sad to go to Philadelphia. We lived in + around there until I was 12, so I have a strange childhood memory map of it in my head from before buildings could be taller than city hall. In high school when we lived in Delaware my friends + I drove up to hang out in a real city as often as we could, and it was strange + heartwarming to hear the advice to “go to South Street for funky alternatives” given in the new members meeting.

I love trains, and the train ride into Center City was excellent. There is some fantastic graffiti along the walls + abandoned warehouses in North Philly. The city makes me sad, too — it’s having some hard times, increasing crime + poverty. But I think I saw a big community garden behind some houses near the train tracks, with compost bins and picnic tables and barbecues too, which cheered me up.

I wish I’d had more time to walk around the city, but after a whirlwind 1.5 day tour of the convention center and surrounding hotels it was time to go home. I missed the boys, anyway (even though they had ice cream BEFORE lunch so they clearly didn’t miss me!).

n is for the new wave dreams

maura @ 8:58 pm

I quit the gym today. Well, okay, almost. I mean, I tried to quit the gym but the person that handles membership transfers wasn’t there even though I had called earlier and they said I could come anytime. Grrr…

So I’ll be quitting the gym tomorrow. I’m a little sad, but what with my busy high fashion model adjunct schedule recently I haven’t had time to go as often as I really feel like I should be going, given the cost of the membership. While I do take Gus swimming there on the weekends sometimes, it probably only works out to about once every 3 months or so. And the water there is so completely hellishly cold — I’m sure we could find another pool in Brooklyn for the occasional non-Arctic swim.

Now I need to find some sort of gym substitute. I have some hand weights from a pre-Gus fitness jag, so I can use those a coupla times a week. And maybe I will finally buy that bike I’ve been jonesing for. Though winter is hardly the best time for getting into biking. Though #2 it was over 60 degrees today, where the hell is my winter, Al Gore?

We also have a small area of donated exercise equipment in the basement of our building which I could conceivably use a few mornings/week. But really what I should be doing is trying to work more exercise into my daily life. Maybe walk one stop further down the subway before getting on in the morning? Taking a lunch break walk couldn’t hurt, either.

This morning I took my farewell tour of the gym. While on the rowing machine I came up with a wonderful solution to the whole gyms suck up electricity for no good reason problem. People are pushing and pulling and running and moving all of those machines: can’t they all be used as generators? Then the gym could make electricity, and either store up the excess or sell it back to ConEd or something.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to have thought of this. And of course generator exercise machines would probably be more expensive than the normal ones. But doesn’t it sound like a lovely solution?

you are the color and you are the number

maura @ 4:09 pm

I am becoming more and more incapable of throwing anything into the trash. Not that I’m hoarding things, merely that I hate hate HATE putting something into the garbage bin because I know that’s a one-way trip to the landfill and I cannot abide it.

Usually this isn’t too much of a lifestyle cramp. We have a garbage disposal, and everything plant-based that doesn’t go in there goes into the compost barrel in the courtyard. The city has a pretty kickass recycling program which takes care of paper, glass, metal and some plastic. We can recycle much of the rest of the plastic in our lives at the food coop, which is a little bit of a pain but happily they recently extended the collection hours. Electronics go to the electronics recycling events held every month or so by the Lower East Side Ecology Center. Usable clothing/linens we’re not wearing/using go to the Goodwill. Also, for the next couple months there’s a textile recycling table at the farmer’s market near us for all the unusable stuff which I am completely excited about! Everything else gets sold on ebay or at our annual stoop sale or freecycled. Yes, I am a recycling nerd.

The problem is the items made of multiple materials. To wit: today’s struggle with the xmas wreath. I am thinking of writing a letter to LL Bean, which will go something like this:

Dear LL Bean,

Thank you for making such a beautiful holiday wreath. It brought lovely smells and holiday cheer to our house around Christmas.

However, I wonder if you would consider making a wreath solely out of compostable organic materials? Today I spent an enormous amount of time and effort trying to separate the compostable parts of the wreath from the reusable/recyclable parts. I was able to pry the greenery from its metal frame, but was unable to free the pine cones from the wire that held them to the jingle bells and Christmas balls. I hate the thought of sending pine cones to a landfill when they could be composted, and the Christmas decorations reused.

Please give it some thought.
Yours truly,
Stinky Hippie

it’s all true

maura @ 10:04 pm

Today we went to the AMNH because Gus wanted to see scorpions because my mom gave him a scorpion encased in lucite. We didn’t end up seeing any, though, which was fine, really, because Jonathan showed him a bunch of small animals fighting scorpions videos on YouTube.

We did see the Mythical Creatures exhibit one last time (it closes on Sunday), and then we used our complementary tickets to the space show that we’ve had for a year (since getting a membership) that expire in 3 weeks (how last minute of us!).

The space show was pretty cool — all about stuff colliding in space, the creation of the moon, the dinosaur-killing asteroid, etc. Very pretty and only a little scary-loud. Afterwards we were all spaced up so we bypassed the possibility of scorpions in the Hall of Biodiversity and went straight down to the Rose Center for Earth and Space. Did you know that Gus would weigh 15 pounds on Mars?

There are lots of black holes in Super Mario Galaxy so when we walked by a small room showing a video about black holes of course we had to go in. I hadn’t even known this room existed! It’s all tucked away in a corner, next to a gorgeous photo of the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula taken by the Hubble.

I don’t know, I mean, I really do believe in Science, but somehow I find the concept of a black hole to be kind of weak. Oh, you can’t see it, but it’s there, really! It’s just SO dark! Because it’s so heavy and everything is collapsing into it!

Somehow during the course of the video Jonathan and I started imagining Will Arnett doing the narration using a total Gob voice. Just thinking of him saying phrases like “singularity,” “event horizon,” and “accretion zone” made me giggle out loud. I kept laughing all the way home, and am still laughing now. Go ahead, try it!