and then the next thing you know

maura @ 10:16 pm

Oh dear, I seem to have fallen into that beginning-of-the-semester-hole again. I meant to blag all week, really I did, but I was just so tired at night and now that Dollhouse has gotten interesting it was much easier to watch than write.

Last Friday evening I met Jonathan and Gus at the MOMA to see Projects 90, an exhibition by the Chinese artist Song Dong. Since it was just before a holiday weekend I’d hoped the crowds wouldn’t be too bad, even though it was the free Friday night dealie. But it was packed and Gus was crabby, despite the gelato we bought him in the sculpture garden. Sigh, 3rd graders are not so easily bought off, I guess.

Still, Gus was reasonably content to sit in a corner reading while Jonathan and I took turns looking at the exhibit. It was fascinating, totally worth the grumpy kid. The story behind it is that the artist’s mother became somewhat unhinged after his father died, and she took the traditional Chinese thriftyness to a whole new level and refused to throw anything out. She packed it into their tiny house and it spilled out all over their yard. Finally the artist was able to convince his mother to move out of the house and allow him to create an exhibit of all of the stuff, which she then helped him curate.

The result: a wooden-framed house skeleton in the center of a room at MOMA surrounded by neatly arranged stuff: tied bundles of magazines, folded clothing, rows of toothbrushes, scads of plastic bottles, a stack of soap cakes, a pyramid of pill boxes and bottles, furniture, etc. Watch the installation video — it’s mesmerizing (as was the exhibit). Of course the stuff is just recognizable, normal stuff, but as Jonathan said when you actually walk around it all and see the arrangement close-up it’s almost like a model of a city. Here’s the crayons neighborhood, over there is where the shoes live. So cool. And, you know, full of implications for our modern lives and all the stuff we use and whether it’s necessary etc. etc. Sometimes I miss thinking about material culture, so I was really glad we got to see this before it closed.

And then this week, with the busy, and now it’s now. I’ve been doing a bunch of reading about writing lately and last weekend I got all fired up about setting aside time to write on a near-daily basis. But then this week was busy at work (and it was short to begin with) and I ran out of time as usual. I’ve been thinking all week about Song Dong’s mom’s house, just an empty timber frame, as a physical manifestation of my goal: one empty hour to write most days. As ever, the problem is partly my fault and partly not. Not my fault because, well, objectively, it’s busy at the beginning of the semester. But my fault because my list is too long to begin with. And my fault, too, because I tend to fall into the trap of procrastinating writing with other work. Yes, sometimes the other work seems to scream loudly: “pay attention to me!” But it’s rarely truly urgent, and certainly can wait an hour.

I was wondering today whether Anne Lamott would be disappointed in me since I didn’t meet my writing goals this week. But then I thought that she’d probably understand. And she’d probably make me a cup of tea and tell me that next week will be better.

lose yourself in the sound

maura @ 10:00 pm

This summer’s been weirdly paced, slow yet fast. It seems like it’s just begun, yet it’ll be over in a few weeks. For me, at least — Gus doesn’t start school until Sept 9 because there is a rule that public schools don’t start until after Labor Day which this year is on 9/7, as late as it can possibly be. Maybe it’s because it rained all of June (and also I was strangely busy at work until well into June). And then it was cool in July (which I loved). But now it’s August and hot and I’m sluggish. All of which contributes to the fast slowness.

There’s also the thing about not having a lot scheduled at work which can sometimes perversely make it harder to get things done. It can be nice to have a couple of meetings, classes or ref desk shifts sprinkled around the week, just to have something to hang yr schedule on. I’ve gotten a fair amount done so far this summer — had a couple of big projects planned at work — but not as much as I feel like I should have. And I am still procrastinating weeding (tho I feel like I read/hear that everyone does).

But it’s a little scary to realize that there’s only a couple of weeks left to my summer. We’ve got one more vacation coming up and then it’s orientation + first week of classes. I’d love to have one more week of summer, one week for just research/writing. I’m in the middle of an article and have a bunch of smallish things to do for this year’s big research project and have a malformed mini-draft for another article and am trying to come up with a topic for presentation at a small local conference. And I’m sorely neglecting my personal academic/library blog. And I should write another post for the official academic library blog. Last week I thought I’d write about the slow fastness of summer, but now I can’t figure out how to do it that doesn’t sound all trite + whiny (which is the raison d’etre of this blag only, not the others).

