Musings of a Semi-Coherent Mind

Testing... Testing...

2007-06-30T16:54:00.001-05:00

Ummm.... right.

So guess what?

I've moved. To here. Tentatively.

Tentatively, as in, pending my ability to figure it out this weekend and make it look right. And also because I'm unable to get all the archives from this blog loaded onto the new one. And also because I have to figure out how to make it stop saying "blog" at the end of my address, despite the directions for doing so looking extremely complicated for what would seem such a simple a task.

But check it out anyway.

Keeping Up With My Agenda

2007-06-28T11:19:00.000-05:00

A great deal has happened over the last two days and while I am excited and relieved and all that happy crappy, I also feel a little overwhelmed. You know what will quell my anxieties? Bullet points!

Tuesday afternoon started off just fine- a whole day off with not one thing on the agenda for the first time since I finished school. Out of the blue, I got a call from this "friend", claiming she would like to hang out now that school was over. Random! And bizarre! But hey, I'm game for a little entertainment. So we met up for a beer. Everyone I told about this meeting thought she was for sure going to do some apologizing, or at least make some claim that she still wanted me to apologize, but neither of those happened. We basically talked for an hour or so as if nothing had happened, as though I had been on a seven month long vacation and now I was back, so we had to catch up. I think she saw it as an opportunity to brag about her new boyfriend, who happens to live in Philadelphia and is some kind of PhD student in a relatively unknown field. Well. Good for her. I think? Moving on.
Tuesday night C received some very good news: he was offered a new position in an awesome company doing something he has always wanted the opportunity to do! For way more money! And for a boss that doesn't have horns and cloven hooves! Hooray! He quit his old job immediately and brought home a box of his stuff which is still sitting on the floor of his office as I type this. I did manage to convince him not to throw away an entire collection of ties, but he has been more than happy to wake up and roll into shorts and a t-shirt every day. And bonus for me: no more miserable nights of trying to console him when his job was particularly horrendous. Wheee!
Wednesday I had to wake up at the crack of dawn (read: 7 am) to head to school for some contract work they hired me for. Yes, they are paying me; that doesn't make me complain any less. It was as boring as expected, but once free C met me for lunch and we discussed the possibility of visiting his father down in Florida for a few days while he has time off in between jobs. Then I headed off for a haircut (completely drama-free, thankfully). And set out for the athletic club for some madcap adventures in towel-handing. C called me about halfway through my shift to inform me that he had booked our flight to Florida, where we would be staying in Orlando for a few days and perhaps heading down to Key West with his dad for a few days as well. Which is perfect, since the dreadfully hot and humid weather here has been preparing me for survival in a Florida summer anyway. I also had a minor encounter with the Parking Lady during my shift, which was remarkably uneventful; I vow next time I see her to provoke her anger so that I can report back to you.
This morning I woke up early (again! I know!) to head to school, where I had to refrain from rolling my eyes 97 kajillion times at the other librarians. I might be the youngest person there by 30 years, but sweet Christ are they bossy. Once I made my escape, I came home with vague feelings of guilt over not posting earlier and started typing this up. Directly after this, I will be taking a nap, and then hopping on the T to meet up with Kelli and the other members of the 007 Bookclub to discuss Infidel, which I finally, finally finished the other day. I'm super excited about it! And yes, also super nerdy. I know. Shut up. After that, the lovely Ms. Kelli and I (and anyone else that wants to join our crazy selves) are heading on over to the infamous Beer Garden, where we will meet C and some of his compadres for drinks and hilarity.
And then: the weekend! I have to wake up early again tomorrow for that stupid contract work, but whatever, I'm glad I took it because it's funding the upcoming Florida trip. My sister just bought a boat, so we might head up to NH for some fun on the lake, or we might borrow my parents sweet canoe and paddle ourselves around. Either way, there will be fireworks and ice cream involved: you can be sure of that.

Keep cool, people. I'm heading out into the wild heat of summer. Over and out.

Beware: Potent Material

2007-06-26T10:44:00.000-05:00

Holy crap! My blog is rated R!

Mingle says that my R-rating is based on the following words:

hell (3x) - I would imagine this would be referring to Christopher's place of employment, where he ferries bankrupt souls across the River Charles.

cocks (2x) - I knew I shouldn't have used the phrase "cocks and apps". And anyway, make that 4x, suckas!

corpse (1x) - Makes my blog sound like some kind of scary movie website. Pssh. If only.

Actually, I'm kind of surprised it didn't get an NC-17, what with all the library talk and the sordid middle school drama going on here. Very risque.

Time Off Is Good For My Self-Esteem

2007-06-25T07:57:00.000-05:00

Having unlimited free time really does wonders for me, I've discovered. It's like I can take all the most productive parts of my brain (of which there are admittedly few, but still) and put them to use, concocting lovely plans for things I'd like to finally get around to doing this summer. At the same time I can also realize my dream of complete and utter laziness; a laziness so great that it actually included reading an article in People entitled "What Happened to Lindsay Lohan?" simply because I couldn't be bothered to get off the couch to get my copy of School Library Journal. Thanks for sending me all those back issues of People, Mom! I've been meaning to play catch up with the Linds.

Anyway, considering I've had five days to compose a new post, one would think that I could have come up with some brilliant ideas, or at the very least a mediocre outline of what I was going to write, but... ummm, yeah. No. This is all freestyle, baby. Winging it. 'Cuz that's how I roll. So why don't I give you a little breakdown of my doings over the past few days and we'll just pretend I was planning on doing that the whole time, okay?

Friday was finally nice enough to get my ass outside, so I loaded up a bunch of new music on the beloved nano and went for a fairly long run/walk up past Tufts and down the other side of Davis. By the time I got back I was tired and sweaty, but elated to find a big green produce box on my doorstep from Boston Organics. I hauled it up the stairs and opened it up and my excitement deflated like a helium balloon in a freezer; I had somehow forgotten that organic produce tends to be a) smaller than regular produce, since it's not pumped full of chemicals and such, b) a little strange looking, since it's deformities and natural shape are not genetically modified into perfectly round oranges and apples, and c) expensive as hell. I'm not kidding you when I tell you they sent me a head of cauliflower that was the size of a baseball. Sure, it was cute, and yes, it's just C and I eating it, but for $27? That better be the best tasting cauliflower I've ever had in my life. [edit: I just ate one of the pears from the box and it was very unimpressive. Boo.]

Anyway, I also managed to watch Volver and although it was funny, I just wasn't that into it. Maybe it was Penelope Cruz's hair that was irritating me, maybe it was the fact that I was playing Darts on the Nintendo while trying to watch a subtitled movie, or maybe I was just in the mood for something ~~like Dumb and Dumber~~ a little less acclaimed, but I gave Almodovar a whopping "meh". When C got home from his job at the seventh circle of hell we made a late dinner on the grill and took a stroll down to Davis for some ice cream. And can I just tell you? Oreo soft serve is the bomb. For reals. Then C had a (super-late) band practice and I settled in for a night of Forensic Files and Ghost Hunters. And then peeing my pants every time I heard the slightest noise and going to bed with a giant serrated steak knife with the certainty that if no one broke into the house to murder and dismember me, surely someone out there was slowly poisoning me with antifreeze. Damn you, CourtTV!

Saturday was my godson's first birthday, and if you don't know this by now, my family pretty much has some Martha Stewart DNA injected into our bloodstreams at birth and our parties sometimes go a little overboard. So when I heard two weeks ago that my cousin had been re-painting her (already perfect) back porch in preparation for this party, I knew the party would be a success. And by success, I mean she would pull off a pirate-themed party for a one year old and make it fun. I hid giant gold coins around the yard for the kids to find, there was a cake shaped like a treasure chest, there were eye patches and a pinata and all kinds of terror on the high seas fun. And once all the kids were gone for the day, we lit a big fire in the backyard and just relaxed sans screaming piratical children. Unfortunately, C's boss, Satan, demanded that he work on Saturday and he also had a band "gig" scheduled in Jamaica Plain for that evening, so he was unable to attend the festivities. He did, however, discover that his band was loud enough to clear a club in under 10 minutes. And also, that they rock. Hardcore.

Sunday we decided to play tourist and head down to Faneuil Hall, but only because I had been craving Wagamama's since they opened up their first US location right here in my very own city. We didn't even mind the crowds of crazy travelers fighting their way through Quincy Marketplace because we got to sit in the breezy summer sun and drink ginger peach iced tea while C shouted to every duck boat that went by. We also took a stroll through FancyTown, aka Beacon Hill, stopping in Cafe Vanille and the classiest 7-11 C had ever seen. Seriously, this 7-11 doesn't sell snacks, they sell sundries. Ah, old money. We hopped back on the T, came home to rest after our long (read: mile or so) walk, and start dinner. C made skewers of some type of carne asada and onions to grill (I do believe that every meal we've had has been grilled since he bought that thing, but I'm not complaining), and I turned that tiny little cauliflower into a magical au gratin with the help of many cheeses, some red potatoes, and Silk creamer. Yum. We also watched Apocalypto, which was surprisingly amazing, if you're in the mood for action and gore.

And that's it, people. Now it's Monday. The only reason I know it's Monday is because C had to go to the place that pays him. Oh yeah, and I have my second shift at the gym tonight! I promise all you fans of the Parking Lady that I will try to be all super spy and get some photos, just as soon as Fuji sends me my camera back. Because did I mention that I dropped it at C's birthday party weeks ago? And they still haven't fixed it? Seriously, it fell like 5 inches and the entire lens encasement snapped right off. Way to build for durability, Fuji.

I digress: pictures. Of the crazy lady. I accept the mission. Happy Monday!

Would Someone Please Drop a House On This Lady?

2007-06-21T18:29:00.000-05:00

Day two of the vacation, the first shift at the athletic club complete. Remember how I was a little nervous about starting a new "job"? Yeah, I don't know what that was about. Working at a gym is probably one of the most mindless things I can imagine doing. In fact, that's what makes it so perfect. There are no kids whining in my face about how they forgot to save their science fair project and now it's gone and what are they going to doooo?, no substitute teachers announcing that they somehow broke not one, not two, but all three of the copy machines in the library, no teachers having meltdowns about contracts and grading and union dues. Nope, it's just straight up easy: smile, say hi, hand them a towel, smile some more, say goodbye. Seriously, the hardest part is all the smiling- not because I don't want to, more because I'm not used to having it permanently plastered to my face. I'm going to have mad jaw muscles by the end of the summer.

It could be too early to tell, but I think I might be working with some of the world's strangest people. Half of the staff is in grad school for something or other, the other half seem to have barely finished high school. All of them are just plain weird. Since I was only there for four hours I'm still taking stock of the cast of characters, but rest assured I will make some snap judgements about them and get back to you. Anyway, there seemed to be one universal theme among all the employees there, a common unifier, if you will: they all have a deep-seated loathing for the woman who runs the parking lot across the street. Not one person failed to mention this woman to me immediately upon us being introduced. Conversations went like this:

Destiny: Joe, this is NPW. She just started today.
Joe: Nice to meet you, NPW.
NPW: You too.
Joe: I think you'll like it here, it's very laid back. Except that parking bitch across the street. She's a real c___.
NPW: Oh. Ahhh... yeah. I think Destiny mentioned her. So did Josh. And Jeff. And that other guy that stopped in for a minute earlier. And the lady that teaches pilates. And a couple of members.
Joe: Yeah. She sucks. Bad.

Not only did everyone want to trash the parking nazi, everyone also seemed to have a personal anecdote that they wanted to share that had to one up the previous anecdote. I think by the end of my shift it had escalated to the point where she had single-handedly caused the unrest in the middle east, stolen someone's baby and burned it in a bonfire, threw her own excrement at passersby from her attendant booth, and used all the tissues at the front desk without asking. Everyone also had a solution as to how I could avoid her wrath; some people chose to bribe her by letting her use the bathroom at the gym, some let her use the telephone, some tried to ply her with gym t-shirts. The manager of the gym recommended that if I parked in the lot, that I bring her some kind of peace offering right away- a plate of brownies, some candy, a crisp $20. He also warned that Parking Lady could be fickle: one day she'd let you drive right out of the lot for free, with a smile and a wave, the next she'd pretend she didn't know who you were and the cycle of extortion and bribery would continue.

I was a little disappointed I hadn't parked in the lot, opting instead to put $1.00 worth of quarters in the street meter, but I held out hope that she would come in so I could see her in person. Of course, the second my back was turned to sell someone a Vitamin Water I saw a little flurry of excitement and I missed my opportunity to gawk as she whisked past to grab a free (used) newspaper. Later on that evening I was further intrigued when a gym member came in and informed me, "Some guy out there is having an altercation with the parking attendant. He looked like he might hit her. She's a real jerk." I ran to the window to see if I could catch a glimpse of the action, but all I saw was the dude making obscene gestures out of his car window and flailing wildly, obviously incensed.

One man lost his parking ticket and I thought he would cry when he asked if I had any extra parking tickets for him. No, I'm sorry, only the parking lady has the parking tickets. Good luck with that, sir. He hung his head as he went back to search the locker room for his ticket to freedom. What does she do that makes people so angry? Is she blatantly rude? Does she charge more than she should? Does she place a hex on you and demand a lock of your hair as payment for exiting the parking lot? It will take some investigative work, but I have dedicated my summer to finding out.

On the First Day of Vacay

2007-06-20T08:12:00.000-05:00

Right. So, day one of my vacation and I already feel as though my schedule is completely fubar. Like I have all the time in the world and yet it's 8:30 in the morning and I'm fully awake with two cups of coffee already in me and I'm thinking about laundry. What kind of vacation is that, I ask you? I should be nestled all up in my lovely soft bed, cocooned in the warm blankets while the central air issues cool breezes into my apartment, happily dreaming of the ocean and Colin Firth. Or even better: Colin Firth at the ocean. Instead, C hit the snooze six times this morning (six! that's an hour! and the clock is on my side of the bed!), whereby I found myself in that zombie state halfway between awake and asleep and realized my head was pounding slightly (a common side effect of drinking three blueberry beers and eating nothing but tortilla chips on a Tuesday night), then snapped fully awake when C brought me a cup of coffee, a glass of water, and some ibuprofen.

Of course, beyond living with a person who does not share the same schedule of leisure, there are other factors contributing to my being up. Like the weather, which has made it dark as hell in my place. What's up, thunderstorms? No, really, it's refreshing to feel like it's 8 p.m. when it's actually 8 a.m. Way to make me cranky!

Also, I'm a little nervous about starting training at my new job at the athletic club this afternoon. My other friend who works there has been attempting to paint me a portrait of the place for weeks now and I'm sure she means it to be reassuring but it seems to be having the opposite effect. Tidbits like, "If you're training with Destiny, just ignore how crazy she is. Because she's literally crazy, as in asylum crazy. You'll probably never have to work with her again once you're done training. But bring a book, in case she tries to have a conversation with you."

As everyone was packing up yesterday for the summer it struck me again how odd a world it is in education. Seriously: picture just waking up one random Tuesday, packing up your office, and waving goodbye to everyone for two months. Like, "hey, cubicle mate, see you in September!" And then frantically trying to get everyone's contact info into your phone so you can actually try to make good on some plans (even though you know it's probably not going to happen) as you edge your way out the door. It's so weird to think I won't see most of the people I interact with daily for months and months, and then after Labor Day we'll resume our work as if there was no interruption. It's a little bit jarring.

But hey- I just made my first summer iced coffee! Who am I kidding? I love summer!

Hold On For One More Day

2007-06-18T05:48:00.000-05:00

I decided to view this past weekend as a warm-up for my summer of fun, and partied accordingly. Friday night we met a bunch of people in the [up and coming] downtown Haverhill area for some cocks and apps. Ok, we actually met for dinner and beers, but I've really wanted to use the phrase "cocks and apps" since I read it in one of those terrible A-List books a few weeks back. It's amusing, no? Anyway, once we blew that joint we headed into Brighton to Porter Belly's to see one of C's friends finish up a set. For a cover band, they are pretty damn entertaining. And we? Rock pretty hard.

Saturday C blew off work and we headed beach side; notably, to Newburyport and Plum Island. The weather was gorgeous- perfect for beach bums like ourselves. Hot and sunny, but breezy. Chris collected shells and buried my legs in the sand. Honestly, we are as easily entertained as children. We also got some ice cream at a place downtown, if you could call it ice cream; it was more like peanut butter cups glued together with minimal cream action. We also had dinner at Chris's new favorite place, California Pizza Kitchen. It may not be gourmet, but it sure is tasty.

Sunday we had a cookout at my sister's and the phrase "rain or shine" was put to the test. So we had to eat hot dogs in the rain- whatevs. It's hot dogs, people. They care not for the weather. We played some wiffle ball with the old Padre and enjoyed one of our favorite pasttimes, making fun of my sister.

Today was the last day of school for the kids, and it was a half day, so they were a little bit wild and a little more out of control. I just looked out my office window and watched one kid wrap another kid in an entire roll of duct tape, both of them laughing like hyenas. Bet you won't be laughing so hard when that tape rips off all your newly grown arm hair, buddy.

School's out!

Where My Head's At: Field Trips, Summer, and Memes

2007-06-15T05:22:00.000-05:00

Wednesday and Thursday of this week were spent in an unfortunate state of mild nausea. Whether this was due to some kind of stomach bug (likely), or the fact that my eating habits have been terrible the past two weeks (also likely) I don't know for sure, but the fact remains that I have been decidedly ill. Not ill enough to warrant an absence from school- I still went on the field trip yesterday and even managed to get in a round of mini-golf (where I came in a disappointing third. Out of four. I really need to step my putt-putt game up), and enjoyed a day of relative leisure by the pool, despite it being a chilly 59 degrees. And bonus: there was only one golf-club-to-the-eye injury. However the field trip did mean a ride on the school bus, which is not fun on the best of days, but is downright unpleasant when one is feeling like they are about to throw up. But whatevs: nothing a little three-hour nap couldn't cure.

Moving on, is anyone else really excited that it's Friday? And is anyone else really excited for me that it's my last real day of school?! And that all the seventh and eighth graders are on a field trip? And that the sixth graders are pretty much watching movies and playing wiffle ball all day? Yeah, I thought so.

I also wanted to briefly mention that with summer comes SummerNPW, and judging from last year I would say that SummerNPW tends to suffer from a case of blog posting ADD. Rest assured that I will still be writing, probably just not as frequently. Because, you know, I have important things to do; making iced coffees and not killing my neighbors is very time-consuming. But please feel free to leave me comments with ideas/suggestions/requests on topics you'd like to see here on the ol' SummerNPW post-a-thon and I'll see what I can come up with from this burnt-out brain.

One more thing: I was tagged. So I'm going to play a little meme game from the lovely Kelli; I feel as though I have probably done this one word answer meme before but since ~~I'm too lazy to look for it~~ I can't exactly locate it right now, I am hereby completing it again.

One-Word Responses

1. Where is your cell phone? desk

2. Relationship? lovely

3. Your hair? crazy

4. Work? finished!

5. Your sister? younger

6. Your favorite thing? family

7. Your dream last night? uneventful

8. Your favorite drink? tea

9. Your dream car? electric

10. The room you're in? bright

11. Your shoes? flipflops

12. Your fears? death

13. What do you want to be in 10 years? content

14. Who did you hang out with this weekend? friends

15. What are you not good at? confrontation

16. Muffin? almond

17. Wish list item? this

18. Where you grew up? NH

19. The last thing you did? showered

20. What are you wearing? jeans

21. What are you not wearing? socks

22. Your pet? Vinny!

23. Your computer? old

24. Your life? fantastic

25. Your mood? sleepy

26. Missing? sanity

27. What are you thinking about? summer

28. Your car? functional

29. Your kitchen? clean

30. Your summer? tomorrow!

31. Your favorite color? green

32. Last time you laughed? today

33. Last time you cried? Sunday

34. School? done

35. Love? definitely

I Double Damn You

2007-06-13T05:21:00.000-05:00

Why is today only Wednesday? And why is this the never-ending week? I honestly thought last night as I fell asleep, "thank goodness tomorrow is Friday!". Of course, it wasn't. It was Wednesday. It was just my demented brain trying to trick me into believing a wonderful fairy tale. Because my brain knows that when you're halfway through the middlest day of the week, it's a tough place to be. It's not like I have nothing to get done- in fact, I should probably be more concerned than I am about how much stuff I have left to finish up before the end of the year. I just can't seem to wrap my head around the fact that the school year is finito. A random sampling of my thoughts today:

Wow, I should really get these new books covered so I can put them out. The kids love new books almost as much as I do, it's so great. Then they can check them out... oh. Right. I stopped checking books out on Monday. Because school is over.
Ow! Why am I walking around with a staple remover in my pocket? That was dumb. Oooh yeah, I have to take down that bulletin board. Ehh, I'll have the kids do it Monday. No, stupid, the kids are gone on Monday! Do it now, lazy ass!
Hmm, I never called to make that appointment to get my haircut. I promised myself no more impromptu cuts! Must make that today. When can I do it? Thursday... no. Friday... no. Ok, next week then. Thursday? Perfect! Oh. Except why would I drive all the way up here when I won't be in school any longer?
Thank goodness all of my classes are done and I'm going on a field trip tomorrow... oh no! I have a class tomorrow morning! What the heck am I going to do with them? Maybe we can just sit outside for the very last class and enjoy the sunshine... at 7:55 a.m.
It's going to be so nice to have a few days off when school ends. I can just relax and res- wait, I have to start work at the gym on Wednesday? Well that blows.
I'm kind of glad there are no big events or holidays coming up soon, I'm so tired. Damn. Except Father's Day. Must get gift. And card. Gift and card! Plenty of time. Except... too late to order it cheaply online. Double damn! I suck.

As you can see, it's a painful cycle of procrastination and self-consternation. I do lecture myself frequently about doing things in a timely manner, but mostly I just end up doing crazy things at work and not having time for any mundane tasks like dusting the library computers, which totally needs to be done because I came in this morning and saw "SCHOOL SUX" written in the dust of one of the monitors.

Maybe once I start getting more than five hours of sleep a night things will return to normal? Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Only On A Tuesday

2007-06-12T05:45:00.000-05:00

This morning one of my senior citizen volunteers stopped in to offer her services again for next year. She's a funny old bat, that one, with a mouth like a trucker, and she informed me that the woman who coordinates all the senior citizen volunteers in the town is a "bandicoot bitch". Hee! I definitely don't know what that means, but I sure did find it amusing. Anyway, after she had given me the rundown on all the medical emergencies, deaths, and sudden afflictions that had occured amongst my various volunteers over the past few months (did you know you could get inner ear cancer?) she asked how many volunteers I thought I would need for next year.

The answer, of course, was zero, but I couldn't break her poor old heart like that and I told her that anyone who felt up to returning this year was welcome to come back. Sure, they might be slow as snails, chatty, and generally weak, but it's not like they've never helped me out and they're certainly good for all the town gossip.

So while she was giving me the goods on a juicy affair between two of the town officials my office phone rang. I always groan when my phone rings because it means one of two things: a) someone is calling to try to sell me the latest new books/office supplies/library carts/copying equipment and then they laugh at me when I explain my budget figures, or b) a parent is calling to complain.

This time it was option b. I should've known to expect some of these calls because I sent out the overdue notices last week and there are always certain parents that just simply cannot believe that their son or daughter was irresponsible enough to not return a library book, which means of course that I must be mistaken and must have misplaced the book. I was informed by this mother that her daughter most definitely returned The Giver, and of course she would never have kept a book out since last November because she is very meticulous. And furthermore, this mother had taken a course with Lois Lowry and had extended discussions with her about the book, and that her daughter had been very deeply touched by Lowry's portrayal of a dystopian society.

I felt like asking her, "Excuse me, but what the eff does that have to do with my library book? That'll be $16.95, please."

So once I appeased the crazy lady (who by this time was basically claiming to be BFF with Lois Lowry to get her daughter out of paying up for the book), I hung up the phone and turned around, only to find my batty old volunteer asleep in my office chair. I wasn't sure what to do- I didn't want to embarass her by waking her old ass up in a library office, but I didn't want to tiptoe around her all day either. Besides, what if she wasn't just sleeping? What if she had a stroke or something while I was on the phone and I just sat here ignoring her corpse all day long?

So I grabbed the phone back up and slammed it back down on the receiver. She kind of startled awake at the noise and as I turned back to her I added, "So there!" for good measure. "Wow," she exclaimed, "you sure know how to get those molly-coddling parents to 'fess up that their kids are idiots, huh?"

Only on a Tuesday, my friends. Only on a Tuesday.

In Which I Refrain From Being A Whiny Brat

2007-06-11T05:06:00.000-05:00

This morning I was planning on writing a long-winded post complaining about how I haven't been on an actual vacation in years (years! from the girl that used to hop on planes every other day to jet off somewhere, years is a very long time), and how I'm going to really make it my goal to have a plane ticket to Denver in hand by the end of June.

But then I stopped myself from writing any further because I realized something: this is my last week of school!

And then I will be on vacation for months and months, with no children to worry about other than my godson, and he only knows about four words, none of which are "Axe", "Body", or "Spray". And yes, I will work a few days a week at the gym with the godawful hours they handed me- low girl on the totem pole and all that- but really, how hard is it to smile and hand out towels? But other than that I am going to be spending ample time at the beach, hiking, and relaxing. My cousin's wife is coming to stay with us for the month of July (is there such a thing as a cousin-in-law?) while she starts her PhD program, which means built-in Filippino chef and party person! Chris and I are also spending a weekend in Burlington, VT, and another in Maine. And of course, with my family being my family, there are a number of parties and cookouts already planned out.

So I guess I can't really complain about not having a "real" vacation in a while, even though I really kind of wanted to I thought it might be unfair and sad to all you people that have jobs in which you have to stare wistfully out the window at the clear summer sun from your office window. If you're lucky enough to have a window, that is.

Weekend: Imminent

2007-06-08T05:44:00.000-05:00

No worries, no worries- although certainly traumatized yesterday, my brain is fortunate enough to be able to compartmentalize things so well that I almost entirely forgot about the incident for a few moments yesterday. Until I took a walk to get an iced coffee and was accosted by swooping birds everywhere, that is. Damn wildlife.

But thanks to everyone for your concern. I'm very pleased that I did not cause an accident, nor did I contract avian bird flu (the school nurse has assured me that in fact it would be impossible for me to get avian bird flu since humans cannot contract the disease- who knew?), nor did I have a mental breakdown forcing Chris to hospitalize me for Hitchcockian bird fears. A successful trauma all around, yes? And I even plan on bringing a Starbucks gift card to the nice man who removed the bird from under my car seat, despite it's wings being wedged in between the seat belt bolts on the floor. I think that deserves an Orange Creme Frappuccino if anything ever did.

