Liz the Librarian

Lately it has been increasingly hard ...

2010-04-11T12:52:00.001-07:00

Lately it has been increasingly hard for me to sit down and write something,largely because I feel like all I will do is complain. I think it's fair to say that my mood, along with most of my coworkers', could mildly be called sustained unease in light of the draconian cuts made to our already lean budget--it's been a month since the news hit and we all, still, know nothing about how our jobs will be affected, only that they will be affected. If I weren't putting it mildly, I would say the general feeling is one of straight-up panic. Adding to the fun is the fact that the paper has been publishing articles every few days further politicizing the cuts--it seems that the head of the city's board of finance and the head of the library can't be in the same room without sniping and on occasion, screaming at each other, and the mayor hates us as well. Maybe hate is a strong word, but I do think it's fair to say that he doesn't understand the role of a public library in a city, and seriously underestimates the value our services have on the community. Summing up, it's a bummer.

While I have been trying to come up with something positive to write about, I have mostly been coming up empty. So my compromise is to try to keep my kvetching to a minimum, and at least write something.

Switching gears, on a slightly more positive note, I was walking down the street today when I literally stopped in my tracks to read the headline on the local free weekly paper--"Wheat is Murder" with a much smaller subtitle, "Gluten-free in CT." This superimposed on a big smiling guy in a chef's hat displaying a pepperoni pizza. I do question their tactics, but they certainly got my attention, and while the article itself was kind of short and not as in-depth as I would have liked, the fact of the matter is, there was an article about living gluten free in CT! As well as a list of about 30 pizza joints in the state that offer gluten-free pies! And a further listing of maybe 60 grocery stores, bakeries, and other restaurants that either offer gluten-free options on their menus or have completely gluten-free menus! Huzzah!

Whatever else is going on, I am still reading, currently in the middle of three things: Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork (teen book), Wimpy Kid Movie Diary by Jeff Kinney (kids), and Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the race of a lifetime (adults). Marcelo and the Real World is fantastic so far, but it's stressing me out--about a boy with something resembling Asperger's syndrome, and how he takes a job at his father's law firm because he father thinks he needs to learn how to function outside of the special school he has attended since first grade. I'm feeling very protective of Marcelo and he's not being treated very well. Wimpy Kid is a guilty pleasure indulgence--the books are not exactly Newbery contenders (or Caldecott for that matter), but they are funny, and the author and two kid stars of the movie appeared here a couple of weeks ago so I felt I could spare the hour it would take me to read this latest book. Finally, Game Change appeals to the gossip monger in me, providing juicy details about all the major players in the 2008 presidential election. It's like reading People magazine, without any danger of accidentally reading about Heidi Montag's plastic surgery or any of the Kardashians. Prior to this I listened to the Andrew Jackson biography, American Lion by Jon Meacham--while the book itself was probably quite good (in fact, I think my brother recommended it to me a year ago or so), I would not recommend the audio--whole discs would go by and I wouldn't remember a thing because the reader was just so boring. I can't even say it was the subject matter, because I loved 1776 and John Adams (both by David McCullough) on audio, the common subject here being dead white guys, I guess. Anyway, I thought it was a snooze. I just feel compelled to read anything having to do with American history because I don't really feel very well educated in this area--honors American studies in high school notwithstanding. I'm not giving up though--once I've had time to recover maybe I'll tackle Benjamin Franklin--wasn't there a big biography of him published within the last 10 years?

Big goings-on around here, where to s...

2010-03-27T08:37:00.001-07:00

Big goings-on around here, where to start? I guess maybe we'll start with the good news, little of it though there is. First and foremost, Ella has gained another pound, she's been eating like a teenage boy for the last two months. And William seems to have finally gotten his eat on, at his 18 month well visit he jumped from the 5th to the 10th percentile for his weight, so we're making some inroads there, too. God help me, I never in a million years thought I would be the kind of mother who obsessed over how much food goes in (and out) of the kids, but here I am. Even I am disturbed. In other news, last Wednesday our library was the co-host (along with 21st Century Fox and Barnes and Noble) of Jeff Kinney (author of the Wimpy Kid books) and the two child stars of the Wimpy Kid movie at their talk and signing at the 1600-seat theater in town. Tickets were given out free at Barnes and Noble and at our library and every seat was filled. I spoke for about 30 seconds before Jeff Kinney took the stage, just to welcome everyone, and I swear it was the closest I'll probably ever get to feeling like a rock star--these kids were whipped into an absolute frenzy. Some were actually asking us as librarians to sign their books--take that, naysayers. I don't see a day coming when people will ask authors/actors to sign their kindles!

Now that we're all feeling good, here's the substantial bad news. Our library was an oasis of heat, electricity and other luxuries during the aftermath of one of the worst storms to hit our area in 50 years. The Wimpy Kid event happened in the middle of an unscheduled week off from school for our town's kids, because most of the city had no power, and many of the roads were impassable because of trees (and live power lines) blocking the streets. The library was mobbed with people coming to charge their phones, laptops, etc.: every table was full, every chair had a body in it, and people were using every open electrical outlet, including the ones behind our desks. It was the busiest week I can remember that didn't happen during the summer, when we are regularly packed with patrons. One of the only people in the city who didn't darken our doorway was the mayor, who cut our budget for the next year by 1.3 million dollars, forcing us to face hour reductions, branch closings, and layoffs in the coming months. Adding insult to injury, most of the libraries in the surrounding towns are getting increases, to deal with the extra business that a weak economy usually brings to public libraries. Morale among the staff is dismal and people are having difficulty trying to plan for the summer and beyond, since we don't even know when we'll be open and who will be around to run any programs we manage to schedule. Dark days.

Back to Reality

2010-03-07T13:15:00.001-08:00

All too soon my much-anticipated vacation has come and gone. The Olympics barely began and I was already looking back fondly on my (too short) time in Vancouver. I could go on and on about my trip, but in the interest of not boring the daylights out of what few people I suspect might be reading this, I will distill the trip down to a few highlights:

Spotting Bertster and Dee in the airport at 4:30 am--proof of Buono/Mulligan magnetism
Sharing a plane with multiple Olympic hopefuls--mostly snowboarders, including Lindsey Jacobellis, and some women's hockey players
Riding the elevator with a Mountie in my hotel
Inukshuks everywhere, including one made of storage containers near the airport--awesome!

One thing that did not happen, and about which I will forever be disappointed, is that I did NOT go to see Anvil perform on my last night in town. I really should have just made that happen, the serendipity was almost too much. Who knows when they will come to CT?????

On the gluten-free front, lots of good news about Ella--in the month between when she was diagnosed and when we went for our consultation with the RD, she has gained 3 pounds!! This may not seem like much, until you consider that she didn't even gain 2 pounds in the last two years. She is definitely less anemic--she is pink! She is already growing out of clothes that were baggy on her before her diagnosis. This more than makes up for the tears and anxiety about the grocery shopping--it is totally worth it. Of course, now that she's feeling better she is starving--she eats like a teenage boy, now that her body is adjusting. My one worry is that she was measured for her dance recital costume back in November, before all this weight gain and growth--there is a very good possibility that it won't fit her by June. All in all, good news as we head into spring!

Between being on vacation and then getting ridiculously sick about a week later, I have had a little time on my hands to read a little. First, I read Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes while I was away--one of this year's Printz honor books, it calls itself "An Historical Romance: 1973," and it owes a large debt to The Catcher in the Rye, despite being about 4 times as long. Still, it tells a complicated story with many threads about a group of high school seniors with totally messed up home lives who have been in group therapy together since about 3rd grade, and ends hopefully, if not outright happily.

While I was home sick last week I read a book I found in our gift/giveaway pile from a couple of years ago: My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kluger, which I absolutely loved. It had romance, baseball, and very sweet relationships between boys, boys and girls, and families in general. I knew it was too good to be true as I was reading it, but I didn't care--it stopped just short of being saccharine (although Mary Poppins figures prominently). Charming.

