Poor thing...

:(

BP disaster may now be worst spill in Gulf history

Many fishing boats signed up to skim oil sit idle in marinas. Some captains and deckhands say they have been just waiting around for instructions while drawing checks from BP of more than $1,000 a day per vessel. Thousands of offers to clean beaches and wetlands have gone unanswered.

BP and the Obama administration faced mounting complaints Thursday that they are ignoring foreign offers of badly needed equipment and making poor use of the fishing boats and volunteers available to help clean up what may now be the biggest spill ever in the Gulf of Mexico.

Based on some government estimates, more than 140 million gallons of crude have now spewed from the bottom of the sea since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, eclipsing the 1979-80 disaster off Mexico that had long stood as the worst in the Gulf.

Help save the LSU School of Library and Information Science

Sign a petition at: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/SaveSLIS/

I did!

For more on the situation at Louisiana State University, check out: slis.lsu.edu.
We need your help to win this fight to save SLIS.

Thanks to Michelynn McKnight of MEDLIB-L for passing on the links.

I am #1619 on the petition. Here are my comments:

Although I am not currently a resident of Louisiana, I did grow up there and I believe it's important that the state have a school of library and information sciences to provide high quality graduates to its public, school, academic, and special libraries, which in turn support the residents of this great state. Please keep the school open!

I'm downtown at the Central Library

So far I have:

1. Enjoyed a funnel cake.
   
2. Watched belly dancing.
   
3. Gone to a petting zoo (and taken lots of pictures of goats for YKWIA. I also tried to keep a goat from eating the cone of a snow cone a child had given it, but to no avail. I hope it's okay.)
   
4. Wandered through various informational booths, shops, and the like. There seems to be more food vendors and music than anything else this year, but that may just seem the way because the stuff that is normally down Vine Street has been moved.
   
5. Gotten some food from Subway. (Seemed cheaper than the vendors.)
   
6. Checked out a copy of The Lovely Bones DVD since I'm off tomorrow.
   
7. Found a book called Hiding in the Mirror: The Mysterious Allure of Extra Dimensions, from Plato to String Theory and Beyond by Lawrence M Krauss.
   

The parade is in about a half-hour, then I think I'm going home. It's okay (and the weather is exceptional), but there have been better years. Still, the goats and llamas were fun. :)

Okay, I have SPF 50 sunblock on

and am ready to take a ride downtown to the Fourth of July Festival to see the sights, watch the parade, etc. I don't have much money for stuff, but I do want to get a funnel cake (hey, I know, I'm diabetic, but it's a once-a-year thing). Wish me luck!

The week in review

This week was strangely out of the routine, as I switch to a new schedule. It's got me a little flummoxed. On the one hand, it was an incredibly light week marked by intensity; on the other hand, I wasn't quite sure what to do with the extra time.

The reason is the new job. I'm still a librarian, of course, and still maintain my twenty-hour-a-week job at the hospital library as a solo librarian. But for the first time in, oh, ever, our system is starting to get into insurance billing as a way to cut costs and ensure our continued work. [There is still no financial obligation to patients or families, though--no co-pays or deductibles, and insurance is only billed with the family's consent. Obviously if someone doesn't have insurance or for some reason doesn't want theirs billed, all care is still provided for free.]

It's a completely new arena for us, and as so often is the case, we are one of the pilot hospitals in a new process. We went live on Thursday. The reason this matters to me personally is that I have been hired as a clerk for another 20 hours a week to enter charges for certain things. What this meant for me is that I was suddenly part of conference calls, had to have training in the computer program's use, and have had to work with the team when issues have come up.

Since it was the first week--and Go-Live wasn't until July 1st--I wasn't needed for a full schedule every day, but needed to be flexible (one day I came in early for a few hours, even though normally I work in the afternoon, for example).

What I found was that the new schedule has some pros and cons, and some challenges.
Cons:

1. I work late morning till early evening, which makes scheduling a doctor's appointment somewhat challenging (especially as my optometrist doesn't see patients until 9:30 am).
   
2. The natural break in my schedule for a lunch is at 2:30 pm--when the cafeteria is closed. Today for example, I grabbed some mac and cheese at 12:15 pm from the lunch room (I'm used to eating lunch at 11:30, so I've been eating a little something later each day) and ate it at my desk, took a lunch at 2:30 and ate hummus and pita I'd brought from home, along with a couple of deviled eggs from the salad bar.
   
