as turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be

maura @ 8:24 pm

Today at my internship I spent some time on the reference desk. I generally enjoy the reference desk — while there are lots of standard directional questions there are also a fair number of interesting inquiries. This morning a student who’s a non-native English speaker asked for help searching the library catalog to research a paper topic. It was such a great interaction, altogether. She asked for help in several bursts and then did some of the research herself (which is so much more satisfying than when they want you to do it all for them). And it was interesting helping to draw out and shape her topic, especially figuring out the best terms to use for the subject searches. The controlled vocabularies ($0.10 for the library science term!) used in library catalogs are often not the way people actually talk and think these days (e.g. cookbooks are given the subject heading “cookery”).

It’s also so interesting to see how the real librarians interact with patrons. Some do the computer work for them, some proffer instructions and the mouse so the patron can do the work. Some go quickly, without narrating their actions, some go slowly and point out each step of the process. Gives me lots to think on re: my own librarian kung fu.

Bah, this all was so much more exciting when it was happening to me. The bloggy mojo just isn’t with me tonight.

it makes me wonder where we’ll be tomorrow

maura @ 1:26 pm

I still have 20 minutes left before I have to go back to do lunch at Gus’ school, and I really *should* be doing schoolwork. But after going for a while at a good clip I suddenly got all squirrely and started thinking about jobs and moving. In about 3 weeks I’ll be halfway finished with my MLS, which means I will probably be heading out on the job market come next May. Just like with other academic jobs, I’ve heard it’ll likely take longer to find a position if I’m not willing to relocate.

I LOVE where we live. I love our building, neighborhood, borough, and city. I could write pages and pages about all the things I love. I also hate moving. Hated it even before we had Gus, and now just thinking about it makes my blood run cold (I think we would just have to ship him out for the whole process, seriously).

Then why is my brain spinning these possible job relocation scenarios lately? I’m not sure. You could probably blame it on the blogs. The other day I stumbled upon one from a librarian at a small college in New England and her situation sounded lovely. A lot of nature and a fast + easy commute to her job (which of course she loves).

I know the pros and cons of it all. Of course there’s no perfect situation. If we gain a house (more space for less money), we lose time (more to clean and maintain). If we gain more nature (fewer people), we lose diversity (and all the incredible food experiences we have here). If we gain a 5 minute commute by car, we lose the subway (which Gus loves) and are chained to the car, to boot.

And of course if we moved we’d lose the people, all of our friends and Gus’ friends that we’ve made in the past 7 yrs and before. As the only extravert in the family I can definitely say that would be hard, hard, hard.

Like many things I’m not sure where this is going, but now it’s time for me to go so that’s all for now.

day 20: we eat the dogs

maura @ 5:07 pm

Of course I’m not REALLY eating dogs. It’s just that here, on day 20 of NaBloPoMo, I’m feeling a little creative drought. I have a big (well, okay, small) list of topics I could be writing about, but don’t feel much like it. Maybe I’m still in recovery from all that driving yesterday. My head feels full of molasses, like I could fall asleep any minute now.

[I wrote that on my visor on the subway on the way to pick Gus up from school this afternoon.]

Now it is nearly dinnertime and I still don’t have much to say. And I’m feeling oppressed by the chores and other stuff I have to do. So I have to go fold some laundry now. See you tomorrow.

too much driving

maura @ 8:17 pm

Drove 2 hrs to my mom’s last night. Then 1 hr to my sister’s this morning. Then 1/2 hr to the church for my nephew’s christening. Then 1/2 hr back. Then stuffed cheese, crackers + cake into Gus and ran him around the back yard with the cousins. Then I succeeded in rocking my nephew to sleep (why did that never work with Gus?). Then drove 3 hrs home, punctuated by 1 gnarly fast food dinner (ugh) and 1 bigass truck trying to run us off the road. Now it is late and we are trying to get Gus to sleep, because of course he fell asleep in the car.

Happy Sunday.

that’s my cue

maura @ 2:10 pm

This morning while I was at class Gus got a haircut. Quite a few, actually (har). It’s a very nice haircut, though like most of his haircuts it makes him look older, which is surprising until you get used to it.

I miss his long hair in some ways. He had a sort of John-Paul-George-and-Ringo thing going on, which was especially cute when he shook his head back and forth crazily. On the down side, he was starting to complain that he couldn’t see. And we all know what happened to the well-meaning parents who thought “let’s just give trim the bangs.” THEIR son ended up with a mullet. Don’t let that happen to you!

