Silly Guv!

Notice the file name at the end of this URL for a Yahoo news item about our wacky Gov. Blowjobovich: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081210/ap_on_re_us/illinois_governor_scheming_for_dollars

It's unbelievable. Given a choice between laughing and crying, I'm picking laughing. You have to laugh.

Still more #$@%ing snow

branches up close
Originally uploaded by Tishoopaper

I ran out and took one more picture in the snow. Remind me in a couple of weeks that I once thought all of this snow was ethereally lovely and photo-worthy...

Shovel it

It's a winter wonderland here in Elgin, thanks to the white frosting of snow we got last night. I took some photos of the snow, which you can see here:
Snowy scene, 12/6/08.

Some of the photos look like they're black&white, but they're not! It was just the pale light, the white snow, and the silhouetted trees. It's a gorgeous palette of pale silver and gray.

Food Of The Gods--The Cheesy Potato Casserole With Sour Cream and Cornflakes

2 lbs potatoes (about 5-6 medium to large potatoes)
1 10 oz can cream of chicken, celery, or mushroom soup
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 pint sour cream
2 cups sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
2 cups crushed corn flakes

Peel potatoes and boil in pot of water until potatoes are firm (usually if fork goes into potato easily, they are done). Set aside to cool. Note: You can use 2 lbs frozen hash browns, too. Just thaw them before using.

In the meantime, butter 13x9 casserole dish and then combine together in a separate bowl the soup, onions, salt, pepper, sour cream and cheddar cheese.

Shred potatoes when cool and then put them into the buttered casserole dish. Pour mixture of soup, onions, etc. over the potatoes and top with crushed corn flakes.

Melt 1/2 cup of butter in a pan and then pour over the corn flakes.

Bake in preheated 350 degree oven for 45 minutes.

Yes, yes--I know it calls for cornflakes! And a can of cream of something soup! And a whole stick of beautiful butter! And you could go all out and use frozen hash browns! But oh, oh! Sublime, utterly sublime! Truly transcendent on the tongue! And yet, it defies the laws of good or gourmet cooking, not to mention the guidelines for nutrition and health. This should be called Heart Attack Potatoes. You food purists out there who sneer at recipes calling for a can of some sort of "cream of" soup? You should try this! You will be transported to heaven on light, buttery, cheesy, creamy wings.

I'm burning up

I would burn down my house if only Denis Leary would come rescue me! The word "hot" is definitely overused, but let's face it: firemen deserve the term! On Rescue Me, the scorching Denis Leary plays Tommy Gavin, an FDNY firefighter struggling to cope with the aftermath of 9-11. He and the rest of the guys at 62 Truck are doing the best they can to come to grips with the tragedy, which means they're suppressing their emotions and thoughts by drinking to excess, talking to ghosts, popping pills, brawling, destroying their families, and getting laid whenever they can. What, you thought they would be noble? As they often say on the show, fuck that!

Rescue Me is one of the best shows on TV. The fifth season begins spring 2009. I watched the previous 4 seasons on DVD in a 2-week binge. To tide one over, there are 10 minisodes available on crackle.com. I'm going through complete withdrawal, having watched every episode available, and all extant video clips in the known universe. God, that Denis Leary is entrancing...mmmmm....

Going green when you're seeing red

As our corn casseroles baked side by side, Bluestem and I drank coffee in her lovely solarium and chatted about menstruation. Yes, everything was cast in a pink glow and in soft focus, and we both wore long flowing dresses and floppy garden hats...

My male readers, please bear with me, and maybe you'll learn something about your dear sisters. We are indeed stronger than you.

There are some things about having my period that really irk me. #1 is having to spend somewhere around $6--$7 for a box of pads, and I go through a box each period, now that I've turned 40 and my female parts are rioting. Pads are wasteful; I don't even want to think about the landfill I contribute to each month. I am not the kind of person who enjoys destroying the environment, but I also want to get through my period with relative comfort and ease, and by that I mean, I don't want to kill anybody. I've thought about using reusable pads, but the thought of washing them over and over doesn't appeal to me. So I continued to buy box after box of Stayfree, literally bleeding my money away.

Then Bluestem told me about the Diva Cup, which is a silicone cup that you insert in your vaginal canal that catches your menstrual flow. In other words, it's a little plastic thingie you cram into your cooch which catches all that icky blood flowing out. It's reusable, it's easy to use (after you get used to it) and it's a green alternative for the red time of the month! I am dying to use it! I ordered one from South Coast Shopping. It was $22.34 including shipping and handling, so I will have recovered the cost in just three menstrual cycles. I can't wait to try it! I will of course blog all about it!

Give thanks for this corn casserole!

It wouldn't be Thanksgiving without this corn casserole recipe. My mom started making it many years ago, and we have to have it at Thanksgiving and Christmas or else. One year for some reason we forgot to make it at Christmas, and that was the year we all started drinking heavily and badmouthing one another and it took a double batch of corn casserole the next year to repair our broken family relationships.

Ok, not really. But it is awfully darn good, and I wouldn't be surprised if this corn casserole won a Nobel Peace Prize someday. Here's the recipe:

1/4 C. butter (half a stick)
1/4 C. finely-chopped onion
1/4 C. chopped celery
1/4 C. chopped bell pepper (different colors are pretty!)
2 Tbsp. finely-chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
2 Tbsp. flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp paprika
1 C. milk
1 15 oz box of frozen corn
2 eggs, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease or spray an 8x8 baking dish or medium casserole dish. In a large skillet, melt the butter. Add onions, celery, bell pepper, and parsley. Cook until onions are soft. Add paprika and salt. Stir in flour, and keep stirring until bubbly. Slowly add milk, constantly stirring. Bring to a boil. Add corn, stirring constantly. Take off heat and fold in eggs. When thoroughly mixed, pour into prepared baking dish. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until knife inserted in center comes out clean. You may want to undercook if you're planning on reheating it the next day; then it won't be dry. This can be made ahead of time for holidays and potlucks. Double this recipe for double the deliciousness! If you double it, don't increase the amount of salt. Double everything else.

I made a double batch of corn casserole with my dear friend Bluestem, quite the venerable blogger herself. This is the second year we've gotten together to make our Thanksgiving side dishes. We portioned out the corn casserole and baked them together but in two separate dishes, and that worked out beautifully! However, when we set them on the stovetop to cool, one of the dishes was still boiling and bubbling, because we forgot to turn off the element! We were wondering what the hell was going on, and when we discovered the element was turned on, we were shocked! My friend has a new stove and it's hard to remember how to turn it off. Ooops...

As the casserole baked, we sat in her lovely sunroom, drank coffee, and chatted intimately about menstruation. That post coming right up...

Lo, e'er I bore thee

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person in the history of blogging to inflict photos of their new haircut on their blog. Most blogs are cesspools of self-indulgence and this one is no exception. Oh, and I also got my eyebrows waxed! A waxed brow does nicely frame the eye.

Fur & Furniture

"A lady, without a family, was the very best preserver of furniture in the whole world."
--Jane Austen, Persuasion.

I'd like to re-write that: A single lady, with a cat to whom she's unnaturally attached, is the worst preserver of furniture in the whole world.

Judge not, lest ye be an Election Judge

I earned my combat pay on Election Day serving as an Election Judge at a local Voting Center. It used to be called a precinct; now it's a Voting Center. However, the sexy new name does not make you forget that you're spending 17 hours in a cinderblock Drivers License Facility in Elgin, IL.