In other, non-bird related, news, it is Friday. Woot. The weather is gorgeous, we had a cookout at lunch today and the words "tube steaks" were never even mentioned, I played Guitar Hero with my 8th graders for our last class ever, our vegetable crisper at home is full of beers from last week's bash, and there are a whole lot of pokemons still to be caught on my DS. So what am I still doing on the computer? Good question. NPW- out.

Baked In A Pie

2007-06-07T05:56:00.000-05:00

People: the most terrifying, weirdest, grossest thing happened to me yesterday and I don't know if I'm going to be able to describe it well enough to do it justice. But of course I'm going to try anyway.

I was driving home from work, cruising along at a fair 50 mph with my windows open and my tunes rocking, when out of nowhere, WHAM. There was an explosion of feathers and blood and something rock solid slammed into my arm and fell down my side. A bird had kamikaze dived into my OPEN CAR WINDOW, smashed into the window frame, and then the force of it hitting the window threw it into my body and then fell under my seat. I only remained stunned for a moment, then started screaming and almost drove off the road. I finally managed to pull off the road into a church parking lot, jumped out of the car and proceeded to run around in circles, still screaming. After I screeched enough to make my throat hurt I gathered up my courage to peer back in my car. Through the haze of feathers I spied the lifeless little body of a sparrow, resting peacefully on a stack of my cds that were on the floor of my backseat.

So then I had a bit of a scream again, especially when I looked at my arm and it was spattered with bird blood. I have a mild fear about birds under normal circumstances, even pet birds freak me out, and wild birds in my car topped my list of Most Scary Things Ever. There was no way I could get back in the car at this point and I tried to call Chris, but no answer. So I called my mother instead, which was a bad idea because I was crying, shrieking, and laughing all at the same time and made my mother do the same. She recommended I not touch the bird, since it probably had diseases (which didn't help much since it's blood was already all over me) and that I should ask someone for help in getting the bird out of my car.

I steeled myself and tried to stop my hands from shaking as I got back in and drove to the nearest gas station. On the way I tried to think up some plausible excuse as to why there was a dead bird in my car that didn't make me look ridiculous and/or like a bird killer. I also let out intermittent little shrieks when I thought about the bird somehow regaining consciousness, hopping up, and proceeding to peck my legs. You know, because that was entirely possible, even though it's little bird head was dented in and there was blood coming out of it's little bird beak.

I finally got to the gas station and found a young man attendant. I explained what happened, suppressing my shudders and trying hard not to freak the hell out that a DEAD BIRD was still in my car and Oh. My. LORD it was hot out and that bird was going to bake in my car and then that would be it. I'd have to sell the Civic because I couldn't drive around in vehicle that smelled like sparrow casserole.

The man was nice enough despite my incoherence and simply reached under my car seat with some paper towels, grabbed the bird body, took it away, and came back with a shop vac to clean up the feathers and blood. I scrubbed down my hands and arms like I had been subjected to radioactive materials and thanked the man profusely. I think I was crying a little, but he was nice enough not to mention it and refrained from making fun of me until I left.

Seriously, have you ever even heard of something like this? It could only happen to me. And you know this.

I'm never driving with my windows open again.

Pals

2007-06-06T05:07:00.000-05:00

The principal here at school says some odd things. Unintentionally hilarious as they are, sometimes I wonder if he doesn't have a bit of a problem with social cues. Or maybe he's just very naive- I mean, he did come from a Catholic school. I'm sure they wouldn't have seen the inherent humor in his comments, like when I was in his office for an observation meeting and he was tapping a particularly bulbous pen on his desk, muttering "Now where should I stick this?"

Or maybe I just have a sick sense of humor. Because I definitely had to stifle a snort of laughter.

Like right before last Christmas break when the youth services group here in town was selling those Kissing Balls as a fundraiser and he got on the intercom to make the announcement: "Anyone interested in kissing balls, please come to the front office" and I heard the entire 8th grade erupt upstairs.

Or last week when he needed volunteers to work the grills at the school's Open House night, and he emailed the entire staff to ask if anyone would "grill his tube steaks".

Or yesterday, when someone asked if a meeting was mandatory and he replied, "Well, I'm not going to gag, blindfold, tie you to a chair, and make you come. But it would be nice."

Sigh. This has been a long year, folks.

Ignorance Is Bliss

2007-06-05T05:14:00.000-05:00

From now until the end of the school year (officially less than two weeks to go!) I've determined that I will likely feel like a crazed lunatic trying to get everything done. So rather than dread the next 10 days I'm going to focus on the awesome. I'm going to forget that the gym I'm working at this summer offered me the most suck-ass schedule I've ever heard of (worse even than when I worked for relatives and they gave me every undesirable retail shift possible), I'm going to ignore the fact that every weekend from now until September is basically filled up, and I'm going to pretend that the piles of work and bills have not been piling up on my desk at home.

Instead, I will spend inordinate amounts of time fooling around on the internet and my Nintendo DS.

A few things that made me smile today:

(married to the sea)

(natalie dee)

(threadless tee I just bought: biggie was right!)

(chris, obviously super-excited about his birthday cake)

Happy Tuesday!

30 Is The New 10

2007-06-04T05:51:00.000-05:00

Thanks to everyone for the party well-wishes; it was, of course, a huge success. Not really so much a surprise, since he had apparently already accidentally found out about it and just never mentioned it to me, but a big hit nonetheless. It also proved that I am fully capable of throwing a party that people will enjoy without becoming a giant ball of anxiety. Woot.

So Friday night C and I grabbed a quick bite to eat and settled on the couch for a movie. Little did he know that three of his friends from Rochester were already en route for a weekend of Beantown fun! Of course, by the time they showed up at 11:30, all five of us were exhausted and couldn't muster much energy other than to set up the air mattresses, have a quick glass of celebratory wine, and watch a fabulous performance of the three Rochstars sing a birthday song they had made up on the six hour drive to Massachusetts. It was very special. And very hilarious. In fact, mental note to myself: get a copy of the lyrics. Those are going down in the history books.

Saturday was spent mostly in preparation of the party. I rounded up the NYers for a morning at Trader Joe's and they were excited to stock up on cheap grocery and alcohol items. We also enjoyed a delicious Indian buffet in Davis, trowled through the giant Salvation Army (where I accidentally touched a used breast pump before Chris declared he felt himself getting conjunctivitis), and admiring the new flavors at J.P. Licks before heading back to the apartment to get out of the stifling humidity and heat.

And then the party! Not only did we have the legendary Cookie Puss (thanks to my lovely mother, who braved an actual hail storm in NH to bring us ice cream cake), but we also had the dollar store version of Pin the Horn on the Unicorn. Although we only managed to make Chris and Kirsten play (probably because they had had the most drinks by then) it was still pretty awesome.

Kirsten: blindfolded, feeling the poster for Chris's horn sticker he had already placed on the poster
Chris: "Hey! Don't feel my horn!"
Everyone: "Whoa! Kirsten's grabbing Chris's horn!"

Stephanie also started some game that involved M&Ms spinning around on a plate. I couldn't really tell if it was a "drinking game", but as it involved both drinking and a game, I guess it doesn't really matter- she was completely intent on winning despite the fact there didn't seem to be any rules or point to the game. Someone else had brought a toy gun that shot ping pong balls and I resigned myself early on to the fact that it would probably devolve into a hardcore game of Beer Pong; thankfully that never happened. I did get shot in the chest and leg with ping pong balls, however. And I did shoot about 15 more people after that, including my sister and some co-workers.

Hey, I'm not 30 yet. I can act like a 5 year old all I want.

Anyway, the party went smoothly and I was feeling just fine until Chris remembered the giant can of Steel Reserve I had sitting in the back of the fridge. Let me just tell you this: that was the worst $.88 ever spent. It was foul. But I drank the thing, so props to me for my sheer stubborness. Once I choked that thing down I was ready for sleepy time and by the time everyone rolled out it was probably 3 a.m. Good times.

Sunday morning I woke everyone up and we headed to the (in)famous SoundBites for some greasy spoon recovery action. Delicious, not so nutritious. The NYers packed up their gear and trooped off for some Ikea fun. Chris and I agreed to meet them down there and we fully planned on going to pick up a few things when Chris was struck ill and remained so for most of the day. Once I nursed him back to health with crackers and water and ibuprofen my friend Megan from Denver showed up with her 7-months pregnant belly and demanded I drive her to the airport. Kidding! Actually, we had a very nice dinner and a chance to chat for a couple hours before they returned to the Mile High City. Hopefully I'll get to see her sooner rather than later; I don't want her son to be 25 before he meets his biggest fan!

And that was that.* Weekend of crazy fun: complete. Now we just have the awesome Polyphonic Spree concert to look forward to- C's birthday present- and the dinner I promised I'd make him on his actual birthday, Wednesday. All I can say is, I want a trip here for my 30th birthday. I think I deserve it.

I'm out- my desk is lovingly calling for me to rest my head, just for a minute.

*Ok, ok. I did manage to play an hour or two of Pokemon while Chris was napping off his illness on the couch.

Surprise!

2007-06-01T05:36:00.000-05:00

Normally the Christopher reads this blog a day late, as he doesn't have access to the internets at work (shudder!). But he does read it and so until now I have not been able to write about the amazing surprise party I've been planning for his 30th birthday for the last two months. And you all know how much that had to kill me! Because I hate keeping secrets... but I think I did a pretty good job of hiding this little soiree from his ever-present eyes. Anyway, the party is tomorrow, everything is in motion and ready to go, and being the consummate party planner (read: three years of event planning under my belt, yo) I believe that I have thought of everything.

Music? Check.
Food? Check.
Seating? Check.
Beverages? Check.
Invites? Check.
Alerting the landlord of an impending bash? Check.
Birthday cake? Check.

I've got a few last minute things to take care of- the room of shoes needs to be straightened so that people don't scream in horror if they happen to stumble in there. There are a few party people that have not yet confirmed their attendance status, I will call and pester them. I need to test out the central air to make sure we won't be broiling in a sweat bath all night long. A few sweeps of the vacuum, throw the dirty laundry in the washer, and voila. A perfect party house.

We haven't had a party at our place yet and I'm a little concerned about space, but I think once I give people enough champagne and beer people won't mind sitting on the floor. Or in the bathtub. And hey, if things get too cramped we can always just head outside to the sidewalk and join the W.T. block party.

Anyway, wish me luck in my first real party-throwing endeavor since the college days when all you needed for a kick-ass time was a handle of tequila and some Doritos. Over and out, party peeps.

All In A Day's Work

2007-05-31T05:22:00.000-05:00

You know those cans of compressed air they sell so that you can clean out electronic equipment without taking it apart? Yes, well I ordered a bunch of them to clean out the computer keyboards here in the library. Considering they hadn't been cleaned in the two years I've had them I figured it was time to step it up and rid them of dust before the summer came along and I waited another year to get it done. So yesterday I started spraying them out and I found all manner of dirt, dust, hair, fingernails, dried boogers, and crumbs flying every which way out of those keyboards. I was more than a little disgusted; it almost made me wish I had never decided to clean.

Anyway, as I was diligently blasting air a couple of students noticed me (the air is surprisingly loud coming out of the can) and they were fascinated. Seriously, I've never seen them so enthralled in anything, not even weepuls. They were rapt with attention, their eyes never leaving the can. Then they saw all the junk flying out of the keyboards and they started cheering! They were so happy that I was cleaning with a can of air that they actually gave me a cheer. They wanted to know every detail about the air: how much was in a can, how did Endust get the air in there, did the can come with the little red spray nozzle or did I buy it separately, why did the can get freezing cold after I had sprayed it for a while? I felt like it could've been a real teaching moment. Unfortunately, I didn't know many of the answers (how do they get it in there?), so instead I made answers up about CO2 cartridges and sending people up to the Arctic Circle to catch the freezing wintry air specially for the cans. What? I couldn't disappoint those fervent eyes.

About two minutes after the wide-eyed children left a whole other troop of kids showed up demanding to see the Arctic air blasts for themselves. I knew if I didn't quell their curiosity I would end up with hordes of kids in here after school begging me to put on an Endust show for them so I tried to play it down a little, demonstrating how boring it actually was to spray out the keyboards. At that precise moment, a giant spider corpse flew out from between the keys, landed on one of the kids bare arms, and was followed by a chorus of shrieks (mostly mine) and running frantically around in circles.

I thought the kids would be traumatized enough to refrain from any further cleaning questions. Oh ho ho, was I wrong! I've heard kids that weren't even there describing it as "totally awesome" and "so scary". Apparently, the spider incident spread like wildfire and it seems every kid in the school now wants to clean computer keyboards for me.

On the bright side, I've run out of electronics to clean and I have a variety of students available to do my dirty work for me. Score.

On A Scale From One to Ten...

2007-05-30T05:06:00.000-05:00

...With ten being the lamest, most dorktastic thing you can imagine:

How lame is it that I caught myself Googling the phrase "how do I move boulders in Pokemon Diamond for Nintendo DS" last night at 10:30 p.m.?

Also, that I became super excited this morning when I learned that they are making Ender's Game into a movie?

Sigh. On second thought, don't answer that. I don't think I need confirmation of my nerd status so early on a Wednesday morning.

Three Days Later

2007-05-29T05:28:00.000-05:00

Dear People of the Internet,

I hope that you all enjoyed the lovely three day weekend. Although our plans got shifted slightly (doesn't that always happen? I mean really, why do I bother to make actual plans?), we ended up having a great weekend. In fact, I felt so relaxed after my three days of fun in the sun that I actually didn't mind returning to school. Of course it doesn't hurt that we only have three weeks left here, but whatevs. What I'm saying is: my head is back in it's happy place and all is well. Good one, Memorial Day.

So Saturday I dragged a tired Christopher out of bed bright and early to begin what I thought would be a two-hour drive up to the White Mountains in NH. Apparently I didn't think to factor in holiday weekend traffic, but it took us more like three and a half hours to finally reach the outlets where we were meeting my cousins. It was so worth the traffic though- we had so much fun just hanging out, joking around, and in general being loud. We decided to do a quick lunch at Horsefeathers before heading out for our out-of-doors adventures. I had been there before and remembered it being fairly touristy (i.e. fake white birch trees "growing" in planters, plastic molds of the Old Man in the Mountain), but despite the questionable decor the food was quite tasty. While we were eating we realized that the Flume Gorge that we thought we'd be hiking was actually another hour from where we were and by then we were mighty sick of the inside of my Civic. So we decided to just start driving in the direction of the Alpine Slide and see what trails we came across.

And yay for us, we ended up finding the Arethusa Falls trail. It was about 1.6 miles in to get to the actual falls and we were feeling pretty good by the time we got up there. The trail was great- beautiful and breezy and surprisingly non-bug infested. And the falls were amazing. I mean, I've been to Niagara and it's pretty and all, but you definitely don't get to stand at the bottom and walk around in the misty pools of water. Anyway, we city folk made it all the way up and out unscathed. It was like City Slickers, minus the cattle roping and quips from Billy Crystal. We then headed back to the hotel to reward ourselves with beverages of the adult type. What about the Alpine Slide, you ask? It was closed! I know. We were so bummed. Well, not so much Chris, but the rest of us were.

Anyway, after the seven of us had a lovely dinner (creamy asiago orzo with lobster, anyone?) it was about 10:30 p.m. and while my cousins were all staying the night at the hotel, C and I did not have a room. And in fact, there were no rooms left to be had. So I steeled myself for the long ride home, C bought me a coffee and it was Boston or bust. And hey, I only got pulled over once! (I was speeding. The roads are very winding and the speed limit is constantly going from 35 to 55. It wasn't my fault! Ok, it was a little bit my fault. But I wasn't going that fast! And yes, he made me do the little "follow the light with your eyes" test, and we were totally fine. I didn't even get a ticket.) We made it home by 1:30 and it was lights out.

Sunday we went to a cookout, the weather was once again great and the food delicious. Oh, and we also tried our hand at making ice cream. Let's just say it was tasty enough for us to eat it, but we won't be opening an ice cream parlor any time soon. Monday was pretty lazy as well- we had dinner with friends, rocked some DDR, and I played about three hours of Pokemon Diamond on my DS. I don't know if that makes me lamest librarian you know or the coolest, but I will tell you this: I have never once even seen a Pokemon cartoon but that game is retardedly addictive. In fact, I almost wish I was playing it right now. Work is for suckers.

Weekend in review: complete. I'll post pictures on ye olde flickr when I get a mo' and you can check out the weekend madness for yourself. Hope you're all rested and relaxed.

Fondest wishes,
NPW

Oh, and PS: I was just cataloging a copy of Dear Mr. Henshaw, by Beverly Cleary, hence the letter format. Remember that book? I swear we had to read it like 53 times between 3rd and 5th grades. I had vague memories of hating it, I just flipped through it and realized why: it sucks. A lot.

TT On The Weekend To Come

2007-05-24T05:10:00.000-05:00

Thirteen Things about NPW's Upcoming Weekend (and Friday)

1. Okay, so really this should have been a post for Friday since I'm about to talk about the upcoming weekend, but there's no such thing as a Friday Thirteen (it would be totally jinxed and all), so here we go. Be forewarned: I may not post tomorrow, so get your crying done now. Yes, yes, I'll miss you too. Moving on.

2. Tonight is the big Open House where parents come to view student work, ~~berate~~ talk to teachers, and of course, buy things at the Scholastic Book Fair. Note that I said "things" and not "books"; the kiddos are far more interested in the foolish little bendy pencils and foul-scented highlighters than they are in the books. And while they may be money makers, I can tell you from firsthand experience that toys and middle schoolers do not mix. For example, they are selling these super long erasers that look like colorful Twizzlers. And do you think students are using these to carefully erase errant pencil marks from their homework? No. They are using them to whip each other on the arms, legs, face, and neck. I had the following conversation this morning:

Me: Bradley, if I see you using that eraser you just bought for anything other than erasing, it will be mine.
Bradley: (pauses, looks at the eraser, looks at the friend he was about to whip, looks at me) Will I get my money back?

Also, who thought it was a good idea to teach kids that huffing banana-scented highlighters is the correct use for them? Sweet Baby Jesus, I feel like Argus Filch confiscating Fanged Frisbees up in here.

3. Open House tonight promises to be a bundle of fun; there's going to be a cookout! Yesterday the entire staff of the school received an email from the Principal asking for volunteers to "grill his tube steaks". I'm assuming he meant there will be hot dogs?

4. Tomorrow will be more Book Fair, more inventory checklists, more work in general. I'm pretty sure that the only good thing about tomorrow will be getting home from work and napping luxuriously on the couch, despite the Crow Children squawking next door. Oh, and it's Date Night!

5. Date Night = fun. Fun = Pirates of the Caribbean. Therefore, Date Night = Pirates of the Caribbean. And hopefully a lot more relaxing because I sure need it.

6. Saturday we agreed to meet my cousins and their respective spouses up in the White Mountains for a bit of hiking at the beautiful Flume Gorge. I'm pretty excited about the trip- I haven't been hiking since last summer and I haven't been to the Gorge since I was young. I do love the mountains. Rock on with your bad self, Granite State. We also have planned a trip to the infamous Alpine Slide. If any of you out there have never been on an Alpine Slide, I highly recommend it. No, in fact, I demand you seek one out- they are one of life's greatest thrills. Unless the idea of a concrete luge down a mountainside freaks you out. Then you might want to stay away.

C has vowed not to partake in the Alpine Sliding fun as it involves a ride up the mountain in a chair lift and he is a wee bit frightened of heights. Or, more accurately, of falling from heights.

7. Actually, I'm not sure why I'm not more traumatized by the idea of the Alpine Slide after the great Sliding Debacle of '84, wherein my overzealous father decided that the use of the brakes provided on the luge was unnecessary, thus launching the both of us off the cart onto the concrete path, wherein the concrete path felt that my skin was unnecessary and scraped a good portion right off my body.

8. Saturday we will also have dinner on the mountain, which I like to say out loud when anyone asks what I'm doing this weekend because I think it sounds very important. "We will be having dinner on the mountain." I would like to say that the dinner will include drinks, but I will likely be the D.D. and it's about a two hour drive back to the city. C, however, will be free to get loose on the drinks, and he'll probably need it after I drag him down the Slide of Death with me that afternoon.

9. Sunday there will be a grand gala cookout for my cousin Gabriel's 30th birthday, which will be a treat since he and his wife live life in the fast lane down in NYC and we only see them periodically throughout the year. Of course, it's supposed to rain, so the cookout may be more of a cookin, but whatever. Point: there will be food. That I didn't have to cook.

10. I'm kind of hoping that Monday will be a day of rest. Like the seventh day, only not. It's not every day that I get to spend lounging around reading books. Oh, wait...

11. Actually, Monday being Memorial Day and all I'm sure there must be some type of festivities going on somewhere, right? I mean, what's Memorial Day for? No, seriously, I just forgot what Memorial Day was for. What are we supposed to be remembering on Monday the 28th?

Oh! Right! Soldiers. That died. Sometimes I frighten myself with how little my brain retains. What would I do without wikipedia?

12. Anyway, are there fireworks on Memorial Day? There must be, somewhere, right? I guess if all else fails we could drive back up to the beach in NH, buy some fireworks, and then illegally set them off somewhere in Massachusetts. Although I don't really fancy the idea of spending time in the ER after we predictably blow off our fingers with bottle rockets. What about music? There's got to be loads of people that want to sing about soldiers being killed off.

Aren't I so patriotic?

13. And that will be my weekend, folks. It's supposed to be super nice out today and tomorrow, semi-nice out on Saturday, and blowsville on Sunday and Monday. Which sounds about right for May in New England. Hope you have fantabulous weekends and unless I get a stroke of sheer writing genius tomorrow I'll see you for our regularly scheduled programming on Tuesday.

Adieu College Kids, Bonjour Neighbors

2007-05-23T05:08:00.000-05:00

Last weekend Chris and I noted with a bit of relief that the long rows of moving trucks double-parked all over the City of Boston must signify the mass exodus of college students from their ratty apartments back to wherever the hell they hail from. Good riddance, undergraduate folk! Until September, may you grace your homelands with your drunken shouting and not my doorstep.

Does it seem as though I am still bitter about my Walden experience of Monday? Because I am.

Anyway, Chris and I discussed how with all the school kids gone our neighborhood would likely become very quiet and serene for the next few months. We fantasized about how a bunch of young professionals might move in; friendly folk that we could smile at and have the occasional chat, and then go on our merry (and quiet) ways. The trees were blooming, the two nasty girls next door had moved on, and our street was looking quite cheerful.

Except we were wrong, again. What we didn't realize was that the sunny, warm weather meant that it was time for the 4-month long block party: all white trash, all the the time. It seems our invite was lost in the mail, but that doesn't stop our neighbors from bringing out the lawn chairs and plastic stools, the beer cozies and the styrofoam coolers full of Natty Light, the packs of Newports and chew, and plopping themselves right down on the sidewalk every afternoon from 3 p.m. (when I get home from work- hell, they could be there well before 3 for all I know) to well past dark. All of them. In a row, in front of their houses. Calling to each other, cackling with laughter through emphysema lungs, and bellowing at their half-naked wayward children running in the street. All through my very open windows, which let in the breezy sunshine in addition to their blue collar cavorting.

Yesterday afternoon I lay down on my couch to try to do a little reading and/or napping before I set out for a long walk. The instant my head touched the soft pillow I heard an odd cawing shriek. What the hell? Where there crows outside? A band of wild crows? I peeked out the window to see a child squatting in his diaper in front of his drunk mother with his face all screwed up, letting out a steady flow of outraged screams at constant intervals. Four second scream, two second pause. Four second scream, two second pause. I thought, in my absurd naivete, that the noise was so irritating that surely someone would stop him quickly in some way. Wrong! Stupid NPW. Everyone just sat slumped in their molded plastic WalMart chairs staring stupidly at the boy and occasionally attempting to make feeble conversation around him.

How long could he last at this screaming game? Longer than I could. I threw on some shoes and bolted out the door for that walk before I could test the limits of his endurance. Come back, college kids! At least when it's cold outside the neighbors contain their Crow Children to their basements.

On a happier note, here is a picture of the Boston skyline from the Tufts library roof- for Jenn, who misses the city.

Getting There

2007-05-22T05:13:00.000-05:00

As of today, four weeks left. For real. That means four more Monday mornings (although, next Monday morning is Memorial Day- this librarian gets to stay in bed!), four more classes with the illustrious 8th graders who will be moving on to high school, four more team meetings, four more outside lunches.

I finally caught up with all my outstanding orders and placed orders for next year. I finally (albeit grudgingly) wrote out a check for the $55 to attend the end-of-year retirement party- that better be some damn good chicken, is all I'm sayin'. I finally finished prowling through classrooms in search of missing overheads and slide projectors, finally hung all the posters for the book fair, finally recycled all the crap that's come out of my mailbox over the last three months.

And I feel like I'm getting there. Mentally, I've pretty much already checked out of this place. Realistically, there's still a lot to get done before I call it good enough and pack up for the summer. I've been feeling a little overwhelmed with all the new responsibilities that will go along with my job next year, which are numerous and time-consuming. I've been trying to square away a schedule for my summer job and get information on the classes I'm supposed to be taking over the break. I've been thinking about the fact that the school committee just offered us a 0% raise for next year, and what I'll do if we're forced to strike. I've been penciling in birthdays and party invites and Frisbee and school activities like people can't get enough of the NPW.

As you can see, I'm all in a state. In fact, I've been so flustered lately that in my state of unawareness last night I started to bring laundry down to the basement after dark. Alone. Only after I peered down into the cavernous black hole at the bottom of the stairs did my zombie fears return in full force and I flew back up the stairs and slammed the door shut behind me in a very dramatic fashion. Because seriously: that scene in 28 Weeks Later when the kids return to their old house and find their mother hiding in the attic room? That would definitely happen to me. And I so do not need the Rage virus right now.

15 Things

2007-05-21T10:57:00.001-05:00

Friends, my head has not been in the right place lately. I have this constant feeling of being out of sorts, like I'm unsure of how to be myself anymore. This feeling has it's own ebb and flow of course, but I'll admit it's been kind of disconcerting. The last year has brought with it many changes- some amazing, some not quite so welcome. Today I decided that I was well overdue for a mental health day and I set out to enjoy a leisurely day at Walden Pond, famous home to Thoreau and the filming site of On Golden Pond. I packed up a book and a snack and some sunscreen and I headed for the woods for some ~~deep contemplation~~ re-reading of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Unfortunately, it appeared as though every college campus in the state of Massachusetts (and believe me, there are a lot of them), also decided that today was Mental Health Day '07 and also chose Walden as their get-away spot.

And in college, "get-away" means "sneaking vodka in Nalgene bottles and shouting and swearing while throwing oneself into a frigid lake in May". Needless to say, it was not the relaxing jaunt I had been hoping for. But I did get some very pretty pictures- if you'd like to see them you can email me, I'll send you the link to my flickr account. I'm far too lazy to post them in both places, you see.