On some level I continue to be shocked that Gus doesn’t have curly hair like I do. But my disappointment is ameliorated by the fact that he has MAGIC hair. It’s true! Gus’ hair never seems to need to be combed or brushed. Even after a washing and going to sleep on wet hair, somehow it is magically straight and neat. I honestly can’t remember the last time we combed it.

I wonder if this means he has other magic powers?

time goes flying by

maura @ 7:39 pm

I don’t know how to knit. A while ago I found myself talking with three friends, all of whom knit in the European style. I hadn’t even known there was a European way to knit that was different from the American way. Then they started speaking German while talking about knitting and I really couldn’t keep up.

Lots of people seem to knit these days. I see them on the subway + bus all the time. If I did knit I probably would not knit in transit; that’s typically when I get to read for pleasure. I’m intrigued by the possibility of knitting while watching TV though — or would stitches be dropped?

Why don’t I knit? That’s a good question. I like to consider myself a crafty gal, and I do know how to sew reasonably well. Plus, my mom knits, as did my grandmother (they taught me how to sew when I was little).

Time is the answer, I think. My mom gave me a knitting book + sock puppet project for xmas a few years back and I still haven’t found the time to give it a whirl. Last year for xmas J’s stepdad gave me some hand-knitted (not by him) socks that are both beautiful and completely comfy, and as winter approaches I think often about how nice it would be if I could knit cozy + colorful socks for our whole family. But there’s just no time.

Bed rest, that’s the solution. I think knitting can be put in the same mental box as putting our photos in albums and editing all the video we’ve taken of Gus over the past almost-5 yrs: something to do if I’m ever on bed rest.

hey! where are you going?

maura @ 4:58 pm

Because I am a supernerd and because I love creating bibliographies and because recently I’ve been formatting the bibliography for a group project required for one of my classes this semester, today you get to read about:

Why I Don’t Like APA Citation Style

In my past life as an archaeologist I had to use the SAA (Society for American Archaeology) citation style. I am nothing if not an obsessive rulesnik when it comes to things like citations, so of course I follow the guidelines religiously. I don’t really remember feeling any particular way about the SAA style, it was just what I used.

But in library science the preferred citation style is APA (American Psychological Association), and for some reason there are several rules that stick in my craw:

1. Continuous Pagination of Journals:

APA requires that a citation specify the volume of a journal but not the number, EXCEPT in the case of non-continuous pagination of the journal, in which the number IS required. So, for example, a journal in which each volume starts with page 1 requires the number in the citation, as opposed to a journal in which volume 1 is pgs. 1-30, volume 2 is pgs. 31-60, etc. This bugs me because it requires that you know whether the journal is continuously paginated which, in this age of electronic resources, can be difficult. I am usually not looking at the entire issue of a journal but rather have downloaded the individual article from a database. (In fact, the one time I’ve tried to get my hands on a print copy of a journal recently it was out for binding. So there you go.)

2. Title Case in Article/Book Titles (or, more accurately, the Lack Thereof):

APA rules dictate that article and book titles have only initial caps, plus an additional capital for a word after a semicolon. There’s no real reason for my dislike of this: I just think it looks dumb. Take a look:

My Incredibly Boring Dissertation: A New Study of Lack of Readership

vs.

My incredibly boring dissertation: A new study of lack of readership

Is it not obvious that the first one is vastly more pleasing to the eyes?

3. Dates:

In an APA citation, the date appears within parentheses followed by a period. Again, I think this looks silly. Plus, it wastes valuable keystrokes! See:

(2006).

vs.

2006.

Two keystrokes saved if I don’t add the parens! Just THINK of what I could do with all that extra time!

4. Author Names:

I have to admit that there is one thing I need to ding SAA for: like APA, their style guide requires that only initials are used for an author’s name. This can make it really hard to track down an article if you’re just reading the bibliography. For people with weird names (like M. A. Smale, for example), that level of specificity might be okay. But how many J. D. Miller’s are there in the world? A ton, that’s how many! It’s an impediment to scholarship, I tell ya!

Phew. Thanks for listening, I’m glad I got that out of my system. Tomorrow we can return to our regularly scheduled slightly-less-nerdy posts. Maybe.

crushed by the wheels of industry

maura @ 8:37 pm

The world* cannot invent a cheap, sturdy, lightweight, ecopowered laptop soon enough. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: quit yer whinin’ cowgirl, at least you have a laptop. But tomorrow I have a meeting in the city and schoolwork to do as ever, so I have to schlepp it all over the place: on the bus to take Gus to school, on the subway into Manhattan, to three locations in the Village, then back to get Gus from school and back on the bus home. Oy.