Tiny little victories

2010-01-27T11:32:00.000-08:00

So, we're a couple of weeks into our gluten-free lifestyle and I am happy to report that I am no longer reduced to literal tears every time I walk into the grocery store (only sometimes), and we have even survived our first birthday party. The birthday party was for Ms. 5-year-old herself, and there was a lot of angst-ing, at least on my part, as to whether to subject all our little guests to gluten-free fare, or just have some separate things for the birthday girl and hope no one else wanted any of what she was having. Interestingly, most of the books about parenting kids with celiac disease recommend against letting other kids try the GF stuff--some of the products aren't so good and you don't want your GF kid feeling bad because other kids think their food is gross. But I went for the compromise--Ella doesn't like birthday cake anyway, never has, but she understands that people expect it at a party, so we ordered a regular sheet cake (Disney princesses) for candles, etc., and then I made some GF cookies, brownies and cupcakes, plus we had vanilla Dibs, which just happen to be GF. Success! I am happy to report that all 14 of the girls were happy with their choice of snack, and probably only half the kids chose the cake. None of the kids had any idea that the other snacks were any different, and I can personally bear witness to the fact that the brownies and chocolate chip cookies were pretty awesome. We had a split decision on the cupcakes--my brother-in-law and I thought they were pretty awful, while my husband didn't think they were so bad. If you're keeping score: Betty Crocker 2, Bob's Red Mill zip. AND! We spread the word about Dibs, which many of our guests (including the moms) had never had before and were totally into. They are fully a staple in our house.

In other news, I just finished Academy 7 by Anne Osterlund, which I read at the recommendation of one of my colleagues--she is suggesting it for our Twilight read-alike/fantasy booklist. I liked it as a romance, it definitely has more heat than Twilight, but that's not too difficult to achieve. I'll admit that as sci-fi it's not my usual genre of choice, but the tech/space stuff was pretty easy to forget as the story progressed. Also, I just started Douglas Coupland's Generation A--I'm preparing for my trip to Vancouver next week and getting giddy. I'm not that far in yet, but I'm noticing an inordinate amount of Simpsons references...not sure what that's all about.

2010-01-18T12:03:00.000-08:00

So this is a pretty big news day--the ALSC awards were announced this morning! And it looks like readers across the country were right--When You Reach Me was indeed the Newbery winner! Now I really do have to read it--despite my best intentions, it just didn't get done this weekend. I was also excited to see that Flash Burnout got the Morris award--that I did finish, and I thought it was great. It's always interesting to see authors who are probably my age giving props to all the music of our youth. Jerry Pinkney's The Lion and the Mouse was certainly spectacular as well (Caldecott winner) so in my opinion justice has been done. I do need to get my hands on Going Bovine (Printz winner) now as well--it was on my list all summer and then all of a sudden it wasn't. Ah well, now it's back. I need to watch Libba Bray in a cow costume on youtube to remind me. I started reading How do you Spell G-E-E-K? on Saturday, but it's short, and then I play catch up. I spent this last year in a post-partum fog, at least for the first 6 months. Well, the whole thing, really. And, as a result, I haven't read a fraction of what I should have. But, new year, fresh start, right?

As I said, this was indeed a big news day. For about a month now we have suspected that my daughter has celiac disease, and today we got confirmation that she does indeed. On the one hand, I'm kind of relieved, because once it became apparent that she had something, better celiac disease than any of the other possible diagnoses. And once it's under control she'll feel better, she'll grow, her quality of life will definitely improve. The down side is, this makes her susceptible to all sorts of other way worse diseases if she can't control it (I'm thinking rebellious teenage years here, wanting to drink beer because everyone else is and who brings wine to a keg party??), and it's hard to explain to a child who turned 5 two weeks ago that she can't have any of the foods she likes. She's smart, but she's stubborn--we have a long road ahead of us here.

I am going to have to make a conscious effort here, to go against my own personal inclinations and be positive for her. In that vein, we were totally gluten-free today. It wasn't the most exciting day, menu-wise, but we did it. So tomorrow we'll do it again. And if anyone has any gluten-free recipes for a picky child addicted to ravioli that aren't prohibitively expensive, then shoot them my way!

Liz 2.0?

2010-01-14T08:48:00.000-08:00

So this is embarrassing--it has been almost exactly a year since my last post, and before that it was a pretty long time too. There has been a lot going on in my life in the last couple of years, and I was leaning toward throwing in the towel, blogwise, but some events over the past few weeks have got me reconsidering. I'm still a librarian, that much hasn't changed, and I'm still a mom, but rather than have me consistently complaining about how my commute is terrible (it is) and my house is a mess (it really is) and how my husband and I are so tired most days that we barely have the energy to talk about anything except the logistics of how to get through the next day (we are), I want to try to give myself a little focus. So I'm proposing a fresh start and maybe an expanded focus--I still want to talk about books and maybe stuff going on in libraryland, but I think my life is just going to have to seep in here too. Plus, I spent a lot of money on my English degree; I should be writing something other than grocery lists and the minutes from the last staff meeting! Although I give fair warning--grocery lists may indeed play a huge role here in the not too distant future... I also would like to try to give myself a minimum goal of one post a month, maybe a maximum of one a week--I'll start small and see how I go. Call it a new year's resolution!
So here's what I'm reading: Flash Burnout by L.K. Madigan (teen), The Help by Kathryn Stockett (my token grown-up book), When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (hopefully will finish before Monday's award announcements), and finally, Walter Wick's A Drop of Water is currently in heavy rotation at bedtime. Also various books/pamphlets/websites about gluten-free diets, as my daughter was just diagnosed with celiac disease this week, and will likely be a couple of weeks before we get an appointment with a dietician (hence the grocery list talk). I'd love to hear what anyone else is reading, I'm always looking for something good!

And now, a little venting

2009-01-08T09:41:00.000-08:00

I've decided to blog today, because no one I know really wants to listen to me complain. I officially returned to work from maternity leave right after the new year, on a Saturday no less, and the fates seem to be conspiring to make me wish I was still at home. Or at least that I had a live-in nanny.
Going to work Saturday was a breeze, as my husband was home and I didn't need to get anyone out of the house but myself. Monday was a bit more of a challenge, as I had to drop the two kids at two different places before getting myself to the train station by 7:30 am. But I did it, both Monday and Tuesday, without too much trauma. Wednesday we had a mini ice storm, not too bad really, but enough so the town delayed school. Until they changed their minds and straight-out canceled school, which I didn't know because once I saw there was a delay I just focused on getting out at the new time and figuring out a different train to take, etc. Plus the temperature seemed to be getting warmer so imagine my surprise when, after dropping the baby off at his babysitter I arrive at the preschool to see that the place is dark and empty. The school is in the town Y, which was open and the staff was kind of snooty, like why didn't I keep tracking the school closings after I already saw there was a delay? Why would I?? Grr.
So. Back home to regroup, call my son's babysitter to see if she'll take my daughter (she will), change my daughter out of her bathing suit because she was supposed to have swimming at school today, and then back out for now the 8th time into the rain to drop off at the babysitter's house. Of course, now it's after 9 am and the trains are running far less frequently, so I bite the bullet and drive, which ironically is the only part of this day that was a pleasant surprise. Ordinarily I wouldn't be so annoyed at getting part of the morning off, but I just spent the last three months using up ALL of my sick time and vacation time, so time off means I don't get paid. Anyway, once I finally get to work the day is pretty much fine, good even, and when I get back on the road at almost 4:45 there's not even any traffic. But things soon take a turn when I call my husband to tell him I'm on the road and he tells me that my daughter has PINKEYE and that the baby probably does too. Stop at the pharmacy, pick up my daughter's medicine that the pediatrician called in, go home, take a look at the baby's eyes and decide that he needs to go in and see the doc--they won't just call in a prescription for him. And, they're both considered contagious until they've been on the medicine for 24 hours, so now my husband and I argue over who has to stay home until my mom can make it in the morning (she meanwhile, had to cancel a dr. appointment of her own just to do us this favor). And don't forget about the laundry--all the sheets and towels for everyone need to be switched out. By this time I'm twitching, imagining my eyes feel sticky, extra teary, you name it; I am not normally a germ-phobe but I really do not want pinkeye and feel like my house should have a giant "quarantined" sign on it. As a children's librarian I thought I had been exposed to practically everything, and that my kids were reaping the benefits by building up their own immunities, but I was clearly wrong about that.
I actually feel better now that I've gotten this all off my chest--here's hoping that this is the worst 2009 can throw at us!