I’m thinking about that whole “get up early + write” thing, the standard advice that all the real writers dole out. I try hard to force myself to work at night but in my old age I’ve realized that I’m a morning person. Gus’s current camp is really close to our house so the mornings will be more relaxed for a little while — this is probably a good time to try it. But of course then I will need to go to bed early, too. Funny how the real writers never mention that. Don’t they need sleep?

i thought of stories they told us long ago

maura @ 11:18 pm

So, as you may have noticed, Google was down for awhile this morning. I was at work, merrily (ha!) transcribing the instruction stats out of Google Calendar into a spreadsheet,* and suddenly event details wouldn’t load. But most of the info I needed was still cached, so I didn’t even realize something was wrong until our library technician swung by my cube to tell me that the library website was down (our Web Librarian was off campus at a meeting).

* Why yes, Google, I would very much like you to include the ability to export to a spreadsheet into Calendar, thus saving me a couple of hours of monkeywork each semester. Thanks for asking!

A little pounding on the keyboard confirmed that yes, the website was down. Our tech went to talk to the college IT folks while I set to posting notices on the library’s blog and Twitter. But the funny thing is, Twitter was excruciatingly slow and kept hanging, too. And I noticed in the status bar at the bottom of Firefox that it was spinning on www.google-analytics.com. I clicked around a little more and found that lots of the internets wasn’t loading, and they all seemed to be hanging on Google Analytics or Google Ads. Our library’s site uses the former to track usage stats, and we also use Google for our site search.

By the time I’d talked to our tech and we’d opened up the homepage and I determined that I don’t know enough javascript not to break the code, Google had fixed itself and all was right with the world. But I’ve been left all day with a lingering weirdness. It’s not that I use EVERY service that Google offers, and I’m definitely intrinsically suspicious of big giant companies that ostensibly provide lots of stuff for free. What do they do with our data? And what recourse do we have if when they fail? As Jonathan always says, we are not Google’s customers: the companies that pay to place Google Ads are.

But there’s no denying that over the past year I’ve become a heavy user of Google products, some might say junkie-level. We use Google Calendar to track reference, instruction and meetings at work. I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets to collaborate w/colleagues at MPOW and other colleges and do work from multiple computers (ref desk, my desk, home).

What really struck me today (and I know I’m not the only one, but it’s late and I’m too lazy to link to anything else) is that it wasn’t just that you couldn’t access Google services. All over the internets the sites that rely on Google Analytics and Ads were toasted. And my random clicking around made me think that it was a whole lotta internets that were affected.

Maybe Google is becoming Skynet.

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!

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!

and why 2 plus 2 makes 4

maura @ 10:13 pm

Status Update, From What Has Become The Blag of Whining:

1. We’ve all adjusted fine to falling back (11/2’s post). I like that it’s light when we get up, though I don’t like leaving work in the dark.

2. The cats still like their low-rent kitty condo (11/3’s post). Jonathan made a tunnel in out of an old cereal box and now it’s fresh and new!

3. I emailed some friends about Gus’s hope for Obama’s presidency (11/4’s post), only to discover that their kids think that Obama will abolish homework. Foolish children.

4. The Pratt mug is nice + deep + good for tea (11/5’s post).

5. My leg is a lot better (11/6’s post), but still not 100%. But it’s better enough that tomorrow I may get off the subway 1 stop early and take the stairs at work. Living on the edge!

6. Tonight we are trying a New Sleep Plan, in which we leave the door to Gus’s room open in a (vain?) attempt to stave off whatever sleep issues may arise (11/9’s post). We will see if it works.

distant voices from deep space

maura @ 10:45 pm

Way back in April I was inspired to take the camera and document my walk to work one day. I downloaded the photos and there they’ve sat, in a folder named blag, on my desktop, for weeks now.

Until today! The day when you too can enjoy My Walk To Work in all it’s late April glory.

This is the block around the corner from ours, a particularly pretty one. Lots of lovely planting going on here — I always enjoy a good clawfoot bathtub planter.

A coffee shop on my walk has this cool bench. Never had their coffee though — I’m always too hyped up from J’s coffee (and walking too fast to stop at this early point).

This is one of two somewhat crazy clothing + other stuff stores I walk by. I’ve never been in though — maybe I am too afraid that I will buy something.

The Williamsburg Bank Building is the tallest building in Brooklyn. Of course they are turning it into condos (note scaffolding). The red and greenish building on the right is just one example of the hideousness wrought by the developer who wants to build a huge stadium in this part of Brooklyn. Bah.

I’ve never understood why there’s a cow in front of the hardware store. But it is a well-maintained cow, and the kids do like it.

Did you lose your glasses? I hope not, because these are in bad shape.

I am perfectly happy living in an apartment. But if I ever do live in a house, I would like it to be purple! After walking by it somewhat unintentionally, I actually changed my route because seeing this house every morning makes me happy.

