:(

One of my favourite actors, Gregory Peck, passed away today as well. I especially loved him in To Kill a Mockingbird. And to be married for 48 years! Wow.

One of those things you get in e-mail...haven't a clue where it originated, of course...

Have you ever spoken and wished that you could take the words back...or that you could crawl into a hole? Here are a few stories of people who did and do....

1) I walked into a hair salon with my husband and three kids in tow and asked loudly, "How much do you charge for a shampoo and a blow job?" I turned around and walked back out and never went back. My husband didn't say a word... he knew better.

2) I was at the golf store comparing different kinds of golf balls. I was unhappy with the women's type I had been using. After browsing for several minutes, I was approached by one of the good-looking gentlemen who works at the store. He asked if he could help me. Without thinking, I looked at him and said, "I think I like playing with men's balls."

3) My sister and I were at the mall and passed by a store that sold a variety of nuts. As we were looking at the display case, the boy behind the counter asked if we needed any help. I replied, "No, I'm just looking at your nuts. "My sister started to laugh hysterically, the boy grinned, and I turned beet-red and walked away. To this day, my sister has never let me forget.

4) While in line at the bank one afternoon, my toddler decided to release some pent-up energy and ran amok. I was finally able to grab hold of her after receiving looks of disgust and annoyance from other patrons. I told her that if she did not start behaving "right now" she would be punished. To my horror, she looked me in the eye and said in a voice just as threatening, "If you don't let me go right now, I will tell Grandma that I saw you kissing Daddy's
pee-pee last night!" The silence was deafening after this enlightening exchange. Even the tellers stopped what they were doing. I mustered up the
last of my dignity and walked out of the bank with my daughter in tow. The last thing I heard when the door closed behind me were screams of laughter.

5) Have you ever asked your child a question too many times? My three-year-old son had a lot of problems with potty training and I was on him constantly.
One day we stopped at Taco Bell for a quick lunch in between errands. It was very busy, with a full dining room. While enjoying my taco, I smelled funny, so of course I checked my seven-month-old daughter, and she was clean. Then I realised that Danny had not asked to go potty in a while, so I asked him if he needed to go, and he said "No." I kept thinking, "Oh Lord, that child has had an accident, and I don't have any clothes with me." Then I said, "Danny, are you SURE you didn't have an accident?" "No," he replied. I just KNEW that he must have had an accident, because the smell was getting worse. Sooooo, I asked one more time, "Danny, did you have an accident?" This time he jumped up, yanked down his pants, bent over and spread
his cheeks and yelled. "SEE MOM, IT'S JUST FARTS!!" while 30 people nearly choked to death on their tacos laughing! He calmly pulled up his pants and sat down. An old couple made me feel better by thanking me for the best laugh they'd ever had!

6) This had most of the state of Michigan laughing for 2 days and a very embarrassed female news anchor who will, in the future, likely think before she speaks. What happens when you predict snow but don't get any....a true story...We had a female news anchor who, the day after it was supposed to have snowed and didn't, turned to the weatherman and asked: "So Bob, where's that 8 inches you promised me last night?" Not only did HE have to leave the set, but half the crew did too, they were laughing so hard!

Hope you enjoy these as much as I did.

Happy Thursday

Well, we're over the hump and heading towards the weekend. Today's payday, so I can pay my bills. Despite the return of the rain, I'm feeling pretty well--I finally broke down and turned on the climate control last night because the humidity was 94%--and slept really well as a result. Humidity trumps over temps for me any time, apparently. I still marvel at my childhood in sub-tropical Louisiana, where it never bothered me. Kids. :)

Last night I went over to O'Neil's pub with some people from work and sat out on the patio (and consequently didn't have to deal with cigarette smoke, although it wasn't that bad inside so early in the afternoon). Their pub fries and quesadillas are wonderful and half-price since it was happy hour. So now I have a place within walking distance to get fish and chips, etc. The inside of the bar is beautiful; they've put in windows with Celtic designs and a bar that was crafted in Ireland. I was going to try some Guinness, but I didn't think I could drink a whole pint by myself and they didn't have half pints. I'm not much of a beer fan, although I do like stout, so I thought it was worth a try, and I was the only person not driving anywhere afterwards. If they do ever push that ban on smoking in public places through here in Lexington, I may wind up living at O'Neil's. Such yummy food!

Some things on which to ruminate:

• Someone needs to explain to the New York Post that a temporary, seasonal library worker does not equal a librarian. I'm sure they were gleeful to portray a librarian as someone who would steal millions in rare books and possibly plant bombs as well. Okay, I know the Post is not the epitome of high media (not that the New York Times is faring so well these days, either). However, every other version I saw was much more balanced. Would they call a janitor who happened to work in a library a librarian?
  
• Most people don't realise that to get a job as a librarian in this country, you pretty much have to have master's degree from an ALA-accredited school in library/information science. Archivists can sometimes have history degrees + training. Paraprofessional workers in libraries are usually called library assistants. Then there are the hosts of pages, interns, students, etc. who may be working as shelvers or other temporary positions. Most of us with the MLS started out doing some of the former. I used to have work-study positions preparing newspapers for microfilming and shelving catalogue cards, and I interned at the Kentucky state archives before I went to library school. Since many people don't understand what librarians really do, there's a tendency for them to act like, "you need a degree to shelve books?" Don't ever ask a librarian that. Really--I'm not kidding--he or she may just go off, or at least leave you dangling with no way to finish that project. Check out Librarian Avengers if you want a better understanding of why it pays to be nice to librarians. That said, we sometimes get a little too defensive. I accidentally tripped over an oh-so-political debate regarding a group called Friends of Cuban Libraries. I've posted news releases from them before. Well, it seems that some people, mostly connected to the American Library Association, see this group as sort of a puppet of the CIA, attempting to subvert the rightful regime of Cuba. It seems that the founders include people who are anti-Castro and who can travel, unlike most Americans, back and forth to Cuba with seeming impunity. They insist that people operating "libraries" out of their homes cannot possibly be our colleagues. Others tout these "librarians" as people operating "alternative public libraries" out of their homes and who face jail and oppression for trying to give alternatives to state-run libraries. Amnesty International and several other activists come out defending the alternative libraries of Cuba. So, who's right? Well, all the parties I've mentioned have their own political agendas. But if you do a Google search on "Friends of Cuban Libraries" you'll get a whole slew of posts, and you can decide for yourself. It seems to me that if people are trying to provide freedom to read (rather than just another form of propaganda), then they should be applauded and supported, no matter how you define a "librarian". But since I'm not in a position to determine what these people are doing, that makes it harder. Still, I thought I might show what sort of controversy exists.
  
