qod re: formaldehyde

Yesterday's QOD (quote of the day) from one of my favorite student workers MK:

"I found a shirt that doesn't hold the smell of cadaver."

Frightening and funny.

stinky cheese stands alone

All other OUS (Oregon University System) libraries are closed today because tomorrow is the fourth. Even the UW library is closed.

We are so smart here at the UO to stay open, spending money from our student budgets and paying to keep the place lit and the equipment running from 8am-7pm today when only a handful of people will use our services. It's a good thing we're not in the middle of a recession.

If we were playing that peppy children's game The Farmer in the Dell, we would be the cheese. We would be stinky, and we would most certainly stand alone.

I am bitter (just in case you didn't notice).

la blogotheque + fleet foxes = jolly good

Also good: watching this VID on a tiny break.

saturday sketch

Drawn by LSA KS.

Today we ate gummy bears. Almost ordered pizza. Checked books in. And yes checked some of them out again. Warned about due dates and recalls. Recited weekend hours about five million times and then to top it all off added just under a hundred bucks in campus cash on ID cards in various states of disrepair, usually dangling from a green and yellow lanyard  and weighted down with a bouquet of jangling keys that gets in the way as you attempt to run the black swipe stripe through the machine.

We are changing the world one mind-numbing scan or swipe at a time…is the mantra looping in my mind right before I say (for the millionth time), "Your balance is [fill in the amount here]."

near or far

When people are far away, it can be difficult to know if they are walking towards you or away from you. Usually if you keep walking, you can figure out which one is true because the other person either gets closer, growing larger and features more defined. Or they shrink and are flattened, merging with the horizon and disappearing. Sometimes, though, you turn a corner or enter a building or lose sight of the distant stranger in a crowd before you know whether your paths might have crossed.

and finally

Finals week, and my office has been hit by a tornado.

Not much to report. Except I need a haircut and have mullet and sideburn concerns. And everyone is leaving--so many of my deluxe students graduating. This finals week is even more appropriately named than the other two this academic year.

So, in honor of the end of the year and finality and all the adios-ing happening in the narrow walkway behind the Checkout Desk, I post one last entry from my old blog before deleting it forever. [insert me, tipping my hat to Incidentals, the hunched over, halted-step-taking old blog from yesteryear]

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Stolen Doormat


Though the first thoughts that traveled through my mind included (but were not limited to) "rat bastards," I really am more amused than upset that someone has stolen my doormat. It was nothing fancy--a brown, bristly rectangle that seemed to attract floating clumps of cat fur.

The apartment just across the way still has a lovely lady-bug mat tucked up against its threshold. It is much more stylish than my plain Jane boot-scraper. I wonder if it is a personal vendetta? Perhaps my downstairs neighbor is angry with me. I wake at 5:00 in the morning, and he doesn't seem to stir before 7:30. I try to tiptoe about, gently pulling a glass mug out of the cupboard without clinking it against the other mugs. The harder I try to be silent, the louder I am.

So my theory about the missing property involves a covert operation: my downstairs nemesis dressed in black, a flashlight's jittery yellowish circle on my cement gray landing, and finally my doormat tucked under my neighbor's arm as he runs down the stairs.

retraction

p.s. I will never mock the food pyramid again. Also I don't think I'll drink w'09 or baileys for a very very long time. And never together.

mocking the food pyramid

I felt so healthy, eating that plate full of salad for dinner. Well, at least until I polished off a few W'09s. Talk about a well-rounded meal: vegetables and Widmer hoppy goodness.

I mock you, Food Pyramid!

previous life supposition

Check out Grizzly Bear, courtesy of the Black Cab Sessions. It's a grand performance. Also enjoyable: Peter Bjorn & John, Spoon, Ane Brun. They are deluxe, stripped-down versions with a moving backdrop of the city and its unaware inhabitants.

