nothing to see here

maura @ 9:23 pm

Decided to write something about open access for my other blog today. Really it was finishing something I started a few weeks ago when Gus was at karate on a Saturday morning. I usually bring the netbook and can often get a bunch written, which seems impossible sitting near 30 kids yelling “yes sensei!” every few minutes. But it’s a surprisingly productive time for me. For a bunch of different reasons Gus hasn’t gone to karate on Saturday morning in a while, and I kind of miss it. I think he misses it, too. Despite being sick he’s still pretty high energy. Begone, evil fever!

because it’s the weekend…

maura @ 12:45 pm

I finally had time to finish an ACRLog post that I’ve been chewing on for more than a week and drafting for a few days. It’s 724 words, so that counts for today, right?

(Warning: not interesting unless you’re a librarian, and probably only if you’re an instruction librarian.)

i’m a robot man

maura @ 11:03 pm

It’s finally summer here and even though it’s not too hot yet my brain has been kind of slow lately. We went on our fabulous midwest vacation last week and though I’m back in the groove at work I’m having trouble shoving myself into a writing frame of mind. Also since it finally decided to stop raining this week I started riding my scooter to work again, which means that I’m more tired than usual at night.

So hi, internets, how’ve you been? I feel like I should have something more interesting to say than that, but sadly I do not.

We had a great time last week. Gus was treated to all manner of grandparental spoilage including go-kart construction, pottery making, junk food eating and late night TV watching. I slept for eight hours EVERY night and spent enough time lying around reading that I think I actually gained a few pounds. We all got to pet adorable baby goats at the zoo.

Jonathan and I also went to Chicago for 2 nights which was a blast. It was fun to see old friends and spend time walking around the city without having to give someone small a piggyback ride. We went to the newly-expanded Art Institute, and though I was a teeny bit disappointed that the Chagall stained glass windows aren’t back up after the renovations it really was lovely. There’s so much space now that lots more of the collection is displayed than before. The Cornell Boxes were among my favorites – so interesting + creepy. We rode my favorite El line and took advantage of our friend’s knowledge of architecture to learn about all of the new buildings. And I stood under the bean and took a picture of us:

(Please note: unless your name is Anne or Tex you are probably not at all interested in this paragraph. Feel free to move along.) On the way into the city we stopped in Hyde Park to eat garbage pizza and drink (strong!) coffee at the Med and wander around campus. The new dorms by the Reg are intensely orange (and not really in a good way) BUT they have the old house names from the now-demolished Woodward, which is kind of cool. And the new GSB building is handsome but kind of pushes Ida Noyes even more to the periphery than it was before.

Mostly I really wanted to ogle the new library construction. Instead of offsite storage they’re building this crazy oval-shaped dome-covered subterranean library next to the Reg. It’ll be closed stacks with automatic book retrieval (read: robots!). I’m calling it the underground robolibrary in my head – you should, too.

shameless self-promotion

maura @ 10:25 pm

It’s National Library Week, and I’ve got a post on the Oxford Univ Press blog. Yay for libraries!

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!

let me try to pull you free

maura @ 9:28 pm

Interwebs! I’ve missed you, with your daily forced blag of months past. How the heck are ya? I’m still pretty busy. I keep thinking things will slow down any day now, then things pop up. Such is the downward slide til the end of the year. I’m chewing over a big post deconstructing what has of late become my dread of the Christmas season (complete with highfalutin’ references to anthropological essays!), but don’t have the gumption for it tonight. And maybe dread is too strong a word, anyway. Something like annoyance + unease + fatigue + nostalgia is probably better. Is there a word for that?

I was going to do “what we’re reading,” but I have not had time to read much of anything lately, either for fun or for work (my infostreams are neglected + unruly, sigh). Gus, on the other hand, has been a reading fiend. Apparently the trick is to tell him he can read before bed — it makes him think we’re letting him stay up later (which of course we are not).