The year that was

2008-12-30T06:47:00.000-08:00

Well, despite my best intentions I have not been the best blogger this year--I did all right the first half of the year but then things sort of spiraled out of control...but here we are at the end of the year and I feel sort of compelled to make some kind of year end statement or reflection.

I wish I had something profound to say, but my whole year is pretty well defined by the last three months since my son was born. I am heading back to work right after the new year, on the 3rd. My daughter started preschool, which only underscores the fact that she is definitely not a baby anymore, plus she turns 4 on Monday. Just three days ago, the baby rolled over for the first time, and yesterday he had his first cereal, so he's getting big too. I'm still exhausted, and I have no idea how I'm going to get myself and the two kids out of the house my 7 am everyday, but at least once I go back to work I'll have something else to worry about than the last time somebody ate or pooped or took a nap.

On that note, crying child #1 has arisen from his nap. Happy new year!

Slacker mom

2008-10-28T14:25:00.000-07:00

Okay, I am totally embarrassed by the fact that my last blog post was in JULY...I have clearly fallen by the wayside in the whole book-a-month thing. That is not to say I haven't been reading--I have, and have been updating my librarything accounts and my iRead or ibook or whatever they're calling it now on facebook--but I haven't been reading on task, and I definitely haven't been blogging about the books. In my own defense I have been kind of otherwise engaged: I had a baby five weeks ago, and worked full-time up until the day before I gave birth (3 weeks early), and my husband was away in Alaska for almost 3 weeks during my 7th/8th months leaving me alone with my 3 1/2 year old while everyone I worked with went on vacation during the final throes of summer reading. Still, a deal's a deal and I clearly haven't been holding up my end of the bargain reading challenge-wise, so I need to somehow make myself feel better by confessing here, whether anyone actually reads this or not.

At this point I am so sleep deprived it's a wonder I read anything except bedtime stories to my daughter, but I am trying to get through a few things. I managed to get a copy of David Sedaris' newest book and am snickering my way through that ten pages at at time, or until I fall asleep. Before that I read Barack Obama's Dreams from my Father (which I started out of a sense of duty, but then got hooked), American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld (I love, love, love her!), Chelsea Handler's Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea (again with the snickering, or in some cases, weeping with laughter), and now I am in the middle of listening to the final book in the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn.

Now, because I haven't finished this yet, I should probably not even say anything, but I had mixed feelings about this book because I didn't exactly love the previous books in the series. Bella as a character annoyed the daylights out of me, with all the swooning over Edward's marble arms, stony chest, blah blah vomit. She was such a totally dependent character, and her obsession with Edward seemed like the worst kind of teenage mooning about. Plus, I am firmly on the side of team Jacob, because Edward always seemed a little too goody two-shoes for my taste. Then, because I didn't read the book in the first week it came out I found out some key plot points--like Bella and Edward do get married, and she gets pregnant, and Jacob imprints on the daughter while she's still a fetus--so I debated whether I really needed to read the fool thing at all. But, I am reluctant to admit, so far this book is appealing to me more than the first three. I think it's better written than the previous books, and Bella isn't such a whiner in this one, at least not after she becomes a vampire. But I think my hang-up was that I didn't want her to become a vampire, but now that she has I realize it's more interesting this way--and Edward isn't such a Puritan with her anymore, which was also getting pretty tiresome. So, making a long story short, I'm enjoying it much more than I thought I would. Of course, because I am listening to it, I can only get through it so fast so it's a little slow going--I find myself looking for excuses to go on long car trips and I haven't had too many occasions to go anywhere while home on maternity leave. But I'll confess to being probably a bad mother--I do listen with my 3 year old in the car--the language is pretty clean, the sex is alluded to but never described, and she doesn't know what a vampire is yet, anyway. Plus, it puts her to sleep sometimes, which is a bonus.

In search of the first fortune cookie

2008-07-01T15:51:00.000-07:00

Let me just start by saying that it's a good thing this month's theme was broad, because otherwise I don't think I'd have been able to do it this month. Now if the theme had been, oh, let's say, summer reading club preparation, I could have written a book about that, but as it was the theme of knowledge was about as lucky as I was going to get. The only book I read this month that fits this theme was Jennifer 8. Lee's The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food. And as it turns out, it's pretty appropriate. Inspired by an unexpectedly high number of Powerball winners who all won on the same day with the same numbers pulled from fortune cookies, Lee sets out to find out the origin of the desserts, which are suspiciously un-Chinese in character. Her research takes her all over the country and eventually all over the world, to see how "Chinese food" differs regionally in the U.S., from country to country, and often barely resembles actual Chinese cuisine at all. Lee also touches on the issues that have surrounded Chinese immigration to the U.S. and the important role Chinese restaurants have played in the lives and livelihood of Chinese immigrants. She does finally get to the bottom of the fortune cookie conundrum, and along the way offers some possibilities for the world's "best" (admittedly a biased label) Chinese restaurant.
I'm not going to pretend for a minute that this is the most academic book I've ever read, but considering the month that just ended, I'm just lucky I was able to fit it in at all. And I have had a terrible craving for General Tso's chicken ever since I finished reading it!

Didn't we almost have it all?

2008-05-30T12:04:00.000-07:00

Ugh, motherhood. I had to think long and hard about this one. I have a mother, I am a mother, and I am currently exactly halfway through a pregnancy, so I am about up to my eyeteeth in motherhood these days. I'm not really the Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul type, so I chose something a little less feel-good: How She Really Does It: Secrets of Successful Stay-at-Work Moms by Wendy Sachs. I actually bought this book for myself about two years ago, when I had been back at work a little less than a year after my daughter was born and was feeling totally overwhelmed and overtired. And then I never read it. Basically, like pretty much every mother, I am busy with too much other stuff to read, both for work and for pleasure, and I didn't want to waste my precious free time on this, which felt a little like taking my medicine. Fast forward two years, and suddenly this seemed like the perfect title for the challenge.
Sachs is a freelance TV producer and mother of two, and wrote this book because she felt pressure to stay at home with her kids and pressure to work for financial reasons and for her own self-esteem. And in talking to other moms she knew, she found that she wasn't alone in her conflicting feelings. This led Sachs to expand her research and she interviews all sorts of working mothers, mostly professionals, including television journalists, celebrities, lawyers, bankers, politicians and entrepreneurs, and gets their take on how they manage to balance a full-time job and being a full-time mother.
What's both discouraging and heartening is that pretty much everyone, no matter what they do, is burning the candle at both ends. The hours are terrible, when you're at work you wish you were with your kids, and when you're home with your family you feel guilty because you know there are things you should be doing at work. The good news is everyone, rich or not-so-rich, is in pretty much the same boat. The bad news is, there are no secrets to successfully negotiating this, except toughing it out and sacrificing. Some women "opt out" of the workplace for their kids and end up totally derailing their careers, to the detriment of their finances and their sense of self. Indeed, she cites motherhood as one of the greatest indicators of a woman's future financial ruin, mostly because of divorce but also because a woman's potential for future earnings is pretty poor if she has a 10 year hole in her resume.
It's hard for me to review this impartially, mostly because I am full up with hormones and this book strikes a little close to home. One mother in the book calls her situation a house of cards, where one weak card being pulled out can cause the whole thing to fall apart, and I must admit that's exactly how I feel pretty much all the time. The book isn't so much about self-help, but more about encouraging women who feel like they're at the end of their ropes that they're not crazy (or wrong, or bad mothers) for wanting careers despite being mothers. At the end of the day, what works for one person won't necessarily work for someone else, but these women show that there are lots of ways to cope.

