people never read the airwaves

maura @ 9:00 pm

What did you do last weekend? We had a busy and fun weekend that sort of arose out of nowhere.

On Saturday Jonathan went to the food coop in the morning while Gus played video games and I read the extra sections of the week’s paper (arts, science, dining, style, travel). Then we grew a wild hair and decided to go to Ikea. We hadn’t been to Ikea in forever and, because after all that winter cleaning I up and sold off many of our belongings a few weeks ago, we really needed a lamp. So off we went.

Because it took us so long to get through &$*#$ Manhattan, when we got there we were really hungry, so we started at the cafe. Mmmm, meatballs, gravlax, and a chocolaty toffee tarty thing. So tasty we each had our own dessert, which practically never happens.

Then Gus was jonesing for some time in the ball room, so we let him go in even though he’d eaten mere minutes before. It didn’t seem like that great of an idea, but we were free for 30 whole minutes so we headed down to the lighting area to get with the lamping.

We ended up getting this crazy embroidered lampshade. I had to be talked into it but now I am glad I agreed because I too have come to love it! It is not nearly as grandma as I thought it would be. There’s a wacky little bird embroidered on it too that you can’t see in the picture. Not bad for $25!

After we went up to spring Gus from the ballroom (he didn’t want to go and had to be near forcibly removed) we took a tour of the showroom. Gus loves trying out all the sofas, chairs, and beds; opening drawers (it’s so nice to have someplace other than our house for him to do this!); and playing in the spinny egg chair in the kids section that we are too cheap to buy him.

At one point Gus was asking how much various things cost. Jonathan said “this is a store, everything here costs money.” Gus indignantly replied, “Ikea is NOT a store!” Ah, consumerism-as-leisure claims another victim.

Sunday we went to the AMNH and finally got a family membership. After lunch Gus ate an absolutely DISGUSTING dessert of windex blue jello topped with whipped cream and a yellow gummy octopus. I had to look away and think happy thoughts, it grossed me out so much.

We watched the Big Bang movie twice, and now I have soothing blissy techno + Maya Angelou’s voice in my head (which strangely keeps morphing into that Thomas Dolby song “Airwaves”). Of course that set off 1001 questions about the Big Bang all the way home on the subway. What color was the Big Bang? What did it sound like? And, the kicker, Why did the Big Bang happen? Finally he fell asleep on the A train. All that jello really wears a kid out.

popp & co

maura @ 8:22 pm

Things I Learned This Week:

1. Registration for summer camp begins in January! Even though camp doesn’t actually start until July!! Oh, our head was in the sand with that whole year-round preschool thang.

2. Changing into pj pants or something else stretchy before starting to meditate is a good idea, otherwise you will spend the whole time shifting and resettling so your legs don’t fall asleep, which kind of misses the point of meditating in the first place.

3. Bringing a book to read to Gus on the ride home from school on the B71 makes the trip go much more smoothly. And looking out the window occasionally helps keep my reading-inspired bus-sickness under control.

4. Don’t go to the gym the morning of the day you have class from 6:30-9pm. That day is just too long.

5. There’s an enormous printing press underneath the General Assembly room in the UN! Apparently they are not allowed to print their publications + documents on U.S. soil, so they do all their own printing in the building. (that one’s courtesy of my International Documents professor)

spending time, away from everything

maura @ 9:02 pm

Today was a busy day — took Gus to school plus some internship time plus my first class of the semester — so I’m starting the week off behind on the newspaper already. Sigh.

Thus, in belated news, I’ve decided that there are just not enough Democratic presidential candidates, so I’d like to announce that I am entering the race! And also, Colorado is STILL HOGGING ALL THE SNOW.

Ahem.

So today I realized that I just need to accept the fact that while school is in session I will not have the time to read everything I want to read. Here’s my list of reading goals:

1. class reading
2. the paper
3. New Yorker and Entertainment Weekly (the latter is easy, takes about 20 minutes/week)
4. misc. library journals (hard copy, like the College & Research Libraries journals, LJ, etc.)
5. library news online/blogs
6. something fiction (except that the damn Calamity Physics book is STILL not in for me at the library!)
7. something nonfiction (still working on A Little History of the World)
8. something good for me (Strunk & White, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen, etc.) (also sometimes 7 and 8 are the same book)

1-3 I can do. 4 is where things start to get more iffy: maybe I will carry an issue of American Libraries around in my bag for a few weeks ’til it’s good + wrinkly before I get a chance to read it.

