Tuesday, November 28, 2006

More life lessons

It does me no good to own a multimeter in order to test batteries when the batteries in the multimeter are dead.

I'm off to the store.

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Does my Master's degree come with a lifetime gym membership?

Forgot this little tidbit from a few days ago.

Librarians should be sexier
According to the marketing guy in the article, we should use "good-looking" staff, recommend "racy" titles, and not use the word "librarian" any more. No idea what the hell we're supposed to use instead, though ("information choreographer" anyone?).

Hey, I consider myself a very hot (or "hott") librarian! It all depends on what you consider sexy, after all. Okay, I don't wear lipstick (I end up licking it all off...) and I can't fit into my black lace bustier right now, but the cone-shaped cups made funny dents in my blouses anyway, so no big loss. But watch out when I take my bun down!

Hummina, hummina. :-)

Aaaaaaaaa!!!!! [deep breath] Aaaaaaa!!!!

My nightmares have come true! Luckily, it wasn't me who was the victim. And it happened across the ocean in an entirely different country. But it was on a bus! Just like in my dreams! Waaay too close to (imaginary) reality!

Man arrested for cutting women's hair [and possibly murder]

I'm going to go have a small anxiety attack now.

Things I Did Not Anticipate...

...When I Decided To Keep Cats As Pets, Number 5,347:

Needing to know how to get cat barf off my MacBook.

Sigh. I'll spare you the photo.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Woman, know thy limits

I knew there was a reason why I'm not a good student. I just don't know my limits! And all the knowledge pours out of my head after awhile.

Also? Party Girl is even funnier when you're in the middle of getting your LIS degree. Best line: "He's not a dick, he's a patron."

Thanksgiving was great; good friends, good conversation, good food. Except that since I don't have any leftovers (Kathleen and Shea provided most of the meal) beyond the pumpkin cheesecake which I made, I now have a powerful urge to roast an entire turkey.

And now back to my silly little paper.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Someday I'll get the hang of this...

Good reason why you shouldn't wait until the last minute to turn in an assignment? Because that way, when your internet connection goes down 15 minutes before your paper is due to be emailed in, you don't give yourself a panic attack in the ensuing rush to figure out what just is wrong with your home network this time.

The paper was successfully turned in just 2 minutes ago, but 'm going to go bang my head against the wall for a bit, just to remind myself NOT TO DO THIS EVER AGAIN. Yeah, that'll work.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Maybe I'll start a new annual tradition...

Well, Winter Solstice...comes but once a year, and these folks want to make sure that everyone celebrates together. On December 22 join in the Global Orgasm.

The goal is to add so much concentrated and high-energy positive input into the energy field of the Earth that it will reduce the current dangerous levels of aggression and violence throughout the world.

And here I thought that by joining the Free Hugs movement I'd be doing the world some good. Looks like I was setting my sights too low...or not low enough.

Seriously, check out the Free Hugs video on You Tube. It's really sweet.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

W00T!

Yay! I finally got my wireless internet working again after over a month of wired-only access! Woo hoo! Now I can play Kingdom of Loathing...I mean, studiously read my class forums and perform important research, all from the comfort of my living room.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Hey, could be worse. Could be raining.


How Will I Die Quiz

How Will I Die Quiz

You will die at the age of 110

You will after a long battle with wasabi addiction

Find out how you will die at Quizopolis.com

Quizopolis


Thanks, Mark. Yet another thing to distract me from my 501 homework. And now I'm also hungry for Japanese food...

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Like Grad school isn't hard enough already

I'm going a leeetle bit crazy tonight. Not only was the system down for 3 hours after my first available time to register, the one class that I have been looking forward to for over a year is already full!!!

I have enough credits that I should have been able to register earlier than tonight, but since I can't actually transfer those credits until I've been a "real" grad student for this semester...

Gah! Bah!

Yes, I wrote to the teacher and GSLIS admin to get on the waiting list. Oh, it's for the Cataloging II class with Bial, in case you were wondering.

So far, I am registered for the following:

502 Libraries, Information, and Society (2 credits, required course)
490 Storytelling (2 credits)

...and that's it. I need 10 credits to get my tuition waiver. Cataloging II would've given me another 4 credits, still leaving me to find another class. I've already taken Reference, Cataloging I, and Museum Informatics. This semester I'm taking 501 (other required course), Intro to Networking, and Collection Development.

Damn it! I'm off to look at the listings for the umpteenth time. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Edited to add:
Here are two other classes I've thought of, but they are offered at exactly the same time. Which to take? This doesn't help!

590ILE Indexing & Abstracting with Frank Kellerman
590MD Metadata in Theory and Practice with Jerome McDonough

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Boobage! And nicely rounded dipthongs.