3. I haven't been over to my friends' house all week. This means lengthy but enjoyable phone calls almost every night.
   
4. The buses only run every hour once I get off work, so that makes errands a little challenging.
   

Pros:

1. I probably am working the best schedule for a night owl who has always worked best from about 10 am-7 pm (I used to work that at the survey research centre, for example).
   
2. I'm not standing on my feet 28 hours at the gas station a week. That's now cut down to 8.
   
3. Instead of working three 12 hour days and two four hour days during the week, I'm now working 8 each day, so there's more continuity.
   
4. It's nice to be there full-time. I feel more connected in some ways to my co-workers at the hospital than I had been (which after 13 years, I thought I was pretty well connected to everyone already).
   
5. There's no need to run and catch the bus to another job in the middle of the afternoon. I can take my time going home if a rainstorm blows up or if I need to run errands.
   
6. I'm home by 8 pm instead of 11 pm. For now, that means it's still daylight when I get in.
   
7. I only have to walk from the store one night a week.
   
8. Oh, yeah. More money. And it goes into my retirement, which I've increased to 6% before I have a chance to miss any money that might go in. They're resuming matching our retirement, too, so this is a wonderful thing.
   

So what did this mean for this week?

Monday I worked at the library, then stayed another hour or so or a conference call. Tuesday I came in at 8:30 and went through some of the process with some people, then worked until about 12-4:30 at the library. Wednesday was the last actual half-day I had, so I went to the eye doctor, got contacts, ordered glasses, and then got my hair cut. (I would have gone over to my friends' house but they were doing something with the family.) Thursday was mostly to schedule; I left a little early once I finished up everything. Today was the same--but I also had a nice neck/backrub by a massage therapist as part of a de-stress thing they were doing at work. That was really nice. She was really surprised how tight my muscles were (they always are; my friend can't touch me without causing pain because of it, but she was really gentle and got them to relax. I really should consider getting a monthly massage. Their group is having a special of $35 for an hour right now, apparently. It's out by Hamburg, so I could get there on the bus. I just don't know if riding the bus after a massage is the best thing; they're kind of bumpy. I used to hate doing so after the chiropractor back in the day.)

What I have been doing that's a bit strange is I've come home, eaten, and then slept for an hour to three after getting home. I think it's because I'm trained to come home, eat, and then it's already time for bed when I was coming home at 11 pm. So I need to get over that. Plus, I was probably sleep deprived early on in the week. I have managed to actually get some reading in, too, though.

So what are the plans for next week? Tomorrow I'm going to the Fourth of July festival that they're having on the third :) downtown, then I work a short (5 hour) shift in the evening at the store. Sunday is completely free; we're not playing the game. I have Monday off, too, so my plan is to go over to my friends' house then, since the buses will run on a normal schedule and I'll get to stay later. I also need to pick up my repaired glasses on Monday. Tuesday-Friday should be my first days at full schedule. (Tuesday will be especially busy, it looks like). Then next Saturday I should be back to the eight hour store schedule, and then next Sunday we should have a game.

I've got part of the notes done from last week's game; I still need to work on those. I'll probably finish on Sunday, since I'll have a free day, and do some cleaning around the house, too. I also have a project that absolutely is due by July 15th, where I'm contributing many entries on ac couple of subjects to an encyclopaedia.

Okay, my computer keeps reminding me that there are updates and wants to shut down (I finally told it to come back and see me in an hour.) I should go back to sleep--it's almost four (but I went to bed at 10. See what I mean?)

Talk about a flash dance :)

75 teens from DANCE This! did a flash mob dance at the Seattle Public Library yesterday. Thanks to Nikki at the Eagle Dawg blog for the head's up. It looks like it was great fun.

Apologies are long overdue...and for many, may come too late

Unfinished Business: For 65 years, Japanese corporations have escaped responsibility for abusing American POWs during World War II

Lester Tenney entered World War II as a strapping 21-year-old, weight 180 pounds. By the time he emerged from Japanese captivity in 1945, he was a shattered, emaciated cripple. His left arm and shoulder were partly paralyzed due to an accident in a coal mine where he'd been sent as a slave laborer. His overseers there -- civilian employees of the Mitsui Corp., not members of the Imperial Army -- had knocked out his teeth in repeated beatings with hammers and pickaxes. At war's end, he weighed in at 98 pounds. It took him a year in U.S. Army hospitals to regain something like a semblance of his old well-being.