5, oh 5, I have been trying with 5, but have I mentioned that librarians write A LOT? Realistically I am keeping up with the Library Link of the Day, because it comes right to my inbox every morning. And then once every couple of weeks I have a binge of a few hours or so.

6-8 are but a dream right now. But I’ve been thinking that I need to carve out some time for them, esp. 6. Gus could use a new chapter book, too (we had to reject The Wind in the Willows for now because the language is too archaic), so maybe I will drag him to the library someday after school this week.

oh how i cannot bear the thought of you

maura @ 9:41 pm

After a long and busy day spent driving around in the damn car I’ve come to some conclusions. The real issue with the car is that it often embodies two sides of an obsession of mine: efficiency.

Public transportation is good (among other reasons) because it’s (usually) relaxing time that I can use to read, think, write (albeit slowly on the visor), even snooze a bit. Time in the car is stressful (traffic, paying attention, trying to park) and it is not even useful for one single thing*, it’s just gone.

* Except singing along to New Order or Allen Clapp. But I could probably do that at home too.

But, often driving saves time**. Take today, for instance. I probably would have spent nearly twice as much time running around using subways and buses than I did with the car. Which was actually the reason I took the car in the first place — I didn’t have the time to spare.

** Though not as often as you’d think, because parking can be evil.

But #2, is 2x time that I can do something useful worth taking public transit over driving?

Today it was sleeting by the time I got Gus from school, adding another variable to the equation. And I fully concede that waiting for the bus in front of the bakery (“I want a cookie! I want a cookie! I want a cookie!”) in the sleet would have sucked. And I got lucky and found parking right on our block.

But #3, I feel like an evil fossil fuel consumer when I use the car. And I get stressed out thinking about possible parking pitfalls. So there’s the mental cost of driving.

But #4, sometimes it also stresses me out to think that it can take nearly an hour on public transportation to go six (6!) miles. How can that be?

So, I guess it’s a draw.

look cheerful

maura @ 7:34 pm

I’m sure the whole interweb has seen this hi-larious site by now, but what the hell, I’m behind the times because I’m a parent.

Test: The Joys of Parenthood

yoy should bring long tim in someday

maura @ 1:29 pm

One thing that has come of all the cleaning out and getting rid of stuff around here is full disclosure of the depths of our packrattery. Jonathan thinks it sounds like I’m bragging when I say this, but we are lucky enough to have really great closets in our apartment. Add to that the fact that we have not moved in over 7 yrs and you wind up with yesterday’s discovery: a box* for a phone that we no longer own, having upgraded to a new model who knows how many years ago (but less than 7).

* Are we the only freaks who keep all the packaging from computers, phones, appliances, stereo components, etc.? Mostly this is a holdover from all the moving we used to do, though sometimes it comes in handy if we want to eBay old stuff.

Also, the things we can shred! So many things. So many old documents, why do we still have them, why? Our poor shredder has seen much action recently. Shredding is a seriously boring time suck. I was wishing we could get Gus to do it, I know he’d love to shred. But I’m pretty sure that it’s illegal to make your 5 yr old use the shredder. What we need around here is a Kevin.

diary of a hopeless nerd

maura @ 8:30 pm

I am officially really really ready for the semester to start. I’ve done a fair amount of good work during intersession, things that had been languishing on the to-do lists for ages. Including making a huge dent in cleaning out and getting rid of stuff from our closets and basement storage. And I tried to go ice skating (AGAIN) and was denied (AGAIN). And I went clothes shopping. And had lunch with a friend in Manhattan. And wrote the xmas thank you notes.

But now I am ready to get back to the libraries. How ready? Yesterday I finished my backlog of American Libraries and CRL News, and today I read library blogs + websites for two hours. This semester I am taking 2 classes and have 2 internships at university libraries. I’ll be busy, but everything looks to be interesting and fun.