Gus’s old preschool was across the street from this bar, which prompted many a joke amongst the parents, esp. during the always-excruciating “phase-in.” Note the “for sale” sign. Sigh.

I walk by lots of beautiful examples of urban gardens. I like this one for the pansies, which look so perky and happy, and the variety, which is quite eye-catching.

I also walk by lots of bikes. I’ve been having serious bike lust lately. This old school yellow number’s pretty rad. (More on bikes another day.)

How many new buildings can you count? The correct answer is 3 (4 if you count the one just to the left that didn’t fit in the frame). There’s a lot of construction these days in northern Brooklyn. Because, did you hear? There’s a terrible shortage of million-dollar 2 BR condos! TERRIBLE! Wherever will those people wanting to pay $1m for an apartment GO?! Quick, throw up more condos, before they all move to the suburbs!!!

</snark>

This is a sculpture in the plaza I walk through when I’m almost at work. Even though I’ve been at my job for almost 3 mos, I still wonder “where’s that dog’s owner?” at least once a week.

Another view of the plaza, while the cherry trees were in bloom. Public art is cool. The mostly blue + green mostly metal + stained glass sculpture on the left has an old-fashioned subway station feel to it. On the right is part of an installation of small plastic water bottles filled with red liquid hung in the trees, which look like alien fruits or eggs or something.

I like walking through this plaza — it’s right at the end of the walk and it’s nice to see trees, grass and art before starting the workday.

Work! The library’s in a funky building that was built in the 80s to connect 3 other buildings. Sometimes the floors don’t meet up (e.g. the library building has no 3rd floor) which is surprising! I’m lucky to have a window — the green dot approximates my location.

…and, I don’t know quite how to end this post. Except to say that it’s Friday night, and even though I can’t quite manage the popfest this weekend, I still probably shouldn’t be thinking about work. Bye!

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.

banned from the end of the world

maura @ 11:19 pm

Gentle readers, have you been waiting with baited breath, wondering how my owies are doing? You have? So sweet of you. Why yes, I’d love to share the gory details, thanks for asking!

(If you were here I’d show you the wounds, but you’re not and the camera is all the way in the other room, and my knee hurts, dammit!)

We’re now on day 6 post-idiotic-falling-while-running-accident, and I’m pleased to say that nearly all of my wounds have stopped oozing. Yippee! A glaring exception is my knee, which is still in pretty bad shape. But this morning Gus said, “Mommy, your face looks better!” He then proceeded to kiss my eyebrows (sort of his security blanket, my eyebrows), so I know he means it.

One thing about injuries, they provide a fantastic vocabulary-boosting opportunity. Did you know that the yellowish-white goo that oozes from an abrasion is called exudate? Did you? Well, now you do.

I ointmented and bandaged myself up on Monday and hobbled into work (damn those 50+ subway stairs), where I was instantly mortified by everyone’s sympathy (yes, I am an idiot, please don’t remind me!). BUT, I’d completely forgotten that one of my coworkers is a bicycle racer, and thus knows a thing or two about road rash. He had some great tips, chief among them this new, cool, cling-wrap-esque bandage that’s actually letting me bend my knee without excruciating pain. Thanks, Xavier!

However, my face, while mostly non-oozy (save for a tiny spot on the bridge of my nose), is still a sight. I now have 3 big and 2 tiny red patches where the ooze used to be. Luckily I can cover them with makeup now, since they’ve dried out (and luckily I still have some coverup from last year’s forehead carcinoma removal, the first of what I’m sure will be many forays into the land of skin cancer). But vanity, thy name is ME, ooh boy. If the carcinoma is any indication, these owies will fade to lovely pale white spots, paler than the rest of my skin. Thanks, Celtic heritage, for giving me that easy-to-scar skin. Off to the pub to drown my sorrows in a pint.

Or not really. Really I am drinking a glass of wine and wondering why I am still awake at 11:05pm. It’s Gus’ fault — he didn’t conk out til after 9:30 tonight, and I gots stuff to do, blogs to read, PTA tshirts to coordinate. Plus, after 11 days of evil heat (ending with a few days of the mid-90s, a temperature that I believe should NEVER be reached at this latitude), it’s a breezy and fabulous 70-ish degrees today. The house is airing out, and the piles of laundry I couldn’t stand to do in our apartment without an outdoor-vented dryer are all lined up for tomorrow morning. All is right with the world.

I suspect Gus, at 3 1/2, may finally be ready to give up his nap. The problem is that he goes to school every day and they nap there. So we have no control over it, really. I guess we’ll just move the bedtime stuff back a bit to accommodate his wakefulness. Drag, though, as that shrinks the evening grownup time evermore. Maybe we can get him to play quietly by himself while we check email. HA hahahahaha! I’m so funny.