Anyway, Jenn had a great Post Secret type of blog entry today and I thought I'd follow suit in the spirit of being cathartic. Here are 15 things that I wish to tell different people without naming any names.

I'm still so angry and disappointed with you, I don't know that I'll ever not be angry. But I'm trying.
I wanted you to be somebody else.
You're a better writer than I am; sometimes I'm jealous.
You've always been there for me and I appreciate that more than you'll ever know.
Years later I'm still trying to understand how you could give up your family members so easily. I cannot understand your feelings but at least now I can accept them.
Sometimes it's difficult to be your friend when we have such different views of the world. But I'm glad we are; it's good to have your beliefs shaken up once in a while.
I hope our friendship continues to grow and I'm really very glad you showed up at this point in my life.
I'm sorry that things did not work out the way we thought they would. I'm sorry we didn't try harder. I'm sorry we left things the way we did.
I never wanted to get to know you but you've made it really hard to hate you.
I wish we didn't live so far apart. I miss you.
I secretly hope to run into you someday so that you can see how awesome I am compared to you.
You are the person I turn to when I feel like there's nobody and nothing else to make me feel better and you never ask for anything in return. I don't tell you enough how important that is to me.
I find you to be silly and immature, but sometimes I need that.
I hope you're happy and content, even if you wouldn't wish the same for me.
You are my love. You are my favorite. You are my home, and my heart, and you represent all the best things in my life. I want you to know that you mean more to me than I'll ever be able to express in a silly blog post. And I'll tell you that until forever.

Tetchy

2007-05-18T06:03:00.000-05:00

I'm not feeling particularly verbose today. Apart from yesterday's amusement over Latawnya's Naughty Horse Tales and an actual good episode of Lost on Wednesday, this week kind of blew. But! As of today I officially have four weeks (and two days) to go before I am relieved from duty. School is a battlefield, people. A metaphorical one, maybe, but still: battles. On a field.

Today we were invited to bring our classes down for a "musical presentation" by some high school kids. As soon as the lights went down and the high schoolers started singing some jazzy rendition of a cabaret song I honestly thought I was going to need to resort to using the librarian death glares and sending students out to sit in the hallway. Instead, the 8th graders were rapt with attention and I found that it was myself I had to stop from snorting with laughter. Am I evil? Possibly. But those g.d. high schoolers took themselves very seriously and it was really difficult to concentrate when all I could think of that terrible movie High School Musical (which we thought would be hilarious to rent and watch while drinking; it was not) and other, even worse, musicals like From Justin to Kelly and West Side Story. Anyway, I was relieved that the kiddos liked it because I would have been hard pressed to stop them from laughing about something I found so ludicrous myself.

The rest of this week has been sucked up by inventory (which makes me cry inside) and allergies (which make me cry on the outside). I missed Book Club last night, I was too tired and tetchy from a week spent searching for random overhead projectors to haul my ass to Southie. I regretted not going as soon as it was too late to make it- but then I fell asleep and had strange dreams about having mouth surgery in my aunt's kitchen with an X-Acto knife, so I guess that probably means I needed the rest.

Tonight we've been invited to a couple of soirees. We'll see which one sounds appealing; by the time Chris gets home from work it'll probably be limited to whoever stays out the latest. And tomorrow: 28 Weeks Later. I need some zombies, yo. They're the only thing that can pull this week into a plus.

Lata, playas.

This Just In: Horses of the World Form D.A.R.E Group

2007-05-17T05:23:00.000-05:00

Maybe you've already seen this, but I am reposting it here anyway in case you missed it. Why? Because it just made me laugh so hard I almost peed, sitting all alone here in the library. God, I love books.

The Most Amazing Book Ever

Oh, and just in case you were wondering? I don't own a copy in my library; I checked already. But I will own one, just you wait and see. My particular favorites? Illustrations on pages 22 and 28. Check it.

Why, Middle School? Why?!

2007-05-16T05:35:00.000-05:00

I went for a walk yesterday afternoon after I got out of work. The sun was shining, it was warm and breezy, and Mother Nature was calling my name. Little did I know, it was actually Satan himself posing as Mother Nature calling my name; as soon as I hit the road I started feeling ill. My head was pounding, I was sneezing my face off, and I was uncomfortably hot.

Either I am dreadfully out of shape or that damn Claritin is worthless. And I've been going to the gym, so don't try telling me it's the former. Also, Frisbee starts next week and I can already tell it's going to be quite amusing wheezing my hay fevered, winter-weighted self up and down the field. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this Zyrtec that Chris brought home is going to be the magic allergy pill to get me feelin' all kinds of wonderful.

Yeah, if you can't tell? I'm kind of a mess this week.

This morning I also broke up my first fight. It wasn't really a real fight, like the kind in the teen high school movies where people get smashed into lockers and onlookers chant and cheer them on. It was more like a little Asian kid quietly punching a scrawny white kid in the back of the head behind the library stacks. I happened to be walking through and caught them, barked out orders for them to go sit outside the Assistant Principal's office, and had a little freak out as to what might have happened if I hadn't caught them. Oh yeah, and I also sent another kid down there because he was rude and disrespectful.

For real: don't mess with the NPW today, kiddos. I've had about enough. Like, enough for the rest of the school year. Which is only five weeks away. Do you think I'll make it?

Drudgery and Rants

2007-05-15T05:09:00.000-05:00

Paying bills makes me miserable. I hate money and everything to do with money, unless it involves having unlimited amounts available to me. Unfortunately, this has yet to happen. When I start to think about how much money I actually owe that I will have to pay back in my lifetime (which happens at least once a month, when I look at my bank statement), I start to get that fearful, anxious, dread feeling, like a dull ache at the back of my brain. My brain simultaneously kicks into overdrive, concocting schemes of how to get out of paying my overwhelming student loans that involve elaborate staged deaths all shrouded in mystery, and causes the other part of my brain to simply shut down, making it difficult to concentrate on said bills that need paying.

I've been pretty good about everything being timely and balanced. I try not to live beyond my means, I haven't taken a true vacation anywhere in years. Granted, I also didn't work last summer, which meant I had no extra income (and I sure could've used it), but I'm still glad I took that freebie couple of months and did what I wanted to do. This summer I'll be working at an athletic club, mindless and cheerful work that I won't mind doing for 20 hours a week. And of course, the school still pays me through the summer, so that's a check in the bank every two weeks regardless of how many hours I put in at the gym.

So why is it that I still always feel behind? Plus, the end of the school year always brings expenses- birthdays, retirement parties, showers, weddings, etc. I hate feeling resentful about paying $55 to go to a party celebrating a friend's retirement after 35 years teaching, but I do. I hate trying to cram in as many graduate credits as I can every year so that I can sloooowly climb the ranks of the school pay scale. I hate having to worry about being in a union contract year and school committee meetings where the town declares they have no money for raises for the teachers, let alone a cost of living increase. What other profession would be forced to to accept a 1% pay raise every year? What is that, an extra $20 a month?

I hate feeling like I'll never be able to buy a house in this area because there is nothing affordable and it's impossible to save. I'm sad that the area I love so much is so far out of reach it's insane.

I also hate feeling unhappy with an educational system that could be so great, if only it got the recognition it deserved rather than being glossed over while the big money goes into weaponry and warfare.

Yes, I chose to go to graduate school and I took out the loans. But why should I have a lifetime sentence of bills just because I wanted to better myself? Why should I owe more than my actual yearly salary in student loans, just so that I can meet state standards for my job? Like I'm supposed to just shrug and say, "Oh well, at least I'm considered 'highly qualified'!"

I think I should have been born independently wealthy or something.

God, I hate bills day.

That's A Lot of Pictures!

2007-05-14T05:29:00.000-05:00

You asked for it! I put some real time and effort into this post and all the picture-taking. They didn't all come out as nice as I would've liked, but I was feeling the pressure of getting them done and I spent most of the weekend in New Hampshire, which greatly limited my photo time. I think I got everything people asked for- with the exception of the signs from my favorite haunts and a few lovely pictures of Boston, which I will definitely for sure get this week. I promise! And thanks to everyone who played along; this "assignment" gave me something to concentrate on while the Boy was in far-off lands. (Well, this assignment, and the benefit I went to with my mum where I won a $150 gas card and a pair of sweet Kate Spade sunglasses!)

So without further ado...

For Stefanie, my comforter and sheet set that is currently on my bed. I'm sorry to say it's a plain white down comforter- I do have a few different duvet covers, even one that matches this leaf print set, but when it starts to get warm out I leave them off.

For Aly, my favourite place to relax. (Hee!)

For Kelli, my morning ritual in a modest PG. Shower and products first!

Breakfast second. I don't normally have juice AND a shake, but I brought some juice for lunch and I pack up some cereal for an after-school snack.

And finally, my hair. Like it really makes a difference if I do it or not- in the humidity it always ends up looking like I just sat in a steam room anyway.

For moogan, the sorry inside of my fridge. I couldn't find any weird science experiments in there (besides Kelly LeBrock, duh). Please note, however, the giant can of Steel Reserve- the only thing you can clearly make out. I think there is also some pasta sauce, feta, ginger-echinacea lemonade, a couple bottles of wine, raspberry preserves, some diet Coke products, and some other things I can't quite make out.

The tea pantry.

For ween, the shoe room. And for the record, you don't have to tell me- I know I have shoe issues. The rest are thankfully in the attic in a bin where you can't see them (or the extent of my madness).

The newest acquisition: rainbow skull Rocket Dogs!

Also for ween: the view from my front window. Not so lovely, but at least the trees are finally blooming and can hide some of the neighbors from my sight.

For those who wanted to see my library: my office.

Who loves the pink and orange combo? I do, I do!

And finally, for l sass, the guts of my purse. I might also have a teensy problem with buying lip products.

Oh, and hey! If you click on them you can see them in larger format. More photos to come once I can get my allergy-ridden ass into the great outdoors to my favorite shops and walk routes!

Happy Returns

2007-05-11T05:13:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday! On Monday I mentioned that the weekend had been kind of a downer. You see, my Mom's cat had somehow escaped from the house and no one could find him. Being a house cat and all, he didn't have any tags. Why would he, right? He's never been outside in the 6 years we've had him. This is her youngest cat, her baby, if you will, and it's quite possible she loves that cat more than she loves the very children that are made up from her own DNA.

Needless to say, she was kind of a wreck on Sunday. So Chris and I headed up to New Hampshire to attempt a rescue mission, which basically amounted to us walking around an acre of woods shaking a treat container and calling his name. We didn't find him, even when we broke out the tuna.

Monday went by, then Tuesday and Wednesday. My Dad kept insisting he must have been hurt or attacked or else he would have returned to the house. While this wasn't the most sensitive observation, it was quite possible- the NH woods have mad wild animals that would love a soft little domestic animal for dinner. Fisher cats, bears, foxes, hawks, owls... it's a wonder I feel safe enough to get from the car to the front door, really. Oh, and did I mention the monkeys? Anyway, my sister and I consoled ourselves by imagining Jake on a little adventure, a la Milo and Otis. My mother hung posters in every conceivable place in my small hometown, she and my Dad pestered the neighbors with pictures of him, they even loaded up his image on the local cable access channel with a REWARD sign. No luck.

Both Chris and I despaired a little bit of his ever returning. Then on Wednesday afternoon I got the phone call from my mother. She was crying so hard I couldn't really understand her; I thought she must have found his little body somewhere, ravaged by evil animals of the woods. Finally she yelled, "Jake came back! He's back!" and then cried some more.

She had heard a cat crying outside. She ran out to see who was making it, and found him meowing under the porch!

So happy to have you back, Jake! And not a scratch on you. Now please never do that again- my mother's blood pressure can only go so high before her head explodes.

In other news, the forecast for this weekend is looking bleak. The Christopher left today for a mini-break to Rochester and I will miss him. I wish I was going with him but I have about 12 million errands to run and such and there was no way of missing a Friday and a Monday during the last couple weeks of school. So tonight I'll be at school until 8 doing some random school-related activities. But hello, Rochester people! I'll see you soon, I hope! Saturday will be shopping for Mother's Day and hanging out with some family members (I know, procrastinator!), and Sunday is the big Day of Mothers, where my mother will once again be spoiled rotten by her kids (note: Jake's never bought you something cool, has he, Mom?!), and be treated to a fabulous brunch. Needless to say, I am jealous that C gets to run around having fun all weekend while I'm stuck doing DDR with students and their feckless parents. But at least I get to see my Mama.

Hope you all have a fabulous Friday. I will be posting some pictures for you on Monday; be very excited. Something to look forward to!

Taking Over, One Blog At A Time

2007-05-10T05:48:00.000-05:00

Omigod guys, I like totally got invited to guest blog today over at Funky Carter!!!!! Aren't you like, soooo jealous??!?! I mean, I know I'm, like, really, really awesome and all, but I didn't know how awesome I really really really was until Ace asked me to fill in for him. I told him yeah, totally, I could do that, as long as it didn't involve me going bald and becoming a dork and listening to Jenny Lewis on repeat for 8 hours straight while crying into my Steven Seagal Energy Drink about how I never get any. As long as it didn't involve that, I would totally do it!

No, really; check it out. I wrote stuff over there today instead of here.

And I hope all of you are still thinking of things you'd like to see photographed by yours truly. Believe me, this will be as fun for me as it is for you, I love taking pictures!

Just remember: minds out of the gutter and I'll work my shutter.

Cut To The Montage Already

2007-05-09T05:47:00.000-05:00

Here's the deal: I am going to be very busy the next few days. I know this, now you know this. So rather than try to come up with something totally hilarious and original for you right now, I am going to instead direct the fun and hilarious back to you.

That's right, it's INTERACTIVE POST time!

Being the ~~voyeur~~ visual learner that I am, I always want to see pictures when I read people's posts. I love pictures of people's rooms, work, themselves, anything that gives me a better insight into the person behind the words. And I thought, maybe you all are like that too! So in the interest of curiosity (as well as giving my ass something to write about today), I am opening up the comment lines. You tell me what you want photos of and I will do my damnedest to post them up here on Friday.

Random example: photo of my dining room table and semi-new orchid.

Awesome blinds, eh? They drive Chris batty, I can tell you. It's the only room in which I have not yet hung drapes. And the orchid is now in a pretty green pot and not in that hideous little clay thing it came in. And now the orchid has about seven pretty flowers, not just two.

Anyway, you get the idea. Of course, I don't think I need to remind anyone to keep this rated PG. Or PG-13, at least. Otherwise, comment away, get creative, have fun.

No, seriously, please make this fun. I may be busy, but I'm bored.

Shock and Awe

2007-05-08T05:51:00.000-05:00

I was just sitting here quietly, minding my own business, poring over the latest It Girl book, when I happened to glance out the window and saw something that caused me to let out an involuntary shriek. A quiet shriek, but a shriek nonetheless.

My first thought was, "Why is that woman wearing a tumbleweed on her head?". My second thought was, "Wait, is that a woman? It seems to be capable of walking... and it has a purse". And my final thought before I lost consciousness due to shock was something along the lines of, "At least my hair doesn't ever do that."

People, I grew up in New Hampshire. I have seen some bad hair in my day. Hell, I've been to events where there wasn't a single non-offensive haircut in the whole damn place. But this woman... this woman hurt my eyes and she hurt my soul. And for that, I can never forgive her. If only I had any type of artistic skills, I would have immediately drawn her so that I could bring the picture to my next salon visit and emphatically point out what I do NOT want done to my hair. Maybe if I describe it well enough, one of my more artistically inclined friends (Jenn, I'm looking at you) can do an actual drawing. Until then, the best I can provide you with is this:

I know. Please, take a minute to absorb the image before you move on.

So as I was saying, it was mostly her hair that caused me to pass out, but in retrospect it was really the eyebrow/hair combo that pushed me over the edge. What you may or may not be able to tell from my crude MS Paint rendering is that her eyebrows actually looked like moth wings after the moth has been caught in one of those zappers and fried to an electrocuted, burnt mess. However, some of those eyebrow hairs managed to escape the singeing and grew to their full height, i.e. she just combed them right into her hair. And they were curly!

Hold on, I need to catch my breath.

The top half of her "hair" looked as though she went to a dog groomer and asked for their best poodle cut, but the groomer was having an off day and somehow managed to make it completely uneven and also needed to shave down bits where there were mats. The bottom half looked as though she might at some point have had a perm but it didn't quite take and then tree roots started to grow in it. It was also uneven, but in a less disturbing way, almost like it was in its natural state and all it needed was a good watering and she'd be good to go every morning. Some of the tendrils had regenerated where it was dead and sprouted little off-shoots of new curls.

Did I mention it was down past her waist?

I almost had the thought that she must have been involved in some kind of bet where the contestants wanted to see who could go the longest without ever touching their hair, kind of like the time in college when we were on the train in Boston and my friend Megan bet me my train fare that I wouldn't wear a side ponytail the entire trip and I did. Only, the train ride lasted about 10 minutes and this woman had to have been working on this hair for a bare minimum of 10 years, so I was kind of sad for her, but also amazed that she's apparently able to shrug off people's constant stares and stifled gasps without so much as pulling out a comb.

This Little Piggy Went To The Market

2007-05-07T05:50:00.000-05:00

This past weekend was a mix of highs and lows, people. But the lows were very low, so I am not going to discuss them until further notice. Just keep your fingers crossed for me that everything turns out okay, hmm? Rather than worrying about things I am attempting to distract myself with a special viewing of Pretty Woman (thanks, OnDemand!) and some mint chip yogurt*.

Onward and upward: remember how I said last week that I was a sucker for cool packaging? No? Well, I don't blame you, that meme was a tad long and my answers were more than a tad boring. Anyway, I'm sorry to admit that it's very true; I will buy anything that looks cool or comes in a pretty package. I'm probably the sole source of income for all those Packaging Design majors at RISD.

When Chris gets the idea in his head that he wants to buy something, he'll spend roughly seven years researching reviews, looking at it in the store, debating with me over brands and prices, wavering, quaffling, and being indecisive. He then purchases something that he has never even mentioned and the cycle ends- until the next time he wants something. I'm almost the opposite, in that I rarely know that I want something until it's right in front of my face, then my impulses take over my fine motor skills and it's in my shopping basket. Basically I'm like a child: easily distracted by bright and shiny objects. So, with the best interests of my adoring public at heart , I am willing to give my completely uneducated and half-formed opinions on said crap so that you may wisely choose what to spend your hard earned Ben Franklin's on. Here are just a few of my recent purchases, none of which I had any idea whether or not they were complete and utter crap until buying them, bringing them home, and using them.

Method Bloq Shaving Cream: I mentioned this one on Friday but I think I owe it to you all to mention it again because this stuff is the devil incarnate. Not only is it terrible for shaving your legs with, it also attracts every mosquito in a 90-mile radius. Looks pretty and smells yummy, but I suggest you put away that $5 for something that will not cause you to curse baby Jesus in the shower every morning for making you so gullible.

Trader Joe's Nourish Spa Shampoo and Conditioner: Once I've dispensed with the morning's shaving torture, I can relax my pretty little head with this little duo of delight. I know the packaging doesn't look like much (nor does the $2.50 price tag), but it smells amazing and will make your hair seem like you just went to the salon... every day. Also, it doesn't have that chemical in it that almost every other shampoo has that dries out your hair. You know the one. Sodium something? Whatevs. It doesn't have that. Yay, Trader Joe's!

Aveda Light Elements Smoothing Fluid: Tiny, pretty little blue bottle. So cute! Must have! Right now! In my bag you go! Here is my credit card! Signing my name... annnnnd I just spent $25.00. But fear not, lovelies, this stuff does the trick on frizzies and flyaways like no one's bidness.
Pro: is awesome.
Con: proves I should not be allowed in salons alone, ever.
SOYJOY Nutrition Bars: Oh, soy product. You know I love thee. And you come in mango now? Never mind that you look like cardboard! Come to me. I must taste your fruits.

Uhh, yeah. These things are delicious. And expensive. And tiny. But so very good for you, surprisingly. I only wish mine came with Japanese writing on it because then I would've bought 20.

Diet Coke Plus: Just what it sounds like, duh. Diet Coke with vitamins and minerals! Which ones? No idea. Cool logo though, yes? Oh wait, here it is... B3... zinc... something else. Is B3 even a vitamin? Is that like a quarter of B12?

Why did I buy this? Let me spell it out for you, script-style. Scene: A CVS in a very sketchy neighborhood. Time: 11 p.m. Outside, three cop cars are parked in the lot, surveying the lay of the land. Chris and I exit, only to find ourselves trapped in rival gang fire. With a burst of super B3 energy, I grab Chris and throw him over my shoulder and leap the 100 yards to his car, thus ensuring our safety. The cops clap and whistle and I take a small bow, then hand them the Diet Coke Plus bottle cap. "Try it," I say earnestly, "there's just nothing like it!"

Shut up! That so could have happened. Regardless, I thought it tasted just like Diet Coke, Chris thought it tasted like Tab, we both enjoyed it and agreed to disagree.

Sony Clock Radio: Yeah, I had a perfectly functioning alarm clock already. So what? This one is green and orange! And plays different alarm melodies. And has a weekend mode. Actually, I do love the dual alarm function, it was a bit wearying when I had to reset the alarm every morning so that the Christopher could then hit snooze 90 gajillion times. And it was on sale at Target, the store where everything seems like I could possibly need it at some point.
And on that note, I will end this list of folly. I mean seriously: I don't need to divulge all my impetuous purchases to you. Yet.

*Please don't worry about me too much, all the people in my life are just fine. And that is as much as I'm willing to say for now.

Because I am Bored And I Am Lazy. And You Know This.

2007-05-04T05:44:00.000-05:00

Time Started: 6:41 p.m.
Name: NPW
Gender: female

1.) When showering, do you start the water and then get in or get in and start the water?
If you got in and then started the water, you'd risk being frozen to death and then scalded. At least in my apartment, anyway.

2.) Do you read the labels on the shampoo bottle?
When I'm buying them. In the shower, I'm usually too sleepy.

3.) Do you moan in the shower like the people on the herbal essence commercial?
Absolutely not.

4.) Have you ever been forced to shower with one of your siblings?
As an adult? What kind of pervy questionnaire is this?

6.) Have you ever brushed your teeth in the shower?
Sure.

7.) Have you ever dropped your soap on your foot?
Heck yes. It hurts like hell.

9.) How old do you look?
Old enough to be your mother! Wait, what?

10.) What's the last song you heard/sang?
One Two Three Four, Feist

11.) Have you recently become a member of anything?:
I don't think I understand this question. I just joined an Ultimate Frisbee league... does that count?

12.) What are your plans for the weekend?
Wine tasting, date night, family time.

13.) What is your mood at the moment?
A bit down.

14.) Have you ever ridden a mechanical bull?
No, but it's on my list of life-long goals. Tequila Rain, here I come! Maybe I can scratch off the wet t-shirt contest at the same time. (Ha!)

15) Do you ever intentionally vomit after eating?
No. Is this really the time or place to cop to bulimia, though?

16.) Who would win in a fight...a Tiger or a Lion?
Ummm. A lion? I like lions. They would definitely win.

17.) Have you ever called anyone a slut?
Not to their face.

18.) Has anyone ever called you a slut?
I wouldn't imagine so.

19). Have you ever smuggled something into America?
Yes. Shh.

20.) Does playing a guitar make someone more attractive?
Maybe? It depends on the person.

21.) Do you live in a city with a good sports team?
Sometimes.

25.) Do you have more enemies or more friends?
I lost count at 111 to 115.

26.) Have you ever sent an anonymous letter?
No.

27.) Can you fix your own car?
I can barely manage to put my own windshield wiper fluid in. Isn't that what Dads and boyfriends are for?

28.) Do you like staying up late?
Yes, although it's not very conducive to my work schedule.

29.) Are you smarter than your friends?
I wouldn't say so. I make them all take IQ tests before we can become friends so that I know they are smarter than me.

30.) Have you ever stolen anything from your friends?
No.

31.) Have you ever been to jail?
No. I'm not cut out to do hard time.

33) Do you like the smell of beer?
The smell? Like stale beer in a bar? No.

34.) Have you ever died or killed someone in a dream?
Yes. It's very disconcerting.

35.) Have you ever given to charity?
Yes. I work in a school, you see.

36.) Would you kill a dog for $1000?
No! Sickos.

37.) Do you ever get depressed?
Sure.

38.) Do you live with your parents?
No.

39.) Do you have plans for your future?
I guess? I would think only the suicidal would have absolutely no plans for their future.

You are
[]short, 5'3" and under
[] 5'4"-5'5"
[] 5'6" - 5'7 ''
[x] 5'8" - 6'0"
[] tall 6'1 and up

NATURALLY
[] blonde/dirty blonde
[] redhead
[x] brunette/light brown (tremendous too!)
[ ] black
[ ] dont know... dyed it to much

[] blue-eyed
[] brown-eyed
[] black-eyed
[] green-eyed
[] Hazel-eyed
[ ] gold/gray-eyed
[ ] silver/gray- eyed
[ ] blue/green-eyed
[ x] blue/gray-eyed
[ ] green/gray-eyed
[ ] they change colors
[ ] amber

[x] glasses--
[]contacts--
[] neither

[] short hair
[x] medium hair
[] long hair
[] no hair

Your favorite color(s) are?
[] red
[] khaki
[] aqua
[x] pink
[] yellow
[x] black
[x] green
[] lime green
[x] blue
[] white
[] turquoise
[] silver
[] purple
[x] brown
[] orange
[] grey
[] fuscia
[] maroon
[] gold
[] teal
[] coral
[] clear
[] bronze
[x] i don't really care (you can say that again)
[] rainbow
[x] i basically like all colors

Your personality is sometimes...
[x] talkative
[x] shy
[x] funny
[x] serious
[x] laid back
[] strict
[] hyper
[x] sarcastic

The pets you have HAD?
[x] cat
[x] dog
[] rat
[] ferret
[x] bunny
[x] fish
[] horse
[] bird
[x] frog
[] hermit crab
[] turtle
[x] hamster
[] snake
[] gerbil
[] guinea pig
[] pig
[x]goat
[] chinchilla
[] tarantula
[] geese
[] baby chicks
[] baby ducklings
[] none
[] hedgehog
[]snail
[] piranha
[] seagull
[] newt/ salamander
[] pigeon
[] lizard
[] I hate animals

Your confessions:
[] I hate silence
[x] I am really ticklish
[x] I'm afraid of the dark
[x] I've collected comic books
[x] I sometimes shut out others
[] I open up to others TOO easily
[x] I read the newspaper
[] I love Disney movies
[x]I am a sucker for gorgeous eyes
[x] I am a sucker for a gorgeous smile
[] I don't kill bugs
[] I have "x"s in my screen name
[x] I bake well
[x] I have worn pajamas to class
[x] I love Martha Stewart
[x] I am self-conscious
[x] I love to laugh
[] I can't swallow pills
[x] I bite my nails
[x] I play computer games when I'm REALLY bored (and also sometimes when I'm not)
[x] I have gotten lost in the city
[x] I have gone out in public in my pajamas
[x] I have made out in an elevator
[] I have been skydiving
[] I have been bungee jumping
[x] I have bitten someone
[ ]I have egged or rolled a house/car
[x] I have smashed into a car
[x]I have been skinny dipping

Have you ever...
[x] Seen a shooting star
[]Joke proposed to anyone
[]Gotten stitches
[x] Eaten Sushi
[x] Gotten the chicken pox
[x] Ridden in a taxi
[x] Been on a cruise ship
[x] Driven over 400 miles in one day
[x] Been on a plane without adults
[x] Had surgery
[] Seen a movie more than 3 times in the theater
[]Been on stage
[] Gotten a black eye
[x] Memorized all the dialogue in a movie
[x] Watched an entire baseball game

Do you like...
[x] Old movies
[] Musicals
[x] Blasting music in your car
[x] Foreign foods
[] Gameboy Pokemon
[] Christmas time
[x] Animals
[x] Coffee
[x] Tea
[x] Summer
[] Winter

Spell your name without vowels: nncyprlwnnb

What color(s) do you wear most often?
black

Last song heard on the radio?
Some Green Day song, unfortunately.