On Beauty

2008-04-16T13:05:00.000-07:00

Wow, if only this book a month challenge was a few years ago--I could think of tons of great books having to do with beauty, but they were all books I'd already read! What a bummer. The very first book that came to mind was Scott Westerfeld's Uglies (or the sequel, Pretties), so I decided to read the 4th book in the trilogy (I know, it's not really a trilogy if there are more than three...): Extras. The premise for the series is that in the future (this is sci-fi) everyone gets this special surgery when they turn 16 that makes them beautiful--tall, good skin, even super-strong bones, you can choose your eye color, whatever. People even live in a special Prettytown once they get the surgery, so as not to mix with the pre-surge uglies. Everybody gets the surgery, so the playing field is level as far as looks are concerned. Unfortunately, as we find out, the surgery also makes people stupid--while everyone is having their outsides beautified, the doctor's also alter people's brains so they lose any kind of curiosity or inquisitiveness they may have had naturally. All the better for the government to manipulate them! That is, until Tally Youngblood and her friends expose the government's plot to keep everyone dumb and beautiful--what will ever after be known as "the mind-rain;" people still get the surgery, but without the mind-altering component. That's the first three books in a nutshell--when we begin Extras it's a few years later and Tally and her friends are revered for saving all humanity, studied in textbooks by schoolchildren the world over. The surgery is still rampant, but the entire economy is based not on looks anymore, or even money, but on fame and popularity. In the Prettytime (before the mind-rain) people were able to just ask for anything they wanted and get it, apparently without money, but now people have to earn what they want, either by doing community work or by simply being famous. How famous you are depends on how frequently people talk about you on their "feeds," sort of video gossip magazines people have wired into their brains (or their houses, etc.). Our heroine is Aya, a fifteen-year-old ugly waiting for her sixteenth birthday so she can become pretty, but even more anxious to become famous for kicking a big story. The whole city is ranked by how popular people are, and Aya's face rank is 451,396, which is to say she's what people refer to as an extra. I gotta tell ya, the plot is pretty convoluted and the message seems a little muddled (is it bad to want to be famous or not??), but Aya discovers a pretty big story, enlisting the help of her big-face (super-famous) older brother Hiro, his friend Ren and Aya's love interest, Frizz. Suffice it to say that this story is so big that none other than Tally Youngblood herself contacts Aya, and they all go off to try and save the city (and maybe the world) from what they perceive to be aliens who want to blow up the planet. Or maybe they don't. This is definitely a book that needs a little background, and I wouldn't recommend it for anyone who hasn't read the previous books. The first in the series, Uglies, is the best of the bunch, and it ends with enough of a cliffhanger that you need to keep going just to find out what happens to everyone!

How to be BAD: the handbook

2008-03-13T08:58:00.000-07:00

Golly, as we get further into the year here, the challenges just keep getting more challenging! Anyone who knows me will tell you, crafts are not my thing. It's really kind of sad--on the rare occasions I am responsible for doing crafts with storytime or something the kids are always better than me. Coloring inside the lines is about the limit of my crafting ability, and that's only if I concentrate. I do have hobbies, or at least interests, but overall when faced with the theme for this month I was at a total loss, partly because I have read quite a few memoirs/biographies lately, and I wanted to branch out a little for the challenge. So maybe I'm stretching the definition of craft here, but I decided my book this month would be Peter Sagal's The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (and How to Do Them). I admit I do listen to Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me on NPR, so I was partially drawn to the book out of thinking Peter Sagal is a pretty smart and funny guy, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little curious about the subject matter. And I have to hand it to him, he does deliver--there are chapters devoted to swinging, strippers, gambling, consumption (of goods), eating, lying and pornography. But it's not enough to just talk about these things--you need to define your terms, which he does in the introduction. I mean, how do you know you are engaged in some honest-to-goodness unsavory behavior? Basically, it comes down to three things--you know you aren't supposed to be doing it, you enjoy doing it, and you feel shame about it (when you get caught). I am writing this in the wake of the Eliot Spitzer scandal here in the NY tri-state area, and thinking this would have been a good book for him to read about 10 years ago. Anyway, it goes without saying that more than one of the chapters in this book take place in Vegas, and Sagal interviews all sorts of people (both professionals in the fields and avid amateur pursuers of each pastime alike) to get as comprehensive a look at some of these vices as possible. As fascinating as some of these stories were, I still was left feeling like I didn't get why people would do pretty much any of these things--and Sagal basically feels the same, as summed up in his afterword. But it takes all kinds to make the world go around, and who am I to judge?

Young love, sort of

2008-02-24T13:05:00.000-08:00

After having so many books I wanted to read and blog about last month for the time theme, I was sort of stymied when trying to come up with just one book about love, or romance or, failing that, with "heart" in the title. I guess I just don't read that many romances. Or at least, conventional romances. I do like books with a love story, but it's not my first choice of subject matter. I guess it's not even really fair to say that, but I guess for me the formula of the couple meeting, falling in love and living happily ever after isn't what I prefer, and the tragic stuff gets depressing if you read too much. But I realize I'm kind of in the minority here, given the multi-billion dollar potential for romance writers.

I did, however, find something that fit the bill perfectly for this month, a little book by Sara Zarr called Sweethearts. A very quick read, the book is the story of Jennifer Harris and Cameron Quick, two third graders who are the social outcasts of their community, and have miserable home lives to boot. Jennifer's mother works and goes to school and just isn't around very much, but Cameron's father is at least psychologically abusive, and the author alludes to the probability of physical and sexual abuse as well. The only bright spot in either child's life is their relationship, and suddenly even that is gone. One day, Cameron doesn't come to school, and after a few days kids begin telling Jennifer that they saw on the news that Cameron died. When she hears this, Jennifer asks her mother who doesn't confirm or deny the story, but allows Jennifer to think that this is what has happened. Things turn around for Jennifer as the years go by--her mother finishes school, gets a regular job, and meets and marries a great man. Jennifer herself loses weight, forces herself to try to make friends, starts a new school where no one knows what a pariah she used to be, even changes her name from Jennifer Harris to Jenna Vaughn (taking her step-father's name) to complete the transformation. For all of high school the change fools everyone, even Jenna--until her birthday in the fall of senior year, when she gets a mysterious letter in her mailbox addressed to Jennifer Harris, the name that symbolizes the outcast she used to be. Of course, Cameron is back--not dead, but still with many secrets, and causing a stir among Jenna's friends. The really compelling part of the book is Jenna's and Cameron's relationship now that they are older. They were too young to be real sweethearts back in third grade, and now that Cameron's back there is sexual tension that teeters on the edge of turning into something real, but is overshadowed by everything else going on, particularly Jenna's desire to maintain her image as a normal, happy popular girl. Jenna's struggle to come to terms with Cameron's reappearance feels real, trying as she does to negotiate her boyfriend's jealousy and her girlfriends' romantic interest in Cameron while figuring out her own emotions. The writing reminded me of Gabrielle Zevin's Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, another quick read for teens by an author to watch.

Race: A History Beyond Black and White

2008-01-29T15:27:00.001-08:00

This challenge really was a challenge, because I have a few books I've read this month that could be considered for the theme, and the runner-ups were: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver, and Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life by Steve Martin, both of which were personal stories and/or memoirs written for an adult audience. However, after much deliberation, I decided on Marc Aronson's Race: A History Beyond Black and White, a non-fiction book for teens (or at least older children). I looked at reading this book for this challenge as the reading equivalent of taking my vitamins; I knew it would be well-written and informative, but it wasn't exactly topping my list of must-reads. Still, it did get many very positive reviews and I thought it would be a good choice for the month in which we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday. And I was pleasantly surprised--it was less academic than I expected it to be, but just as informative. Basically, Aronson traces the history of race and racial prejudice, concentrating mainly on the US and Europe, but acknowledging the fact that divisions are drawn down racial lines all over the globe. One of the more shocking revelations is the fact that the concept of race is really a rather recent development--and it can pretty much be directly traced to the start of Christianity. This book was written for teens, but adults looking for a concise introduction to the subject will find this helpful as well.

Happy New Year!