The day started at 5 a.m. I am by my own admission one of those annoyingly chirpy Morning People. But getting up at 4 a.m. is cruel. 4 a.m. is an UnGodly Hour. The Pope should declare the hours between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. UnGodly. Yes, people who have had little sleep the night before are responsible for setting up all the voting machines and keeping the democratic processes of our fair republic humming along. Once we set up the machines, put up the posters in the obligatory if not official languages of English and Spanish, and set up the laptop and the Judges Booth Control computer, we were good to go by 6 a.m. when the polls opened. There was already a long line of voters waiting at that UnGodly hour!

That's Kane County Clerk John A. Cunningham in the photo there. He would like for you to know that his nickname is "Jack," and that's in quotes. Because let's face it, "Jack" is really an exotic, whimsical nickname for someone named John. He's a friendly sort though, and pays the judges $145, which works out to less than minimum wage per hour after a 17 hour day.

I worked with 7 other judges in my Voting Center. Some of them remember voting for Abraham Lincoln, having decided to do so after he handily trounced Stephen A. Douglas in the debates and then appeared in some humorous sketches on Saturday Night Live. One woman went to the prom with Rutherford B. Hayes. Another mentioned the really good fish sandwich Jesus split with her. There's something about being an Election Judge that attracts the aged and infirm--oh yeah, you get to sit on your ass all day! But now there's a lot of technology to master, and the old judges are nervous. There was only one other judge who was competent, and we could've run the joint ourselves. Everyone else moved at a pace best described as "a spritely glacier." It was incredibly frustrating to watch someone who voted against the Louisiana Purchase slooooooowly turning Every Single Page of voters applications to find the right one; the concept of slicing down the middle and then cutting that half in half and then flipping quickly didn't mean anything to the alphabetically-challenged. When voter applications were issued on clay tablets, I wonder if these people moved any quicker...probably not.

The whole rainbow of humanity voted in this election. It was amazing to see young and old, black and white, able and disabled, intelligent and idiotic (ok, mostly idiotic...) stepping up to the booths. Some of the elderly voters wanted help, which is ok as long as they fill out an affidavit saying they needed assistance. One grandma told her grandson who was helping her that she "didn't want no black man", and another grandma snapped, "I don't want that man with the droopy jowls!" There were moments of great joy as well as great comedy, I have to tell you...

At any rate...however glacial...we all bonded in a spirit of democracy, shared our snacks, and dealt with all the suckers who were "registered" incompetently and incompletely by various drivers license facilities (they should abolish Motor Voter registrations! So many people never made it onto the rolls! I felt like I was disenfranchising someone every time I pointed out they weren't registered. And the number of people who had moved out of the area three years ago and thought they could still vote in their old precinct was astounding! We need to educate the public about voter registration, especially when you need to re-register, like if you move or change your name, and the number of heartbreaking problems at the polls would drop.)

I was completely brain-dead and laryngitic by the end of the day. I collapsed when I got home--I think I fell asleep in the middle of IMming a friend. It was the fastest 17 hours of my life! Ultimately it was an incredible rush, to be helping people who wanted to vote--I have no interest in politics, in running for office, but voting is such a privilege and I'm truly humbled and awed by the process, and grateful that I could help out. The only downside is, I now hate freakin' old people.

My mind's eye

There's a vast distance between the artistic vision of my mind's eye and the pedestrian reality that results from my creative endeavors. The scarf I'm knitting, the soup I'm cooking, the photos I'm taking--I see a glorious possibility in my mind, and then reality falls short. Why is that? Is that a measure of true artistic talent, if you can realize what you see in your mind's eye? If that's the case, then I fall woefully short. But I keep trying.

This photo I took this morning, of what in my mind's eye was a breathtaking sherbet and a dramatic silhouetted tree. Um, it's just a pic of a tree.

In my mind's eye, I pictured glowing candles reflected in the glass, beacons of light in the autumnal dark. Ok, I took pictures of little blobs of something:

A friend said that sometimes when you don't have your camera, all you can do is remember the moment in your mind's eye. The mind's eye really is the finest camera, paintbrush, pen, and clay. What we see in our minds never fully translates to the work of our hands, but there is joy in trying to duplicate what we envision. It's just that Reality is such a harsh and exacting mistress!

Many moons

Ever wonder what all the full moons for each month are called? We all vaguely know about the Harvest Moon, and maybe some of you geniuses out there have heard of the Hunter's Moon, but there's more! The Farmer's Almanac has a nice list of full moon names, complete with a description, of each month's full moon. The names are poetic and evocative--I love the Pink Moon for April and the Strawberry Moon for June!

I couldn't resist coming up with a list relevant to my world, however:
January: Dead Battery Moon
February: Still Fucking Winter Moon
March: Green Beer Moon
April: Tax Moon
May: Garage Sale Moon
June: Construction Moon
July: Fucking Humidity Moon
August: Allergy Moon
September: Still Fucking Construction Moon
October: Cross-Dressing Moon
November: Two Evils Moon
December: Cold As Hell Moon

Nice rack!

I have a nice rack, if I may say so myself. I don't have too much trouble strapping it in, though sometimes I need someone to help me. Once my rack is adjusted, it's ready to go places!

It holds two bikes when it's strapped onto the trunk, without marring the finish of my car. It's really a nice rack!

Today was one of those perfect October days, with a deep periwinkle sky and bright sunshine. The leaves are starting to turn, and there were ruby-red and pumpkin orange trees brilliant against the clear sky. It was the perfect day for a bike ride! I went to Moraine Hills State Park for the first time in my life, and it was great biking! Moraine Hills, which is on River Rd. just north of Rt. 176 in McHenry, is a little gem of a state park. It has 10 miles of crushed limestone trails which are really packed down well, and you can bike or hike or just meander as you wish. The trails are loosely arranged in concentric loops, with a couple of little side loops here and there. It would be pretty difficult to get lost in Moraine Hills--the trails are clearly marked and most are one way, so just follow the big huge arrows of helpfulness. If you're something of a rebel, the compliant nature of Moraine Hills may not be to your liking. But for you rebels, you can ride around Lake Defiance, which rather defiantly dried up several years ago and is no longer a lake.

The trails are rather hilly--a grueling workout on a bike! Grueling in a good way though, like your heart is about to jump out of your ribcage and run for the nearest park bench. I managed to shift accurately and made all of the hills, an accomplishment for me. I won't be the King of the Mountain Stage in the Tour de France anytime soon, much less the Tour de McHenry. But I was pretty excited about going up and down all those little hills! The scenery is really pretty--lots of forested areas filled with dappled sunshine--my close friends know what a freak I am about dappled sunshine--can't get enough of that dappled sunshine!

I forgot to take my camera, though. I'm irked about that. Oh well. Instead of posting photos here, I'll just offer to mime the whole ride for anyone who asks.

Which Circle of Hell is your workplace?

If your daily routine includes being cast into pits of burning sulphur stoked by winged, remorseless demons, you may be in Hell, specifically one of the Circles as outlined by Dante in his masterpiece The Divine Comedy. See, long before The Office, workplaces were inspiring black comedy... Surely Dante was a beleagured employee at a soul-crushing workplace back in his day; he simply hits the nail on the head in his descriptions of Hell.

It's almost 3 p.m. now, and time to pick out which Circle of Hell you're in!