What's for dinner tonight?:
Turkey curry salad sandwich, roasted potatoes.

Are you happy with your life right now?:
Some parts of it. Mostly, yes.

Do you have:
- PSP?: nope
- PS2?: yes
- PS3?: nope
- XBOX?: nope
- XBOX 360?: want one!
-Wii? want one!
- Digital Camera?: yes
- game cube?: no
- Gameboy?: nope
- Nintendo DS?: yes

Do you shop at stores like Aeropostale and American Eagle?
Not often. I try to refrain from looking like my students. I feel that's a good rule of thumb.

How do you make money?
That's a bit personal, buster.

Last thing you bought?
Method Shaving Cream- I'm a sucker for cool packaging.

How's the weather?
Sunny and cool.

When do you start summer break?
Not soon enough.

Do you own big sunglasses?
Yep. Just call me NancyPearlLohan.

Do you find yourself attractive?
I'm not unattractive.

How many beds did you lay in yesterday?
One?

What color shirt are you wearing:
Pink and black.

Name one thing that you do everyday?
Laugh.

How much cash do you have on you right now?
$21. That's pretty good for me.

What's your favorite sport?
To play? Tennis.

What did you have for dinner last night:
Pizza night!

Look to your left, what do you see?:
A pile of books. My camera. Day planner.

Do you have plants in your room?
Yep. I love me some green stuff.

Favorite Starbucks drink?
Hmm... iced Cafe Americano with a little bit of soy milk. Or the iced Tazo chai.

Recent time you were really upset?:
It seems to be happening with alarming frequency as the school year comes to a close.

End time?
Who cares?

Thirteen Oddities

2007-05-03T05:22:00.000-05:00

Thirteen Odd Things You May Not Know About NPW

(In playing along with Noelle's Ten Dirty Little Secrets)

1. My clothes closet is organized by color, then in long sleeve to short sleeve order (with 3/4 length sleeves somewhere in between). Then pants, skirts, dresses, in that order. Sometimes shirts with patterns throw me off so much I can't decide which color they belong with, so they are relegated to the back of the closet where I promptly forget that I own them. My shoes are another story; they have an entire room devoted to them. Well, shoes and Christmas decorations, and a clothes rack, and Chris's shoes, and a couple of tables. But mostly shoes.

2. I have a compulsive need for car's radio display to be dust-free. While the rest of my car looks like the city dump had an avalanche that spilled directly into my backseat, I am always careful to lovingly remove any speck of dust that might marr my view of the radio station.

3. My use of commas is excessive and sometimes egregious. I'm aware of this and I am constantly re-reading my writing to make sure it doesn't look ridiculous.

4. Ten years later, I remain absurdly proud of my perfect score on the SAT II Writing test. As you can clearly see, that perfect score brought me big things: a whopping teacher's salary and a half-assed blog.

5. I can feel a nervous tic coming on when kids use the three-hole punch in the library and drop the little punched out holes all over the orange carpeting. If I catch them, I make them pick up every single one. If I don't see the actual culprit, I've found myself on more than one occasion down on hands and knees picking them up. Time to invest in a dust buster, maybe?

6. I'm irrationally afraid of being murdered. Likely this is due to a combination of factors: too much Court TV, a fear of the dark, and a somewhat hysterical mother who insists on calling me daily with updates on local Boston crime.

7. I prefer good beer to good wine. Does that make me less girly? Maybe. I don't care. Nothing is better than a delicious beer and pizza combo.

8. Every morning when I wake up I have to do things in the exact same order: coffee, shower, dress, lunch, dry hair, pack up, goodbye to Chris, out the door. If I don't do it in this order every day, I inevitably forget something and I can't be held acccountable for going into school half-dressed with wet hair and no lunch.

9. I get an ominous feeling when I step on cracks in the sidewalk or spill salt. I scoff at superstition, but deep down I still get a panicky, anxious feeling.

10. I have very strange cuticles. They're kind of non-existent, except when I somehow manage to snag one on something and it rips to shreds and causes a bloody mess.

11. If I know I am having guests over to my apartment I will obsessively clean and tidy, even if that means shoving everything "extra" into Chris's office room. We might be messy, but at least we can manage to be privately messy.

12. Having my wisdom teeth out was the worst experience of my life. That might make me sound like a huge wuss, but if you've never experienced a dry socket and a sadistic oral surgeon shoving 12 yards of gauze into a hole drilled into your jaw then you have no right to judge me. Plus, I woke up from the surgery to find my father laughing at me and my clothes covered in blood from where they had to drill my teeth out of my bone. Traumatizing.

13. I eat my lunch at 10:30 every school day. That means on the weekends I am absolutely starving by noon- which ends up being breakfast. Then I skip lunch because otherwise it would ruin my 5 p.m. dinner time. It also means that when all you normal people are eating lunch, I am pretty much done with my work day. Yeah, schools.

The Miracle of Advertising

2007-05-02T05:49:00.000-05:00

A few months back I discovered that the person I called my best friend in the whole world, the person I had been friends with for the majority of my lifetime, the person with whom I shared an honorary PhD in Dirty Dancingology, was insanely jealous of of my boyfriend. To the point where she decided she'd rather not be friends with me at all than live with the fact she'd have to share my time with someone else.

I suppose I should've seen it coming. Even though L and Chris got along really well, she was forever making comments about how much time I would spend with him, how it was insane to date someone who lived 6 hours away (at the time), and how our relationship could only end in heartbreak. Still, the fact that she and Chris were friends seemed very promising to me; she and my previous boyfriend had hated each other with the ferocity of a thousand suns. Seriously, if they spoke two words to each other in the course of an evening I considered it a huge success.

While Chris was still living in New York it was easier to ignore. She did inform me that she was put out when I chose to spend most of last summer in New York, but otherwise she seemed to be able to keep her jealousy in check. It wasn't until I told her that Chris would be moving out to Boston that everything broke down. "He's moving out here? So soon? Don't you think it's too soon? It's too soon! You're going to regret it. Wait, you're going to live with him? This is ridiculous." And so on, and so on. You get the point.

And while I understood her need to speak her mind (often, and to countless other people, even), it became a bit tiresome week after week. One night I was out with a mutual friend of ours and she happened to mention that L had been talking about me- had, in fact, been talking about me to everyone we knew. Maybe she was trying to garner support of her "Chris stays in NY" campaign, maybe she didn't think it would get back to me, maybe she just needed to vent. I didn't care. I was angry. Then our mutual friend also informed me that L had admitted to having a crush on one of our other friends- a girl- and it was then it dawned on me. L was so crazy jealous because she wanted to be with me.

Ohhhhhh.

I resisted that idea for a while, assuring myself that she would've said something before, that there was no way I wouldn't have noticed. I told myself that I couldn't know that was true. I ignored the fact that people had been teasing me for years that L had a crush on me. She wasn't gay! I would've known! She dates men! But in the end, I knew my hunch was right. It didn't surprise me or freak me out, nor would I have cared if she had said she was or was not gay. But she definitely didn't trust me as much as I thought she did, and that hurt.

To make a long story short, I never ended up confronting her, she freaked out when Chris moved here (for various reasons), Chris and I moved out, L decided to not ever speak to me again. End of story, right?

No. Me, being the sap that I am, decided it wasn't good enough to leave things at that. I thought, for once in my life I should just suck it up and be the bigger person. Pride and holding grudges have always been my weakness and I knew that I could play this not speaking to each other game until the end of days. But it just didn't feel right, to end a 10 year friendship with an email confrontation. So I wrote her back and told her all the things I had been thinking for months and months. I spent time pondering how I wanted to word things. I worked at it. I told her if she ever wanted to talk, like really talk, I would make time.

The response:
"I think of you in a far off city or a boat or something without phones or email access."
-L

Wha huh? I live approximately .5 miles from you. Apparently my grand gesture, my Buddhist philosophy of being the "bigger person", did not play out exactly as I had thought it would. Oh well. C'est la vie.

And the reason I decided to finally write this all out? No, it wasn't some overwhelming desire to tell the world about a failed friendship. It was this ad on a website that suddenly reminded me of her:

Props to Google for its simplicity. And who knows? Maybe if L had seen this ad a year ago things would have turned out a bit differently.

Playing Catch Up

2007-05-01T05:50:00.000-05:00

Right. First off, I have to give myself props for being a domestic goddess. I mean, I'm aware that I'm a pretty good cook (you would be, too, if you grew up with my mother), but last night I kind of blew myself away. Oh yeah, and Chris was pretty impressed too.

I had actually stayed home from work yesterday- a combination of allergies and sore throat and swollen glands and eyes convinced me I'd best not enter the den of mold I call my office. But by noon I was feeling fine, flying high on a cocktail of coffee and benadryl, and decided to put my newfound energy to good use and catch up on things I never find time to do. I power cleaned, cleared out all my old summer clothes to make room for new ones, did loads and loads of laundry, paid a bunch of bills, rearranged my Netflix queue, emailed a bunch of people I never get to talk to, scrubbed out the tub, and even found time to watch The Last King of Scotland. Which, by the way, was amazing.

And then I started to put together dinner. We bought two tilapia filets at Whole Foods the other day and marinated them in coconut milk. I dredged them in flour and black pepper, coated them with more coconut milk, and dragged them through panko and coconut flakes, and threw them in a super hot wok with olive oil.

Then I cut up red potatoes and mango chunks with allspice, sea salt, black pepper, fresh parsley, and a touch of cayenne and baked them in the oven for 45 minutes until they were all crisped up.

Then I mixed the last of the coconut milk, some orange juice, brown sugar, and kosher salt and simmered it to a reduction glaze for the finished fish.

Seriously, who wouldn't want me as their personal chef? And don't say people that don't like fish. My skillz range to all manner of consumable goods, not just the oceanic variety. Anyway, that delicious meal convinced me that I must join Boston Organics, at least for the summer. I love fresh food. It also made me realize I absolutely need a grill. Because fish on the grill in the summertime? Love.

Moving on from my crazy cooking, there have been things in the works here in Beantown. I signed up for an actual Ultimate Frisbee league for the spring. This means two things: one, they will probably keep an actual score and there will probably be an actual winner (as opposed to the pick up league I played with last year, where the girls mostly skipped down the field singing show tunes while the dudes tackled each other to the ground for the frisbee). Two, although they are likely going to be more competitive, I have the feeling that they will also be better, more experienced players, which means I hopefully will not incur quite so many injuries as last year.

Another sign that it's spring, the Christopher got invited to the Red Sox game at Fenway this evening. I am insanely jealous, but happy he gets to go. While he's down there, I am going to meet a friend at the newly opened Wagamama's in Faneuil Hall. Hooray!

I'll leave you with a quick recap of last weekend:

Went to a charity BBQ. Did not win the raffle for the ipod video.
Proceeded to the liquor store to buy cachacas- a Brazilian rum-type liquor made from distilled sugar cane. Hung out with some other friends drinking caipirinhas for the remainder of the night.
Saw Hot Fuzz. Was hilarious. I liked it as much as Shaun of the Dead, and that's saying a lot. And speaking of Shaun of the Dead, who's up for zombies next weekend?

Hope you all had a pleasant start to your week. Only four days left till Friday: we can do this.

NH: Rave-Ready

2007-04-30T05:34:00.000-05:00

Spotted at a local New Hampshire eating establishment recently:

Oh, did I mention this was in the bathroom?

I can't even tell you how many times I've been hard-pressed for glow sticks while in the bathroom. Thank god someone understands my needs.

Busy Bee

2007-04-27T05:46:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the non-post this morning, but if you understood how much work I have all of a sudden you wouldn't hold it against me. We had the brilliant idea to hold a book drive to bring in "gently used" books to the library; apparently I didn't realize the lengths to which these competitive children would go to to win a pizza party. Seriously, some of these kids gave me hundreds of dollars worth of books in exchange for maybe two slices of cafeteria pizza. Part of me feels badly about this, the other, more rational, part understands that these children have more books and more money at their disposal than I will ever have in my lifetime.

Of course, if all the books are like this one, then maybe I'm overpaying them with pizza?

Seriously- when is this book from? 1974? What kid is reading that?

I guess maybe I should have realized the book drive would end up like this. These children really, really like to win- i.e.: the magazine drive when they pretty much whore themselves out for weepuls.

Anyway, please pardon me for being so out of it this week. As it is, only three classes have brought their books down to the library so far- that's out of 30, mind you- and there are already over 200 books. So as you can imagine I've got cataloging up to my eyeballs. And did I ever mention that cataloging is one of my least favorite parts of being a librarian? Because it so is.

Happy end of week. Have some fun for me!

So Weak

2007-04-26T05:37:00.000-05:00

This week actually kind of flew by and I realized that there are now only 7 weeks left of school before the gloriousness of summer commences. Woot. I also realized as I was driving in to work this morning that even though there are still a few little patches of snow left where there were once giant piles, all the leaves and the trees are starting to show some green. It's so very pretty outside I just had to go for a walk, so I went downtown to pick up an iced coffee and drop off some mail and stop in the bookstore quickly to see what they were buying for young adult stuff. Did I ever mention that I love walking when it's nice out? If it was 75 and sunny every day I would never be in a bad mood again.

Ok, that was a big fat lie. But it would definitely make it that much harder to stay in a bad mood, rather than the days on end of miserable weather we usually get here that seem to egg on irritability and instability. You know how everyone always says that you can only truly appreciate something good when you've already experienced the worst? Yeah, I'd like to kick whoever said that in the shins. I've paid my dues, yo. Bring on the searing desert heat.

Enough about the weather! I'm sick of the gd weather. Anyway, I thought about doing a Thursday Thirteen today and I just don't have the time or the energy for more than a couple of weak bullet points.

The very big news I have to tell everyone is still unconfirmed. It's likely and probable that I could report the news now and be safe but I don't want to jinx anything. You know how it is.
All packages have been mailed. Expect them forthwith.
I can't wait for the weekend. Natch. I don't even have any big plans, I just want to sleep in. Although I must admit, it's much easier to wake up in the mornings now that it's actually light out.
Last night we watched a couple of episodes of the first season of Arrested Development. Did anyone else watch this show? HILARIOUS.
I am right now resisting the urge to drive up to the MSPCA to see if the Tuki has gone home with anyone yet.
Ultimate frisbee is starting up again. Wee! I only hope I don't get knocked unconscious this year.
Speaking of wee, I really want a Wii.
I just bought a diet green tea drink and almost choked when I read that one bottle is 6 servings. Six! That may still be 0 calories, but it's 420 miligrams of sodium. I'm surprised my insides aren't corroded.
I bought a cute Proenza Schouler shirt at Target and I've received about 12 compliments on it. Good on ya, Target. I love me some cheap one-season clothing.
Oh, crap. I better bustamove- my to-do list has become ridiculously long and I just keep staring at it uncomprehendingly, hoping it might just go away if I pretend not to understand it. Kind of like Chris does any time I start to talk about something that bores him. Ha!

You know it's bad when you're wishing you had a meme to post. See you fools tomorrow for some Friday Fun.

Faux Paw

2007-04-25T05:24:00.000-05:00

Nerdstar Runners: sorry to disappoint, but I've got nothing for you today. My brain hurts and my heart is heavy. My little Tuki doll might have traitorous fur, but as Chris and I were leaving the MSPCA yesterday she kept staring down at him from her perch and meowing reproachfully. She wanted to come home with us. She couldn't help it that she caused us to itch out of our minds. She misses us.

Or, you know, she could be totally fine; maybe she'll go home with some awesome people who will understand that she's the coolest cat around and treat her as royalty. Maybe she has no awareness whatsoever that we even wanted her. But those eyes... it's hard to shake the feeling that she knew we were leaving her there.

Anyway, I'm sure you'll all be glad to end this week of NPW's Cat Drama Mini-series and get back to my usual trippy librarian stories. With any luck the end of this week will bring the good news I know you're all dying to hear. Till then, I leave you with my current list of summer job options:

Nanny/Au pair/glorified babysitter
Tutor
Camp counselor
Porn set fluffer
Bookstore
Pouring concrete
Mover
Shaker
Selling ginsu knives at state fairs
Becoming a Mormon, filming commercials

Cats: An Off Broadway Drama

2007-04-24T05:03:00.000-05:00

First off, thanks to everyone who left me congratulatory cat messages yesterday. We have yet to pick her up since the MSPCA is conveniently closed on Mondays. Also, I got a snotty message yesterday from some woman that works there. When we saw Tuki* (the beautiful dragon cat) on Saturday, she had a bit of a bald patch on her belly. The person we talked to thought it was allergies, and told us she was taking some kind of supplement for them, but that the vet would check her out on Monday- as in, yesterday.

According to said snotty message, the visiting vet is "only available for emergencies" on Mondays, and she didn't know who could've possibly told me that the vet would be looking at Tuki, but if we wanted her looked at we'd have to schedule a special vet exam.

You know I'm irritated when my brow furrows and I'm frowning while listening to a stupid voice message.

Regardless, Chris and I want to go see her and make sure she's doing okay before we take her home. Of course, C never leaves work before 7:30 p.m., and the MSPCA is only open until 4. Way to get your animals adopted, MSPCA- close before people even get out of work.

So that is the Tuki drama, up-to-date and current. I just hope she's not miserable being crammed in with all those other animals and being subjected to all those uncouth degenerates trying to pick her up and mussing up her lovely fur.

*I kind of love the name Tuki, but I also want to just call her Fizzgig because that's how I think of her. Chris has started calling her Kathleen Turner because of all her long flowing "hair", which makes me laugh until I pee every damn time I imagine Tuki starring in Romancing the Stone.

edit: We just got home from the MSPCA and Chris and I are both itchy, sneezy messes. This happened last time we went, too, but we ignored it for the sake of our mutual cat love. I don't think, however, that we could successfully ignore allergic reactions every day for the rest of Tuki's (or our) lives. What does this mean? I suppose it means no Fizzgig, no Kathleen Turner to sweep us off our feet with bad romance novels.

This is a sad day, my friends. I really loved that cat.

8 Weeks Till Summer and Counting!

2007-04-23T05:46:00.000-05:00

I'm back, nerdlets! Not that I really left, per se, but the true spirit of NPW is back. My vacation seemed to be the very definition of situational irony: the discrepancy between what is expected and what actually occurs. I expected glorious sunshine and lots of walks and iced coffee. What I actually got was a lot of rain and a drain that will not unclog.

Fret not though, intrepid readers. I did manage to accomplish a few things over break. For example, I... um, well, I got new athletic socks. You might not think that was such a big deal, but that is because you have never seen my old running socks. You see, I hate, hate, hate when socks are baggy and so I always pull the backs of them up so that they're not all loose in my sneakers, but then it's like the ankles are all up around my achilles tendon and then Chris makes fun of me. And rightly so, it's pretty unsightly.

Ahem. Anyway, I did not intend to write a post about my athletic socks. What I meant to say was, my vacation was less than stellar, but better than work. And good news for my blog winners of yesterweek, the packages are ready (mostly) and will be mailed out tomorrow (I think). You will be happy to note that Chris is jealous of the packages, as I have them all laid out on my dining room table, and he wishes he commented so that he could've won.

I would've mailed them all out today, but I have a list of things to do a mile long and it's only Monday morning. This afternoon is a staff meeting, followed by yoga (hopefully outside, since it's a ridiculous 80 degrees and sunny, now that I'm back at work), and then I think I'll go for a run to take advantage of this lovely day.

I also have one other errand I need to do, involving something that happened over the weekend. It seems as though Chris and I have adopted a cat. I think. We went to the MSPCA on Saturday afternoon just to look around at the cute animals and we had almost decided it was time to go when we saw her. She looked like a Chinese bearded dragon mixed with a long haired cat, mixed with Fizzgig from the Dark Crystal.

Yep, that's her! As soon as I saw her, I knew I wouldn't be content with the knowledge that she might have to go home with one of the nasty white trash people milling about the MSPCA. Especially not with the grubby kids pulling at her tail and matting her fluffy fur with their sticky popsicle hands. No, they would not love her darling peanut butter face like I would, they wouldn't buy her treats and play laser beams with her, and open the window so she could sit on the sill in the warm sun and stare disdainfully down on our neighbors. So really, the answer was simple: I had to have her. The only minor problem being that our lease specifically says "No Animals".

We filled out the adoption paperwork anyway, and Chris sweet talked our landlord into agreeing to let us keep her. Now I just have to pick her up and make a pit stop at Petco (where the pets go) for all the accoutrements of once again being a pet owner. This also means that my master plan has finally been set in motion: cat now, dog later. I mean, once we have a cat, how is our little Greek landlord going to be able to say no to a sweet-faced little boxer? Right?

Little Visit

2007-04-20T08:37:00.000-05:00

Must type quickly- the sun is shining and I need to get out there before the weather realizes what's happening and reverts back to its usual state of apathetic gray drizzle.

Yesterday in the brief bout of sunshininess I decided I wanted to go a-touristing and drove myself to historic Concord, home of Walden Pond and the houses of Thoreau, Emerson, and Louisa May Alcott. I quickly scratched the Walden Reservation off my possible to-do list because of the recent flooding- I hadn't brought my wellies and I sure as hell didn't want to end up knee-deep in historic, albeit poetic, lake mud.

So then which house to see? Each one cost about $7 with a student ID (thank goodness my grad school ID has no expiration date- that thing saved me one whole dollar!) and I figured I'd try one and see if they were worth the price of admission. So I picked the Alcott house because really, who doesn't love Little Women?

Let me do you a favor- I'll save you those seven hard-earned dollars and give you the tour run down, as remembered by my (admittedly faulty) brain:

The woman handing out tickets for the tour was doing a little needlepoint that read "Jesus love me, this I know". I didn't have the heart to tell her she forgot the "s" on loves.
The first 15 minutes of the tour consisted of watching a video in which a woman pretends to be Louisa May Alcott, answering questions about different problems in today's society. "Louisa, what do you think about global warming and people harming the environment?" "Well I do believe that people should take care of the places they love. It is our duty to make sure our homes are livable." Whatevs! I'm pretty sure in reality Louisa would've actually said something closer to this: "Huh? What the eff you talkin' about, global warming? We don't even got no coal for our stove 'less I sell these here books and winter in Concord is like 19 months long or some shit and you askin' me about global warming? Bring that bitch on."
I realized halfway through the movie that I was on the tour with about 15 Mormons. How did I know? They had their Elder badges on that said Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints! They seemed very intent on the movie so I thought I might be able to snag some super spy photos, but the needlepointing lady kept peering intently into the darkness and I realized it would be horribly embarrassing to have to tell people I got kicked out of the Alcott House on my break. Suffice it to say, they were satisfactorily horrified when they realized that Bronson Alcott allowed his daughters to choose whether they wanted to marry or have careers, and that some of them actually chose careers.
The girl that actually gave us the house tour looked like she had fallen off a motorcycle going 70 mph directly onto her face. I don't know what the road rash was from, but I don't remember one word of the tour, I was so fascinated thinking of things that might have happened to her.

Anyway, the whole place was very pretty and predictable. There were some interesting little vignettes about the family stories and it felt very authentic. I felt a bit funny when we were standing in the parlor and a guide mentioned that May Alcott had gotten married right there, with Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Louisa May all in attendance. Crazy.

"Welcome! Now give us money."

The place looks a little scary for the scene of Little Women, no?

The house is a landmark, but the actual orchards? Strip malls.

The needlepoint lady told me that 80% of the things in the house actually belonged to the Alcotts, but didn't seem to like it when I asked if this was an original toilet sign.

Thursday? Already?

2007-04-19T10:33:00.000-05:00

Thirteen Things about NPW's "Vacation"

1. After 28 years of life here in New England I've come to learn that you have to take what the weatherpeople say with a grain of salt. So when they predicted rain for the entirety of my vacation week I admit I scoffed a little- it certainly can't rain the whole time, I thought.

Want to know how wrong I was? I haven't seen so much as a hint of the sun in the last 6 days. It's either been pouring, sleeting, or drizzling at any given moment. Yeah, it's been pretty sweet.

2. So yesterday I thought, screw this rain, I'm going shopping down in Harvard Square. I had some prizes for certain winners that I wanted to pick up, and I also figured I could do some Jasmine Sola shopping and partake of some delicious bubble tea while I was there.

I drove down to Harvard (the first mistake of many) thinking no one would be out in these miserable conditions and I'd have no problem finding parking. After 45 minutes circling around trying to hawk a spot, I pulled into one about 10 minutes away from the Square. I got out to put money in the meter and realized I only had one quarter. Well, that bought me 30 minutes- I had better get moving. I started walking and a giant truck breezed by me, launching a solid three foot wall of water onto my torso. Too late to turn back now, I was in this for the long haul. I kept walking, my umbrella turning inside out in the blustery wind and my glasses coated in a spray of drizzly mist. Soaked from the waist down, I made it to the Tannery to look at some shoes when I suddenly felt those tell-tale cramps that signify "I am woman, hear me whimper".

In case you don't know, there are only two bathroom options in Harvard: the nasty underground hole in the basement of the Garage, or the infinitely preferable Harvard Coop. The Coop was closed for inventory. You get two guesses where I ended up next. By the time I exited, my 30 minutes were up on my parking meter and I still had a ten minute walk back to my car in the freezing (and now pouring) rain.

So. That was a fun adventure. I spent the rest of the day huddled in blanket watching movies and shivering.

3. Today I decided that to make up for the Harvard debacle I would serve a little mall time. I gathered up my cousin and Aidan and dragged them to store after store. To their credit, they both handled my aggressive shopping with composure. Especially for a ten month old and a new mom. Thankfully, this trip was indoors and far more successful.

4. But... do you think I have a problem?

And those are just the flats that I have unpacked!