2008-01-08T16:17:00.000-08:00

It's official, the holidays are finally over. We had our last quasi-holiday (actually a double birthday party) over the weekend, so I can begin the detox process from all the cake I've been eating for the last month and a half. If I'm being honest I can't really complain about all the eating because right after Christmas I had an enforced cleansing/diet situation, by which I mean I had a stomach virus, so two days of no eating at all. I know, it's not healthy, but at least it was over quickly and I don't feel too much guilt about gorging myself on xmas cookies.
So this year I am choosing not to go the physical self-improvement route with my new year's resolution, but instead have chosen to rise to the book a month challenge thrown down by a fellow blogger. And true to her word the first month's theme was posted on January 1--the theme is, appropriately enough, time. So there are lots of choices and decisions to make. I would like to at least start this off on the right foot and not cheat by twisting whatever I am already reading to fit the theme, but here it is only the 2nd week of the year and I am already feeling behind. Lately I have actually been reading more adult books than children's or teen, so I think my final decision is going to be something children's, and I've got my eye on a couple of weighty non-fiction titles that I know will be good but will take me a while to get through--this is starting to sound like taking my medicine. My deal with myself with have to be this: if I do something boring and dense one month, I'll balance it out with fluff the next month.

BAM!

2007-12-31T12:22:00.000-08:00

So I've been thinking about the future of this blog, and whether it will have a future going into 2008. As long as I was doing my learning 2.0 exercises I had ready-made topics for rumination, but I've been sort of deliberating about which direction I should be steering this thing. Ideally I'd like to talk about books, because if I get going about the day-to-day library stuff I'll just start complaining, and while that's fun for me I realize that it's not much fun for anyone else. Then, I went onto my library's blog today and heard about someone who is doing a Book a Month Challenge--one you sign up, on the first of the month you'll get the month's genre "assignment," and then you can read whatever you want and relate it to that genre however you see fit. And children's/teen books are allowed! The blog is http://bamchallenge.wordpress.com/ and since today is the last day of the year, I expect that before the end of the week I'll have my first assignment. I know you are probably thinking that reading a book a month is not exactly a stretch for a librarian, but you'd be surprised how little reading gets done some weeks--if it wasn't for my commute I'd have no reading time at all. So I'm starting out with high hopes and good intentions...

Oh, there's no one in the library for the holidays...Everybody sing along!

2007-12-11T16:17:00.000-08:00

Is there a quieter, lonelier place than the children's room of a library in the weeks leading up to Christmas? The shelves are full to bursting, the computers are abandoned, even the phone isn't ringing, except for the occasional toddler's mom, trying to sign up for next month's storytimes (wait till January!). Oh sure, every once in a while someone passes through to check on myspace, or to find a book about vampires, but overall we are not the place to be in December. On the face of things this is good, as it should mean I am weeding my collections and clearing off my desk, but one thing I have learned about myself is that I work better under pressure. I am a procrastinator in my bones, and if I don't have a deadline hanging over my head, I just won't finish my project. I'm not proud of this because I think it actually means I am lazy, but old dogs and all that.
In fact, I have been weeding, and I have been gazing adoringly over at the section I just did, that's how good it looks. All neat and spacious, I'm woozy just thinking about it. Too bad I still have about 75% of the collection left to go...
Tomorrow I have my last class visit of 2007, less than a week before xmas. Odds are these first graders will be a little wound up and not exactly library-minded, but there is a chance the teacher will threaten to withhold parties and treats, so I might make it through the program in one piece. Still, it might behoove me to plan for less talk, more action. We will sing and dance the hour away if need be!
Okay, late breaking news: our internet was down for about a half hour earlier this evening, and somehow the word got out to the public and we were actually busy! With people looking for books and information! In the last 35 minutes I have had kids looking for books about Native American drums, Ferdinand Magellan, maps of ancient Egypt, the Korean war, and rocketry and Sally Ride. Everyone wanted books! I even had one mother thank me over and over for finding so much in various reference books (this was the Native American drum person). Which was kind of nice. But alas, time has passed and the flurry of activity is over. Everyone in the room is hunched over a computer and if they're not playing a game they're im-ing. Order has been restored to the universe.

Doesn't he usually go down the chimney?

2007-12-02T13:07:00.000-08:00

In the unlikely event that anyone reading this doesn't know where I am, they will now because I think my library is located in the only town around with this particular event. I speak, of course, of the traditional event where Santa rappells down the tallest building in town along with Rudolph and some other celebrity daredevils (I hear that last year, Rudolph's girlfriend was there). Why do a boring old tree lighting when you can watch Santa hang off a building? The thing that cracks me up is that everyone in town loves this--it starts in 20 minutes and people are all lined up to buy their commemorative $12 balloons and whatnot, despite the fact that it's freezing out, not to mention intermittently snowing and raining. Maybe it's the thrill of wondering whether he'll make it down in one piece that draws the crowd. Or, more likely, maybe it's special guest Jose Feliciano--all I have to do is read his name and I'm singing Feliz Navidad for hours. See, now I'm so distracted by humming the song that I lost my train of thought. Maybe NYC will catch on to our popularity and do a nightly rappelling event in Rockefeller Center instead of putting the tree up. It would be a greener thing to do (no cutting down ancient trees), and possibly more ecumenical, since they could rotate representatives of different faiths doing the dangling.

Mental Note

2007-12-01T10:46:00.000-08:00

This has basically nothing to do with learning 2.0 or libraries, but I wanted to officially have this somewhere, so next year when Christmas rolls around I remember the horror and don't make the same mistake twice. If anyone who knows me hears me say that I am going to have my daughter's picture taken at some mall studio for Christmas, for god's sake, stop me! Especially if I say it after Thanksgiving! I spent two hours in the studio yesterday for a 15-minute photo session and about 15 minutes of looking at the proofs and choosing poses. I thought as a children's librarian I had probably seen the gamut of children and parent behavior, but this was eye-opening even for me. All I can say is, whatever the photographers working there make, I hope they're getting big holiday bonuses.

Superstah!

2007-11-29T06:45:00.000-08:00

Ta-da! I made it, number 23! I have really enjoyed this whole exercise, not only learning about all the new applications and websites and stuff, but also blogging and reading everyone else's blogs as they chug along. I feel like I have a whole new vocabulary now. And I am making a concerted effort to actually use all these new things, if not in my professional work then certainly in my personal life. Facebook is a big favorite, which is a surprise for me. I was so distainful of mySpace and never expected to like social networking, but there you have it. I also regularly subscribe to podcasts, which I never did before. And LibraryThing! Totally loving that. Most of all, I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy about my blog. I know no one is reading it, except those of us in our learning exercises, but even so, it's been so much fun I'm thinking I may continue even now that I don't need to. You never know, the holidays are coming, maybe I can con one of my unsuspecting relatives into checking me out online.

Second Life--Almost as bad as the first

2007-11-26T10:25:00.001-08:00

Let me start by saying that I am glad I checked out Second Life, but I don't think I'll be a regular user/inhabitant/frequentor/whatever. Just before Thanksgiving I signed myself up, picked out a snazzy new name and downloaded the software (this part actually took a ridiculous amount of time--then as soon as it was finished I was told that I didn't have the most up-to-date version, and needed to download it immediately--grr). So I'm finally all logged in and I appear in Second Life-land with a bunch of other lost souls, one of whom was about two inches away from me--naked! And of course I don't bother learning how to do anything, I just see that if I press this button I can fly, so I press the button and get stranded hovering over everything with no clue how to get down. I figured at the very least I would fall back down to earth, but no such luck. It was at this point that a co-worker wandered up to my computer and with her help I was back on the ground, but I was already off to an inauspicious start. Second Life is kind enough to have a tutorial for losers, ahem, beginners like me, so we can learn to walk and stuff, but I was having a tough time even with that. So I start by walking to the target, okay, so far so good, and then I'm supposed to find something to ride, okay, there's a scooter or something, I get on that, but this is where things go horribly awry. I'm on my scooter thing and this guy comes up to me and greets me in Italian. I ignore him as I am trying to turn a corner on my scooter and there's a taxi in my way, but he is persistent. Somehow I end up off my scooter, the scooter disappears, this guy is still talking to me, and I now have to figure out how to get across this bridge thing with no vehicle. Italian guy is getting more annoying, he figures out that I don't speak Italian and asks to be my friend in English, which I decline, because I just need a ride now and he is not going to help me. I retrace my steps and see that there is another scooter, so I hurry to get it, but some other newbie steals it out from under me. I have figured out that the scooters just keep coming so I wait until another one shows up and try to get on it. But Italian guy is back! He races to the scooter, gets on it and then starts trying to run me over backward so I am forced to flee. Bastard! or should I say bastardo! This is why I don't want to be your friend! Either way, I am now hopping mad and decide I am going to hijack this car I see, thinking I can get in the same way I got on the scooter--but instead I am sitting on the roof of the car, which is not what I want, and the people inside are probably thinking I am a freak, which wouldn't be too far off the mark--who sits on the roof of a car? At this point we are weeping, I am laughing so hard my sides hurt, and I am thinking that aside from the smoking hot avatar I would doubtlessly have as my alter-ego, this is maybe more trouble than it is worth. But I did get to fly and at least I wasn't naked--I hope that poor girl got herself sorted out.