1st Circle: reserved for Virtuous Pagans, i.e. those ass-kissers who pretend to do work at home or volunteer for crap, but really they do jack. You're force to listen to them, based on your cubicle's proximity in this Circle.

2nd Circle: reserved for those who lust, i.e. those who are in danger of getting slapped with a sexual harrassment suit. The lusters can be amusing, as long as you realize they're not raunchy funny like the movie Wedding Crashers, but just raunchy boring. Still, for being one circle below the Virtuous Pagans, they're a bit more tolerable. Nobody likes an ass-kisser.

3rd and 4th Circles: reserved for Gluttons and the Avaricious, respectively. I work in a public library where people greedily snap up every single DVD off the shelf. Many days I toil in these particular Circles, trying to satisfy the insatiable lusts of these slavering Demons. If you work in public service or retail, chances are you know these Circles well.

5th Circle: reserved for the Wrathful, i.e. that one coworker frothing at the mouth, and you're afraid they're going to go postal any day now. Or perhaps that wrathful coworker is you.

6th Circle: reserved for Heretics, i.e. anyone who dares question a company policy....hmmm....we've all been in this Circle, have we not? More brimstone, please!

7th Circle: reserved for the Violent--see how this is starting to look like your workplace?

8th Circle: reserved for those who commit fraud, with a special inner circle for Politicians!

9th Circle: reserved for Traitors/Betrayers, i.e. management.

Ow! Those pitchforks are really pointy!

Cooking For Engineers

Cooking isn't fun unless you can be really analytical about it, or at the very least, anal. That's why I love Cooking For Engineers! And look, there's a handy tool for making conversions right at the top! You can always trust an engineer to have the right tool...for making calculations, that is. Speaking of engineers and their tools, I have heard that engineers make better mates than dates...

Check out the 92 comments on making mayonnaise! And don't forget to kiss the cook, and kiss an engineer! They could be one and the same!

Cold mornings and hot coffee

There is no greater joy than a cup of hot coffee on a cold morning. Even Oskee agrees. He likes his coffee with lots of cream and a generous pinch of catnip. I drink mine black.

This summer I bought some yard furniture at local garage sales, enough to furnish my "outdoor salon." Please say that with a fruity French accent: sah-LONH. It's fancier that way. I like sitting on my $12 glider with a good book and my great coffee. Unfortunately, the mornings now are so dark; I have to wait for the weekends to enjoy my hot coffee outside.

Might I add, there is no greater annoyance than forgetting to turn off the fricking coffeepot...

I propose a more suitable name...

...for Lean Cuisine. Since one of those little meals doesn't satisfy anyone over the age of 3, it should be called Mean Cuisine. To paraphrase their slogan, "It's not just cuisine, it's mean..."

Fit to be Thai'd

My Parental Unit came over today for a Nice Visit. After their arrival, announced by Dad intoning, "Someone could trip over that!" they made themselves at home. Dad spent 25 minutes in the bathroom, during which time Mom pawed through all of my belongings--I hid my wine, condoms, vibrator, and Obama cap, but forgot about the potato chips, and they were the most controversial--all those trans fats!

We went to Thai Town for lunch. Oddly enough, for people who think that salt and pepper is "too spicy" and lasagna is "ethnic food," both of my parents like Thai! Dad always gets sweet-n-sour pork, so he might as well be eating in a Chinese restaurant. Which may account for the fact that he all of a sudden bellowed, "ARE THEY TALKING CHINESE?" "Um...no, Dad...that would be Thai..." "IT SOUNDS LIKE CHINESE! HOW DO YOU KNOW THEY'RE NOT TALKING CHINESE!" "Um...because they work here and they're wearing freakin' Thai Town aprons?"

Across from us there was another Adult Child of Parents. He was suffering through a litany of all the foods his parents consumed on a cruise ship which Did Not Agree With Them. At one point, we grinned in solidarity and cast rolled eyeballs at our respective Parental Units. We could've traded tables and our Parental Units probably wouldn't have noticed, and we wouldn't have improved our individual situations any.

At least this wasn't like the last time I had lunch with my parents, when Dad announced out of the blue that "Your mother and I haven't had intercourse in several years...."

And I wonder why I'm a social misfit???

Tie me up, tie me down

I wonder if I have it in me to be a bibliotrix, or dominabrarian? A cross between a librarian and a dominatrix, that is...

Loserville welcomes its newest resident, the Male Slave. Male Slave is such a nice guy--handsome, witty, smart, cultured--oh my, he sings opera! Loves to hang out at Ravinia! Is familiar with the entire ouevre of Monty Python! He gave such good e--I was half in love with his written word. Sigh...

Then the librarian detective in me decided I should Google his e-mail handle, and that's when I discovered he was a Male Slave Seeking a Dominant Female on a BDSM site! For those of you who are not as informed as I now am, that stands for Bondage/Domination/Sadism/Masochism. (In the library world, BDSM might stand for Bibliographic Descriptors Standard Marc, but let's not go there.) Oh my...I was devastated, yet I couldn't stop laughing. This was clearly another hello from Loserville! I found out more about this man from his BDSM profile--more about his non-sexual hobbies as well as the sexual--than I did from his Yahoo Personals profile. "Oh, he likes board games! I do too!" I sighed, before reading about his experiences with a constricting chastity device. (He does write well, I'll give him that...) I sent him a very nice e-mail telling him that I Googled him and discovered more than I really wanted to, and I just couldn't see myself whipping someone into submission. Besides, I think I may have some submissive and masochistic traits myself; I do work at a public library. The real dealbreaker was the fact that he was so stupid and naive that he used his email username on the naughty website! He couldn't come up with an alternative username, like SlaveBoy1972? Dumb dumb dumb...

Well, to wrap up this story, I guess there was a reason he wasn't replying to my e-mails as quickly as I hoped he would: he was probably tied up. Whatever his proclivities are, it just ain't my cup of leather.

Now as I stare out my window at my lawn that needs mowing, I wonder if perhaps I was too hasty in calling things off with him: I could certainly use a Male Slave around the house...

Thai me up, Thai me down

Hot, spicy, and it makes you sweat! It puts you on the brink of suicide! I'm talking about Thai food. I'm also talking about something else, and you'll have to see my next blog entry, with a homophonic title that pairs with this one, to read about that!

So I get home from work and I'm in the mood for Thai food, but I don't want to drive all the way to Randall Rd. or Schaumburg Rd., the closest good places. Sorry, I'm not a big fan of Bangkok House in downtown Elgin. I decided to mix up some hot sauce, soy sauce, and little bit of peanut butter, and voila! Fake Thai! I can Thai one on whenever I feel like it, for dirt cheap! I chopped up some green onions, scrambled an egg, boiled up some noodles, and mixed in my sauce for an ersatz Pad Thai. Not too bad for a post-work-I-need-to-go-grocery-shopping-soon kind of meal.

If I had a coat of arms...

...it would say, "What doesn't kill me, makes me more sarcastic."

Cheesemaking and Permafrost On Mars

Remember the Iowa Test of Basic Skills that you had to take if you were a grade-schooler in Illinois in the 1970s? You know that one reading comprehension part where you read a bit about something or other and then you had to put in order the key points?

Remember reading about Cheesemaking and Permafrost On Mars? Now, why in the hell do I still remember all the steps involved in cheesemaking, and various facts about permafrost on Mars? Could it be...