5. I have mostly put together the winning packages from last Friday's contest. I have a couple more things I want to pick up but they're shaping up. I like them enough to want to keep one for myself, but I won't. They'll be on their way very soon.

6. Monday at the gym I caught the winning runners of the Boston marathon and let me tell you, there is nothing more inspiring while running on a boring-ass treadmill than watching those runners hit Kenmore after 25 miles and then bust out in a sprint. For about 2o minutes I thought how great it would be to have such a big goal and meet it. Then I got bored of the songs on my ipod and bored of the treadmill and switched over to the elliptical. And then I realized: my ADD is far too advanced at this point to do anything for a solid two and a half hours.

7. Seriously, this child does nothing but smile. If I knew I'd have such a happy baby I think I could handle the idea of having one of my own.

8. I don't want to get ahead of myself here, but I think there will be some very good news at the end of this week. Very good news. I will keep you all informed.

9. I've been spending some of my many, many indoors hours looking for summer employment. This has been both frustrating and amusing; it seems every job that entails summer hours pays $8 an hour and/or requires no prior telemarketing skills. Anybody need a summer librarian? I catalog real good.

10. I'm also looking to trade up cars. I've had mine for three years now, and that's been about two years and eleven months too many. A few weeks ago I test drove the Nissan Murano. One word: awesome. Can't you just see me hauling ass on 93 every morning? I would get so many speeding tickets in that thing.

11. Speaking of cars, I was having a discussion yesterday with my mother about vanity license plates. It's a well-known fact that New Hampshire has the highest number of vanity plates per capita of any state in the country- about one in 4 cars. It really adds up. Sometimes these plates are infuriating (BIGBRAT, NHRULZ, HOWUDOIN), sometimes stupid (ALRITY, T42&24T, DRNKUP), and sometimes just incomprehensible (PRYNCS, ZOBS, PGDIGR). On my quick trip up there today I saw DODIRT and SMAHHT. My mother saw a Corvette with the plates: STRPR. Way to advertise your bidness, hos.

I'd post pictures, but I get the feeling that might be illegal in some way.

12. Must go see Hot Fuzz this weekend. And Grindhouse. Yeah, must see both. Movies!

13. How many more weeks till summer vacation? Too many.

Must. Get. Warm. Soon.

Drumroll, Please...

2007-04-16T11:49:00.000-05:00

I was tempted to throw up a random post about stuff like what I had for lunch, and who won the Boston Marathon, and the fact that I have Full House on in the background while I write this (did you know that Bob Saget was supposed to be 33 years old on that show?!), but then I thought it might be just too mean to keep you all in the dark about the results of last week's contest. And what a contest it was!

Seriously, you people pulled it out big time. It even exceeded my pipe dream of 40 comments, which is no small feat for this small time writer. So I think I owe a big thank you to everyone who read and commented over the last few days. Sure, I pretty much had to bribe you all, but whatevs!

Without further ado, the winners:

The "secret magic" number I had chosen beforehand was #23. No reason for it, it just popped into my head as I was writing. And since I didn't really think things through when I posted I'm going to go ahead and designate two winners- one for the 23rd comments including mine, and one for the 23rd comment not including mine.

#23: Ween! This sunny CA lady is currently studying to be a librarian and I often feel her pain when she describes the trials and tribulations of Cataloging homework. And if I know library school, she could probably use a good grin.

#23 (not including my comments): Megan! My lovely friend Megan now lives far away in Denver and I miss her terribly. Especially now that she's totally preggers with her first baby and I probably won't even get to see him until he's 18 and flies here to follow in our footsteps and spend his college years drinking in Boston. Meg, you don't know how hard it was for me to refrain from posting the picture of you wearing those goggly-eye glasses freshman year at Brandeis! I can't wait to send your stuff.

And the very special comment #40 goes to: Aaron! The Acerock has been a bit gloom and doom-like lately, but I aim to change all that with a mini-package of smiley face odds and ends.

Congrats to everyone! And if you didn't win, please know that I still love you. A lot. And maybe, if you're good, I will host another contest sometime in the future. For now though, it will be good to go back to my regular number of comments- the thrill of seeing those numbers go up was a bit much for my poor little librarian heart.

So if the big winners could kindly mail me their addresses I will make it my Spring Break Goal to get those packages mailed out before I head back to school for the long haul 'till summer.

Happy National Library Week, everyone!

Help A Girl Out

2007-04-13T05:22:00.000-05:00

Despite my best efforts, the number of comments I usually receive hovers around the 6 to 12 mark, and I want to see that number get above 20 before I sign off for my vacation. Call it ego-boosting, call it shameless self-promotion, call it whatever you want, but as a blogger I would be remiss if I didn't push the limits a bit to see what I can get out of it. I mean, besides the satisfaction of writing something every day, of course.

So I've decided to host a little self-run contest! I am going to pick a random number, and the person to be that number commenter on this post will receive a personalized gift from yours truly, sent directly to your doorstep. Or P.O. Box. Either way, you'll get something great.

And by great I mean something that will forever remind you of me.

This might be pushing it big time (and tempting fate for me to get no comments whatsoever), but if someone manages to be the 40th commenter, I will also send that person a prize. A fabulous, life-altering prize.

Here are the rules:

The contest begins... well, when I post this. And ends... oh, hell, I don't know. The next time I post.
It has to actually be a comment. It can be on any topic you like, or it can be some burning questions you have for me that I haven't already answered in the myriad of memes I've completed, but I will not accept jumbled up letters as a comment. Unless, of course, it's from Aaron, since I know that's all he's capable of.
You have to be willing to send me your address so that I can send you your gift. I promise not to stalk you, unless you are Matt Damon and your address is in Southie.

I so just pulled those rules from my ass. Let's just see what happens with this, ok?

In fact, I'll make it even easier for you with a couple of photos you might discuss:

And I know you have something to say about that last one.

Is It Vacation Yet?

2007-04-12T05:45:00.000-05:00

Thirteen Things about npw's week


1. I was feeling rather uninspired yesterday afternoon, hence the youtube clip. Yes, it was the lazy girl's answer to a quick post, but cut me some slack. I can't be brilliant every moment of every day. Or can I?

2. I just paid my student loans, car payment, insurance, heat, electricity, and cell phone bill all at once. I felt a bit like crying. But then I found a dollar on the floor of the library. Who says education isn't a lucrative profession?

3.  There have been some school-related frustrations on this end and they all sort of came to a head this week. I don't know who out there still believes that the education world is simple, but I do know that anyone who does think that is probably simple in the head. It's been like playing a giant political game of Risk over here for the past few months. I will tentatively state that I have secured some additional funding for next year's budget, but I'm preparing to have to fight to the death to spend it how I want.

4. As I believe I've mentioned, I have next week off for my Spring Break. To kick off the spring-like celebrations, the Boston weatherpeople have been predicting 4 inches of s

now today and another 4 or 5 inches on Sunday. Add to that th

e fact that absolutely every friend I have from school is going away, and you have one cranky NPW. Yeah, because I love going to lunch and hearing about trips to Aruba, Chicago, Turks and Caicos, Cincinatti, Costa Rica, Denver, and Florida.

I try to play it all cool, like I'm choosing to spend the week sitting on my couch watching movies, but damn if I couldn't use some fun in the sun right now. I suppose I could've planned in advance for this (seeing as how I've known abo

ut it since September) but now I am a.) missing a travel partner, and b.) broke as a joke.

5. This brings me to another complaint: Chris needs a new job. Stat. I have never heard of a job where you are required to stay at work until 8 p.m. every night and are not allowed to take your vacation time or personal days without being harrassed, and yet here he is, smack in the middle of that very special position. So: no hope of him get

ting to take a day or two to go somewhere fun.

6. I discovered yesterday that there is a contingent of 8th grade boys who have been falling asleep in class every afternoon. No one could figure out why until I overheard a conversation this morning in which said students were discussin

g how they go to bed at 10, set their alarms for 1 a.m.,  and get up to play xBox until it's time to head to school at 7. I do believe that none of them even bother undressing or showering, simply going to bed in their clothes and rolling into school in the same unwashed state in the mornings. You know I dig the gaming, but seriously with the smell? Not cool, kiddos. Not cool.

7. Oh, good. The snow just started.

8. My new membership at the Cheapest Gym in America has been going well so far. Three afternoons this week I've enjoyed watching Red Sox games while listening to music and running. Of course, I can't help but make some comparisons to the Gym of Dreams, the biggest one being that I forgot what it's like to work out alon

gside men. Men whose eyes never quite make it to your face, as they seem to get stuck just a foot or so lower. I wouldn't say it has reached the "leering" stage yet, but it's close. Ah well. What can you do? Ten bucks is ten bucks.

9. Yesterday a co-worker and I decided to sneak over to Starbucks for a pick-me-up chai. On the short walk I managed to twist my ankle, fall to the ground, scrape up my hands and legs, and bruise my wrist. Then someone left their bag out in the gym locker room and I slammed my toe into it, causing me to curse and jump, then smash my shin into the open locker door. I put the word of the day ("shinjury") to good use, I can tell you.

10. The last few months have been a movie-going drought for me, partly because Chris is so tired when he gets home after 8 every night that all he wants to do is sit in front of the tv or computer and appear brain dead, and partly because I haven't felt a strong urge to see anything. But now there are at least three movies that I must see in the upcoming weeks: Grindhouse, Aqua Teen, and Hot Fuzz. Anyone feel like an afternoon matinee next week, shoot me an email.

11. A co-worker came running in the other day to tell me she had a great book recommendation for me. Then she whips out this beat up paperback that was based on some shitty-ass show that got cancelled from the Hallmark channel. Is the proper response to this:
a.) smile politely and accept the book, exclaiming that you can't wait to read it over break while actually crying on the inside,
b.) look at the book in a vaguely disgusted way and say, "Uhh, no thanks. Loser",
or c.) smack the book out of her hands and warn

her that if she ever tries to pull something like that again it'll be her head getting the smack down.

I chose A. How 'bout you?

12. Wait, snow and hail? Oh, New England. You're so funny.

13. I haven't decided yet if I want to post over break. I mean, seeing as how I'll be really, really busy. I'm sure I can probably pencil in some posts. Especially since the weather forecast looks like this every day for the next 10 days:

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

Comic Relief

2007-04-11T05:23:00.000-05:00

Every morning on the way into work I listen to NPR news. Sometimes it's just too much, hearing every single morning about all the people being killed in Iraq. Sometimes I have to switch stations quickly to avoid the dreaded mascara running. Because once I start bawling about teachers attending former student's funerals? It's hard to stop. And there's no crying in the library.

So it's a relief to finally get a bit of a laugh out of the whole war situation. Throw in some ribbing of Steve Jobs, and you've got yourself a winner.

Oh, MadTV. Sometimes you do get things right.

Library Find of the Day

2007-04-10T05:17:00.000-05:00

If Spring means one thing in this here library, it's that science fair projects are in full swing. Yesterday while helping some students search out books on chemical reactions, ballistics, and boiling points, I stumbled across this lovely volume:

It seemed innocuous enough at first, if maybe a little dated. I laid the book on the counter and forgot about it. A few periods later I was chatting with the science teacher and for some reason glanced down at the book again. Something was wrong with this picture, but I couldn't quite grasp it. Why was this kid alone, slowly burning objects over an open candle flame in a wooden shed filled with chemicals? Hey! Discovering Chemistry my ass! This little jerk is a pyro!

I mean, look at his face! You can't tell me that expression isn't pure evil.

Next thing you know he'll be jabbing that red-hot poker into a stray cat he trapped in a box.

"Why, hello there, young Mr. Ted Kaczynski. What's that you say? You say you prefer to be called the Unabomber? Well what kind of name is that for an upstanding young citizen, just out here discovering chemistry in an abandoned shed in the woods? And why do I smell burnt hair?"

Actually, I can't tell you what a relief it was to know that my students will be well prepared for life out in the big, big world. This library is not just a bastion of literary genius; I'm providing life skills here. My kids will know how to build their own ~~meth~~ chem labs before they ever even get to college.

Ohhhh... dang. He's from New Hampshire? Well there you go. Mystery solved!

It All Works Out In The End

2007-04-09T05:36:00.000-05:00

The trouble with long weekends is that once forced to return to a normal work week I always feel like I'm somehow getting gyped. Like, for real? You expect me to work 5 days out of 7? Shouldn't we try to balance out this whole work time/play time thing a little more evenly? And I always feel pressure to use that extra day off to do something supremely productive and wise, like building my own fallout shelter, or cooking myself lunch that doesn't involve peanut butter or jelly; inevitably I spend it lying about in my pajamas, munching on stale tortilla chips, going for walks, and watching movies.

Luckily, once this week is over I will have an entire week off and I'll be able to waste all the time I want. I'm definitely due for another vacation- I mean, seriously, when was my last one? Like six weeks ago? Geez, people, I'm not a machine.

I did however, manage to gather up enough courage on Friday afternoon to head over to the local Planet Fitness to see what all the hype is about. After last week's POW debacl e I was very hesitant to seek out other gyms, but fortitude is my middle name. After a little discussion and a brief tour, they showed me the huge facility (complete with juice bar, chiropractic offices, and circuit training room), informed me that in 5 months they were moving across the street to an even larger facility with all brand-new machines, and found out that I was a teacher. Then it was time to talk pricing. Get this: $10 a month for teachers. No contract, cancel any time. Oh, and if I want to upgrade to $15 a month? I can have unlimited guest passes for Chris and half-price drinks. $10 a month! No joke. That's like a beer and a half at the Burren.

Sooo... this afternoon I begin a new love affair with the PF. And tomorrow morning? Free bagels. Thanks, new gym!

Anyhow, I hope you all had lovely nondenominational weekends filled with visions of genetically hybridized bunny-chicks hiding psychedelic eggs all around your domicile. Chris and I spent roughly 80% of our Saturday making what turned out to be glorified cupcakes. On Sunday, my lovely mother prepared a banquet fit for 12 people, half of whom did not show due to violent illness: a persistent fever and cough, some throwing up virus, and varied other sicknesses. Which, whatevs- it just meant more leftovers for me! My Dad even bought extra tupperware in preparation. That's what Dads are for, right? Lavishing their lovely daughters with leftovers and plastic containers?

Often times my sister and I use my parents house to do the bulk of our grocery shopping for the week. This means that battles sometimes break out over who gets what and end with some variation of this scenario: my sister kicking me in the backs of the knees so that my legs give out and I'm knocked unconscious by the kitchen counter. Or my sister punching me in the arm and shrieking so that I'm distracted to the point of exhaustion and don't care what she takes. Or my sister stealing what I've already packaged up to take home and hiding it until it's time for her to leave, then smuggling my stuff out to her car.

Sometimes my mother will try to mediate with secret advance offerings- for example, if my sister shows up before I do, she gets the extra package of syrian bread. If I show up early, I pack up all the spinach pies with the mail that still gets sent to my parents house (mainly solicitations to donate money to my various places of education), and my sister is none the wiser. In the end, it all works out- Chris and I have lunches for the week and I usually only sustain minor injuries.

Happy Easter Weekend!

2007-04-07T10:00:00.000-05:00

TGIT

2007-04-05T05:40:00.000-05:00

Thirteen Things about NPDoubleU

1. This week has been "Spirit Week" at school, which I loosely interpreted to mean "Yay! I get to wear jeans every day! Week". It had all the usual dress-up days- Favorite Team day (I wore my snazzy Red Sox t-shirt), School Colors day (thank goodness I look good in blue and gold), Western Day (Chris has a surprisingly good selection of cowboy gear and my new hair seems to like being in pigtails), Spots and Polka Dots day (WTF?), and Comfy day (where else do you get to wear pajama pants and slippers to work?). Plus, thanks to the Christian soldiers I have Friday off, and any Friday off is a Good Friday indeed.

2. Sunday is Easter, which to some people means the very holy day of Jesus's resurrection. To me, it means one thing: a huge-tastic family dinner (which usually occurs every few months anyway), but with the added stress of having to make something delectable that everyone in my family will eat. Fortunately for me, it also means that everyone I know that has been crabby and irritable all Lenten season (a certain someone I know gave up coffee; that seems like an abomination against god and a surefire way to lose friends if you ask me) will once again be able to bask in the glory and the gluttony that is every day secular life.

3. Easter also signifies the time for the annual tradition: my Aunt will be making her famous lamb cake. No, not a cake made out of lamb, but a cake shaped like a lamb! She has the little mold, and once it's done and covered in shredded coconut, she sets it prettily on a bed of fake green Easter basket grass surrounded by jelly beans and Cadbury mini eggs. Then she chops off it's little lamb head, boxes it up, freezes it, and mails it to some unlucky family member or friend.

Imagine my college roommate's surprise when she accompanied me to pick up a package in the mail room and realized I had not received bags of Easter candy and money but a decapitated lamb head. This should explain a lot about my family's sense of humor.

4. I finally watched The Departed. Yeah, it was awesome. I also watched Kicking and Screaming (the Indie one, not the Will Ferrell one) which was both funny and strange, and I've almost finished up Season 1 of Alias. When I tell people that I watched every season of Alias except the first one I get some strange looks. But not from my beloved Netflix! He doesn't care one bit, he just sends my DVDs when I demand them. Of course, every time I see that $15.74 deducted from my checking account I vow to quit Netflix and join a new gym instead. Then I remember that I have about 80 movies in my queue that I cannot live without seeing, heave a little sigh, and keep adding titles.

5. For those of you still wondering, my team once again failed to win the grand Spelling Bee trophy this year. The losing word? "Rathskeller", which I totally spelled correctly but was forced to change at the last minute by an insistent teammate. Bitter much?

6. Blogger has been acting screwy the last few days. I've been having problems with the fonts and font sizes (it's a good thing I know some minimal html so that I can go in and manually change it), but what the hell? April Fool's Day is over, Google. I don't want any wingding posts, thankyouverymuch.

7. Has anyone else checked out the Comcast OnDemand fitness channels? I thought it might be a cheap (read: free) alternative to joining one of the horrid gyms in my area. Then I watched the first two minutes of "Urban Dancing" and had a full understanding of why these channels are free. Fortunately for me, one of the parents at school is a yoga instructor and is offering 10 free classes to a bunch of us teachers starting next week. Hooray for being an edumacator!

8. My spring break (Take Two) is quickly approaching. I only have one more week of school, and then it's couch time for this here library lass. I wanted to plan a trip but unfortunately I don't think C's ridiculous schedule allows for anything longer than two days, and two days seems more like a hassle than a vacation. He did mention that he needs to get out to Rochester sometime in the next few weeks (I can't believe it's been more than 3 months already!), but whether or not I will accompany him is still undecided.

9. I sent out a survey to my school staff that asked for suggestions on materials they'd like to see added to the library collection. Here are some of the actual responses: North Star book tracking devices, laser tag vests, slip n' slide set, mini golf putting green, and unicycles. I'm afraid to look at the student surveys.

10. I was just given a bunch of money by some parents to kind of re-design the library layout. I think I'm going to buy a couple of Ikea Klippan sofas for one of the corners, but I have a few concerns: first, does going to Ikea to buy things for school qualify as breaking my New Year's resolution not to go to Ikea? And second, where can I place these couches so that I am always able to see who's sitting on them and in what position?

11. Tonight I am hosting the 007 Bookclub at my digs. I'm both nervous and excited. I've never hosted a book club before and I feel as though Kelli set the bar high with the last pick. However I'm sticking to my guns- I chose Looking for Alaska, by John Green, and I really enjoyed it. Hopefully everyone else did too. If not, I bought enough wine to get all 12 girls drunk enough not to care.

12. There are those of you out there who probably read this ol' blog in order to keep up with Christopher's antics, especially since he has recently put the kibosh on the brickwindow site. Please let me assure you that he is fine, he is just looking for a new job and doesn't want his name tied to a site that basically calls him out for being a slacker. Ha!

Honestly though, C is doing well, despite the fact that his job, his boss, and his hours are terrible. I have to give him major credit for not punching either of his bosses by now and not quitting even though it's probably the worst job I could picture anyone having. All I can do is make sure he's all good when he's not at work and support him in his quest for new employment. Well, that, and be my usual entertaining self.

13. Please do not cry when there is no post tomorrow. For explanations, refer back to the latter half of #1. I'll see you all on Monday.

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

I Wish I Was Making This Up

2007-04-04T05:24:00.000-05:00

In a moment of loathing my own recent laziness I decided to check out some gyms around my place. I'd been dreading looking at other gyms after leaving the Gym of Dreams when we moved, but the time has come to move on and get back on the proverbial horse. As lovely as napping every day after school is, I don't want to become one of the women you see on Dr. Phil who's so huge she has no other option but to have the Jaws of Life cut an extra space in her doorway so that she can be airlifted to the nearest hospital for gastric bypass.

Or something like that.

Anyway, I decided to start with the closest gym to ease myself back into the process. On the short walk over there I mentally prepped myself; I knew there was no way it could compare to my beloved eucalyptus-scented place of sweatitude and I didn't want to be disappointed in a normal machine-ridden gym. There was just no way of knowing just how ghetto this gym could be.

This gym- let's just call it, oh, say, POW- was in the filthy dirty basement of what could comfortably house a meth lab but instead housed a number of decrepit, squeaky machines. I entered through a haze of Newport Light smoke emanating from three or four POW employees and passed through the metal detector, approaching a desk manned by four people. Then I waited. I stood there for about 3 full minutes, patiently waiting for them to stop yapping about their co-worker who had, apparently, just been arrested for dealing. When they finally deigned to grace me with a glance, I informed them I was interested in checking out the facility. Already regretting my decision, my newfound tour guide meandered around the windowless concrete dungeon, sometimes pointing at machines, but mostly silent. Until we got to the woman's locker room.

"You wanna see the locker room?" She looked hard at me.

"Uhhh... sure?"

"Good. Some people say, I don't need to see no locker room. And I say, whatever, you DO need to see the locker room because you can't know no gym if you don't see no locker room! You get?"

"Oh, yeah. Sure. Let's see the locker room," I nodded vigorously.

"Yeah, you needs ta see it to know it. Like see here? I always use the handicap changing room because it's twice as big as the regular room. It's like you got a whole room to yourself! Plenty of room for your wheelchair, or your shit." She looked at me hard again. "Ya also got some special 'quipment down in here for women only. Ya know, for your thighs and shit."

Things get a little hazy here. I think I probably gulped and nodded, looking around for someone else in case this girl decided I was challenging her in the locker room and wanted to throw down. Instead, she ushered me back out to a row of cubicles where I sat, relieved to be out of the dirty diaper-smelling locker room.

"Ok, ya got two options: one, you can pay $499 down and $19.99 a month, which is good foreva, like, for your life. Or you can pay $299 down and $29.99 a month. Right?"

"Well, I was kind of thinking I'd like to try the gym out for the day, to see how I like it?" I have a bad habit of posing my statements as questions when I'm nervous.

She looked at me suspiciously. "It's $20 for a day pass. You got $20 to try it out? You might as well sign up now."

I'm sure I looked as confused as I felt. I was dizzy from so much fluorescent lighting. "You're not going to let me try the gym out?"

"Oh, alright. Just leave your license behind so I can fill out all your paperwork while you're working out. Cuz I know you're going to join and it takes me foreva to get that paper shit done."

I slid my license over and got up to leave.

"You probably wanna keep your bag with you unless you got a lock for the lockers," she warned as I walked away.

Shaking my head, I snagged the nearest elliptical machine and plugged my headphones into the tv, making sure my bag was in plain sight next to me. The tv blared some Food Network show into my ears and two guys with dreadlocks stared at me while I futilely clicked the volume down button. Giving up, I fired up my ipod and got to the ellipticalizing. Almost immediately I noticed a shrill shrieking sound. Looking around in annoyance, I suddenly realized that it was me making the noise. Every upswing of my left leg a big "SHHHhrrrreee" wheezed out of the machine. Oh, so that was why it was the only available machine. Great.

I gathered up all my stuff and scoped out the treadmills, grabbing one as someone stepped off. Once I got going, I glanced to my right and noticed that the little twelve year old boy had stopped his machine to stare at me. Thinking if I ignored him someone would eventually come to collect him, I persevered. Ten minutes later he was still staring thickly at me and I could take no more. I wiped down the machine and stalked back over to the cubicles of doom. Then the real fun began.

"Yeah, I was just trying out some machines, so I need to get my license back."

"Ok, well why don't you take a seat. The assistant manager will be over to discuss plans with you."

"No, but I..."

"Just take a seat."

A very large man came to sit down next to me. "Well, missy, what do you think of our gym?"

I explained I wanted to look at some other gyms and that if I decided I wanted to join I'd come back.

"Well here's what I'm gonna offer you. We had this deal, see, that ended on Sunday. Like, last Sunday that already past. It was for $49.99 down and $19.99 a month. Normally I couldn't give you that price, since it's already past Sunday, but someone just cancelled so I have just one opening. You must be a lucky miss."

"Oh. Well, that's nice of you, but I still want to check out some other places."

"Hold up, hold up. If you don't take this now, someone else will. And that would be dumb, see? Cuz I want to give this to you, you know, like a little sumptin sumptin on the side?"

I stared at him dumbly. Did I not know what sumptin sumptin meant? Was he saying he wanted... no, it couldn't be.

He winked at me.

"Errrm... well, I'm going to take a look at other gyms. I know I might miss this special "deal" and all, but I haven't looked anywhere else yet..." I rambled on in my flustered state.

"Hold up. My regional manager is here. I definitely can't hold this deal for you, definitely not. But maybe I can."

At this point I was already partly angry at being corralled, partly amused at the situation, and mentally composing this post in my head.

The zit-faced regional manager limped over. "I hear you want me to hold the special deal just for you?" she demanded.

"No, I was just saying I'd like to take a look at other places," I reiterated, "I understand if you can't hold something for me."

"Well let me tell you what we can do. I can do you one better than that special. How about if I wave that $49.99 fee and just sign you up for the $29.99 a month? Manager's special." She leaned in conspiratorially.

I brushed her too-bleached hair out of my face and repeated my desire to shop around for places.

"Well you're in luck. Our actual owner is here today. Let's see what he can do you for."

"No, really, I..."

She stalked off, returned, and told me to head to the "back of the stalls" to meet with the owner.

"Well hi there, NPW. I'm GreasySalesman. You're a tough customer, but I like tough customers. So here's what I can do: you sign up today, right now, and I'm going to give you the $19.99 for membership for life, no money down, and I'm going to throw in a TV. A free TV! You'd be an idiot not to take this deal. A real idiot. In fact, if any of my salespeople didn't get you to take this deal, I'd fire them myself."

My reaction to his deal must not have been what he was looking for- probably a laugh or a face- because he suddenly looked angry.

"Look, there's no better deal at any gym in town. You know you're going to come here. Just sign up today. You're a real dope if you don't just take this and I won't be in tomorrow to give you this deal, so this is it."