Weirdly, though school starts next week my schedule is such that my first class is the 22nd. But the internships will kick in next week, thankfully.

please don’t let me hit the ground

maura @ 4:50 pm

I am kind of on the clumsy side, but today was a banner day even for me. First I dropped a 10 lb. weight on my toe at the gym. Luckily I only hit the very edge of my toe with the very edge of the weight, so I’ve just got a bruised, sore toe rather than a bruised, sore, and broken toe. Lesson learned: don’t put on hand lotion before going to the gym. Also, pay more attention, even if it is a rainy Monday morning and you are tired!

Then I cut my hand just a very tiny small wee little bit on a can that I was rinsing for recycling. Jonathan got all freaked out when he heard about this one: “Did you clean it? Did you put neosporin on it? Cans are really nasty and dirty! All wounds from here on out need to be cleared with the Council of Fussing and Fretting. That’s CoFF!”

He did NOT say “you can blag that,” which has been his standard response lately whenever he says something funny. But I thought I’d blag about it anyway, so there you go.

And just so YOU don’t worry about me, I actually had a tetanus shot last summer at my annual physical. My GP had gotten in a batch of new combined pertussis/tetanus boosters and asked if I wanted one. And because I am not a fan of infectious diseases I said hell yeah. So I’m good.

what is this, a freak out?

maura @ 8:49 pm

A few weeks ago I read that book Everything Bad Is Good For You. You know the one: its subtitle is “How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter”. I’d heard about it last year and resisted reading it because I figured it wouldn’t tell me anything I didn’t already implicitly know and agree with.* But a few weeks ago Jonathan brought it home from the library and it taunted me with its saucy red cover and its can-be-read-in-three-days-ness so I had to read it.

* Sometimes I think that I am just surrounding myself with people/places/ideas that are exactly like the ones I already have. And sometimes I think that I shouldn’t do that anymore, and I should branch out more into the realm of stuff I may not altogether agree with. And sometimes I even do it.

Yeah, I liked it. I mean, one of the goals of the book seems to be to make people feel good about the amount of time they spend watching TV and playing video games (watching movies, too, but less so). So of course anyone who does any of those things would be all “hell, yeah, I’m getting smarter with each episode of BSG, pass the cheetos!”

What really tickled me/was interesting is that one of the video games he uses to make his point is Wind Waker, the very game that Gus adores. And it’s made me think even more on the fact that Gus has continued to play this game even though we won it 2 months ago. It is a really huge and rich environment. The world is a grid of 49 islands that you sail between, and has about a zillion side quests (that we didn’t do when we were “winning” the game). So thus far there are still lots of new things for Gus (and us, still, if it gets too hard) to do. He’s definitely learned and memorized a lot about the game, much more than we have.

Anyway, I don’t know where I’m going with this. Maybe I’m just trying to make myself feel better that this afternoon when he said, “I don’t want to ride my bike anymore, I just want to play video games,” we went home and played video games. But when he grows up to be a genius THEN you’ll see! Yeah!

i want a bean feast

maura @ 10:48 am

One pleasant side effect of all that healthy eating we’ve been trying to do for the past decade (cheese, except at parties!) as well as joining a gym 2 yrs ago is that I’ve lost all the Gus baby weight and then some. I weigh less than I have in 15 yrs at least, and I’m generally pretty happy about it.

Except that now I really, really, really have to go clothes shopping. I mostly do not like any shopping, and I definitely HATE clothes shopping. All that trying stuff on takes so much time and effort, and I’m not always good at picking things that flatter me. Jonathan is better at it than I am, but who has the time for us BOTH to go shopping at once? I wish I could buy things online but since sizes are always so variable it’s too risky.

But my wardrobe is in painful need of some updating. For the past 5 (!) yrs I’ve only worked in an office 2 days/week. But this semester I have three days of internship per week, and dammit, I’d like to be able to wear a different pair of pants for each of those days.

So my New Year’s resolution is to stop buying unflattering clothing! And before the semester starts I will spend some time shopping for some grown-up clothes that fit and look nice. Would that we were flush with cash I would splurge on this incredibly fun skirt, though it’s not really work-friendly. Friendly critters!