A conspiracy? Yes, it's a conspiracy! I bet the school district wanted to implant us with one practical survival skill/food-making process in case of nuclear holocaust. Only problem is, let's hope there are some cows left after a nuclear war so all of us implanted with the cheesemaking process can put our tenaciously-held knowledge to use. We were implanted with the permafrost on Mars stuff in case the nuclear holocaust was so bad we'd have to colonize Mars, and permafrost may hold an abundant supply of fresh, potable water, according to the short excerpt I read. We weren't filling out those fecund ovals with our #2 pencils just for the sake of gaining a percentile of glory for our school; we were being implanted with valuable survival skills! At least that's my theory. If anyone has a better explanation for why we had to read up on cheesemaking and permafrost on Mars in the first place, and you can explain why the hell after 30 years you remember all this crap, let me know.

In the meantime, I am actually interested in making a farmer-style cheese at home, and you know what? I know what to do with the rennet, thanks to the ITBS!

You can hear the ocean in every piece

Have you ever wondered why coworkers bring back saltwater taffy to share with everyone even when their vacation destinations are completely landlocked? How big is the saltwater taffy industry anyway? Does it have a long and proud tradition of some kind? There must be a microhistory written about Saltwater Taffy. If there isn't, can we persuade Mark Kurlansky of Salt and Cod fame to write it?

Gail Borden Online

What was interesting about Gail Borden Online was discovering I'd already participated in a lot of the activities as a writer/blogger/performer/victim. ;-) I have done book review clips for YouTube, I blog weekly on the Good Reads blog, and my turn as a Confederate widow at the Lincoln Gala you can view on Flickr. Or right here...



I also am one of the friendly, chatty people answering questions on Ask Away Illinois, manning the Spanish queue once a week. So I guess I was Web 2.0 for a while without realizing it! For me the most fun was creating this blog, and as you can tell, I've had a lot to say and I will continue to express myself through this humble little blog.

I would like to do more podcasting. For one thing, some of us look fat, but nobody sounds fat. :-) We can offer book reviews, bibliographic instruction, menus of services, all sorts of delights via podcasting, and nobody needs to moan about how fat they look on YouTube. ;-)

Just eat the #$%@ing strawberry already

If you ever want to waste time on a professional level, i.e. make sure you never, ever get those hours back in your life, spend some time trolling the message boards on the Weight Watchers site. You will meet such an array of obsessive-compulsives, whiners, overachievers, underachievers, self-righteous Pharisees, and the just plain boring.

The people who obsess endlessly about whether they're going to eat another strawberry and need the support of strangers in cyberspace to "talk them down" are my favorites. It's a strawberry--just eat the fucking strawberry! It's a lovely little bit of fruit, pure sunshine and sweetness encapsulated in a petite red, luscious flesh. But some people think a strawberry will put them over the edge. On the other hand, these are the same people who will eat an entire tub of fat free Cool Whip and not bat an eyelash. Never mind that the stuff is most closely related to jet fuel on a molecular level.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with sarcasm: please don't consult my blog for scientifically-accurate information. All I hope to do is amuse. No, that's not true--I really don't care if you're amused or not.

Save Gas, Burn Ass

In my effort to reduce my carbon footprint as well as my caboose, I have been biking to work. I've been at it for almost two months, and I'm really enjoying it. Granted, the five minutes before I leave for work I'm in agony: "Ooooh, I don't feeeeel like riiiiiding to work," I whine to Oskee. (Whereupon he looks at me and points an accusatory paw at aforementioned fat ass.)

There are a couple of really fun hills to swoosh down on the way to work. On the way back home, there are a couple of killer hills...so I take a different route home.

My new motto is: Save Gas, Burn Ass! Or you could say, Burn Ass Not Gas! Either works.

All the hottest hits!

Here's something fun to do when you're burning up with a fever. Whatever your temperature is, find it on the radio! Right now I'm at 101.9, which I believe is The Mix in Chicagoland. Enjoy their live stream or Eric & Kathy in the mornings. I'm going to try and find some Aleve.

Social Media Networking

I signed up for the Good Reads social media networking site. I created a profile thusly listing some books I vaguely remember reading. I may keep up with posting what I've read, but I have no desire to interact with other readers online. Why waste time reading about what other people are reading when I could be reading a book? ;-) However, the library could use this site to post lists of books by genre or reading taste.

Now, I'd like to get back to my book... I'm reading Don't Try This At Home, about famous chefs' culinary disasters. Then maybe I'll cook something. ;-)

Wiki wiki woooo!

I wead about wikis wecently--hee hee! I learned how to post to one and edit a page. I submitted a title to a bibliography on women's history via the library's Tapestry of Freedom wiki. It wasn't too difficult.

I visited Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki. I liked the wealth of info available on readers advisory. Other sections were bursting with good info as well.

The "wibwawy" could use wikis in a variety of ways. They could be used for collaborative book lists, focus group discussions, online suggestion boxes, special programs, etc. Weally, we could work with wikis awot.

Signed,
Dat Wascawy Wabbit

Zuviel Punkte

I have struggled with Weight Watchers off and on. That's in addition to struggling with my weight. Weight Watchers itself is a fire-breathing dragon one must conquer in order to bend it to your will. There are umpteen and eleventy-one rules and edicts to follow, and you have to religiously keep track of everything you put in your mouth.

Sunday I went to Germanfest in Milwaukee. Es war spass! Ich habe Milwaukee gern! The festival area has Real Toilets every 50 yards, which rates highly with me. I got my German on--rocked out to the oompah brass bands (which provide employment for tuba players everywhere), drank delicious beer and ate lovely pretzels and potato pancakes. I also bought a flower wreath for my head, which you can see in this unfortunately accurate photo of me.

So this is the problem: German food is zuviel Punkte! Practically every single morsel of German food is over 10 points! You can't get away with under 30 points per meal! It's all pork and potatoes, pork rolled up and fried up and fried again and slathered with pork and some more pork. Would you like pork with that? I had the vegetarian special--beer, pretzels, and potato pancakes. Beer and pretzels go together to form a complete carbohydrate, I believe. Actually, the lowest point item and probably the most nutritious offering at Germanfest was the beer. I calculated I ate 11,314 points on Sunday. I wonder what German Weight Watchers meetings are like...poor miserable souls trapped in a land of fried starch. Oh well, these are my people and I love them.

Now if the Dominicans can ever get their act together and throw a festival, I can satisfy the other side of my family tree...

I would like a Vodka Sting...

...but I'm here to report on vodcasting and podcasting instead, via Gail Borden Learns, which I've slacked off on. So here goes:

I listened to a scintillating podcast on Uncontrolled Vocabulary about Sandy Berman. What I would like to do with podcasting at the library is offer book reviews. I do the occasional You Tube book review clip, because here at GBPL we already do vodcasting, but I'd much rather go audio instead of visual, as I feel I'm not especially photogenetic (not a typo or malaprop--nobody in my family is photogenic and hasn't been for generations--it's an inherited disability and there should be a foundation for people with photogenetic disorders. ;-) ) I could handle pods instead of vods, unless it's vodka. ;-)

Loserville proclamation

Attention: Residents of Loserville

Expecting your date to be attired in a sports bra, bike shorts, and stilletos (a.k.a. FMPs) is unreasonable. Especially on a first date. There is no way any sane woman would want to don on that sort of apparel, especially for your sorry non-Armani-affording ass.

However, we will don on said apparel for Girls' Night Out....only my nearest and dearest friends, who understand every cell of my trembling, poetic soul, will see me in a sports bra/bike shorts/Fuck Me Pumps. It all goes back to Emily Dickenson.