"Uhhh. No, I don't think so."

He threw his hands up. "Fine. Nice to meet you." I got up to leave and I swear I heard him mutter "Dope" under his breath.

I finally reclaimed my license and left, TVless, to call Chris and regale him with stories of poor salesmanship.

As I was making dinner that night, around 8:00 p.m., my phone rang. "Hi, this is Mattie from POW? The owner told me to call you to let you know he'll be here till 9 if you decide you want the deal still. Should I have him call you?"

I looked at my phone like it was playing a joke on me. And then I clicked END and laughed.

In all my vast imagination, I don't think I can picture anything worse than being a POW "member for life". It's like a death sentence with no hope of pardon. So much for easing back into things, eh?

In Which I Dutifully Answer Questions

2007-04-03T05:49:00.000-05:00

It seems I have some bloggy questions to answer that come from my friend from Down Under (do Aussies really hate being referred to as the country Down Under? I probably would), Aly.

Here we go!

1.What is your favourite and most used (non-person) item in your house?
I would like to say that my favourite (I wrote it with a "u"!) item and my most used item would probably be different things, but if forced to choose just one that is both, I would say my computer. No, wait! My cell. No, definitely my computer. Seriously, what did we do before the internet? Life seems so hazy and unsatisfying back in 1994.

2. If you were forced to abandon your house due to an emergency (like stampeding elephants, or something) what would you take? [I should mention here that you can only take three things, maximum, because I am MEAN like that.]
I don't know if Christopher would count as a "thing", but I would definitely drag him along with me. I'd also grab my bag, I think, because it has my phone and camera and my cards and my checkbook and ID and insurance info and everything. And probably my box with all my pictures and scraps of papers and cards and personal mementos. All the other stuff I can just replace (and quite probably upgrade).

I feel I should mention that the likelihood of stampeding elephants in Boston is unlikely, although I do live quite close to this:

3. a)What is your alcoholic beverage of choice? Usually beer. Or red wine. Or whatever's free.

b) Have you ever had an embarrassing moment with that beverage? Many, many, many.

c) Discuss! Once in a bar I was making fun of an old drunk woman's dancing by imitating her dance moves. When I had finished I went to sit down, entirely missed my chair, and fell straight to the floor. The band actually stopped playing to make sure I hadn't broken anything. Like perhaps my dignity.

4. Could you live in a place with absolutely no electricity?
Hmm. Indefinitely? No. At least, I wouldn't want to. If some kind of apocalypse occured and it was a situation straight out of The Stand, I suppose I could, technically, live without my computer and my blow dryer. If you call that living. But if you're referring to a lifetime of make-shift camping, then no. I need me some hot showers in the morning.

5. Who are five bloggers that you would recommend other people to read, and why do you think they're fabulous?

This is very hard to choose because I love them all equally and they fill in gaps with humor, thoughtfulness, and random interesting tidbits, but if you've never read any of them I'd recommend the following:

Ramblings by Alyndabear: because she's cute and Australian and a teacher. She's also hilarious and a self-proclaimed dork, which I adore. Plus, she wrote these questions for me!

Funky Carter: the Acerock himself. This man should be writing novels and screenplays. Instead, he entertains us on a daily basis with stories of crazy homeless people throwing things at him on his overnight work shifts.

Daily Tannenbaum: Always makes me laugh. Plus, she's an upstate New Yorker, and so can relate to my tales of woe when stuck in godawful places where there is no Target.

Roaring Through My Twenties: this lovely madam is not only a fantabulous blogger, but she also started the 007 Bookclub and invited me to join! (Ok, I kind of invited myself, but whatever.) The point being, she rocks.

Othersideofmyhead: Kirsten is one of my very favorite Rochester people. She's amusing, and likes to talk about poop. Among other things.

Of course, I should mention that every one of the blogs in my sidebar are worth reading and they're all great, otherwise I wouldn't have included them in my sidebar. Duh.

So thanks for the questions, Aly! I've now fulfilled my meme duty for the month of April.

Welcome To The Jungle

2007-04-02T05:18:00.000-05:00

More often than I'm comfortable with, I leave my office only to return to someone lounging around my desk, talking on my telephone, "borrowing" my scissors, or rifling through my stuff. Once someone had even closed and locked all the doors to my office while they were in there so they could have some privacy while using my phone. I'm not sure what it is that makes people feel as though they can just wander in and take/do whatever they feel like. I know for sure that they would never do that in, say, the main office. One, because the secretary would kick their ass so hard, and two, because it's someone else's space. Would you just wander into someone else's house and start flipping through their magazines? Probably not, unless you're crazy and feel the urge to be arrested.

In fact, I'm fairly certain that none of these people would walk into another classroom and just take things, either. Even the most laissez-faire of teachers would find it rude if someone just stopped in every now and then to steal their belongings. So what is it about the library that makes my co-workers feel as though they're entitled to everything I have? If it were just the kids that were doing this I could understand a bit better- I mean, it would still be bizarre and unacceptable, but at least they can blame it on being dumb kids who feel like everything in the world should be theirs. These are grown adults I'm talking about here, and I'm sick of finding jammed staplers, empty paper bins, and one lone, broken-tipped #2 pencil in my pencil holder every time I come back from peeing.

Any suggestions for theft deterrents would be greatly appreciated. Especially ones that inflict bodily harm on the next person to misplace my memory card reader.

Friday Fun

2007-03-30T05:19:00.000-05:00

I'm feeling rather lazy today, so I think we'll both benefit from me keeping this post short and in bulleted order.

Yesterday at lunch I pulled out my chocolate yogurt, which I eat as dessert and pretend it's chocolate pudding, and stirred it up really well to avoid another misha p. It looked a little funny, more of an orange color than the normal rich dark chocolate "sauce". But it was a different brand than I normally buy so I figured, hey, maybe their chocolate is orange-ish? Uhhh, no. One spoonful proved me wrong- it was peach! With actual bits of peaches! In a chocolate container! I'm no peach hater, but if they managed to get the entirely wrong flavor into a container what else could they have gotten wrong with this batch? Some of my more litigious co-workers thought I should fake a peach allergy and call the company for a lifetime supply of chocolate yogurt. The thought made me a little ill- both the idea of suing an organic yogurt company and the thought of a lifetime of chocolate yogurt sitting in my fridge.

One of my parent volunteers offered me her extra set of Genesis tickets at the Garden for the fall. So. Awesome. I'll be able to actually see the sweat glistening off Phil Collins forehead. And hello? Peter Gabriel? If you're reading this, I just want you to know that I always dreamed of Lloyd Dobler standing outside my bedroom with a boombox playing In Your Eyes.

Last night my mother called me to tell me that I must turn on the Animal Planet channel immediately. No explanations. When I finally found the channel I was enthralled: it was the World's Ugliest Dog competition! If those damn dogs didn't live in the lap of luxury I would have felt extremely sorry for them for being so exploited. My personal favorite was Munchkin, but despite her little tiara she still lost out to Archie, the toothless Chinese crested. Anyway, Chris and I both decided that the real competition would have been the World's Ugliest Dog Owner- we saw some stuff going on with those people that was just wrong.

Spelling madness to ensue this evening. Last year I complained that my school had no cheering section. I thought I was complaining just to hear myself complain- usually my whining falls on deaf ears. It didn't occur to me that anyone would take me seriously enough to show up at this event, but now I have a section of about 10 people coming with full-on signs and body paint. As long as they don't blare "We Will Rock You" from the audience and throw water balloons while I'm trying to spell I think it'll be fun to have some cheerleaders. I've been staring at the word eleemosynary for about 25 minutes now, trying to think of a way to remember it. Does that spell trouble?

Wish me luck, peeps. I'm out. See you fools in April.

Dangerously Irrelevant

2007-03-29T05:19:00.000-05:00

Early this morning in the library, before the school bell rang, with a hundred kids surrounding me just begging me to confiscate their hot chocolates, iPods, and PSPs, I had this conversation:

Student: "Ms. NPW, do you know about that website that rates teachers?"
NPW: (warily) "I've heard of it, Sam. Why do you ask?"
Student: "You're on there! Wanna know your score?"
NPW: "Not interested, Sam. It's not a popularity contest here in the library."
Student: "Oh don't worry. It's not bad! I mean, it's not good. But it's not bad!"
NPW: "Thanks for that info, Sam. Now step away from the computers."

Counter to my normally curious nature, I actually couldn't care less what my score is. But is it wrong that I want to know how the kids rate everyone else? I think it could be very interesting to compare my professional assessment of my co-workers with the kids reviews. Must... resist...

The internet: turning teaching into a popularity contest, one survey at a time.

It's Bee Season

2007-03-28T05:29:00.000-05:00

Interestingly, no one seems to mind that I look like Carol Brady and David Bowie had an illegitimate love child; in fact, I've received more compliments in the past two days on my hair than I have all year long. Perhaps people really like me with the emo hipster wannabe hair (emobe? emoster?)? Or maybe people just like to see others change it up because they're glad they didn't have to do any of the changing themselves and they don't have to spend 45 minutes blowdrying and styling their new hair. Whatevs. All I know is, it's one thing for me to rock out to My Chemical Romance in the privacy of my own car, it's another thing entirely for me to look the part at 28 years old.

Moving on, things here in the library have been steadily improving. Testing is over for the most part. The children have resumed normal levels of screaming and shoving. Teachers have stopped rolling their eyes and audibly sighing every time the word "test" is mentioned. Schedules are back in full swing. We're through with you, MCAS! Until we meet again... in May.

Also, I've been so busy whining the past few weeks that I've neglected to give full props to this Friday night's main event: the annual town Spelling Bee! Picture, if you will, a scene of the utmost nerdliness. Businesspeople and town officials alike gather for a test of rote memorization skills. Who will come out on top? It'll be a regular American Gladiator up in this piece. Minus the physical part. Hopefully this year I can lead my team to victory- I chose my teammates well. And by that, I mean I conned two new teachers into it and recruited one other due to the fact that she had a spelling bee trophy in her office. It wasn't until much later that I found out she didn't actually attend the spelling bee for which she has a trophy, but her team won, so she got one too. Kind of like getting a Super Bowl ring even if you were injured and didn't play, I guess. Whatever- she has Bee experience.

I was mildly disappointed this year, Scripps has stopped producing the little 30 page books they printed to list all the words they use in their Bees. Instead, their website directed me to an intimidating 350 page PDF document and I am so not printing that out. But for once my packrat tendencies have paid off- I kept my booklet from last year and I decided to just re-study.

Now all that's left is to actually take a look at the list of words and I'll be good to go. How hard can it be?

NPW Stardust

2007-03-27T05:31:00.000-05:00

It seems like haircuts have been a popular topic 'round the blog block of late, and it's pretty easy to see why. I mean, a girl's hair is the source of her power. Good hair can be a valuable asset, bad hair is a girl's kryptonite. But rather than collect data from an informal blog survey on what my readers think, this time I decided to opt out of asking for advice from the internets- only because it seems like every time I ask for advice I just get even more worried and worked up. And then things turn out fine in the end and I realize I caused myself a good deal of anxiety over nothing. Well my friends, I know now that I should have reached out to you: I had the worst haircut of my life yesterday. No joke. I've been lamenting my poor chopped off hair for 24 hours and I think I've finally moved on from the denial phase to the anger phase.

When I called my regular Aveda salon yesterday afternoon there was no answer. No machine, no friendly receptionist, no little beep like they're on the other line, please try back. Nothing. I should've taken that as a sign. Life doesn't throw you unanswered telephone calls willy-nilly. Life was trying to tell me something. And being the impatient fool that I am, I didn't listen. Well, you know what they say about hindsight being all Lasik and I've learned my lesson. Still, that doesn't help my current situation.

After I didn't get any answer at my regular salon, I called the fall-back salon in the hopes they'd have an impromptu appointment available. I'd been there a couple of times and my memories of the place were hazy but not entirely bad. As luck had it, they did have an appointment available. At 3:30, I asked? Oh, whenever. "No worries, someone will be free when you show up," they trilled. They weren't kidding. There were at least 8 people having a food fight with pieces of lettuce and discussing all the times they caught their parents "doing it" when I showed up. My stylist came to scoop me up out of the mess of salad dressing smears and I noticed right away that I was scared of her hair. My gut was wrenching itself into a knot telling me to RUN! Run away! You do not want a hipster mullet! Get out now!

Then the second major sign that things were about to go horribly awry occured as I sat down in the stylist's chair and she popped the dreaded question: "So... what were you thinking for your hair?"

First off, I hate that question. For two reasons: 1. very rarely do I know what I want to "do" with my hair, and 2. even if I have some vague notion, I have no idea how to describe what I'm after. Apparently I never learned the crucial hair lingo required to survive a trip to the salon. I've always sheepishly depended on stylists to assess my hair and do their best with it. Hey, I never went to Blaine School of Hair Design. So I ventured a guess: "Oh, I was thinking some longer layers with longer, kind of side-swoopy bangs?" She wrinkled her nose in disgust (actually wrinkled it!) and exhaled loudly. "Long layers? Really? I'm not doing long layers. You need to take some of this hair off." This did not bode well with me, but I hadn't prepared myself to be ballsy enough to just stand up and walk out of there. Also, if I tried to escape I'm pretty sure this girl with her giant Elvis tattoos would have bitch slapped me back into the chair.

And then the slow torture began. Because once she started razoring the shit out of the sides, I knew it was all over. There's no salvaging the razored hair. I simply resigned myself to months and months of awkwardness, and promised myself some mini Cadbury eggs and a good cry when I got home.

At one point during the shearing I commented, "Umm, my hair looks like David Bowie." She kind of giggled and then said, "Wait, that's a good thing, right?"

Oh, you want to see a picture of the new 'do? Fine. Here you go:

When I got home and called Chris to cry about my hair he was only mildly sympathetic. He seemed to think I should have stopped her midway if I didn't like how she was cutting it. Like I have the power to stop someone holding scissors right up against my neck?

"Wait, so are you saying you think your hair looks like Ziggy Stardust David Bowie, or I'm Afraid of Americans David Bowie?"

"Does it matter?! You're supposed to tell me I'll look beautiful no matter what my hair looks like," I groaned.

"Oh, yeah. That."

"Mmm hmm. Too late now."

"What can I do to make you feel better? I'll do anything. You want me to smash every mirror in the house for you? Duct tape your eyes closed? I would do that for you."

I guess I deserve this for going to get my hair cut at a place named after a Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

Sigh.

Just Say No

2007-03-26T05:13:00.000-05:00

I don't believe that I've ever blogged about television before because, frankly, it's boring as hell to read someone else's opinion on something you may or may not watch.

But let me tell you something, people.

When that show Heroes came out? I watched the season premiere and thought, "Meh". I wasn't keen on the idea of adding another show to my (admittedly scanty) list of Must See television. I already had Lost, and DVDs of Alias, and occasionally some Forensic Files if I was home at that time of day. Granted, in that one episode I realized that the deep characters and the cool plot lines and the fast-paced storyboard scenes were intensely gratifying after the monotony of Lost and it's ridiculous back stories week after week. But I staunchly refused to get sucked in.

Then everyone kept talking about it! If everyone had just kept their traps shut on the subject, I never would have felt the urge to download the entire season (eighteen episodes, for those who're counting), and Chris and I never would have watched 18 hours of television, almost back to back, in a period of two weeks. How is every episode is a cliff-hanger? One episode is twenty times better than the season finale of Lost. And speaking of, are we the last people left still watching Lost?

If I had consulted my doctor before I began watching, I'm sure she would have kindly reminded me of my family's history of heart disease and discouraged me from speeding up the process by giving myself a mini-heart attack roughly every 45 minutes. But seriously with that "To Be Continued..." at the end of every episode. It gets me every time.

Last night as we settled in to watch the final two episodes I braced myself for the inevitable disappointment of a season ending. I knew there was no way they could make their final episode any more awesome than every one previous. But then they DID! I think I actually screamed, gasped, and cried during those final 45 minutes. Thank you, NBC, for creating characters I actually like.

And people, when you so blithely decided to get me interested in the show? You might also have mentioned that Heroes is like crack; I might then have been able to avoid it. But now I'm doomed to lay awake nights, fitfully tossing and sweating in the throes of Heroes withdrawal, with only the glimmer of hope that is April 23rd keeping me sane.

A Day In The Life Of

2007-03-23T05:25:00.000-05:00

When my alarm goes off at 5:30, most times I mumble incoherently into my pillow and thrash around in the dark, usually managing to smash the snooze button a couple of times, and promptly fall back to sleep. I don't know why I do this, since I never feel any better about being awake ten minutes later. It's still dark. It's still cold. And Chris still gets to sleep for another hour or three. Once I do manage to claw my way out of the blanets and stumble into the kitchen, I flail around a bit until I'm sure that I've turned the coffee on, and I peer out the window to check the weather. Because I am too cheap to buy one of those $10 outdoor digital thermometers, I guesstimate a bit and think up a suitable outfit.

Once everything outside starts to turn shades of gray- like it's too early yet for even the colors to be up- I know I have to bust a move or risk screaming my little Civic into the parking lot two minutes after the late bell has rung.

Actually, that has never happened to me. But I'm still petrified that someday it will.

And then I go about my day. Once I've had some coffee in me and my body has readjusted to not slumbering I'm almost always right on top of my librarying. Until this week. Dreaded, dreadful testing week. I knew it would be bad. It was bad last year. It's always bad. It has made that morning bit harder than usual and my days seem forever long.

I'm working hard not to be a Molly McBitter about having to sit on my ass all day watching children take tests. I've tried looking on the bright side of things. I've thought (extensively) about how much worse things could be. I've even contemplated a foray into Not Whining About Things mode for a whole day. But... it's just really very hard. Especially when I have SPRING FEVER and I want to get outside where there's actual air and sunlight that hasn't been filtered through layers of mold, asbestos, and ancient drop-ceiling tiles, not biting my tongue to keep from screaming at the plodding, slow-poke children pondering main ideas and topic sentences to just HURRY UP ALREADY. I mean, it's not really their fault my day sucks.

No one is happier that it's Friday than me. Except maybe every other teacher in the state of Massachusetts, and who cares about them?

Extreme Entertainment

2007-03-22T17:30:00.000-05:00

Watching children nervously rock back and forth, hands shaking as their pencils scribble across standardized test booklets is not my idea of a good time, but it does allow me to get a good bit of reading done. I thought I'd start in on some of the kitschy-looking 1970's fiction I've located in my library (not all that hard to come by) and I've found a couple of real winners in the collection. But after four days of that, I had reached the saturation point.

This morning was so boring that I could actually feel my brain atrophying inside my skull. My eyelids were begging to be propped open Tom and Jerry style, toothpicks straining to keep me from slumbering. Please, Baby Jesus, just let me sleep away a bit of the boredom.

What could I do to entertain myself? There had to be something so exciting that I would no longer be in danger of embarassing myself by having my Principal shake me awake by the shoulders, sprawled out on a desk with a little puddle of drool pooled under my cheek. I quickly ruled out my idea of "borrowing" some of the band instruments to "test out", as well as my half-formed plan of building a fort made of books. I didn't have enough Krazy Glue to do anything that would hold my attention for very long and I wasn't desperate enough to try out the new hot glue gun. But then, as my eyes fell on my mini-fridge, I had an idea: I'd eat my fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt without mixing it up.

I. KNOW!

It kept me entertained for all of 4 minutes and nauseous for 4 hours. Who knew that the fruit on the bottom was actually just super-sweetened fruit product? It always tastes so real when it's mixed in with the yogurt. Then I started wondering about whether I had consumed the live cultures in the yogurt part or the fruit part, and I started to actually feel ill. It also made me very sad that all I had for the rest of my lunch was a salad and a Clif Bar.

Screw testing. Tomorrow I'm bringing a deck of cards and some Girl Scout cookies.

This might help pass some time too. Holy addictiveness.

NPW: Hotter Than Anne Ramsey

2007-03-21T05:46:00.000-05:00

I was having a pleasant chat the other day with a friend when I mentioned that I had seen one of my all-time favorite movies, Goonies, in the theater at Harvard last weekend. I was elucidating all of the reasons why it has stood the test of time and why it's the perfect young adult movie when I realized suddenly I couldn't remember the woman's name that played Mama Fratelli.

"Anne Ramsey", came his immediate reply- too fast to even have IMDB'd it.
"How the hell did you know that?"
"Huh, no idea. Six years clerking in a video store?"
"Well, yeah, anyway, so Anne Ramsey. She is one ugly lady. If I only had one wish, it would be that I never ended up looking like her."
"Too late."

With the threat of bodily harm he eventually rescinded his statement with a "obviously you're hotter than Anne Ramsey", but still the thought remained: what would I do if I looked like Anne Ramsey? I mean, she's worse even than Kathy Bates, and that's saying something. At least Kathy Bates never wore a beret (that I know of), and never starred in Throw Momma From A Train. But if I were Ms. Ramsey I think I'd try to steal One-Eyed Willie's gold, too. Just to fix those jowls.

I Sure Do Post A Lot

2007-03-20T05:21:00.000-05:00

NPW here; just perusing my past entries and I realized I'm well over the 300 posts mark. That gave me pause for a moment. How, I pondered, is it that I have no problem updating this here forum of farce almost every day, and yet sitting down to actually work on some writing that might make me some money proves nearly impossible for me to accomplish?

I didn't have to ponder long before the answer came to me: I'm lazy. No, really, it's as simple as that. Here I can just freestyle, I can wing it, I can pontificate on the most inane, ridiculous, or amusing thing I can think of and then ramble on for a full five paragraph essay. But when I'm working on something with direction? Not so into it. Ok, so good- at least I have that much figured out: sheer laziness.

Then I started to wonder at my complete inability to ever keep a journal or a diary in the past. It's obvious I enjoy writing, why wouldn't I have wanted to fill page after page about my angst-y, drama filled days? Well, duh- journals and diaries are meant to be kept secret, hidden. Why would I want to write hilarious and often apt entries about my life if only I get to read them? Seriously. I don't have to go far to amuse myself, I do it all the time. And if I wanted to keep a secret diary, I don't think I'd choose to do it on the world wide web. This is no livejournal, folks. This here is the real deal.

Second conclusion: I want to amuse the masses.

So basically what it comes down to is that I'm a lazy ass, but if I can make people laugh in my own lazy ass way then at least I can feel I am contributing somewhat to life in general. Here's to all you other lazy asses out there. I tip my hat to you.

Thanking My Lucky Clovers I Made It Out of Southie Alive Sober

2007-03-19T05:20:00.000-05:00

For a city that prides itself on it's Irish heritage, the Southie parade sure did suck. Thousands of people crushed into the train, alighting in the dangerously over-crowded Broadway station to gusts of bitterly strong wind and equally bitter gusts of beer breath. But even with the tumult, I was absurdly excited. I turned giddily to Chris; "This is going to be so awesome- I didn't know so many people came down here for the parade! Why have I never done this before?"

We quickly discovered the answer to that question.

While I've always vaguely understood that when people call themselves "Irish" they may as well just say "Alcoholic" (i.e.: "Oh, my family? Well I'm German and Italian on my mother's side, Alcoholic and Dutch on my father's), the euphemism became much more clear in my mind once we got above ground and saw the festivities that were going down. It quickly killed my naive excitement from the train station: what amounted to gas station attendants hocking $5.00 Southie t-shirts, high school kids in gothwear with hair dyed electric green drinking lime flavored Mad Dog 20/20 straight out of the bottle, college girls who used the holiday as an excuse to dress slutty and then loosely interpret their idea of St. Patrick with a green boa, a woman who tried to lay a blanket out on the street so she could get a good view (subsequently sitting in a large puddle of melting snow), authentic old Irish dudes dozing in rockers with blankets and pipes, and a sea of Red Sox hats covering frat boy and construction worker heads alike. We also saw lots and lots of puke.

That's not to say we didn't have fun! Fortunately for us, my friend Kelli hosted a party at her Southie digs and we had a third floor view of the parade, which was close enough to see that we were very lucky not to be down on the street. Right before it started I asked one of the girls what her favorite part of the parade was. She kind of made a face, adding: "Well, I personally like when the Unions come through. At least they have banners."

Ha ha, I laughed! What about the giant balloons and the floats and the brass bands? She just kind of snickered and went back to eating lime Jell-O shots like Bill Cosby himself had bought them for her. Oh, if only I had heeded those early warning signs and got myself smashed before ~~everything went wrong~~ the parade started!

And then, without fanfare, it began. I won't mince words here. The "parade" consisted of clusters of children walking with clover antennae, a few ragtag baton twirlers, a couple of men in kilts, one large Elmo, and a horde of Storm Troopers. Oh yes, and the Unions. All kinds of Unions, huddled in the back old pickup trucks waving frozen banners.

All in all, much of the party consisted of making fun of the parade and drinking a few token bottles of Guinness, which was A-OK by me. Thanks to Kelli, our trip to Southie did not end in getting puked on or screamed at and was, in fact, a great time. Her place is lovely, her friends were fun, and bonus: we have video footage of a couple of Boston dudes doing the ATM Dance.

I'd also like to thank Southie for showing me that all it takes to have a party in Boston that everyone is sure to attend is Bud Light in Solo cups and the promise of girls wearing green.

All Things Green

2007-03-16T05:52:00.000-05:00

I am severely lacking in motivation today. I know last night I said I wasn't counting on a snow day, but I lied. Deep in my heart I truly thought I would spend today lying comfortably on the couch watching marathon episodes of Heroes season one and occasionally lifting my arm to feebly bring a mug of coffee to my lips. Instead, I found myself trudging off to work, in the dark, with roughly zero snow on the ground and zero snow in the sky. All I have to say to that is, WTF weatherpeople? Where's my final winter hurrah? I'm supposed to be in pjs right now, fools!

Moving on, my plans for this weekend were big, big, big until the proclamation of a Nor'easter; suddenly it's looking like I'll have a lot of free time. While I have tentative plans to attend a very large Charlestown party this evening, replete with green beer and lime jello shots, C is still very flu-like and I don't know that I can stomach a party full of strangers and Guinness without him. So, everyone please send some well-wishes his way- maybe your collective psychic energy will amp him up enough for a night of beer pong.

Saturday may also be a bust if we end up getting snowed in. Last year St. Patty's Day fell on a weekday and we still managed to get out to a show in Cambridge, this year it has been kind enough to land on a Saturday and I have no plans. I'd bitch about that some more but honestly, there's no shortage of Irish bars in the city of Boston and I'm certain some plans will crop up out of the blue. They always do.

Sunday is supposed to be fair weather and we're heading down to Southie (Matt Damon, if you're reading this, I'll be on the lookout for you) for the giant Irish parade and some mad cap fun at my friend's new pad. How many green beers does it take to start yelling obscenities at the men in kilts? I'll be sure to report in on Monday.

Happy luck day, clover lovers!

Who Says I Don't Work Out Enough?