A-Twitter about Twitter

2007-11-20T14:54:00.000-08:00

The web 2.0 winners list is so overwhelming, there's so much good stuff out there. Although if you look closely at all the individual sites you can see that many of them get high marks for being social, not so much for usefulness. I was trying to find one that I hadn't already used--thanks to these learning exercises we've had exposure to some of the winners and runners-up on the list--and that was possibly applicable to work, not just fun. After a little exploring, my finalist is...Twitter! Working in a department with six full-time staff, almost 20 part-timers, two desks to staff and programs almost every day, not to mention in-house meetings, outreach, off-site meetings (you get the picture), I can see the value in knowing where everyone is or if someone is running late. Of course it's only valuable if everyone who needs to know is hooked up, and this is also fundamentally a social tool, but since I did my little I-love-Google dance in my last post, I didn't think it was fair to reprise it here again.

This post brought to you by Google Docs

2007-11-19T10:59:00.000-08:00

Oh my god! Why did I not know about this before?? Actually, it's because I have never gotten around to fully exploring all the bells and whistles of Google...but this is like a dream! All the anxiety about losing documents from faulty disks, ahem, crashing computers, etc., gone! Okay, maybe it's not realistic to think I'll be saving all my documents in here, but it means I don't have to worry about what version of word is on which computer I'm working on, or if word is even there at all! My husband and I have been mulling over the idea of getting a mac for some time now, and my main reason for holding out is that I was worried about not being able to open documents from PC-using folks. This changes everything! Maybe I should see what else Google has up its sleeve...is there anything they can't do?

The Blogger's Best Friend

2007-11-17T09:43:00.000-08:00

I'll tell ya what, I am definitely learning new stuff in this exercise. I am in the generation that totally fell through the cracks in terms of the internet and technology. Here's a scenario--when I started library school there was no internet as it exists now, but by the time I finished 18 months later, netscape was born and I was using it at my first (part-time) library job. Wanna laugh? One of my core competencies for technology in grad school was knowing how to FTP! I don't even remember exactly what that stands for, but I bet no one needs to know it anymore! Anyway, I am young enough that I grew up with some computer technology (I remember the old floppy floppy disks for PCs but I used a Brother word processor until my senior year in college) but old enough that I am having to educate myself on pretty much everything internet related, unlike every kid entering middle school these days. It's the reason why it's not second nature for me to explore all this new stuff on my own, so I'm glad to be led along through all these exercises.

Technorati was totally new to me, but I love the idea of being able to link a blog up to the bigger world so people know about it! I mean, why go to the trouble of blogging if no one but you is going to read it? Except for the whole cathartic diary-esque thing. But still. And of course, if you are blogging with a purpose, you really want to get people hooked up. I am not laboring under any delusions of people adding me to their rss feeds or anything, but maybe someone somewhere will think what I'm writing is worth reading, or at least more interesting than staring off into space. Of course this means that I have to go back and do tags for all my blog posts. Tagging is still not second nature to me, but I see the value and I've just gotta try to remember to do it! I'm a librarian, this sort of thing should be a piece of cake--don't we love subject headings?

Mmmm, social bookmarking...

2007-11-14T11:17:00.000-08:00

Ack, I am falling behind! The last time I checked it was sometime in May, and now it is MID-November. Is anyone else feeling super-overwhelmed (would that be overoverwhelmed?) and frantic? Hmm, must just be me...Also, is today a holiday and no one told me? It's eerily quiet in the children's room this afternoon at 2:20 pm. I may live to regret even thinking those words, but for now I'm wondering where everybody went.
I must confess that I am not a very good tagger. Does this mean I am inherently uncreative and boring? Maybe. Probably it means I can't be bothered. But I like the idea of tagging, i.e., I like to see the tags other people apply to things. And I'm noticing tagging everywhere now--I bought some stuff on amazon the other day and there were totally tags all over the place. But that figures, since amazon always likes to tell you what other people looked at and bought. Monkey see, monkey do. I am definitely intrigued by del.icio.us because I like the idea of taking my bookmarks with me from home to work and vice versa, and it's kind of fun to see what other people are checking out regularly. It'd be interesting to have a social bookmarking account for our whole department, say, so we could see what everyone's favorite databases and search engines are for different assignments. In a perfect world, with lots of time and nothing else to do, this could be totally addicting. That's what I should do for my Second Life--I'll be a person who does nothing but plays on the internet. And can fly. But never does because she's always on the internet.

Fulfilling my Obligations

2007-11-04T13:07:00.000-08:00

Well, I guess I kind of feel like I have contributed to the library's Learning 2.0 wiki, since I did in actuality add my book and my movie and my fun website--but it wasn't the empowering experience I thought it would be. Maybe that's because not too many people have added yet, and I didn't have time to be all creative and add a new page. But I did it, that's the important thing. Ho hum, it can't all be fun and games and podcasts.

Wiki wiki wiki

2007-11-03T08:49:00.000-07:00

Hmmm, it is fun to say wiki. And I totally love that it's Hawaiian. Not sure why that makes me happy, but it does. Before reading up I admit I was a little wary of wikis (hee hee) because of the whole everyone's-a-contributor thing. That makes me such a librarian; I like there to be an authority who is the definitive responsible party for my information, but I know that is 1.0 thinking and I am working to change my attitude. I guess what I sort of object to is the wikipedia, since in my mind there's always the chance that someone would intentionally or even unintentionally put wrong information out there. But I know this is irrational, I mean, we read reviews for books all the time that are printed with errors so of course it's bound to happen in the online environment as well. Working with kids and the internet you always find yourself telling kids that they have to trust the source so they can determine whether something they've found online is really good and accurate information, mainly because the kids don't realize that unlike publishing a book anyone can throw something up online with no editing, nothing. If I say I'm a leading authority on kangaroos and here's my website documenting all my research, who's gonna say I'm not? But wikis by and large seem to exist in pretty closed environments, like for a company's staff or a library's users so their applications can be tailored and specific to their audiences. I particularly liked the one library that used a wiki so their patrons could review books they liked (or didn't like) and people could browse by genre as a reader's advisory tool. In fact, there's been a lot of talk about blogging about new books as part of the library's webpage, so that staff could do some reviews each week or month or whatever, but I really like the idea of starting a wiki because then we could get the ball rolling with some of our favorite books and then have the patrons get in on it and post some of their own recommendations and then before we know it we've got a bona fide database going. Maybe if we start small, like for summer reading, it'll get off the ground. But in the meantime, I never thought I'd say this but I think I'm pro wiki.

Newsflash!

2007-10-31T11:11:00.001-07:00

In case anyone is interested, I almost made it to November without further mechanical mishap until yesterday, when the brake line in my car sprung a leak. To date, my car is the biggest thing I've ruined in October, so next year I am totally living in a yurt for 31 days. Of course with my luck the yurt will have wireless internet access, so maybe that's not such a good idea. For now, I am hoping that my poor beleaguered husband can fix it in time for me to drive to Canton tomorrow for a meeting. I could try it without the brakes, but I did that last night on my way home from work and it was just a little too much of an adrenaline rush hurtling down 95 at 70 mph in the dark and I'd just as soon not try it again.