If for any reason you're starting to do some math: yes, most of us are only 4% heterosexual. The 96% that's "unspoken" will wear sports bra/bike shorts/absolutely killer orgasmic shiny pump pump pumps with knife-sharp 4" heels for our girlfriends. Because they appreciate absolutely killer orgasmic shiny pump pump pumps with knife-sharp 4" heels. And wild rice. A real girlfriend buys you wild rice when she's on vacation up north.

City streets

The streets of Loserville are paved with no intentions...

Loserville dress code

The residents of Loserville often approach me with a request for a mandatory dress code. This dress code would pertain to women only. Women should be attired in either jeans and a t-shirt, baseball cap optional (but only if you have a sexy little ponytail to pull through the opening in the back of the cap--otherwise, most Losers just assume you're a softball-playing dyke, so don't bother) OR the little black dress (LBD.) You see, the citizens of that sleepy burg of Loserville think that women can go from jeans/t-shirt to LBD in 30 seconds or less.... Never mind that the typical Loser, as the natives of Loservilles are known (Loserpudlians is the more archaic term) is not going to squire a woman to either a baseball game, where jeans/t-shirt/baseball cap would be appropriate--he's a Loser--how the fuck is he going to get Sox tix?--or a wedding/other gala event where the LBD would be the thing to wear. The typical Loser is garbed in bad shorts and a sloppy shirt, but somehow feels he has the right to command women to don on the fantasy-inducing garment of his choice. Ladies, eschew the jeans/t-shirt/baseball cap combo AND the LBD (which you can wear on Girls' Night Out and receive compliments from your ever-loving, trustworthy, back-you-to-the-end girlfriends) and instead wear your plaid flannel pajama bottoms and ratty Fightin' Illini sweatshirt* should you encounter a Loser. All you're going to do is watch The Bourne Supremacy for like the 5th time in a row, so you really don't need to dress up. And you'll be sitting on the couch, so you don't really need a baseball cap, and jeans aren't flexible enough for you when you need to scrunch up your legs.

Until the good citizens of Loserville agree to array themselves in Armani suits (formal) or James Dean white t-shirts and jeans (and only if you look like James Dean), then the request for a mandatory dress code for females will be tabled. But don't despair, precious little Losers--your City Manager will tell you that most everyone is at their happiest attired in their pajamas.

*Goes without saying--sweatshirt must have image of banned Chief Iliniwek emblazoned upon it...

Liquid brain

Without coffee, I have no personality.

New city manager of Loserville

I'm proud to announce that I have formally accepted the position of City Manager for Loserville. It formalizes a job I have already been doing for the past couple of months. There's little compensation and no benefits, but it is a great public service. Like most city managers from whichever burg or metropolis, I'm not actually from there or even live there; I just have to deal with its citizens on a daily basis.

I think I found the Grand Marshall for the big Loserville parade! This guy truly exemplifies the citizenry of Loserville...he is stunning. I didn't even have to seek him out; he came to me and right away I knew he could lead the Loserville parade.

Drink my Kool-Aid!

My friend Sara and I were talking about lame headlines we've seen on Yahoo profiles. Lines such as, "Part teddy bear, part social butterfly." That line is one of the examples given in the oh-so-helpful advice article "Punch Up Your Profile."(That's the article which encourages people to lie.) So if you're so non-creative that you have to appropriate a line from the Yahoo help pages, you're pretty much a sorry mutha.

So then out of the blue Sara says, "I just want someone who will drink my Kool-Aid."

I immediately seized upon that and exclaimed, "Oh my God! You have to use that for your own online profile! Drink my Kool-Aid! You want a man that when the chips are down and you're wondering if you have control over him, will drink your Kool-Aid!"

We howled with laughter over that one. But I still think that would make a great online dating profile headline: Drink my Kool-Aid!

Fun Tour de France fact

The average cyclist in the Tour is 6'2" and weighs 147 lbs. I am a foot shorter and outweigh them by a good 20 lbs.

Those boys are like sleek gazelles on bikes...and maybe for the sake of my self-esteem, I need to start following sumo wrestling. Or women's pro softball.

Weather or not

For the best-looking weather radar, you have to check out the National Weather Service's Weather Underground website--animate it for even more fun! The NWS is using a new digital forecasting database these days, and Weather Underground is a taste of that for us weather laypersons.

6 degrees of 50

He's not Footloose anymore--he's 50! Kevin Bacon is 50! 6 Degrees of AARP! Unbelievable...

Oh wait. I'm 40 now...tempus fuckit!

Happy Holidays?

The 4th of July is a federal holiday. You don't have to say "Happy Holidays," you can call it what it is. It's ok to say "Happy 4th of July" or "Have a great 4th." You're not going to offend anyone, unless there are some people out there who find ordinal numbers offensive.

A Pair of Haiku by Oskee

I meow in order
to comprehend the chaos
that humans create.

To commune with the
Realm of the Unseen, one must
stare blankly at walls.

--Oskee Wow Wow Calhamer

More red flags than May Day in Moscow

The latest yahoo I have run into is the King of the Yahoos--you can't beat this story! He said he was an internal auditor for Shell Oil (and you know how I feel about oil companies--they're Satan's henchpeople, rapists of the environment, instigators of modern wars.) He was supposedly "in London" this week auditing the London office, and since London is 6 hours ahead of Chicago time, of course his e-mails and chats showed up at "odd hours." (Like, when his wife was asleep?) His photo showed a good-looking man with dark hair and a big smile. He said he was 6'2" and made over $150K (doesn't impress me, but I'm sure that was designed to impress a fair number of gullible women.) Oh, and tragically he lost his wife and three children in an auto accident in Arkansas two years ago! This is some guy with whom I e-mailed and chatted briefly, before I shut him down for the following reasons:

1. Couldn't write very well--certainly not at the level of someone who has a high-paying, sensitive job at a major corporation. His main form of communication was repeating "lol" or "yeah" over and over. That's a big red flag!
2. Said he also owned his own oil company which bought from wholesalers and sold to others, and he apparently bought from Shell--that's conflict of interest if you're an auditor, so I think that's bullshit.
3. Wanted to know when was the last time I had sex and how many men I'd been with but didn't seem to want to know anything else about me. That's just plain icky! So I decided to change the subject and asked him about his parents. See #4.
4. When I asked him if his parents were still around, said he grew up in an orphanage...
5. When I pointed out that he sounded like a character in a book and that I didn't believe him about #4, and what else has he done? Train elephants? Played on the 1980 Miracle hockey team? He shut down and I haven't heard from him since. Which is fine with me. I deleted him from my contact lists and from my search results.
6. Couldn't Google him because he had a really common name, but apparently doesn't show up in anything related to Shell Oil either. Hint: if you want to mess with a librarian, be prepared for the fact that we will thoroughly research you...
7. I think his photo is just some random male catalog model he scanned in, some good-looking dark haired guy in a black shirt. I won't be surprised to see "him" in the next Kohl's flyer I get in the mail. Still, whoever he is, he's a good-looking guy. ;-)
8. If you're supposedly conducting something as sensitive as an internal audit for Shell, how can you be e-mailing and chatting with strangers you've met online? Wouldn't you be concentrating on your work and unable to have access to anything that might be an outside influence? Hellooooo?

That's a lot of red flags and bullshit, doncha think?