I think, in another life, I was an amazing musician. So amazing that I used up all my talent, and in this life I'm left only with the ability to enjoy others as they play the guitar and harmonize and maybe sway a little with their eyes closed, pausing before the last refrain that they hold just a few extra seconds before rejoining the rest of the world.

special olympics unified softball

I'm drinking a W'09, eating a turkey and provolone hoagie. My glove on the chest by the door is dusty from cleaning off home plate an hour ago. My eyes feel gritty and I have a protective layer on me consisting of one part sweat, one part sunburn, one part third base line chalk. I'll de-stink soon but for now I'm enjoying a satisfying exhaustion and a warmth inside and out. The best. Special olympics unified softball.

let the gorilla lead

The reader board at Trinity Baptist on the first stretch of my morning run: If your (yes, minus punctuation and an e) dancing with a gorilla let it lead. Isaiah 58:11

By the time I circled back on my return trip, they had changed the quote. I wonder if someone complained that it was confusing or inappropriate. Maybe a group united to stop forcing gorillas to dance.

I looked the verse up in my tiny bible from high school and there is no mention of dancing. Or gorillas for that matter.

point of origin

You know those moments that make it easy to get off the fence about a decision or an issue or when you're trying to choose between lemon or chocolate cake? They can be so great.

They remind me of when my ears finally pop after my flight lands and the hazy, gauzy filter disappears so I can understand what people are saying to me again; or that instant you surface after swimming underwater for one and a half laps at the Wilson High olympic size pool and all the warbly shouts from above become clear again; or when you have a light-bulb revelation in grade school about fractions as you sit at a desk covered in multi-colored construction paper pie pieces. But I'm getting lost in excessive (and far from taut) metaphors.

Back to those moments of clarity. Those moments in your time line that will have a thick hash mark and a specific date written below to signify its importance. As a milestone. As a turning point. As a crucial contributing factor that altered your trajectory, even if only by a millimeter. It is a moment that you'll never forget so when someone asks in a few months about the change's point of origin, you can answer without a pause: Thursday, May 21st. Google Calendar was involved.

operation tame yard

The next two weeks: a mis-matched hodgepodge schedule. Then end of term and start of summer as well as Operation Tame Yard. Because it's out of control. Because it's embarassing. Because I want my house prepped and ready to sell so I can unload this shack as soon as I can do it without losing my shirt. I like my shirt.

no stupid question phliosophy

I'm a staunch supporter of the "no stupid question" (NSQ) philosophy (mainly because I'm responsible for about 45% of questions that might be labeled as less than intelligent). Lately, even I find my belief system (of aforementioned NSQ philosophy) and ability to squelch laughter put to the test. I blame it on my constant close proximity to the public and also on the rather rainy Spring.

On Saturday, a kind and unintentionally hilarious patron asked at the Library's Checkout Desk, "Um, have you by any chance seen a group of people studying in here?"

Let me just say that it's a good thing I was pulling old items from the hold shelf because excessive mirth struck me (and left a mark). When the coast was clear, the student worker and I looked at each other and pretty much bust up laughing, but carefully so no one would hear us. After all, the library also supports the NSQ.

urge to suppress

Yet another blast from the past. I miss fixed fields. I see them all the time at work, but it's a "look and don't touch" type situation. Is it strange that I have a recurring desire to suppress records in the catalog?

Yes, yes I know the answer.

June 24, 2004
Arm wrestling over suppression codes

Today, there has been a flurry of e-mails and phone conversations as we wrestle over fixed field codes. BCode 3 is my personal favorite--a powerful little code that can suppress the whole bib record. ICode 2 comes in a close second.

"So you want to suppress locally, contribute, and suppress in the union catalog? Or maybe you want to display locally and not contribute? Or are you living on the edge and hoping to suppress locally to be deleted later, contribute and suppress in the union catalog? Well, you've come to the right place."

Oh boy, I need to get out more often. Listening to debate over codes m, n---and the ever tricky r--well, it's made me a bit batty.