Liz 2.0.1

2007-10-29T10:46:00.000-07:00

Before I got ready to write this entry I did a little reading online about Library 2.0, because I wanted to get a real definition of what the term means. Probably like everyone else who works as a librarian I get a lot of non-librarian guff from people who think they are funny and say things like, "Librarian, huh? It's all about computers now, soon you'll be out of a job." Har dee har har. It's been ten years now, and that joke is still funny. What I learned from my reading is that Library 2.0 isn't just about technology, it's about the evolution of libraries and how we change in order to stay relevant, which isn't something that just happened with the advent of computers, but has been happening for decades, if not hundreds of years. True, technology means that we change quicker now, but I like the "constant beta" philosophy--try something, and if it doesn't work, or if something better comes along, then nothing is carved in stone and you tweak, or adapt, or totally drop it, whatever. And by the way, as the trucks and trucks of returned books in my department will attest to, books aren't going anywhere either.

Customized Search Engines

2007-10-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

Before getting into these 23 things I had never heard of Rollyo or any other customized search engines, although it definitely makes sense. If you can tell a search engine like google to look for whatever you want, you should also be able to limit that search by telling the search engine exactly where you want it to search. I fooled around a little and set up my own Christmas shopping search engine, where I put all the places I usually go to look for books, video games, toys and kids clothes. Truthfully, I don't know how much I'll use it, but some of the preloaded limited searches Rollyo offered looked more promising. For instance, I liked that I could do a focused search in either health or parenting, which are two kinds of searches I do frequently. Of course I have my own favorites sites to search, but some of these were included in Rollyo's search so I didn't have to jump around from site to site if I didn't see what I wanted on the first try (plus I could always add my sites to theirs). Here's my embarrassing admission for the day: I have been pronouncing Rollyo as "rolly-o" in my head, and it became clear when I looked at the site closely that they would have me say it as "roll yo." I know, it's semantics, but "roll yo" sounds a lot less dorky than "rolly-o." 50 Cent knows what I mean.

Finally, Something My iPod is Good For

2007-10-26T06:31:00.000-07:00

Actually, this title isn't really fair because I love my iPod and it's really good at the thing I most want it to be good at, which is playing all the music I love. But there was some initial disappointment after finding out that I wouldn't be able to take advantage of the library's free eaudio books. Ah well, the benefits have outweighed the drawbacks all in all. But here's how dumb I am: until I really sort of started looking into podcasts (what they are, how to access them, subscribing, etc.) it never occurred to me that they are really kind of what iPods are made for. I mean I never wondered what the "pod" in iPod stood for, but the penny finally dropped--you know, what makes it different from an mp3 player. It's kind of cool to have a device to watch/listen to for portability's sake. The train has totally gotten me addicted to all these audio gizmos, and I'm willing to try anything, so this is one more way to spend my tedious commute. It'll only become a problem if it starts cutting into my books per week average!

Frustration, or Google Owns Everything

2007-10-24T12:18:00.000-07:00

I am not as slick as I thought I was. My superstar status is downgraded to D level. I've come up against my first techno-wall, as I have been trying in vain to get a video from Youtube viewed here in my blog. Woe alas. I thought it'd be a piece of cake since blogger and Youtube are both owned by Google and should be all simpatico but I'm having trouble all the same. *sigh* It's still October... I know there's probably some really easy way to do it and when I finally figure it out I'll be smacking myself in the forehead, but in the meantime, grr.
Youtube is sort of a quintessential time-waster. I can view commercials from the '70s, teasers from bands and TV shows, all of which are entertaining, but for about a week I had an RSS feed on the top 100 or whatever Youtube videos, and they were all either foreign sporting events or porn (occasionally foreign porn). So I unsubscribed to that...
I guess I will take a break from trying to hook up some video clips here and try again in a week or two, on a day when I haven't spent six hours in meetings.

Revvin' Up for a Rant

2007-10-23T16:01:00.000-07:00

Ugh, I have actually been dreading blogging about this, because I know I sound like lead grouch-keteer under normal circumstances, but there's no avoiding it. This is October, known to many as breast cancer awareness month or Hispanic heritage month or even just the 31-days-of-Halloween month, all of which are good things. But for me, October is the month where, year in and year out, one or more of my various and sundry pieces of technology craps out on me. This year is no exception, as my computer crashed on October 7 and I have spent the last two weeks trying to recover all the things I lost. The good news is, I haven't lost anything tremendously important except hours of my life sitting trying to figure out where things might be hidden. Last October my cell phone died--just died, no new batteries or anything, which meant I lost pretty much every phone number I need. Two years ago in October of 2005 I really lucked out, as I got a new computer from Gateway which had all kinds of problems and required no fewer than 3 angry phone calls to their customer service department (this actually ended up getting me a free flash drive for my troubles, so that wasn't too bad). The reason I got the new computer that year was because I got an iPod nano for my birthday, which didn't work with my old computer's Windows 98. That nano was returned less than a month after I got it (also in October) because it wouldn't hold a charge. That very same month, my work computer contracted some virus which resulted in my having to get a replacement computer there, too. So I am basically the angel of death to anything with a plug. My only consolation is that we are almost to the end of the month, when it will be safe for me to watch TV again.

Victory!

2007-10-22T07:31:00.000-07:00

I don't mean to brag, but I am a superstar. This weekend I downloaded one of the library's audiobooks and it was totally easy. This saga goes back, golly, over a year now, to when we had a meeting here at work about the ebooks and were given a "tutorial" about how to instruct patrons in how to download and listen/read. At that meeting I took about 2 pages of notes, including instructions on how to register your device/reader, blah blah blah. I came down to my office from the meeting, thinking everything was fresh in my mind so I should be able to do everything easy peasy, but NO! When push came to download shove I was unable to get my computer to download the file--this may have been because I was doing the download inside the library, but staff computers are not subject to the same restrictions as the public computers (i.e. deep freeze therefore nothing gets saved on the hard drive, ever), so I never figured out what the matter was. Of course, I never really pursued it either, because I have an iPod and can't download any of our ebooks to it anyway, so the whole exercise was sort of academic.
So, flash forward to yesterday, when I had a few minutes to spare and was online at home and thought I would give it another go, since it is part of our 2.0 training. At the very least I could blog about how traumatic an experience it was. But it was delightfully trauma-free--I did have to get myself a new account, since the one I set up all those months before was no longer valid (or else I forgot my username and password, either way), but once I did that it was smooth sailing. My best guess is that in the intervening year they maybe streamlined the process, or else I got smarter. I was even able to listen to a little bit of it already.
One thing I noticed as I was looking for something to download was that they don't appear to be getting much use. Almost all the titles I browsed were available for download, but I will go on record as saying that I don't know what the use statistics are and that I have no empirical evidence to back up this statement, just what I saw on this particular day. And the pickin's were slim, but you can't have everything. I was able to borrow part three of a trilogy, where we own the first two books on CD but don't own the 3rd one on audio at all, so all's well that ends well. And god knows I see enough people on the train plugged into to one or more devices, so it's not that people are technophobes. Maybe they are (shudder) buying their audiobooks? I wonder what it's like to have disposable income...

I don't feel the Flickr

2007-10-17T09:01:00.000-07:00

It's becoming apparent to me that by the time these 23 things are accomplished I will have 23 new accounts I have to keep track of usernames and passwords for...not so psyched about that. After having introduced myself to flickr (I am proud to say, before beginning the 23 things), I think it's a little less useful to me than some of the other technologies/applications. Maybe it's just because I am not really a photographer--I take lots of pictures, but usually they're all of my daughter with or without various other family members thrown in. In other words, not exactly Photography Today material. And, because my daughter is the subject of so many of the pics I don't feel comfortable posting all the pictures publicly, so I have all sorts of layers of privacy so no one can see them except the people I allow in. So for my purposes, flickr doesn't do much differently for me than, say, costco.com, which is where I have been storing and sharing all my online photos. Okay, I know, that pretty much outs me as the sad example of lameness that I am. But I never claimed to be cool in any way, so this is just proof. Anyway, flickr also seems to assume that I am doing all sorts of editing to my photos before I post them, which is just not the case because, well, see above.
I have done a little exploring of some of the flickr mashups, which I will admit are kind of fun, but in a sort of I'm-sure-I-can-find-something-else-to-do-for-five-minutes, non-essential kind of way. It was interesting to see how many different representations of the letters "L" and "I" flickr could come up with when I went on a "spelling with flickr" site and asked it to spell "Liz the Librarian," for instance. But you know, jeez.
I guess my main appreciation of flickr is for seeing what great photographers other people are. A few weeks ago I saw some fantastic photos people had posted of Oktoberfest in Munich, and I guess it could be a way to see people's travel photos without the boring commentary. Maybe a more charitable way to say it would be, good for armchair travelers!