Tapas, the little dishes of Spain

Last night my Entire Family, meaning not just me and my parents, but additionally my sister and her husband, went out for dinner. We went to Emilio's Tapas Bar in Hillside. My sister and brother-in-law are in town this week--they live in Texas in a small town named Seguin, home of the World's Second Largest Cement Depiction of a Pecan. Another town nearby built a bigger cement pecan, a huge blow to Seguin's civic pride.

But I digress...going out to dinner with my parents is usually an exercise in saintly patience, as I grit my teeth through all sorts of circular conversations with my mother while my dad sits and munches things he shouldn't have because of the Heart Attack Two Years Ago. Therefore, it was such a pleasant surprise to actually sit down with everyone and have a wonderful time at a restaurant! Unheard of!

Tapas are the little dishes of Spain, as the menu helpfully described. Back in the old days in the old country, one enjoyed a glass of manzanilla, Spain's famous sherry. But one wouldn't want flies in one's manzanilla (not italicized this time because you're familiar with the word now...) so a little plate would guard the sherry. Some brilliant Spaniard decided, "Why you put plate on glass to stop flies if plate could have little food on it?" And thus tapas was born!

We had the chickpea puree with breadstick slivers, hot goat cheese in tomato sauce, dates wrapped in bacon, a mini beef tenderloin with roasted veggies, salmon crepe, potato salad made with aioli (the famous Spanish garlic mayonnaise, and for which Spain should win some sort of Nobel Prize, something...) grilled portobello mushrooms with manchego cheese, and all sorts of other little delights. It was fun to pass the little plates around and sample everything, and everyone had a Good Time, even my mother, who didn't complain about a single food item as being Too Flavorful (though it was, ironically...Mom doesn't usually like Flavors in her food.) Dad, who didnt' say much as usual, enthusiastically declared at the end of the evening, "That was fun." The biggest honor was when Mom and Dad said they would go back again, an honor usually reserved for family restaurants. So a good time was had by all!

Remember Mold-O-Rama?

Remember those wacky waxy animals you could watch being made in a space-age machine with a bubble glass top at the Brookfield Zoo? Turns out those machines are still around! I was beside myself when I went to the zoo yesterday with a friend and her two little girls and discovered that Mold-O-Rama is still in existence! A link to my childhood is preserved, and as long as Mold-O-Rama is there, I am a child at heart.

The process that creates those animals is injection molding (which I remember doing in 7th grade Industrial Arts to a less-amazing effect, though my mom still pretends to this day that she adores the napkin holder I made.) You watch the machine's molds close, and then the mold splits, and you see your blue dolphin or orange lion or white polar bear appear, and then the best part: this spatula appears to slide your mold off of the machine and into the receptacle, where you lift the little door and CAUTION! WAX MAY BE HOT! which indeed it is, but you scoop out your animal while risking third-degree burns anyway, because you're so excited to get your little dolphin into your waiting hands!

Brookfield Zoo has changed since the last time I've been there, which has to be over 20 years now. It's all Pottery Barn decorated--the Australian wombat had a tasteful terra cotta pot tipped on its side in his habitat, for example. There's all sorts of interactive crap for kids, too. Heaven forbid you should look at a real Mexican Grey Wolf when you can scoot a little metal wolf on a grooved table which flashes digitized facts as the wolf goes by so you can learn all about its habits, or you know what, let's just scoot the little metal wolf around on the table and skip that pesky, time-wasting learning part! It's funny--nobody really wants to experience things through their little naked eyes; let's look through a giraffe-shaped periscope at the giraffes, or pull down a little flap to spot a leopard instead!

My favorite animals are the Big Cats, of course, distant cousins to my adored Oskee. It was eerie to see the Big Cats doing things my Little Cat does: a snow leopard was licking a paw, the lion was bobbing his head up and down as he napped, and the tiger was pawing at the walls, bored out of his mind. Oskee does all of those things.

It was a gorgeous day outside and I thoroughly enjoyed strolling around the zoo. The world is filled with amazing creatures, whether you look at them straight on or through a little digitized display unit that kids bang around on. ;-)

Serving suggestions

On my bag of tortilla chips: Dip ideas--bean dip, sour cream, or your favorite salsa. Just dip & eat.
My question is: Has our collective IQ sunk so low that we can't figure out how to chip-n-dip? Say it isn't so, baby...

Koi meets girl

Did you know there are quite a few koi in the Elgin area? Koi is the expensive version of carp you actually want to keep alive, because they swim around in your backyard pond and help you show off for the neighbors. I was taken aback at how many people have ponds in their backyards! Today I went on the annual garden walk, traipsing through nicely-manicured lawns in search of unique and interesting ideas for my garden. What I noticed were koi. One koi, a large white one with orange spots, swam up to the edge of the pond where I was standing and stared at me for a few seconds.

Aside from the koi, I wasn't really overwhelmed by the gardens I saw, except for one that had been on the garden walk a couple of years ago. I was impressed with that one then, as well as today. It's a huge yard with lots of garden beds, and it is a riot of color! The front has purple and pink and red, created by delphinium and clematis and roses and daisies and poppies, and the shadier back has gorgeous hosta and tall trees. There's even a Japanese garden, with the raked sand, connected to the deck in the back. It's amazing, it really is!

The rest of the gardens were ok. A couple were too eatsy-neatsy for my taste. There's not a lot in bloom this time of year, which was a disadvantage. I didn't see anything new and outstanding, as mentioned before, but the old favorites such as coreopsis and hosta were doing well. Still, for the most part, people obviously worked hard at their gardens and presented lovely spots of suburban outdoorsiness. It's not like my yard is garden walk-worthy, so I do admire the efforts of others. My garden is a likely candidate for the "Gardens of Shame" walk, if there is such a thing.

Online dating profiles deconstructed

In the emotionally-debilitating exercise known as online dating, various stock phrases and cliches come up frequently. I'm not talking about the "loves long walks on the beach" kind of cliche (and why can't I insert an accent over the e? I would love to know...so if anyone out there is well-versed in the subtle art of diacriticals, show me how!) These are the phrases that make me want to tear my hair out, if not my heart:

1. Looking for a woman who "takes pride in her appearance," "takes care of herself," "likes to work out as much as I do," means "I want someone thin! Fatties need not apply." Everybody checks off "slim/slender/athletic/fit" as their Ideal Woman. Isn't that nice. Never mind that the guy is paunchy, beer-bellied, wide-hipped, puffy, or doughy himself. Y'all want "slim, sexy, vivacious!" What the hell does "vivacious" mean anyway? Someone who gushes "Awesome!!!" at everything the guy says? See also #4.
2. "Isn't into drama"--in other words, shut up about everything.
3. 5'10" is the new 5'6". 5'8" is the new 5'3". Basically most men are over-reporting their height by at least 4 inches (do we get those extra inches anywhere else?) So why are men getting all snarly about women being heavier than they say they are? I can always lose the extra weight, but you're not going to sprout up another 5 inches at the age of 42, buddy!
4. "My ideal woman would have a Great Sense of Humor!" Oh, this one does make me laugh! That means, "You should laugh at MY stupid jokes and gaze adoringly at me while I attempt to crack wise." I'm beginning to think a lot of men out there don't really want a woman with a sense of humor. That would scare them shitless.
5. "Fun-loving yet responsible." I think that means, not so fun and not so responsible.
6. Don't say you own your own home when said home is under foreclosure. Likewise, don't tell everyone you're a college graduate when you dropped out of Harper College. (And as my friend Terry pointed out, you don't drop out of community college; you just stop going.)