2007-03-15T17:03:00.000-05:00

Man, I am flat out busy today. Sixth grade science projects coming up and I'm actually, physically sweating trying to find books on catapults and the human brain and citrus fruits. Damn you, smart children!

So not to be completely boring, but what's up with the nasty weather? New England hates my ass. It's pouring, and the weatherpeeps are promising a foot of snow tonight.

So. That's awesome.

Oh, and speaking of nasty, I will leave you today with this image. Premium, indeed. Happy lunch time!

This Body Will Self Destruct in 3... 2... 1...

2007-03-14T05:20:00.000-05:00

Dear NPW:

I don't understand why you insist on punishing yourself so. Do you really think you can survive on 4 hours of sleep a night? Maybe you could have pulled that off in college, but if you think back to good old 2000 you might recall that even then you had ample afternoon hours during which you could nap away your Tuesday night hangover. Now? Not so much. Because I don't think schools encourage you to nap during the day, unless of course you're teaching Kindergarten, and even then I'm pretty sure you're just supposed to watch them sleep, not curl up onto a cot yourself.

Your feeble attempts at staying healthy are not fooling us. One run a week? A salad followed by Girl Scout cookies? We're not stupid. A girl can't live on lettuce and Samoas anymore than she can live with 12 hours of sleep a week. And don't even get us started on how little H2O you've been consuming lately. One look at your dry skin and you're not keeping that secret from anyone.

I think we'll agree that the Aloha show last night was great. And yes, Harpoon Munich Dark is delicious. And yes, Central Square is quite the scene, even on a random Tuesday. But seriously: we can't take much more of this. So consider this your fair warning. Anymore of these brazen attempts to undermine our authority and we will shut this shit down.

Sincerely,
Your Body

The Post In Which I Ramble About Burritos and Maple Sugar

2007-03-13T05:34:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's bitchfest aside, last weekend was actually pretty fantastic. For once we finally managed to actually do all the things we planned on doing, plus some. Friday night we had tickets to see 300 at the IMAX, so we decided to do a quick dinner in our hood before driving all the way to Reading in rush hour traffic. What culinary delight did we choose to bless our palates with? The newly opened Boloco for some "inspired" burritos.

While there's no shortage of places to acquire cheap and tasty burritos (C and I counted no fewer than 6 places in a two-mile radius from our house), Boloco seemed to promise a more upscale atmosphere than some of the other local joints. By which I mean all the patrons would be wearing clothing and the place wouldn't stink of cigarettes being smoked at the kitchen doors. True, I was a little skeptical- I mean, did I really need to add another burrito joint to my repetoire? And the place was a bit more pricey than, say, Anna's, or Qdoba. But damn, that wrap was delicious. Then came the best part: every Friday they give out coupons for $1 burritos! Redeemable any time! Shit, yo, I'm going there every Friday to get a $1 burrito and then get a coupon for another for the next week. They also had big signs up for three upcoming dates of FREE burritos, all night long. For real. I am so going to every one of those nights. God, I love living in a college city. Oh, and P.S.: their smoothies are also quite delish.

How did this post turn into a burrito festival?

Anyway, we braved the traffic on 95 and made it to the IMAX with an hour to spare. Except... what is that huge line forming outside the theater? That can't be our movie. It doesn't start for an hour! WTF? Apparently the IMAX holds 500 people, and about 100 of them were already in line for a sold-out show. We barely had time to appreciate the glory and wonder that is Jordan's before we found ourselves standing in a snaking queue. Good thing I have my v-cast phone and C had his Nintendo DS on him to keep ourselves entertained. Ha! Oh, date night.

The movie itself was pretty good- loved the way it looked visually, even if the story itself lacked any kind of depth. It was pretty much exactly what the commercials promised: 300 Spartans violently killing millions of Persians. It was bloody and gory and exciting, but didn't require me to use my brain overly much. Perfect for a Friday evening.

Saturday was spent doing random errands in a leisurely fashion. The nice weather held and it was very pleasant to see all of Boston wandering around in spring jackets. You could tell the college girls were itching to break out the tank tops and mini skirts as I saw a number of sandals and short sleeves. Too early, people! Do you not know New England? You could be up to your chin in snow an hour from now! Later that evening my lovely cousin showed up with her husband and we hit up Tir na nOg for some crazy music/drinking action. It was a little bittersweet since they'll be closing at the end of this month, but we enjoyed the hell out of ourselves anyway.

On our way home we realized we were starving and decided to stop at one of the only late night places we could find: Pizza Days. Two words: not good. Oh, and one more: expensive. Ok, a few more: stomach ache.

Brilliantly, we had made plans to meet my parents for breakfast on Sunday morning at a place up in NH, about an hour away. I diligently set the alarm when we finally got to bed around 2:30 and surprised myself by actually getting up when it went off. As I was getting ready, proudly extolling on how awesome I was for rousing myself on time, Chris looked at me and said, "You sprang ahead, right?"

I stared at him dumbly for a few seconds, then ran for my phone to call my mother (who is not just punctual, but always, always early for everything). They were already in Mason. C and I decided to brave the trip up there anyway, and arrived as they were finishing their breakfast. We sat down with them (probably pissing off about 90 people that were waiting for tables), and had a pleasant breakfast of pancakes. C topped the meal off with a maple donut and we headed on over to the Sugar Shack to learn all about their maple-making methods. The tour was surprisingly interesting, mostly because when they say Sugar Shack they certainly mean it. Pretty much a lean-to, it was like something out of a Native American story- one that involved garden hoses to pour the sap and a giant coffee urn to bottle it up, yes, but still.

We spent the rest of the day lazing about as my mother toiled in the kitchen for our dinner fare. All together, a most lovely weekend.

Then yesterday happened and all memories of pleasantness vanished in a thin wisp of stale smoke. But now I'm back on track, my library is back to normal, and we've got tickets to see Aloha tonight at the Middle East. I'm a happy librarian. See the smile?

No Rest For The Weary

2007-03-12T05:39:00.000-05:00

Ugh. What a ridiculous day. Apparently I've become a glorified babysitter, an in-school suspension proctor, and a substitute teacher over the course of the weekend. I really wish someone had informed me of this before I showed up to work today. I've gone from mildly put out to increasingly irritated to downright angry in just five short hours. A new record!

Maybe it's some kind of perverse formula; my work weeks are as terrible as my weekends are great. If my weekend is mediocre, my work week is roughly the same. Like some kind of balancing mechanism with the universe. Plus, I'm surprisingly messed up from the time change. Not only is it once again dark as pitch when I wake up, but all the computer clocks in the school remain an hour behind. We teachers are not allowed to change the time on our computers as we are idiots and we might accidently erase the entire operating system while attempting such a difficult operation.

WhatEVER.

At least I can go home, put myself into a maple sugar coma and take a long, long nap to rid myself of this tetchiness. Oh wait, just kidding- I have a staff meeting that wasn't announced until this morning. Burn. Remind me again what I pay union dues for?

Shelvin' Books Like It Ain't No Thang

2007-03-09T05:38:00.000-05:00

What's goin' down in the hizzouse, homeslices? This is NPDubya, rappin' at ya from the big bad liberry in da hood. I'ze about to tell youze about some mad playa hatin' goin' down this very p.m. at the hip hop happy hour- 2:30, sharp as a shark toof. We'ze about to tippity tap that bar Biggie styles.

Wow, spell check did not like that. Not one bit.

Anyway, as straight gangsta as my weekend is going to be, I still have to make it through the work day and that it going to take some... well, work. Plans include an excursion to the mythical IMAX to see some Spartans kick ass in 300. And bonus: Chris has never been to Jordan's Furniture. Wait, what? Your local furniture stores don't have an IMAX in them? What about a trapeze? Or Jelly Belly Land? A liquid fireworks show? They must at least have Dippin' Dots. No? You poor souls. How do you keep entertained when you go to buy furniture?

We might also take a drive up to scenic southern NH because they've started tapping the maple trees for syrup and this place provides both a tour and an amazing breakfast. Umm, banana pecan pancakes? Yes, please! And of course, the Sunday parent dinner- because how else will I get my leftovers to eat for lunch all week?

I'm also going to spend some time this end of week looking for viable summer employment, preferably something involving neither education nor children. I think barista NPW sounds about right. So- if you hear of any amazing summer opportunities, be sure to not send in your resume, and hook me up instead.

Annnnd.... I'm out.

Lame Ass School Humor

2007-03-08T05:56:00.000-05:00

Actual conversation I had this morning:

Co-worker: What about if I offer an origami enrichment class?
NPW: I don't know. A whole year of origami? I don't think kids would sign up for that. Why don't you just do an arts and crafts enrichment instead?
Co-worker: But... then I couldn't call the class "Origami Masters".
NPW: You totally thought of the title first, didn't you?
Co-worker: (nods sadly)

The Power of Pinstripe

2007-03-07T05:14:00.000-05:00

Some days I feel kind of like a poseur. And not in a hipster, techie, punk, stereotypical niche-type way. I feel like an adult poseur.

I show up to work every day like a responsible adult does. I do my job, and I do it well. I have a car and a home and the bills to prove it. I actually pay for things like heat and electricity. Secretly though, I'm always wishing I could be home in jeans and a sweatshirt watching cartoons and letting my mom make me grilled cheese. I miss the days when my greatest worry was getting my Bio homework done and wondering whether any of my friends would still be talking to each other by the time I made it to school the next day. Sometimes my 28 year old brain doesn't seem to like that I've had to evolve past that stage into something else. But what? Pseudo-adulthood?

This little secret (and please keep it to yourself, internet, thank you very much!) appears to manifest itself at school every once in a while. Like today, when I overheard a student making completely inappropriate yet hilariously funny remarks about a substitute teacher. Rather than admonish them, as an adult who is responsible for student's minds probably should, I let it slide. Was it because I can remember so vividly what it's like to be young and stupid, or was it because my mean streak thought their comments were apt and amusing? I just don't know.

The worst days for this type of problem seem to be Dress Down Fridays. Nothing screams "don't take me seriously, kids!" more than low-rise jeans, a Roxy thermal, and Steve Madden wellie boots with little skulls on them.

But honestly, how am I supposed to get the quality gossip when I'm wearing pinstripes and Polo?

Popsicle Toes

2007-03-06T05:30:00.000-05:00

I've just been staring at this stupid blank blogger screen for about 25 minutes. Not a good sign. Most times, I have something of utmost importance upon which I would extol, or at the very least my OCD kicks in and I manically start filling in that blank, empty post space. But then I realized: I could either just shrug and admit I have nothing to discuss, or I could shrug, admit I have nothing to discuss, and then write an entire post about how I've got nothing to post. Oh, the irony!

Or... maybe not. Because that might be boring.

So instead, for your personal edification, just a few of the reasons for the March Slump of 2007:

Chance of freezing to death in the night: 50%
Temperature: teeth chattering
Hours of sleep last night: 4
Number of groundhogs I plan on killing, if I ever get the chance: 1
Number of internet servers situated directly behind my desk that sound like they're about to blow up, complete with a high-pitched whining noise that stabs into my brain like a rusty knife: 1
Irritability factor: high

I don't think I can take much more of my own bitching without being pushed over the proverbial edge into the not-so proverbial Crazy Town.

One shining ray of hope to save an otherwise frostbitten day: California Guitar Trio is playing the Regattabar tonight and if C can drag himself out of that sorry-ass place he calls work at a reasonable hour I think I might manage to once again be graced by their melodic tunes. Keep your fingers crossed for me. I'm out.

Middle Grade

2007-03-05T05:40:00.000-05:00

One of the eighth graders has a crush on me.

Actually, I don't know that it's a crush so much as a "gee whiz, I don't think I've ever looked at a librarian's cleavage so much in my whole entire life and isn't it great? I think I'll come up with 300 questions to ask her so that I can keep wandering into her office and then talk directly to her chest because I don't think she'll really notice, even when I ask inane things like 'where's the pencil sharpener?' even though I've been going to this school for three years now and I'm in the library about 12 times a day and I definitely know that there are at least three pencil sharpeners in a 20 square foot radius; but hey- boobs!".

With spring quickly approaching I don't want to encourage a repeat of the April '06 debacle, but really, how do you call out a kid who barely even realizes he should use deodorant every day for trying to catch a glimpse of something so impressive?

Middle schoolers in one word: clueless.

In one of my friend's classes on Friday she had them go around and say their name and one unique thing about themselves as a little ice breaker game. She got more than halfway through the sixth graders until one boy said, "Hi, my name is Eric, I'm 13, and my mustache is real".

Ok, so one more word: hilarious.

Bedazzled Friday

2007-03-02T05:31:00.000-05:00

Yes, I had school today. Boo. To cheer myself up, I ordered this (among other things):

How much do I love mail-order, handmade, and vintage jewelry? Apparently $89.00 worth. In case you, too, are a jewelry fanatic, here are some of my favorite etsy artists I've discovered.

luxedeluxe
missficklemedia
stilettoheights
helloberlin
maryink

Have I paid my rent yet? Nope. Have I gone food shopping? Oh, ho ho. Who needs food when there are cute things to be had at the push of a button?

Happy Friday!

This Post Brought To You By The Letter T And The Number 13

2007-03-01T05:15:00.000-05:00

Thirteen Thursday-Themed Things about N to the P to the W

1. Well hello there. Did you know that it's March? Because I sure forgot, right up until about 10 minutes ago. This fact is important for a number of reasons: my rent is due, I get paid today (with my 2.5% pay increase- sweet, sweet 93rd day of school), St. Patty's Day is coming up, and most importantly: Spring! Yes, March brings Spring, and if that fool of a groundhog has any bearing on the actual weather the warmth should be showing up right about... now.

2. Speaking of the ever-fascinating weather, we may have a snow day on Friday. They're calling it a "wintry mix": doesn't that just give you a warm feeling inside? Oh, ice and sleet and snowy rain? Why, thanks for the big F you, March.

3. I am back at school today, feeling much better, thank you. Sure, my throat still feels like fire ants are coating the inside of it, my brain feels like it's pulsing against the back of my eyeballs, and all my muscles have a strange flu-like achiness, but still, it's a definite improvement over yesterday.

4. I've been eating these things for a long while now, but I thought it worth mentioning that I am still in love with Clif's Z Bars.

Delicious, nutritious, and a mere 49 cents at Trader Joes. I don't care if they're meant for kids, that just means they're probably packed full of extra vitamins and smaller than the regular Clif Bars. Bless you, Z Bar.

5. I spent the majority of this morning researching articles on autogenic relaxation. Sounds naughty, yes? I had to suppress a giggle when a teacher requested it. It's actually more boring than it sounds, apparently it has something to do with teaching autistic kids to self-hypnotize when they get to feeling anxious. BOoooring.

6. The other half of this morning I spent watching Back to the Future with my brilliant little group of Tech & Media kids. I mean really, what can I teach them that they can't learn from Doctor Emmett Brown?

7. Due to my week long vacation and an added sick day, I've watched quite a few movies in the past couple of weeks. I'm sure you're all dying to hear my reviews. Let's see if I can remember them all:
Marie Antoinette: loved the costumes, loved Kirsten Dunst even though I normally think she's kind of a widget, loved the soundtrack.
Wimbledon: curse of the Netflix strikes again, apparently this time I was on a KiKi bent. Cute movie, though.
Babel: Amazing. How did this not win an Oscar? V. depressing, though. Felt vaguely sad at the state of humanity, in much the same way as I did with Crash and A History of Violence.
The Science of Sleep: An adult version of Pee-Wee's Playhouse. C and I didn't even finish it.

On deck: The Departed and Cocaine Cowboys.

8. I showed up to work to find a random book on my desk that had been donated by Raytheon, famous builder of bombs for our lovely government, called Medal Of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty. It even has a foreword by our great Commander in Chief. So... I guess it's never too early for me to start recruiting these kids for the Army? Seriously, am I supposed to put this out?

9. I've slowly been trying to make our apartment more homey, it looks a little better after each weekend I can spend hanging things and/or buying things. I am now on the hunt for a writing desk for my bedroom. Something like this:

I'd also like a long bench or ottoman for the foot of the bed and a new dresser or wardrobe, but even with that whopping 2.5% raise there are still some budgetary constraints. I'm wary of buying furniture on eBay, but I have been scouring good old CL for a while now. So far, zilch- but I maintain hope.

10. Being the sneaky librarian that I am, I have managed (through a combination of sheer charm and lying through my teeth) to convince four other people to do the spelling bee with me. At least if I'm forced to make a fool of myself on local access television I can drag others down with me. Besides, telling people that the spelling bee is "so awesome" is subjective, right?

11. One of my senior volunteers brought in a liverwurst sandwich and Earl Grey tea for lunch today. Ha! I couldn't make this stuff up.

12. I'm thinking of an April vacation trip. Denver? A repeat of last year's Florida trip? As much as I love New England, I need out. Just for a bit.

13. It's almost Friday! Friday is date night. Date night is fun night. Maybe I will stun the world (or at least the people walking through the park in downtown Boston) with my mad skating skillz at the Frog Pond. Or maybe we'll take a ride to the beach- it is supposed to be in the 50's, after all. And who doesn't love beach pizza in March?

Asbestos, Mildew, and Mold, Oh My!

2007-02-28T11:38:00.000-05:00

How many sick days is this? Five? HOW AM I STILL GETTING SICK?

Everyone always says your first year in a school is the worst, that you'll catch everything. My friends, the second year is worse even than that. Your body is already weakened from the previous years diseases, your immune system shocked by the sheer volume of germs assaulting it.

For real though, either I'm a hypochondriac or there is definitely something just plain wrong with the air in my school. By the time February vacation had rolled around I was pretty much ill with a chest cold. Two days later, all signs of illness had mysteriously dried up and I was perfectly fine.

Now it's Wednesday, two days back at school and I am already feeling sick again- achy head, runny nose, scratchy throat, my skin as white and dry as birch bark. I mean, I know schools are breeding grounds for germs and all, but the situation is becoming dire. There are only two possible solutions: 1. My body subconsciously does not want me to have wake up and go to work, thus making up illnesses of it's own accord, or 2. The air quality in this school is extremely poor. And since I love my job, I'm going to go with the latter.

I would love to bring a humidifier into work to alleviate the desert-dry air, but humidity is not good for books and I have the feeling it would just amp up the amount of viruses and bacteria germinating in there. It's also a bit disheartening when you hear the school nurse saying things like, "Wow, the teachers are just dropping like flies today", or the secretaries lamenting that there aren't enough subs to go around. (Speaking of, they better not have put the nutcase sub in for me today- I don't need to go back in tomorrow to find children sleeping in the stacks and the computers coated in an inch thick layer of spitballs.)

What do you do when you're actually allergic to your work?

Crazy Talk

2007-02-27T05:43:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I think I must know what it's like to be mentally ill.

I'm not saying that in a "I feel your pain, Prozac Nation" kind of way, or even a Britney Spears shave-all-my-hair-off-and-check-into-12-different-rehabs kind of way. I'm simply thinking that for the past 15 years or so I have been getting that montly visit that signifies that I'm now a woman and that I have God's biological permission to procreate. And yet? Every single month rolls in and I spend a good 3-4 days as a crazed maniac bent on my own destruction. My moods range from sad to angry to chipper and happy to weeping and ranting, in roughly 10 minute intervals, with pretty much no reprieve until I wake up a few days later thinking, "Uh oh. I really hope no one was too badly hurt during that little Dr. Jekyll episode."

And usually I think to myself, Self? This is really not a very lady-like way to behave. In fact, you're probably making everyone around you want to murder you in your sleep. Sometimes I can even pep talk myself into being calm and normal- that is, when I recognize that I'm being a loon, which is not the majority of cases. But when your feelings are so big and they feel so true, it's almost impossible to tell yourself that you're being irrational.

So maybe I'm naive, but I'd imagine that's exactly how mentally ill people feel. Or maybe they just never have that moment of clarity when they realize that everyone probably hates them? If only I owned a big drug company- all my efforts would be poured into a three-day a month Paxil formula. Well, that, and my birth control advent calendars- you know, where you get a little piece of chocolate with your Ortho every day? Oh, and there would be different "advent" themes every month- fun! No one will ever forget to take that ish if there's little bites of dark chocolate and kama sutra leprechauns involved.

I am so going to be rich one day. Or ex-communicated. Whatevs.

Where was I? Oh, right. Anyway, if I seem like a whiny jerk-face lately, or ever in the past, for that matter, it is probably for the above mentioned reasons. All I can say is, thanks be that a good 55% of the people on this planet probably understand without even having to read this, and for those who don't, sorry for the swings.

Dossier: Project February Vacation

2007-02-26T05:50:00.000-05:00

Mission objectives: To fully enjoy the allotted February vacation time
HQ: Living room couch
Known associates: Numerous
Field duty: Complete (02.17.07-02.25.07)
Status: Success

When I left off with the photo montage I had accomplished a fair amount of sitting around. I was pleased with my progress; I felt as though my vision of utter laziness was taking shape around me. Then the weekend came, C took Friday off, and all dreams of laying in a heap on the couch and practicing slowing my heart beat to a near-dead stop went out the window. Thursday night I went to the first meeting of the 007 Book Club, spearheaded by this woman. I thought it would be slightly odd to hang out with a bunch of ladies I had never met, but it turned out great. A few glasses of wine and some fun chat about The Glass Castle and all my fears of being kidnapped in Southie were alleviated. Now my only worry is choosing the book for the next meeting because when we drew for meeting dates, of course I happened to be up next. Representin' fo' the librarians out there, I best not pick a dud. Friday was spent running around the Museum of Science, taking in the new Darwin exhibit and observing some beautiful Galapagos turtles wander haplessly around a box painted to look like, well, a rock. Saturday we carted ourselves up to Portsmouth for some brewery action, had a delicious dinner complete with an assortment of "native New Hampshire cheeses", and walked over to the Music Hall to see The Bad Plus in all their jazzy glory. Now, normally I'm not the jazz type, but The Bad Plus never fails to blow me away with the sheer energy they give in their performances. It was pretty amazing- not to mention, they played Rush's Tom Sawyer. And then on to Sunday, when I arrived at my parent's house for what I thought was going to be a quiet dinner with them and my sister but which actually turned out to be some kind of mini-family reunion party, where we watched Jackass 2 and looked at baby pictures. Happy birthday to my sister, indeed.

And now, and now. It's snowing and I return once again to the land of the working. Don't feel sorry for me though- I'm ready to help the darling children with their 5 paragraph essays on Egypt and their debate research on whether schools should have dress codes. I'm ready!

In other news, I am wearing boots that have fairly high heels today, making me roughly 6'0". I'm used to towering over most of the students (esp. the runty little sixth graders), but wearing boots somehow makes me feel even more Amazonian than normal. They also make a satisfyingly adult click as I walk down the hallways: a departure from my normal Danskos. These are "in-charge" boots. Alas, they are also "twist your ankle in the snow" boots, which so far, I have successfully avoided. As the snow continues to fall though, the outlook on me making it to my car unharmed this afternoon looks grim. At least I didn't wear a skirt.

Six Days In

2007-02-22T11:50:00.000-05:00

Every vacation flies by and I inevitably find myself on the Sunday night before school starts back up saying, "What the hell did I just do for ten days?" Well rather than rely on my faulty memory to take a look back on the February Break of 2007 I put together a little montage of some of the finer moments. That is, the ones not involving Matlock and alcohol at 10 a.m.

Some Rochester peeps came to visit, so what did we do? Drank beer, of course! Fancy beer! In Brookline! God, we're such good hosts it kills me.

Every baby shower should have a flowing fountain of chocolate. It's good karma for the unborn child.

Uhh... babies also like things wrapped in bacon.

The little man had lunch with the ladies at the local Chili's. Being the best godmother, I gave him his first mandarin orange. Being a handsome little devil, he flirted with all the old ladies at the next table over.

"So, NPW, what did you do on your break? 700 loads of laundry? Wow, I'm jealous. You didn't even get a sunburn! Can I hang out with you on April break?"

The hallway of death. Carrying those 700 loads up and down these stairs = the reason I don't have a gym membership.

After burning up all those calories doing laundry, it was snack time. Quandary: why is it that I am petrified of wiping up raw eggs from the counter so I don't get salmonella, but I have no problem eating cookie dough immediately thereafter?

I think the dough was better.

Met C on his lunch break for some Burlington Ice Palace action- "Where Olympic dreams begin!"

The true ice princess. This picture doesn't do her crack justice.

I wanted to document my skating prowess, C wanted to make it look like I throw little children to the ice. And anyway, so what if I did? They have helmets! Geez.

Netflix and FedEx and packages, oh my!

Suck on it, Sprint. Do your phones let me watch the Colbert Report on my lunch break? Yeah. Didn't think so.

Still lots of things on the horizon: I'm working on getting C to skip out tomorrow so we can go see the new Darwin exhibit at the Museum of Science. This morning he actually said to me: "Tomorrow is the last day to close loans for the month". When did we become grown ups? With responsibilities?

I also have a book club meeting tonight to talk about The Glass Castle (which I very much enjoyed, as I do with all miserable memoirs about people with lives so horrible I can only thank baby Jesus that my biggest worry is cramps). And Saturday will be a Portsmouth adventure as Part II of the anniversary celebration- dinner and The Bad Plus show at the Music Hall. And then a mini-birthday celebration for my sister on Sunday, who, although younger than I, is still old.

Oh, and lots more daytime TV. Ahh. The good life.

I Was Wrong

2007-02-20T10:49:00.000-05:00

I thought a heart-shaped pizza was true love. Then Chris bought me tickets to this:

The Police at Fenway Park?!?!!? Oh, hell yes.

Over and Out

2007-02-18T10:22:00.000-05:00

I have a few things of which I need to inform you on this wintry Sunday morn:

1. As of Friday afternoon, I am on Winter Break. Way to start it off with a bang, I am a stuffed up mess. Classic NPW. Fortunately for me, I have ten full days to sit on my ass and recuperate. Unfortunately for you, that may mean a mini-blog break as well. Oh, I'll post here and there, but please don't cry if I miss a couple of posts. My nose and my brain both need a little rest.

2. I am going out this week to buy this phone:

Yes, gone will be the days of hoping the battery lasts the 20 minute ride home from work because my phone is straight out of 1997. I mean, I'm grateful that my mother gave me her (v.) old phone to borrow after mine was so rudely stolen, but seriously. I need my text messaging back. And who doesn't want a cool-ass flip out QWERTY keyboard? Whoo-wee, I'm a nerd. I briefly considered the Krazr, but once I held it in my hand I knew that all it would take would be one over-excited conversation for me to snap that flimsy little plastic thing in half.

Bonus: no more Sprint!

3. On Friday afternoon I got the official invite to be on our school's team for the annual Town Spelling Bee. Please, try to contain your jealousy.