Sixty-five years later, Tenney and his fellow ex-prisoners of war (POWs) -- the rapidly diminishing group of those who remain alive, that is -- are still awaiting the full fruits of victory. The Japanese companies that once abused Tenney and his fellow prisoners have never acknowledged responsibility for their crimes, let alone offered compensation or regrets of any kind. (The companies needed the POWs to compensate for a wartime labor shortage.) The Japanese government has only just begun to offer its regrets for what happened -- far too late for most of the veterans, but, still, something. Perhaps most depressingly of all, the U.S. government has spent years allowing the Japanese to get away with it -- a policy of complicity that has its roots in the two countries' complex postwar relationship. There are signs that this, too, may finally be changing. Hope never dies, as they say.

Just like businesses that reaped the benefits of Jewish slave labour in German areas of Europe in World War II have a moral obligation to apologise and offer reparations to those who suffered (and in several cases, that has been the case), so do Japanese companies who used American POWs.

Survivors of Japan's WWII POW Camps Call on Japan for the Same Treatment as Siberian Internees

World War II former prisoners of war of Japan are calling on Japanese government and industry to provide the same commitment to the memory of their suffering and forced labor. The call comes after Japan's parliament approved on June 16th $200M to benefit Japanese veterans who survived the Soviet Union's post-WWII Siberian labor camps and to provide an accurate historical account for future generations.

Three past commanders of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor (ADBC) applaud Japan's government for taking action now. Dr. Lester Tenney, Mr. Edward Jackfert, and Mr. Ralph Levenberg all survived Japan's notorious prisoner of war camps and endured brutal forced labor, providing profit for some of Japan's largest corporations during WWII. Over 60 well-known Japanese companies, such as Mitsui, Sumitomo, Kawasaki, Mitsubishi, and Nippon Sharyo, used American and Allied POW labor in harsh conditions to sustain their war production.

I'm practicing

Today is my first full day at the hospital as we go-live into the process for which I'll be doing data entry four hours a day in addition to my part-time library duties.

So, the good news is that I get to go in a half-hour later that I used to. I'm up and dressed and I've already gone through my Google Reader stories. I have to leave about 9:50 to catch the bus in to work, so I have a bit of time.

This is also the first time I've had the multifocal contact lenses in for more than five minutes. Things do seem clearer than with the monovision (and apparently my prescription changed, too, at least from the last pair of glasses to the new ones).

According to my optometrist, multifocal lenses are built around the fact that when you look at different distances, your pupils change size. Thus, when you look far away, your pupil dilates. When you look close up, it contracts. This is why you need good light to read by with them, and sunglasses if you're outside on a bright day, though, because of course light also affects your pupil size.

I find myself blinking a bit more and adjusting my distance a little from the computer screen, but all in all, things seem readable, which is good, as I'll spend four hours or so today putting in numbers and other entries.

Anyway, wish me luck. I'm not used to being at that one place for so long in the day. It's nice not to have to rush over to the store, and of course, I'll get off earlier than when I was working at the gas station during the week.

Here's hoping something goes according to plan

Some 70,000 turtle eggs to be whisked far from oil

An effort to scoop thousands of turtle eggs from their nests to save them from death in the oily Gulf of Mexico will begin in the coming weeks in a desperate attempt to keep an entire generation of threatened species from vanishing.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will coordinate the plan, which calls for collecting about 70,000 turtle eggs in up to 800 nests buried in the sand across Florida Panhandle and Alabama beaches.

It's never been done on such a massive scale. But doing nothing, experts say, could lead to unprecedented deaths. There are fears the turtles would be coated in oil and poisoned by crude-soaked food as they hatch and swim out to sea.

Go, Team!

Meanwhile:

BP spill nears a somber record as Gulf's biggest: Ixtoc I spill off Mexico's coast in 1979-1980 reached 140 million gallons

BP's massive oil spill will become the largest ever in the Gulf of Mexico by Thursday based on the highest of the federal government's estimates, an ominous record that underscores the oil giant's dire need to halt the gusher.

The oil that's spewed for two and a half months from a blown-out well a mile under the sea is expected to surpass the 140 million gallon mark, based on the upper estimate, which would eclipse the record-setting Ixtoc I spill off Mexico's coast from 1979 to 1980.

By the lower end of the government's estimates, at least 71.2 million gallons are in the Gulf.

The growing total is crucial to track — in part because U.K.-based BP is likely to be fined per gallon spilled, said Larry McKinney, director of Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi's Gulf of Mexico research institute