I could go on and on. To be honest, I'm tired of this blog entry. It's a waste of time to whine about online dating. I'm beginning to not care. Not care at all. File under W for Whatever!

Cherman enchineerink

The other day I bought two knives I've had my eye on for quite some time: the vegetable paring knife and small serrated knife by Wuesthof, which makes some of the best knives in the world. Wuesthof is located in the bucolic burg of Solingen, Germany. Well, maybe it's not bucolic--it has a steel mill--but I like to picture it as bucolic. Bucolic with great belches of toxic smoke. But I digress....

I am very fond of Wuesthof knives and I'm collecting them. For the last couple of years my sister has given me Williams&Sonoma gift cards so I can go buy knives. I have the chef's knife already. The knives are very sharp, but the best part is the balance--how the blade rocks back and forth as you speedily chop things. You will chop like a professional chef if you have a good knife! And I like my German engineering, no doubt about it! These knives are the kitchen tool equivalent of Porsche, BMW, Audi, and Mercedes.

So what do I do using my new vegetable paring knive for the first time? I nearly slice the tip of my finger off! Blood started billowing out, all over my half-chopped onion! It was like a scene from a slasher movie--I think I know how to do some low-budget special FX now...

I can't figure out how to insert umlauts either...Wusthof technically should have a u with an umlaut over it, and I've been faking it by adding an e after the u, i.e. Wuesthof. For those of you who do not know what umlauts are, they are those two little dots on top of certain vowels in Motley Crue, Haagen Dazs, etc. They add that European flare to made-up words. I'm not sure why the Germans like them, but they are kind of cool, umlauts are!

My new toy

Oooh, it's so pretty! My Garmin Nuvi 260 GPS! Now I can be sure that I am Officially Lost, because the GPS tells me so. I think it is amazing, and almost like Latin American magic realism, that the GPS knows exactly where I am now and where I am going. (Considering I don't know where I am and where I'm going, both literally and metaphorically speaking...) On the downside, it's more Soviet-style to have a satellite following you that knows exactly where you are and where you are going...

The GPS is very easy to use. The Garmin has a snotty voice telling you when to turn and intones the names of the streets. When you veer off the prescribed course, the Voice sighs (inaudibly, but you know she's sighing) and mutters, "Recalculating...recalculating..." The Voice doesn't suffer fools gladly, but suffer she must. It works with a touch screen and the menus are easy to use. The maps are colorful and bright and so pretty! Did I mention the Garmin Nuvi 260 is pretty? It really is! Pretty! Shiny! My new toy!

del.icio.us and filling

Aside from a spell of trouble trying to figure out where the dots go in "del.icio.us" (del.ic.ious.? de.lic.io.ous? Whatever...) I managed to post a bookmark to this site. If you want to gather up bookmarks on a specific topic and then also allow yourself the ability to search certain topics using tags, this is a cool little site.

But my main concern with a lot of Web 2.0 is, there's just too much out there. I'm kind of web anti-social, when it comes down to it. I don't want to know what other people are doing. I do my own thing, I communicate with friends that I know in the Real World, and that's that. I don't feel the need to reach out in cyberspace. It's very difficult for me to feign interest in web 2.0. Blogging is interesting, but I blog for myself and I don't expect anyone else to care, nor do I care about anyone else's blog. I'm not keen on sharing photographs on flickr--and how many photos of my cat do you really want to see? Seriously, you don't want me flickring.... ;-) Honestly, I am not going to be using del.icio.us very much. I'm not all that interested in what other people bookmark and how they describe their sites. I can do my own searches, thank you very much. For a library though, we can set up various subject areas and list helpful sites--that would be a perfectly fine way of making del.icio.us work for us.

How ironic that del.icio.us is hard to type...it's not really a convenient site to look up...you almost have to bookmark it into your Favorites the "old-fashioned way" first!

Author Elizabeth Berg charms, frustrates

I could've sat and listened to her for three hours," said my friend after author Elizabeth Berg wowed the audience at the 'brary last night. Indeed, Elizabeth Berg was her usual charming and witty self, bringing both tears of laughter and that self-aware kind of pain, but mostly laughter, to our eyes. About 130 die-hard Berg fans listened with rapt attention to her wryly romantic story of 50- something Agnes pursuing an old "bad boy" flame while her steadfast "boring" husband Bill waits to take her out to dinner. The story, "Returns & Exchanges," is featured in her excellent new book, The Day I Ate Everything I Wanted. Berg read practically every last sentence of that story, except for the part right before the end when the old boyfriend shows up!!!! AAAAARGH!!!!! We were all left hanging, twisting in the wind of frustration! I gotta go buy the book! I gotta go check it out at the 'brary! That's how those authors get you... ;-)

The secret to Berg's appeal and success as a writer is her ability to capture emotions in words. Think of the vast array of human emotions, and how most of them are vague and indescribable. But Berg nails them with uncanny specificity. You read her novels and you think she's ripped a page out of your diary or overheard a conversation you had with a close friend or witnessed an argument with your mother. I could gush on, but perhaps you all would like to search our catalog for her books and check them out! ;-)

Berg resonated with her audience. I have to tell you, we are all of a type. Berg, who has lived in the Chicago area the past 8 years but has lived on both coasts, remarked that Midwesterners are the best kind of people. That's what she likes best about Chicago--the people. (And the hotdogs with the works!) Her audience was primarily women "of a certain age," though I think there were 2 or 3 Token Males in the audience (who looked like they were enjoying themselves, too.) Everyone wore sensible shoes--either Clarks or Bjorns, we noted. We were all there in our capris and cardigans, clutching our signed books and bonding with our book group friends. It was all much of a muchness. ;-)

When a reader asked Elizabeth Berg how she got started in writing, Berg admitted she was "blissfully naive" and thought she would be successful right away, that it would be easier than selling Tupperware, and what did she know. She bought a batch of magazines she wanted to write for, and started submitting short pieces and articles. She did say she probably was more immediately successful than most people are. With the publication of her first book, Durable Goods, Berg made the leap into longer prose. Her last novel, Dream When You're Feeling Blue, was promoted last summer when she visited GBPL for the first time.

Oh, Elizabeth Berg now has a website and a blog! She was very excited to announce that she was so technically-advanced! You can visit her website at elizabeth-berg.net and sign up for her newsletter, which has some truly delicious memorable recipes in it. Berg's publicist Bill says he remembers the newsletters by which recipe was featured in it. So that's how memorable her recipes truly are...

If you've never read any of her books, you should! Especially if you like realistic, character-driven books with a substantial amount of observational humor. Or if that's what your life is like... Berg is a wonderful writer and her down-to-earth, unassuming manner makes you feel like she's one of your girlfriends.You can probably tell I'm a big fan...it was my pleasure and honor to introduce her at the beginning of the program, too. What a moment! I was really thrilled.

Ok, blah blah blah. Better get back to work now...

Morning is broken, blackbird is squawking

It is an absolutely gorgeous May morning! A delicious breeze accompanied by golden sun chases away the memories of those cold depressing winter days...of April. I decided to unplug my laptop from its power source and go native, make a fresh pot of Swedish dark roast, and enjoy the smell of the earth and the lovely flowers in my yard.