Heard on the quad a few weeks ago:

"Save the boobies!"

[long pause]

"Support breast cancer research!"

--------

I was giggling all the way to the bus stop.

So, boobs. I like boobs. I like other women's boobs (whoops, there go all my female friends, running off screaming). I especially like my very own boobs, which I have never named, nor ever will. Just thought that needed to be said. Ahem.

And if I had known about this before the deadline, I might have participated. My political career is already over before it began due to some questionable photos from years ago, so why not contribute (and I have a lot to contribute, har har) to a good cause? Oh well, there is always next year.

What? You want to hear more about tits? Don't mind if I do.

Unlike many young girls, I was never really embarrassed about my breasts. Apparently, this attitude was present even before I can remember. My mother recorded in my baby book that I pronounced the word kitties as "titties" for years (that damned k sound) and that I often embarrassed her in public with my observations, once by pointing to the bras in a department store and shouting, "Look Mommy! Boobie holders!" I'm sure that you can blame my father for that phrase. When I was going through puberty I was very shy about lots of things (ie., normal), but as far as I can recall never much about my breasts.

Shopping for a bra *was* an ordeal, but mostly because of the fuss surrounding it (and the fact that my father is can be an automatic source of embarrassment in public, especially when one is an adolescent and hates being seen with her parents anyway) and because my parents were very frugal when it came to clothing. I only got bought basic white, boring underwear, even when what I really wanted was the "fancy" set with the days of the week on them. Sigh, poor young me. Not that I have much in the way of fancy underthings today, but that is more because of size restrictions, and a horror of the tiny bows that manufacturers seem to think that a bra is just not a bra without. For example, Victoria's Secret doesn't routinely carry larger sizes in their stores; you have to buy them through their catalog, and shopping for bras via catalog is an exercise in futility.

[Quick aside: the day I started writing this was "Love your body day." I can't say that I *totally* love my body (that's been a struggle since before I was an adolescent), but the hair, eyes, and boob parts are nice. They could be a bit perkier (boobs, not the other parts), but then they'd also have to shrink quite a bit. Win some, lose some. Anyway.]

Other great moments in boob history:

I distinctly remember my paternal Grandmother deciding that the reason I wouldn't wear dresses was because I was embarrassed about my breasts. I still have no idea why she came to that conclusion. I didn't like dresses because I was too much of a tomboy. I could never sit "properly" in a dress and was always showing off my underwear to the world. Hey, at least it wasn't lack-of-underwear, like my little sister. We made many an emergency trip to KMart to buy underwear. And I didn't willing wear a dress until I was in my late twenties.

In honor of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday: I once had a (male) roommate who would shout "turkey's done!" whenever I walked through the house and it was chilly. Figure it out for yourself. He frequently got things thrown at himself.

When I first moved back to Chambana in 2003 I didn't find (or really look for) a job right away. I took the opportunity to "let it all hang out" (How about "Free the boobages!" for my own personal slogan, Mark?) for almost 9 months, only wearing a bra when I was going to a nice restaurant or when the clothing demanded it. Some tops just don't fit right unless there is major lifting and separating involved. And architectural trusses.

Let's see, what else? My mom will kill me for this one: whenever she got dressed, she always put her bra on first. So now I have permanent images of my mother walking around the bedroom in a bra and nothing else. It is a wonder that I am as stable as I am today.

Did you know that in Ontario (and other areas) a woman can walk topless in public without being arrested for indecent exposure? And that there is an entire movement pushing for equal topless rights? Cool. And no, I'm not a nudist, nor am I ready to bare my breasts to the world (guess I'm not *that* comfortable). Only select friends get the pleasure of encountering the magical shirt that comes unbuttoned if I simply breathe wrong. It's been a hit at numerous dinner parties where I've forgotten that I was wearing that particular top. Luckily (I think), I was always wearing a decent bra.

Enforced procrastination

You know, my (required, and therefore hated) LIS 501 class is making it very hard to focus on our database assignment. We are "reverse engineering" LibraryThing, creating entity-relation diagrams and a paper explaining it all. And this requires me to poke around LibraryThing in order to figure out how it works.

Do you know *just* how many books I've either ordered or put on my "to read" list or gone to Wikipedia to read more about, just today? Gah! I really want to sit down and catalog my personal library (I already keep track of what I've read using LT, but haven't gotten around to adding in books that I actually own), but it has to wait until the semester's end so that I can get this project (and others) done!

And to boot, I actually like creating and playing with databases and was looking forward to this assignment. Hell, I get paid to do that at work. But I really don't think that LibraryThing was a great example for the poor people in my class who have had little or no previous experience with databases. I mean, I consider myself an intermediate database creator and *I'm* having problems with the assignment.

This class really is a bonding/hazing experience for all of us proto-librarians.