I am not at all a reading snob when it comes to kids books. Honestly, he can read whatever Star Wars Spongebob Lego Captain Underpants Pokemon crap he wants to, as long as he’s reading. I do, however, prefer to reserve the ca$h money for purchasing books that he’s likely to read more than once (and that will take him longer than an hour to read, too). These are the suggested house rules for everyone, actually.

So we hauled off to the library one recent weekend morning and picked up a pile of paperbacks for him. While scanning the shelves I found a craptastic series called Beast Quest. You know the kind — there are 8 bazillion books in the series and they’ve all been published in the past year and their names are all formatted like so: <Crazy Fake Mythological-sounding Name> the <Weather/Elemental Attribute or Scary Thing> <Kind of Beast>. Plus cheesy cover art.

Well, he ripped through Zepha the Monster Squid in like 2 days, and similarly Tartok the Ice Beast (who is, apparently, a girl, I’ll have you know). These were middle books in the series so I requested the first 3 from the library. But then I started to feel bad that he’d have to wait for them, and yesterday was his birthday, so I headed out on my lunch hour on Monday + bought them for him.

And I have to say, they do work like magic. He’s been most excited about his new Nintendo DS, but he did pick up Ferno the Fire Dragon (Beast Quest book 1) today. I probably have about a week, tops, to order up books 4 through 8 bazillion from the library, so I’d better get on that.

it’s a different walk of life that i’ve come to know

maura @ 10:19 pm

I cannot believe how quickly the summer has gone by. This has been a busy one, but a fun one. There are still some things we didn’t get to do that I wish we’d done. We didn’t go to Governor’s Island, or raspberry picking or to the sprinkler playground on the West side. We didn’t go to Staten Island (though we can do that in the fall). But we did go to the Met (and rode on the M3 as a bonus, which was a thrill for Gus: “I’ve never been on an M bus before!”). And to the Red Hook Pool, swoon, which will be closed after Labor Day (unlike the sprinklers). And just this past weekend we went pedal-boating in he park, which was fun once we settled into it. Gus’ legs are really too short to pedal, but he’s a tenacious little guy so we muddled along with him pedaling and grumping, then when he got tired we pedaled. And rode the trolley home, hooray!

(I’m well aware that I am wasting the linklicious powers of the internets by not adding links to all of those places mentioned in the above paragraph, but I’m tired and you all have google powers of your own, don’t you?)

In other news, this is my last week at work, which is all at once exciting, sad and freaking me out. More than anything it’s making the running voice track in my head into a third-person narrative, which is alternately engrossing, boring or annoying. Things like “she walked up the stairs of the subway station, counting the steps as she always did, realizing that she’d only be doing this for a few more days.” Yawn. Why can’t my inner life be more interesting than my outer?

But I am really really ready to be doing the library thing all the time. Tonight there was an orientation down at school and it just increased my agita to get with the program.

So here’s a question: why is it that I always seem to find a way to mention to my new library friends + colleagues that I have a kid? It’s odd, I didn’t even realize I was doing it at first, but even though I’m aware of it now I can’t seem to stop it, even if I try. I guess it’s because these are the first people I’ve met in a long time not in the context of being a parent (as opposed to meeting other parents at Gus’ school, for example). Interesting.

Or not, as the case may be. I like my tenacious, transit-loving kid. And I missed him tonight, going straight from work to Pratt. And that’s definitely reason enough to talk about him.

i can’t, can’t stop, stop falling, falling in love

maura @ 12:11 pm

Procrastination, thy name is me. It’s my day off and I am supposed to be writing the paper I have due next week (last week of summer class!). I’ve taken notes on 2 (of 12) sources, and now I’m stuck. I’ve cruised through all my standard interwebs reading, made a few lists (of things to do during my August break from school, natch), answered some email, the usual procrastination stuff. I could blame it on the heat (it’s back, ugh), or Veronica Mars (stayed up ’til midnight watching last night, duh for us, and I am tiiiiiiiiired), or any number of other things. But I won’t.

Lunchtime. Food will energize and motivate me, right?