The ground is soaking wet, I just ruined my Bjorns, I spilled my goddamn coffee all over the lawn chair,and there are fucking mosquitoes everywhere! It's 8:24 a.m. and I am miserable! But I will stick it out and "enjoy" this beautiful morning or get West Nile trying. The lyric poetry has left my soul, however. Now it's a test of perseverance, woman against the wild.

French silk pie

Oh my god...a slice of French silk pie from Baker's Square has 850 calories...that's like eleventy-one WW points...what have I done to myself?

Social nyetworking

I just signed up for a Facebook account as part of Gail Borden Learns. I did the bare minimum--I made up an imaginary friend, Ginger Schnapp. I didn't create a full profile, not even for this imaginary person, and I don't feel comfortable trolling around for friends. I really don't care for social networking--nyet to that! It creeps me out. I see 13 yr. olds masquerading as 21 yr. olds on myspace and that isn't appropriate. Those 13 yr. olds aren't being forced, either; they like to pretend they're 21 yrs. old and sexually active. Whatever!

I have plenty of friends in the real world, and would rather cultivate those friendships. It's bad enough that I feel forced to do online dating, which is emotionally debilitating, so I'm not keen on the idea of socializing in cyberspace.

I suppose a library could set up a myspace or Facebook account that would act as a portal and draw people to its website. Maybe it would attract teens who are on myspace and Facebook, although frankly, if I were 13 yrs. old and on myspace, I wouldn't be visiting the library--I'd be pretending I was 21 yrs. old and talking to bikers. I wonder how many teens would come to the library through social networking sites. Heck, they come to the library already to use the computers so they can pretend to be 21 yrs old talking to bikers! We've already got 'em! ;-)

Needless to say, I probably won't be remembering my Facebook user name and password...I don't really care either! :-)

flickring

As you can see, I have managed to blog some flickr photos to this blog. I had a bit of a mishap when the photos when to another blog, the library's Good Reads blog--they weren't supposed to do that! I found out signing in to a Google account is not the same thing as signing in with your gmail address, and the web got tangled as a result.

Photo-sharing on flickr has a myriad of uses. We can post tons of photos of our fabulous library exhibits, events, and departments. The library has already posted photos on flickr and I'm sure we'll continue to do so. I don't know if I'll continue posting photos personally; for one thing, I'm never going to remember how to log in and I'll always be afraid of uploading to the wrong blog... ;-)

Ribbons of Mass Destruction

Ribbons of Mass Destruction
Originally uploaded by Tishoopaper

The ribbon must die!

MVC-011S
Originally uploaded by Tishoopaper

Perhaps the war on string is unwinnable.

Happy Memorial Day!

Seems a bit inappropriate to wish everyone a Happy Memorial Day--aren't we all supposed to be mourning the nation's war dead? ;-) But hey, it's a long weekend, so fire up the grill and ice the beer and wish your friends and neighbors a Happy Memorial Day! I'm right there with you!

That reminds me of the time I went to Walmart, the Evil Empire, last Labor Day weekend. The cashier wished me "Happy Holidays" as I was leaving. Um...Labor Day is a federal holiday, with no religious connotations--you don't need to rephrase "Happy Labor Day" into more politically-correct terms! Labor Day is just Labor Day. Or is Labor Day offensive to the unemployed and we need to be sensitive about that?

Happy Memorial Day!

Garter stitch is very soothing

There's nothing more soothing than knitting in the garter stitch...k, k, k, k, k, k, k, over and over. You watch the loops turn into stitches turn into rows, and you don't even have to look at your hands, all you have to do is feel the wool slipping in between your fingers. I'm k, k, k, k, k-ing with a lovely fuzzy pink yarn. It'll just keep growing until I run out of yarn. It'll turn into a scarf for someone. I don't need to keep it.

That reminds me...I need to get my hands on Sally Melville's book about the knit stitch. She has designed really interesting, gorgeous garments with garter stitch, nothing else. That's elegance and simplicity. My life should be the garter stitch. Instead, it's a pattern involving some sort of twisted stitch that keeps repeating itself...and then it gets all loopy...

IM as I am

I just completed the IM Thing of Gail Borden Learns. (I almost typed "Leans" but I corrected myself.) I already use IM personally and enjoy it. Our virtual reference service through OCLC, Ask Away Illinois, is IM/chat-based, and I man that "desk" once a week. (It's nothing but 7th graders wanting you to cut-and-paste their homework for them! :-) )

We could certainly establish our own local IM reference service outside of Ask Away Illinois, for just our patrons. IM could also be used for more instantaneous communication in the building. It's easy and quick.

It's not right

You can't be a Sox fan and a Cubs fan both. That's biSoxual. You know you secretly lean one way or the other. I don't believe in biSoxuality.

Funny Times

Just got my new issue of the Funny Times! It's funny if you're a Democrat, not funny if you're a Republican. But since when is anything funny to a Republican? They've never really been on the Humor Train. The Funny Times has lots of great cartoons and features Dave Barry. You know, he's actually pretty trenchant in his commentary--I know, I know, you're thinking he's the guy who writes pages and pages of unfunny stuff about golf shirts or sandpaper. But he's different in the Funny Times--he's witty! The Funny Times is bimonthly, which means it likes both guys and girls. To subscribe, call 1-888-FUNNYTIMES (1-888-386-6984, lest you think the first number given is a text message...)

Fed me a line

Hmmm...I can't say I'm fond of RSS feeds. I signed up for the Gail Borden Learns blog and "Books&Authors" info from Hennepin County PL. I don't really need to consolidate my search for news in this way...I fear an onslaught of Updates that I'll wind up ignoring. I don't need to click on cnn.com every time there's an Update--I just click on it when I feel like it. I haven't missed a major or minor news story yet. But I'll try and give it a chance. I'm not sold, however. I think I've been fed a line... ;-)

The one convenient thing I discovered was, I could choose My Yahoo as my reader! It'll be nice to import the RSS feed into my personal e-mail. I have AT&T Yahoo as my at-home internet service provider. So that much was fine and dandy. I can't wait to unsubscribe at the end of the 15 weeks, though... ;-)

The Efficacy of Blogging

Ooops, I guess I don't read directions. I'm supposed to let you know how went my blogging experience. It was very easy to set up this blog. It's not going to be easy to get me to shut up, though...

The only thing that's confusing is where to click once you've created your blog, and you're signing back in. I tried it a couple of times and I think I have it down now...

I hope the rest of Gail Borden Learns is this easy! If it isn't, I'll emit anguished howls from my cube.

Books I've Read Which Made Me Feel Stupid

I really tried to understand these books, but I just couldn't. Professionally-speaking, I should've comprehended them and then gone on to recommend them. But I missed something. Anyway, here's the list of books I hate because they made me feel Stupid:

1. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
2. Beloved by Toni Morrison (Beloved's a ghost? Crap, I didn't see that coming!)
3. Ulysses by James Joyce (I think I have a problem with stream-of-consciousness...)
4. Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco (I don't remember the plot, but I remember the buzzing headache between my eyes.)
   

Who am I?

I could ramble on and on in an annoying existential sort of way, but it would be better just to list a few salient points about myself:

• I am a librarian in a medium-sized public library.
• I love to read, knit, and cook (so those things will take up this here blog, I bet!)
• I just turned 40, but I prefer to think of myself as $39.99 plus shipping/handling.
• I drive a Saturn. It's practical and reliable, just like me. It's cheap and plastic, just like me. It doesn't impress anyone, just like me.
  
• Yes, I have a cat!!!! You already bet your friends $20 that I have a cat!!!! Time to collect!!!