* or MIT

I have this weird paranoia today that all machines are against me, or at the very least about to gang up on me soon. The car, which has had this occasional, heart-skipping, I’m-not-going-to-start-on-you thing for years now, seems to have kicked it up a notch and came very close to not starting after I picked Gus up from school today. Probably it needs a new battery — the current one is I think 6 yrs old?** Older than Gus, at least. Of course we have no idea where to get us a battery here in ye olde city. The last one was purchased + installed at Sears while we were visiting my family in the wilds of Delawhere.

** more fodder for why we should not even have a car, which I still plan to whine post about someday soon

Then this evening I decided that the freezer was making a weird noise, and the dishwasher changed it’s whiny tone a few weeks ago. And sometimes the washer has a high-pitched buzz. The former appliances are 6 yrs old, the latter, 7-ish. How long do appliances last, anyway? And what is the likelihood that every machine we own will crap out at the same time?

THIS, my friends, is why we should never ever buy a house.

shopping mall disaster #1

maura @ 9:51 pm

It’s Day 14 of NaBloPoMo here, and I have to admit that I’m dragging.

So, even though nobody cares what I had for lunch, that’s just what you’re getting today. I have a paper to write and I just lost the past 20 minutes watching 9 great old punk videos, thanks to Jonathan, my resident You Tuber.

(EDITED TO ADD: Lest you think it is as late as the time stamp says it is, actually it’s an hour earlier, and I just realized I need to change the damn time for Daylight Savings on the Word Press settings, duh.)

(ALSO EDITED TO ADD: Jonathan says, with no small annoyance, that he is not a You Tuber but a Boing Boinger. So there you go.)

Tuesdays I help out with lunch and recess at Gus’ school and by the time I get home around 12:30 I am starving and usually have a headache, because 80 kindergarteners are LOUD. So I’m generally looking to stuff whatever I can down my gullet as quickly as possible. Today I ate:

– some leftover broccoli from dinner last night, cold, with a big dollop of garlic hummus spooned over it and mixed all up

While eating that standing up at the counter, I made myself:

– a salad of mixed greens (the container has a sticker that reads “no spinach!” in both English and French!), cubed roasted beets (cold), some stinky blue cheese the fancy name of which I’ve forgotten, olive oil, salt, pepper

Actually Jonathan added the last three items and mixed it all up, because I am just NO GOOD in the kitchen, no good at all.

That was tasty, but come 2:00 or so I was hungry again, so I had:

– 2 sets of mini-waffles (homestyle) with raspberry jam, sandwich-style

This last item nearly made my teeth fall out from its desserty sweetness, and I recoiled in horror when I realized that this same sugary taste treat is what we give Gus for breakfast most mornings. No wonder he can’t sit still.

smile and ride your bicycle

maura @ 9:40 pm

Today was obsessed with fairy tales day. I guess they’d read Hansel and Gretl in school this morning. When I got home this afternoon Jonathan and Gus were reading it in the REAL Grimm’s, having made a gingerbread house out of cardboard and poster paint. Gus likes villains and also “stories with a problem” so of course those old Grimm’s are right up his alley. We followed that up with Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White and Cinderella, and he did not flinch at all when the stepsisters cut off pieces of their feet to try and get the shoe on, or Snow White’s stepmother had to dance in heated iron shoes to her death.

Then we watched the Disney Cinderella, thus fulfilling one of my longstanding wishes: to have my child watch Cinderella with me. Why do I love that movie? I don’t rightly know, it is so incredibly girly and princessy and I am so not. But it was the first movie I ever saw in the theater, plus I am a suckah for those twee old Disney songs. He thought the cat + mouse chasing was hilarious so maybe we will even be able to watch it again someday.

Anyway, it’s a welcome change from making up stories about the characters in the video game.

Also today I am the winner of ice skates on eBay, huzzah! Friday’s lovely Bryant Park photofest reminded me that there is FREE skating there through Xmas. Plus there is a rink in Prospect Park. I am such a dork but I loooooooooove ice skating, just love it. Gus is fixing to like it too, though I need to get his skill level up because right now it’s all about him hanging on to me and me bending over at a back-killing angle to hold him up and then he falls and laughs and I get crabby. Plus I like to skate fast.