You're probably wondering how you, too, can lead such a thrilling and satisfying life? A little friendly advice from me to you: treat yourself to a private viewing of Librarian: Quest for a Spear featuring Noah Wyle (heck, if you're feeling dangerous and think you can handle a double feature, throw in Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines and make a day of it) and then sign yourself up for library school, ASAP. You can thank me later.

4. Thank goodness I don't eat Peter Pan Peanut Butter, eh? And for those of you that do, maybe a bout of salmonella will teach you the importance of not buying groceries solely on what's the cheapest/sugariest product available. Shame on you!

5. My agenda for the week is pretty full, what with all the movies and books piled up next to my sick bed. But hey, if you're around and you're free, give me a ring and maybe we can do lunch. Because I'm sure lunch with you beats anything my co-workers are doing- Aruba? Boring. South Carolina? Please. Hawaii? Pssh. One pizza trumps traveling any day.

Later, 'gators.

Golden Oldies

2007-02-16T05:38:00.000-05:00

Some days, my senior citizen volunteers drive me batty. And by some I mean all. Take, for example, Priscilla; while she is legally considered deaf, she almost always refuses to wear her hearing aid because, she says, "when it's cold outside, it freezes to her ears". And while she does make an interesting conversationalist (Me: "Priscilla, could you put these books back on the shelves?" Priscilla: "Pardon? The library is infested with elves?"), her constant shuffling about grates on my brain. It's like she's unable to pick up her feet to move around, so it's a steady tssssh tssssh tssssh across the library carpet all day long. All I can imagine is that she must give herself some whopping static electricity shocks.

Then there's Edna, who must be in her mid-nineties and no longer drives, nor does she have any remaining family that ~~cares about whether their old mother dies walking in the sub-Arctic temps~~ lives near enough to cart her around. When she talks, she can't focus very well on you and so she creeps closer and closer to your face until you can see her pink rose Wet 'n Wild lipstick smeared clownishly around her mouth, teeth, and gumline. She also has trouble hearing, but with her I'm not so worried about it because it doesn't actually matter whether she hears me or not, she probably won't be able to do whatever I'm asking of her. She can't bend down, nor can she reach up, nor can she walk more than a few steps without needing a rest. So I basically have her sit and stamp things. What things? Just... things.

There's also Polly*, who recently decided that she was interested in learning about computers but is one of those very rare people who actually can break a computer just by looking at it. Seriously, she needs her own episode of Heroes. I stepped away from my computer to take a bathroom break and when I came back I had to fill out three work order forms with the Technology department because she had somehow broken my mouse, keyboard, and barcode scanner in one fell swoop.

Why don't I just trade them in for newer models, you ask? I'd say 10% of it is because it would be more work to have them stop coming in than it is for me to just endure their presence, 10% because they have interesting stories of illness and gossip (they're better than a town crier), and the other 80% is because I feel bad for them. Besides, if I wait a few years they'll all be gone anyway, right?

Right?

*All names are real. Seriously, they're old.

What Is Love?

2007-02-15T05:31:00.000-05:00

Answer:

Double Trouble

2007-02-14T12:50:00.000-05:00

Awwww yeah. Happy snow day!

Oh yeah. And happy Valentine's Day, too.

This Post Has Nothing Whatsoever To Do With Last Weekend

2007-02-13T05:42:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I met up with a friend from New York that I hadn't seen in about a year. I was pretty excited to see her, but the deal was sweetened by the fact that I'd also get to meet her boyfriend and she'd finally get to meet Chris. Sounds like a lovely weekend visit, yes?

The plan was to meet up on Sunday afternoon, but when I talked to her she was a bit dodgy and it seemed as though her boy was hesitant to meet me. Finally she said, "I gave him your blog address and now he's nervous he's going to end up on there." I was momentarily speechless, and then, quite admirably held back a snort of laughter. I was (understandably, I think) both taken aback and amused- one, because in the grand scheme of things, the breadth and reach of my blog is very diminutive, and two, because what on Earth did he think I'd write about him? "Dear Readers, last weekend I met a man who is quite possibly the next Lee Harvey Oswald fused with Hannibal Lecter, possessing some of the finer qualities of Attila the Hun, as evidenced by the fact that he demanded that the restaurant servers bring him fresh raw meat and forced us to watch as he chomped it straight off a goat's leg bone. Oh, and he was also making eyes at me and trying to grab my leg under the table."*

Anyway, being the demi-evil librarian that I am, once I learned that he was nervous I'd write about him I was very much tempted to post Photoshopped pictures and intimate details about our little lunch date but I've been resisting that particular urge. Plus, he didn't really give me anything that I could twist into something hilarious for the amusement of the masses. In the 90 minutes of our acquaintance he remained innocuous enough to fly under the blog radar- except I just had to write something. You understand.

*All of these statements are patently false. Except for the "making eyes" bit, but I think that might have been because I had a piece of a samosa on my cheek that no one bothered to tell me about.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I didn't write about this on Monday in hopes that they'd check Monday, see that they were in the clear, and not check again today. But in case you're reading this- Hi! And it was lovely to see both of you. For serious.

Oddballery

2007-02-12T05:35:00.000-05:00

What is going on around here? I mean, for real. Everything is all topsy turvy; Anna Nicole is dead, they hired a woman as the new president at Harvard, and this morning my Principal made an actual, honest-to-goodness attempt at making a joke. So what gives? Why has my little world been turned upside down? Is this some cosmic phenomenon caused by changes in the tides after an iceberg broke off into the sea? Am I going to wake up tomorrow to find that the state of Maine under water?

Usually things aren't so strange around here, the library is it's own little cocoon of oblivion. However, it seems as though the fates have it in for me this week. NPR news this morning forecasted 10 inches of snow on Tuesday night, which may translate into a snowy Valentine's Day. And since when does New England get snow? It's almost unprecedented in the state of Massachusetts.

Memo to any higher being that may be out there doing weird stuff: no school on Wednesday would be a great Valentine's present, better even than one of those classy Whitman's Samplers. But there, now that I've said it we'll probably just get some cold drizzly sleet that will ruin my hair and soak into my socks and be totally annoying, but won't keep us out of school. So I take it back. I hope we do have school. I hope they decide on Wednesday that we need extra school, that we all have to stay until 9 p.m. that night. In fact, I hope they just decide that we're so far behind that we need to just have a sleepover here on Wednesday.

But just in case, I'm going to wear my pajamas backwards on Tuesday night. Because you just never know what might appease those fickle snow gods.

Taking It Light

2007-02-09T05:08:00.000-05:00

I? Do not want to do any more work. No, for real. I'm tired. Yesterday I napped for three hours and still went to bed at 10. Sad- yes. But necessary for both my sanity (and Chris's) because when I'm tired like this I get cranky, and a cranky NPW is no laughing matter. So this weekend I'm going to take it light.

Tentative plans include:

Visiting this handsome little devil,

Meeting my friend Alex here for Sunday lunch,

And buying this sheet set at Anthropologie.

Then I think I'll be able to make it through one more week until sweet, sweet February vacation. Have yourselves a good one.

So There

2007-02-08T05:08:00.000-05:00

Hmm. Apparently you all lacked the fortitude required to get through the 100 things about NPW yesterday. Either that, or you're just saving them up, reading them like a chapter book, pacing yourself so that you can discover something new about your favorite librarian every day. Ha! Either way, it's very pathetic that my blood, sweat, and tears went into writing all that crap down for just two people to comment on it- my mom and Ben. (Thanks for posting twice though, Beej.)

So today you get a crap post. Hey, don't give me that look, you know what you can do to make it up to me.

Anyway, I spent most of yesterday and today working on the kid's podcasts. Damn them for wanting to do complicated things in my technology-deficient library. The poor little Audacity program that I downloaded for free just can't handle all the sound effects and stuff they're trying to get. But I'll keep working on it- even if I think they're all a bit lame. I guess the good thing is that next year I'll know to be much more organized with the way I set it up; for serious, if you saw my desktop with all the audio files, you'd wonder how there's any room left on my computer at all. But hey, if you're interested in listening to some of the industrious goober's podcasts, shoot me an email and I'll let you know what to look for in the iTunes store.

In other news, I've put the kibosh on computer games in the library for good. That's right. NPW put her proverbial foot down- game bitch no longer. Now all I need to do is figure out a way to tell people to screw when I go to get coffee and I'll be one tough library chick.

One Hundred Things About NPW

2007-02-07T05:39:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to get around to a 100 Things About Me list for a while now, but it seems as though I've lacked the ~~time~~ ~~energy~~ motivation to get 'er done. But since everyone else has completed one, I don't want to be left behind out of sheer personal laziness. Onward!

I love pointless surveys in which you can learn an inordinate amount about someone you might not ever get to meet, or if you did, that you might not ever think to ask them questions that would lead to these specific answers.
I would have no problem being rich, but I would hate being famous. Not that I go out in pajama pants that say FABULOUS on the ass or anything, but if I did decide to go running in a baseball cap and hoodie I wouldn't want it all over the cover of People. Rich, on the other hand? I'll take me a cool couple of million and spend a few years traveling.
Traveling has always been sort of a hobby of mine. This was made easier by the fact that I have always worked/dated/knew people in the airline industry. Flying first class for years for free sure makes me not want to buy a coach ticket.
Favorite US place to visit: New Orleans
Favorite foreign place: London
Dream trips: Morocco, Australia, Vancouver, Mexico City, Costa Rica, Germany, Ireland
I love forensics shows. I would sit and watch an all-day Forensic Files marathon, if such a thing existed. Oh, Court TV. I've learned so much. Like never, ever to commit a crime and expect to get away with it.
Butterflies freak me the hell out. As do spiders and other crawly, bug-type organisms.
I thought about a variety of options before I decided to go to grad school for my Library Science degree: Art History, Urban Development, Translation. Then I realized, the library is where my heart is.
Sometimes I think I would have gotten into grad school even if I was a terrible student simply because my interviewer couldn't take his eyes off my boobs.
I drink coffee and tea like no one's business. Right now I'm digging on the Rishi Organic Fair Trade Masala Chai. I also drink what feels like a gallon of water a day, iced tea when I think to make it, and diet soda when I think to buy it.
I used Crest Whitening Strips this summer before a wedding and my glowing white teeth hurt for a month afterwards.
I've wanted a puppy for a while now- I'm thinking French bulldog, Chris is thinking Italian greyhound. Stout or sleek? We'll see who wins out!
Currently reading: The Green Glass Sea, by Ellen Klages.
Just finished: Avatars: So This Is How The World Ends, by Tui Sutherland (amazing, by the way).
Next up: The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls (for the book club!) Will be the first non-young adult book I've read since Running With Scissors.
I managed to avoid the Netflix snare until someone gave me a month-long gift certificate. Now I can't stop updating my Queue with ridiculous movies that I would never drive to Blockbuster to rent. Currently: This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Next up: Wimbledon, with Kirsten Dunst. (C's pick!)
I presently have accounts on myspace, friendster, facebook, hi5, flickr, picasa, blogger, wordpress, and photobucket, and I kind of hate all of them.
I enjoy writing, but am a very harsh critic of my own stuff. Conversely, I'm much more likely to write if I think there are people out there waiting to read my stuff.
I am a Guitar Hero savant, but am unable to learn to play a real guitar. Secretly, I think I was meant to be the bass player in a White Stripes-esque band. Not with my brother, though, since I don't actually have one.
Have one younger sister. Sometimes I have to wonder at her sanity. Like when she sends me 18 emails a day in all caps saying things like, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHY IS NO ONE WRITING ME BACK? I'M MAKING TACOS TONIGHT, WANNA COME OVER?"
I'm only at 22? My lord, 100 things is a lot.
Stores that I find I cannot avoid: Target, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Ikea, Border's.
Stores that I wish I could frequent more often: DSW, H & M, J. Crew, Abodeon, Jasmine Sola, REI, Banana Republic, Anthropologie.
Stores I never want to set foot in again: Wal*Mart, Home Goods, Building 19 3/4, Furniture World, Bob's Discount Furniture.
I have a bit of a library supply fetish. Not in a kinky way, more in a "Oh my god, I get to spend how much from this catalog at 47% off?!" kind of way.
I love taking photographs but I'm terribly amateur, especially compared to C and pretty much all my friends. Am taking steps to learn more about apertures, ISO settings, and the like, but like I said- I'm my own worst critic.
I'm fairly athletic and I love team sports, as long as the competition doesn't damper the spirit of playing. For example, I love playing Ultimate Frisbee, as long as we're not actually keeping score and no one gets hurt- say, kicked in the head, or knocked out. I also enjoy loner sports like tennis and racquetball. Basically anything with eye/hand coordination, I'm on it.
I'm usually full of good cheer and smiles which makes me a candidate for any "Likeable Librarian" awards that might be going out. However I have, on occasion, been known to have a bitchy side as well. Who doesn't, really?
I like to make fun. This includes friends, family, co-workers, random idiots, the government, the disabled, the abled, old people, people that slip on ice, people that slip on banana peels, celebrities, middle schoolers, and most of all, myself.
I like Mexican food an awful lot.
Ditto on the Indian food.
I wish my job included more hands-on tech stuff like building the school's website. I should be careful what I wish for though- it appears as though all of the tech duties will fall to me next year and that includes an inventory of over 200 computers and printers. Blah.
My student loans each month cost more than my car payment and insurance combined.
I hate dishwashers. I feel like I'm doing extra work with the loading and unloading, plus they always come out spotty, then I have to clean them myself anyway. Washing dishes can be very Zen-like for me.
The worst chore is folding laundry. I'd rather clean the toilet than fold laundry. Even if I can distract myself with Forensic Files or my ipod, I still hate it.
Gosh, this is taking me forever. Hope you're not all bored to tears by now. If you've made it this far.
I'm a fairly excellent cook. If only I could hire someone to come clean the mess afterwards.
I started reading when I was very young. I'd make up words to go along with the pictures, until finally the words and the pictures matched up. No one's been able to tear me away from books since.
I hate the term "hipster".
I love the term "emo", but only because I like the way it sounds when I say it. Emo!
The last time I went to the dentist I thought he was going to ask me out on a date. This was made more humorous by the dual facts that A) he had a newspaper cutout on his wall of him with a mullet, circa 1993, and B) he told me I needed a root canal.
I love zombie/vampire movies, but I hate horror movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Saw. The Grudge gave me nightmares for a month.
My sister is also deathly afraid of movies like The Grudge- and happens to live out on a secluded lake. I like to devise ways of scaring her, like standing outside her living room window at night and moaning like that scary thing in the movie.
In our house, Tuesday used to be pizza day (like in the Ween song). Now it's Wednesday night, to coincide with Lost. Pizza:Lost::Nachos:Super Bowl
Like that? I rocked the SATs.
I'm fluent in French, and have a decent working knowledge of Spanish and Italian. I also took a Latin class in college (worst class I've ever taken, hands down), and I've taught myself a bit of German from some audio discs from the library. I'd love to learn Arabic.
I know more than most average non-Jew about Judaica and things like keeping kosher due to my matriculation at a university that boasts a whopping 65% Jewish population. I would make my roommate teach me Hebrew and Yiddish phrases and then bust them out at parties. Yeah. Good times.
My university had, quite possibly, the least amount of partying known to college campuses worldwide, save for maybe some Mormon schools. For real, I was telling my sister about a BYOB frat party I went to and she said, "What was it- Bring Your Own Books?"
I can't stomach reality television, not even for a minute. I can feel my blood start to pound in my temples when I see things like My Super Sweet Sixteen and that show with Nick Carter's brother and all the screaming white trash girls. Similarly, I hate American Idol, that show where they build houses for poor people, and anything where they ask you to text a vote.
I will admit to watching snippets of Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance, but only for the flashy dance bits.
How is this only half over? Painful.
There are a couple of great kids in my school, I'd love to analyze their parents to see how they made them turn out so great.
There are a couple of ridiculously bad kids in my school, I'd love to analyze their families and then do exactly the opposite with my own children.
I waver between wanting kids of my own and not wanting them. Biology is a strong force to reckon with though; I may just give in eventually.
I have very strong feelings on literacy advocacy and encouraging students to read. Sometimes this gets me in trouble with the people who feel that #2 pencils and machine-read tests are the keys to academic success.
Getting a big box of new books at the library makes me giddy with excitement.
I still watch cartoons.
I love Harry Potter. Love it. I also love Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy- let's hope when the movie comes out this summer Nicole Kidman doesn't ruin it too badly.
Valentine's Day is coming up and while I have previously eschewed the holiday, I don't think I'll mind so much this year. For reals though- if you don't want to get smacked, do not give me Conversation Hearts.
I work roughly 180 of the 365 days in a year. Last year I took the whole summer off and spent the majority of it in Rochester, NY. This year I will be finding myself some part-time employment. Oh yeah, so if you know of anything in the Boston area, drop me a line. Preferably something not involving tweens.
Speaking of vacation, only a week and a half to go before I have one full, glorious week off! What are my plans? Well they'll probably include a whole lot of nothing, but I'll save my pontifications for a later post.
I love the smell of books in the morning.
I love giving good book recommendations.
I love getting comments on here.
Currently listening to on my iPod: the new Shins album, Wincing the Night Away
Currently ordering for my library: Guinness Records Book 2007, the new Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book, and the World Almanac for Kids 2007.
Currently being shipped to my library: an assortment of graphic novels. I obstensibly ordered them for the kiddos; that's not to say I won't be the first person to check them out. Librarian perks- you know how it is.
Ha. 69.
I currently have a Master's degree plus an additional 18 credits. When I hit 30 credits, my pay scale jumps another $4,000. You can bet I'm working on that- hence the classes like "Guitar in the Classroom" and "Beginning French".
I like craft projects and flowers and rubber cement and ribbon and wrapping paper.
I never use spell check. It's more a bad habit than plain vanity, I always re-read everything I write about 50 times before I print it, anyway. But I also kick ass at spelling and grammar, so I don't worry about it too much.
I am highly competitive in the fields of air hockey, skee ball, Mario Kart, Scrabble, DDR, and all gaming in general.
I love the beach and being near the ocean. Summers in Maine are some of my best memories.
I also love the mountains, including hiking and picnics.
Oh, and the city too. With it's rush of people and drama.
I do not love strip malls. Or Central New York. Or southern Georgia, where the cooks have guns in the waistband of their pants at the local Waffle House.
This is taking forever.
I just came dangerously close to spilling an entire Nalgene bottle of water onto my computer keyboard.
I once had a high school biology teacher throw a dictionary at me. She was evil and gigantic.
I then made up the anthem: "What's the AP Bio cry? Eat my Twinkies or I'll die!" It caught on. She only knew of the first line, but it's actually printed in my yearbook.
That was pretty much the extent of my rebellion in h.s. I was kind of a goody two-shoes.
But man, I hated her.
She used to tell us stories about how her husband's brains were leaking out of his ears and how she adopted some boy who was in high school already.
Once we had a lab that involved estimating and she handed out big bags of tiny little beads. This girl Courtney swung one of the bags around, causing an explosion of beads all throughout the lab. Our fearless teacher dove onto the ground, under the lab benches, her sizable bottom wiggling all around in her attempt to grab every last estimating bead. I can still see this image in my brain like it happened yesterday.
I got a 4 on the AP English test and a 1 on the Bio.
Our physics teacher invented the rubber bumper on cars and drove a Mercedes to school every day. He died before I could take physics.
When I think back on my high school days I feel a general fondness, but also a sense of bewilderment that I ever accepted my conditions there and went along with it.
One of my friends from high school became a nun.
Before she left for the convent, she sent me a letter saying she would pray for me and my family. I laughed quite a bit, imagining her praying for me in her bare little cell in Tennessee.
Then I laughed some more when she said she hoped we could visit when she came back in May, imagining us out at TGIFridays with her in her nun habit that she sewed up herself.
Nuns are hilarious. From a distance. Up close, they're scary.
Almost done!
I'm never doing 100 Things About Me again, so I hope you enjoyed this one.
I mean, if I knew it would take this long, I would've just done 50. Or 25, even.
I should have posted some pictures as a couple of the 100 things. Maybe I'll do some kind of photo meme- a project for the future.
There can't possibly be anyone reading this far. But if you are, you deserve an award. Maybe I'll mail you something.
I have to get to work now. Libraries wait for no blog.
Thank you, thank you.
Fin

I'm Changing My Title To "Coffee Bitch"

2007-02-06T05:58:00.000-05:00

Somehow, some way, every time I decide to run out for coffee on my 20 minute lunch break word leaks out and I end up getting 12 very complicated orders ranging from small non-fat soy chais to grande caramel lattes with extra caramel, whipped cream, and Splenda. Seriously, once someone even drew a diagram for me to bring to Starbucks to show the barista with a coffee to milk ratio- I could actually see her muscles contract while she tried to refrain from rolling her eyes at me. And if she had spit in that coffee, I wouldn't have blamed her. Then I have to walk about 8 blocks with the coffee sloshing around into the cardboard holder, which brilliantly falls apart when wet.

Also, there are at least four different coffee places within a five minute walk from me. And while I prefer the tiny, local place with the delicious plain coffee, I never get to go there. Why? Because everyone else wants Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts. And then I get the disappointed puppy dog face when I put my foot down and tell them I'm going local. "Weeell.... ok. I guess I'll get something from there," they mutter.

Well hey, don't let me put you out.

Then, after writing down all their insane orders, printing out copies in triplicate, walking (on my lunch break!) to the farthest possible coffee location, explaining said insane orders to the hapless baristas, re-explaining them, correcting them, filling the appropriate amount of milk/cream/half & half/soy/non-dairy creamer into each cup, carrying them all back to school, trays in each hand... then I get to deliver them to my co-workers in their rooms, like I'm some sort of Coffee UPS.

What it comes down to? I'm a sucker.

Maybe I can build myself a secret exit under the school that pops right up in the back room of my fave place? Hmmm... definitely something to look into.

TGIM

2007-02-05T05:14:00.000-05:00

I will never understand how people can hate their jobs, yet every week they muster up the energy to propel themselves towards inevitable misery. I mean, if you know you hate where you work, how do you resign yourself to getting ready, folding yourself up into your car, and driving yourself to what you know will be a horrible experience- every day? I love my job, and it's still tough to wake myself up at the crack of dawn to get in here. And I still wish the weekends were longer. Every weekday I look forward to Friday, and there's never been a Friday night in my life when I thought, "Damn, when's it going to be Monday morning? I can't wait!"

Anyway, my point of that long-winded ramble was that once again, the weekend flew by and here I am. Cataloging books. Printing tax forms to send in to the IRS. Looking up new graphic novels for the kiddos. All very normal- but still, I wish it was Friday.

My weekend was lovely, packed with friends and fun stuff. On Friday night, two Rochesterians graced our presence at our new pad. We decided on cheap (but delicious!) burritos for dinner and thought we'd head over to the Sky Bar afterwards for some beer and music. You can't get much better than that on a Friday night in a wintry Boston. Of course, it was raining/snowing, and we weren't entirely sure where the Sky Bar was, and then when we did find it it was in the ghe-tto, not to mention almost $10 to get in for a wretched girly cover band that assaulted our ears even out on the sidewalk. So we all piled back into the Element and drove ourselves on over to the Independent, which was quieter, nicer, and had more classy beers for those beers snobs among us (namely, me).

Saturday was the big one year anniversary of our first "date" for me and C. Rather than spend a gajillion dollars on each other, we decided to roll up the anniversary and Valentine's Day into one package- I bought him tickets to this show and we're going to make that a Portsmouth Weekend, complete with brewery tours and a walk on the beach. I know, we're too cute.

So on Saturday we opted for low-key and took the T over the New England Aquarium for an afternoon filled with penguins, jelly fish, and 650-lb turtle named Myrtle. After we were all fished out we decided to walk across the freezing park over to our favorite sandwich establishment, The Parish Cafe. On our walk, I joked about the time that we went there and the whole place was closed for renovations. Our laughter died as we approached the empty cafe and saw the sign in the door: "Closed for renovations". We recovered quickly- mostly because it was useless to stand crying in the doorway, our tears turning to little icicles, but also because by that point we were starving. So we quickly decided on Diva and had ourselves a delicious Indian meal. We went home to watch a movie in the warmth of our living room, and it was a cozy night all around.

Sunday was, of course, the Super Bowl, and since New England was already out I had little interest in watching anything but the commercials. I did find some amusement in Prince's performance, namely when he was silhouetted on the big white sheet and his guitar head made him look like he had a giant bifurcated wang. Oh yeah, and the fact that he wore an Aunt Jemima do-rag in the rain. After that, it was all downhill. Even the commercials were only semi-funny, so we split. I didn't actually find out who won the game until this morning, when I checked CNN. I also discovered that I didn't win on any of the Super Bowl squares I had purchased so hopefully on Friday afternoon.

Ah well! Another weekend, another week. Hope your Monday is jazzy.

Friday ABC

2007-02-02T05:32:00.000-05:00

Despite my lack of communication with the outside world, I have somehow managed to book myself pretty solid the next few weekends. Three weekends in a row I have out-of-towners coming to visit, plus this weekend there's the quarterly pub crawl (this one's in Southie- how Good Will Hunting of us!), the Super Bowl parties, and the ice skating. Thank goodness for weekend distractions, though- after this week, I could use about 50 vacations.

Anyway, it's Friday and I'm feeling vaguely "meh" about posting today, so I figured I'd give you what you've all been waiting for: an alphabet meme! I know, you can thank me later.

A - Available or married? Why are these the only options? Happily taken.

B - Best Friend? C

C - Cake or Pie? Ice cream cake

D - Drink of Choice? Iced tea, coffee, diet Coke

E - Essential Item? Lip gloss, books, my computer

F - Favorite Color? Blue

G - Gummi Bears or Worms? Bears- they bounce, you know. Here and there and everywhere. And they have high adventures that are beyond compare.

H - Hometown? Danville, NH. Represent.

I - Indulgence? Naps, afternoon movies, expensive hair cuts

J - January or February? Oh winter- I'm an equal opportunity hater.

K - Kids & names? N/A

L - Life is incomplete without? Family, Chris, friends, laughter, books

M - Marriage Date? N/A

N - Number of Siblings? 1- younger, sister, Alexis

O - Oranges or apples? Depends on the season- oranges in summer, apples in the fall

P - Phobias/Fears? Butterflies, clowns, spiders, disease, loved ones dying

Q - Favorite Quote? Want me to pull out the Bartlett's? 'Cuz I've got one. Right here. You know I'll do it!

R - Reason to Smile? Why not? It's better than frowning.

S - Season? Fall

T - Tag three people! The first three people to read this. You know who you are!

U - Unknown fact about me: I originally wanted to work as a translator for the U.N. when I finished college, and almost applied to the Monterey Institute of International Studies. I would've studied Arabic and French.

V - Vegetable you hate? Green peppers

W - Worst habit? Spending too much time on the computer

Y - Your favorite food? Pizza, cinnamon raisin toast, burgers, chicken and rice, salad, spinach pies

Z - Zodiac? Sagittarius, the Archer