Seriously....

I'm not doing this. It's at 99,000-something. Is anyone else experiencing this?

That's Funny...

My counter (see below) shot up over 10,000 hits. I think it was in the low 8000's last I checked. If I hadn't spent 14 hours this week working with CSS/HTML/programming languages, I'd try to fix it.

My Favorite Holiday

Has always been Halloween. Unfortunately, my religion is currently boycotting it as a "pagan holiday." Senior year I corrupted two innocent juniors into trick-or-treating with me. Festivities in Ann Arbor don't tend to be as harmless. Nevertheless, I find myself looking at costumes instead of studying Dublin Core.

Which one? Nanny?














Nun?











Or Gollum?












Other suggestions?

I was going to take a nap...

But then I remembered that I have 10 hours worth of work left in the 6 remaining hours of my day. Silly me!

Open-Minded Me

So I was checking out the free Napster and Rebecca St. James' playlist looked good. It had Frou Frou and Alanis. So I thought I'd listen to the CCM stuff too to expand my musical knowledge. Some of it's OK, but Chris Tomlin was driving me CRAZY because he was dropping consonants at the end of his words--something every choir director warns against! So what I heard was something along the lines of HOW CRAY IS OUR GAA.

Come on, people--you're singing about the Deity--it's How GreaT is our GoD

Is Our Children Learning?

And other great quotes from our quotable president. Seriously, watch this. Bush may not be the "breast and brightest" head of state, but he can sure give a helluva "state-of-the-whatever-you-want-to-call-it..."

The Annals of a Student Librarian; or, Manual Typewriters, Ghostly Communications, and Peter Pan Bras

It's been hell week in library land. Mostly because of my Design of Complex Websites class. The course is "front loaded" so we have two homeworks due per week: one dealing with CSS/HTML and one with programming. I've brought away one life application: In addition to an accountant and a mechanic, I now hope to someday employ a programmer.

Cataloging is equally as tedious, but less frustrating and work intensive. Except when it turns out the AACR2 has entries about how to format communications with spirits, but not about how to format Native American names.

Finally, my work at the Herbarium has been an interesting "melding of technology," as my supervisor likes to call it. I use the ipni.org computer database to decipher the botanists' illegible scribbling of plant names (they have to keep up the scribbling- on- a- notepad- in- the- middle- of- the- wilderness mystique, I guess). I asked for a typewriter to fill in the annotations on the labels, and they found me a manual one from the top shelf of a storage room. They all think it is very funny and keep telling me to put it on my resume. The ribbon was dry, so I had to change it. I'm 23. None of the old botanists could tell me how to change it. We're talking about people in their 50s, 60s, and even 90s. Anyway, I figured it out, albeit while making a very inky mess. It's A LOT easier than a cascading style sheet.

The specimens I'm working with are not mounted--meaning they are loose, fifty-year-old weeds nested in old editions of the Ann Arbor News. I must admit it is easy to be distracted by the container. Media is message....or...well...that doesn't really work. Anyway, the Peter Pan Bra, for example. This baffled me so much I had to look it up online. Why would they call an enhancing bra that? Wouldn't that be a minimizer?

Different Sorts of Literacy

"In any case, there is a world of difference between the sophisticated command of vocabulary and tradition necessary of to read Virgil or Keats, and the pragmatic use of written documents to validate legal rights or social position." (Innes, "Memory, Orality, and Literacy in Early Medieval Society," Past and Present 158).

...Sometimes you're reading along in an academic journal article, and it's all very subtle and nuanced, but rather dull, and then you come across a statement and you wake up and go, "no sh**!!!" Keats I can do, but the tax code I cannot. By the way, did you know that the tax code has the same "lexile" level, or complexity, as Hume and Kant? Complexity has little to do with actual worth--or perhaps the relationship is inverse. I guess that's why I never trusted Mansfield and Derrida.

Is There Any Greater Happiness...

Than sitting in a well-appointed booth in a well-decorated cafe, doing a pleasant assignment late on a Saturday morning?

You Know You Have Adult ADD if...

You wonder why everyone else talks so slowly.

You always suspect the red light is broken.

You pass up joggers when you're walking to class.

People think you've had a lot of coffee when you haven't, and that you've had cocaine when you've had coffee.

You learned your multiplication tables while standing on your head.

You wish queues were on a treadmill so at least you'd be moving.

When you try to play frisbee with the dog, you end up throwing and retrieving the frisbee.

Etched in Stone

Emily and I took a lovely walk through the Leesburg graveyard, and were mutually gripped with grammatical horror when we saw this marker for a 20-year-old:

Reception at Lost Creek Winery

I've never been to a wedding reception--I thought I wouldn't like them, and I probably wouldn't like most of them, but it was as tasteful as the ceremony itself, and how could a party at a small winery go wrong? I swore I wouldn't dance, but four glasses of excellent rose and pinot noir later, I was swinging like an Andrew Sister along with the bluegrass band (Sarah and Allis, by the way, were perfectly sober).
You can access more photos on my flickr account.

Vestigial Picture

Well, I'm here! Waiting for Brianna to wake up from her jet-lagged sleep so we can commence primping. I'm sure I'll have lots of pictures to post after this weekend, so here is one I've been meaning to post for awhile.
The kids are my second cousins, and the bike is my brother's new Triumph (I'm so, so, so happy he didn't get a Harley--ick). All five kids went for rides. Cowards we Hoopers are not.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Well, more precisely, I'm driving to VA tomorrow for Brooks and Dana's wedding. I'll be staying with Sarah, Allis, and Leeann, and Brianna will be there, too! When Emily gets finished with the wedding stuff, we are going to descend upon her Saturday.

This is the very first time a close friend has taken the plunge. Normally I'd disapprove, but they are happy, and old enough to know what they want.