Category Archives: me

RIP Exceptionally Slothful Vacation

This is my first week back at work after an extremely restful two week vacation. I was talking about our vacation with my husband and we realized that it was basically the first time in eight years or so when we weren’t traveling or entertaining visitors. It is of course lovely to visit people and have people visit us, but I really appreciated having so much time to do nothing in my own house (in between taking care of sick kids). Some of my restful vacation activities included:

  • Watching most of the kdrama Pinocchio. It has been a long time since I’ve wanted to marathon a kdrama, but this one is very compelling. Pinocchio has a slightly odd premise in that a small number of people are unable to tell a lie. They immediately start hiccuping if they attempt to bend the truth. Of course, the Pinocchio heroine’s dream is to become a TV reporter! The hero of the story has a tragic past where his family was destroyed by the news media, specifically the heroine’s mother. This is good soapy fun, and is by the same writer who did I Hear Your Voice, which is one of my other recent favorite kdramas.
  • I watched How To Get Away With Murder. So frightened of wallpaper now! I’m still behind with Sleepy Hollow, but caught up to a few episodes. I sampled the new Librarian’s series and feel sort of meh about it except for Christian Kane, who is consistently amusing
  • I knit a ton! I finished another cowl and started on another project.
  • I had more time to read! I tore through several trashy novels on my kindle. I also finally read the new Ms Marvel first collection and enjoyed it a bunch
  • I had some mental space to plan out a few Amethyst Legion of Superheroes posts for this site. We will see if that happens!
  • I did some home organization type activities
  • I watched/rewatched a bunch of movies. Die Hard on Christmas Eve, but also the GI Joe live action movies, Locke, Imitation Game, and many others that I am forgetting in my post-vacation brain fog

Work has been mega-busy leading up to this past December and I haven’t had the luxury of a paid vacation very much in recent years, so I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

A Domestic Scene Involving a Mallorcan

Husband enters room holding a copy of Tennis Magazine.

Me: They really oiled him up. Nadal.
Him: That isn’t oil. He’s a beast.
Me: A very shiny beast. No one is naturally that shiny.
Him: That’s not oil. He’s a bronze god.
Me: No one is that shiny naturally.
Him: I am. I’m a sunbeam.

Library Blog Landscape with bonus Naval Gazing

The new issue of Cites and Insights has an excerpt of the book But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009, click on over for the PDF if you enjoy reading some interesting number crunching about library blogs. I find it a little odd to be included in the project, just because I don’t tend to think of this as a “library blog” very much anymore. I’m at a point in my career where I don’t feel very much like blogging about the daily details of my library jobs. I’ve moved away from feeling affiliated with the library blogosphere.

While I do think that blogging about manga serves a very librarian-like function of readers advisory, there’s a bit of a disconnect between the folks who blog about library technology and trends and the people that blog about books and reading. It seems to me like the liblog hype and attention mostly seems to rest with the techie people, and while I very much am a techie person in my daily life I don’t feel like blogging about it anymore. I think most of my disaffected feeling with library blogging originated with all the Library 2.0 hoopla. I just got tired with the idea of following many online conversations about technology and libraries, even though I do stay as current as I can with the things I need to know for my jobs.

The people I’m most connected to online aren’t library bloggers, they’re the group of people that make up The Bureau Chiefs. FakeAPStylebook (book comes out Spring 2011!!!) has had the most attention and hype of anything I’ve ever been involved with online, and it has nothing to do with libraries. So while it is nice to be included in a study of library bloggers I’m now at the point where it feels a little odd to be listed among groups of library blogs.

7 years!

It is pretty sad that I’ve been so busy lately I forgot my Blogiversary. This web site has been in existence for 7 years, which must translate into being almost middle-aged in Internet time.

Here, have some virtual cake:

Bureau Chiefs Site is ALIVE!

So things have been busy around here! I’m pleased to announce that the many-headed (just like a hydra, except we write on the internet) group of authors behind FakeAPStylebook known as the Bureau Chiefs has their own web site to showcase their writings at The Bureau Chiefs. I set up the web site with drupal and Benjamin Birdie did the awesome graphics.

I’m planning on doing the occasional manga and YA literature article over there. Visit the site often or add it to your feed reader because we’ll be posting new pieces there every weekday.

On driving home with two toddlers

Daddy is going to take the bus home.
No Bus Home. Choo Choo!
No Choo Choo. Bus!
Choo Choo.
Bus.
Choo Choo.
Bus.
Choo Choo.
Bus.
Choo Choo.
Bus.
Two Choo Choo.
Why would Daddy need two trains? Isn’t one train enough?
No Two Choo Choo.
Two Bus.
Two Choo Choo.
Two Bus.
One Choo Choo.
Two Bus.
Choo Choo!
Bus!

On Grocery Shopping with Two Toddlers

No, you can’t push the mini-shopping cart. Can you help Mommy push the stoller? Put your hands on the stroller! Push Push Push!
Do you want strawberries? OK. No, Mommy will carry the strawberries.
Please don’t push your brother, push the stroller.
You can have some cookies. OK, we will get chocolate teddy bear cookies. No, not those cookies too.
Other cookie package crashes to the floor. I guess we’re getting those cookies.
Put your hands on the stroller, not on the shelf. Hands on the stroller. Hands on the stroller.
Where’s your yogurt? No, that’s not your yogurt. This is your yogurt.
Beer isn’t for babies.
That’s a nice color, but we don’t need limes.
Hands on the stoller. Thank you.
OK, we will buy bananas. Yes, you can eat a banana. No, we need to pay for the banana before you eat it.
You will be able to eat a banana in a minute.
Almost time to eat a banana. I swear, you will be able to eat a banana.
Get in the stroller, I will give you a banana.
Here is your banana!

Low Content Mode

I’m about to be traveling for awhile so manga reviews will be on hold for awhile. Traveling with little children means cutting down on my usual library of fun vacation reads in order to have more space to pack sippy cups and Elmo sticker books. I’m only packing one book for myself, Georgette Heyer’s An Infamous Army. Maybe I will just spend the next two weeks blogging about Waterloo.