• When I checked on the Times' address for the link above, I found that David Brinkley has died. :( When I was growing up he and Walter Cronkite were synonymous with the news for me.
  

I'm tired--

Tired of playing games. Tired of dealing with people who fly off the handle at the drop of a hat. Tired of people so wrapped up in themselves that no one else matters. Tired of the drama. Tired of the 'you don't love me' whenever I don't follow the script. Tired of people who can't understand that humour can be a form of sympathy. Tired of playing peacemaker. Tired of planting my feet firmly on the ground when they try to push me away. Tired of being the one who works at keeping ties. Tired of people throwing up their marbles in a huff and pretending the next time I see them that nothing ever happened. I've had too many people in my life play this game. Sorry, I'm not playing anymore. Game over.

Hey! Where'd the comic go?

As much as I love Unshelved, and the fact that they let you distribute it freely on your website, I tried getting on here from a dial-up connexion tonight and it was worse than slow. So, I decided to keep it simple. However, a link to Unshelved remains under 'webcomics' to the right and down. And you can still access the Code Amber ticker at the link under 'making a difference'. Sorry, guys, but hopefully that means that people on dial-up might actually get to see the text, which is, after all, the whole point to blogging in the first place. But I'll try to keep from any daily template changes for awhile. :)

Had to start my day with a quiz...

Must say, I'm a bit surprised...


You are Trinity, from "The Matrix."
Strong, beautiful- you epitomize the ultimate
heroine.


What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Hi, ho, hi, ho, it's laundering I go...

I came home this afternoon, took a nice nap (about 2 hours' worth) and then threw enough laundry to get me through the weekend into the washer. I miss having a washer/dryer in my apartment (the last one had a stackable set), but I generally get to do laundry over at Zabet's, and that's great. Our schedules made it not quite work out this past week, though, but I'll be over there Friday and can attack the big stuff then. Still, I shouldn't complain. I can do a load of laundry for $1.50 at my apartment complex and it has one laundry room open 24 hours. It's not great for big jobs, but okay for little ones, anyway.

Came across this...

I've been doing some Internet searching to learn more about Indian (as in the sub-Continent) culture, partly in response to trying to get a handle on the caste system and the other complexities of Indian life (see earlier posts regarding a recent National Geographic article), and partly because I'm working up a roleplaying character for a game where the natural background would be someone familiar with Kolkata (also known as Calcutta). One thing about these games, you wind up doing a lot of personal research. :)

Anyway, while I was doing my searching, I came across a delightful site: Kamat's Potpurri. I've also added a link to the son's blog on the right menu. Basically, this is the website for a family of scholars who have studies aspectes of Indian culture and history. It's photograph-rich, given the father's interest in photography. The son is the techie of the family, and has laboured to put up the content generated by his parents, particularly his now-late father. In addition, the son is living in the Southern United States, so he has an interesting blend of Indian-Southern experiences. Anyway, I thought I'd link to it, because it really is a pretty neat site (and includes such things as Indian catfish recipes). :)

PS

Since I'm updating much more frequently these days, I've changed the settings to display three days' worth of posts at a time. Please feel free to check the archives if you need more. :) And I've played with the colours a little to make things more readable. If you really hate it/like it/whatever, let me know. I'll try not to re-engineer anything for awhile, anyway. So with that, it's good night. (And I went a whole night without playing Bookworm!) Time to curl up with my doggie and get some sleep.

A little housekeeping...

I've added the Code Amber alert back to this page, so that brings everything back that I had before the latest template migration. Who knows, it might help someone out there. They also have alerts that can be delivered to e-mail or via screensaver. Thankfully Amber alerts don't happen all the time, so sometimes you'll just see the placeholder here.

One of the best thing about these alerts is that if you check out the past alerts most of the children were recovered, etc. I don't know if that's generally what happens or if issuing the alerts is making a big difference, but it's good to see the success stories. The only thing about such early public information seems to me that the crime victims are usually already in the headlines, and if they are later determined to be the victim of a sexual crime, the general tendency of the media to protect the victim's privacy goes out the window. Such is the case for the latest case of the girl in California who was forcibly taken from her home. On the one hand, the Amber alert and the knowledge that a neighbour's surveillance camera caught a good deal of the perp's movements probably led to her release and the arrest of a suspece. On the other hand, knowing the motive was a sexual assault brings up a whole lot of ethical issues that I for one don't quite know how to resolve. I'm glad the girl is now safe, though, and I guess that's what really matters. I don't understand the motive of anyone who would do this to a 9-year-old, nor do I understand why he didn't just abduct her but confronted the family, etc. But I'm sure the parents and kids of the area are glad the suspect is in custody. Scary world. It's times like these you have to remind yourself that the vast majority of people out there are good, or at least indifferent, right?