Librarian Thing

2007-10-16T13:22:00.000-07:00

First of all, I would like to say how proud I am of myself for figuring out how to link my LibraryThing library to this blog! For probably everyone else in the world, that's no big deal, but I'm choosing to view it as a personal triumph. What can I say, it's been a rough couple of weeks and I am taking my ego boosts where I can get them.

Professionally, I don't know how I feel about LibraryThing. My library is fairly large, and the best way I can figure to use it would be for genre lists or something, or maybe some "Youth Services Librarians recommend..." sort of thing, but the fact that it links to Amazon and not our library catalog is more than a little problematic. Personally, I kind of like the chance to see what other people, not necessarily my friends, are reading, but I am not prepared to pay for my account and I am totally going to run out of free space way before I enter all the books I've read. And I am not usually into joining groups/posting to bulletin boards but I did see a few groups of interest, at least to lurk if not to post. One thing I have noticed, though, is that in order to get suggestions that are really to my taste I really have to enter a wide range of books--so far, I have only entered things that I have read recently or am currently reading, which is only 16 books, and I am getting some pretty random suggestions. I'll have to go back a little further and add some of my favorites. But you know, bottom line, I like to read and to hear what others are reading, particularly books for adults which I don't always have time for, so purely from an entertainment point of view it's pretty cool.

"Faces" on Facebook

2007-10-10T11:09:00.000-07:00

What a funny thing--I joined Facebook for pretty much one reason only: to communicate with my cousin Paul who moved to Italy over the summer. I mean, he is family but I wasn't about to call overseas to have a two minute conversation with him. When I asked my uncle what the best way was to get in touch with Paul, he told me that there were pictures posted on Facebook. He then proceeded to gripe about why did it have to be Facebook, he couldn't get in to see the pictures without joining up, why wasn't kodakgallery good enough, and what about email...whatever. My uncle is another story entirely. So anyway, I just joined so I could say hi and wish Paul a happy birthday, and the next thing I know, some people I knew from high school and college and various jobs were contacting me, trying to be my friend. My cousin Dominic's ex-wife contacted me; my senior prom date poked me just this weekend (ooo-er, as Georgia Nicholson would say)! So my point is, despite thinking that I was too old and married and busy to have any use for a social networking site, I have been pleasantly surprised. Also, once you have your little core group of people on there, it's kind of easier to post something on there and know that everyone will see it, instead of worrying that I missed emailing something to one individual or another. Plus, no spam!
Here is the thing, though--half the people on Facebook don't use their real pictures, they use avatars or some other picture that they feel represents them, and many of the people I went to school with are married with different last names (interestingly, my prom date changed his FIRST name, but then he found me), so finding the person you are looking for is sometimes a challenge, especially if you are not sure where in the world people are living, etc.
Anyhoo--mission accomplished, I found Paul, he takes fantastic photos of Bologna and makes me jealous, and I know more about him now than when he was living in CT, so it's a bonus all around.

Feeding the Reader

2007-10-04T09:46:00.000-07:00

So I was a little leery of setting up my RSS feed reader--not because of anything technological, but because I didn't think there'd be anything I'd want all the updates on. What you need to know about me is, I have basically no free time. I have times throughout the day when I am not really doing much, but those times are usually spent in a car or a train going back and forth to work, or totally vegged out after I have finished with the whole dinner/bath/stories/toothbrushing fandango every night. If I am lucky, I'll manage 30 minutes of some sort of exercise, but lately I've been just trying to get a little sleep. What I am usually not doing is poking around on the internet looking for news or anything else. I do need to know whether Britney is or is not in possession of her kids from time to time, but that's all.

But then I had sort of an epiphany--I don't live in the town where I work, and I don't always have time to read the paper. Voila--something to read in my downtime, and I can keep up with all the local news. And then, should I want to find out if Paris really goes to Africa or if Nicole legitimizes her baby, I can always subscribe to people.com too. Hooray!

Blogger's Block

2007-09-25T17:31:00.000-07:00

So far, this whole blogging thing has been a breeze, except for the one thing--what to blog about? No one wants to hear a blow-by-blow of life in the department, especially because that has the potential to deteriorate into whining and complaining, and who needs to read that? And frankly, my personal life just doesn't have what it takes to hold even my interest most days, never mind anyone else's. And finally, I don't think I can go into a deep enough cover to really dish, although that would certainly be entertaining. So it's a dilemma.

Maybe I could start a "believe it or not" column, where you have to guess which patron antics are the false ones.

Art Linkletter was right!

2007-09-24T09:06:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I have really had a funny conversation with one of the kids, but on Saturday one of our regulars came in, someone I haven't seen all summer, and we were talking about what he'd been doing for the last couple of months. I don't remember how the subject changed (maybe he just changed it), but he wanted to guess how old I was (occupational hazard when working with kids). He made a guess, a pretty close guess, but then proceeded to tell me WHY he knew I wasn't "old." Peering very closely, really taking his time, he said that number one, I don't wear earrings like old ladies wear. Also, my hair isn't gray and it's very bouncy. So there you have it--the secrets of eternal youth. Forget botox, peels--the earrings don't lie.

Fooling around in Blogger

2007-09-22T11:11:00.000-07:00

I was playing around, actually looking at a friend's blog today, and I noticed a totally cool feature of this blog--at the top of the page, if you click on "next blog" you get t look at some random person's blog. I stumbled onto someone blogging under then name "fat guy," that seemed to be his ruminations on being fat (his word, not mine--I'm not weightist), and another one about a Japanese woman in France, doing a tour of all the places she's been and food she's eaten. Fun! Woe unto him that gets this blog randomly...

I think I'm about to go off on a rant.

I think we should post a picture, like huge movie-poster size, in the youth services dept. of the little girl who disappeared in Portugal or Spain or wherever over the summer when her parents left her unattended in their hotel room while they went off to dinner. And under that we should post our unattended child rules--maybe then people would listen! I just spent the last 10 minutes negotiating with this person who was trying to leave her primarily French-speaking 3-year-old in the care of a 7-year-old so she could go off and use the internet. Grr. I know, here's a quarter.

Okay, I'm starting to sound like a curmudgeon. Let's change the subject.

One of the cool things about working with roughly the same population of kids over almost 10 years is that I get to see them grow up! There's a young lady here today that, about a year ago, was a total problem child. She wasn't "Bad," but she was the kind of kid that was here all the time, and when she was here we all knew that we'd spend lots of time disciplining her (keep your voice down, stay on your own computer, keep your hands to yourself, where's your mother). Anyway, she's been here for a couple of hours today and she's been nothing but respectful and well-behaved. What a difference a year makes!

Hi Everyone!

2007-09-20T12:33:00.000-07:00

This is it, my foray into the blogosphere...can you feel the electricity in the air? I know, the Ferguson world has been perched on the edge of their seats, waiting to hear my thoughts and insights. Well, the wait is over!

Today is a good day to start, because it is also the first day of my Two's Company storytime, which will run for the next 5 weeks, and who knows--maybe they'll give me some fun and interesting fodder. They always entertain me.

I am about 3/4 of the way through a very interesting book from our teen section, Freak Show by James St. James. About a teen drag queen transplanted from our own Darien, CT to the bowels of rural FL, attending a very conservative private school for ridiculously wealthy problem children. Hilarity, as you might expect, does not ensue. He's running for homecoming queen now--I'll let you know if he survives.