where have i been?

Well….

I’ve been quite busy gestating, giving birth to,  and mothering a new person.  Will I ever come back to this blog?  Maybe if she (aka the baby) lets me.   I am incredibly blessed.  Joy fills my heart.

baby & me

from my perfect home to your permanently inferior one

Since nothing says Martin Luther King, Jr Day quite like Martha Stewart, today is the perfect day to reflect on her wisdom.   Each and every month I devour her magazine’s sage advice and realize that yes, I can go even further down the spiral towards perfection and yes, I can spend even more money on household and kitchen stuff because without it, clearly, I am not a good person.

One new-ish feature in the Magazine, entitled From My Home to Yours, is penned by Martha herself.  I often read it out loud to my husband so that we can mutually proclaim, “Well, at least we’re not that intense.”  This column is by far the best glimpse of just how fine the line between perfection and instability really is.  Especially recently, as she seems to be on quite the roller coaster of emotions and domesticity.

December 2008: Cookies Wrapped in the Spirit of the Season

One can never, ever say that a cookie is as good as it can be, because the addition of one little thing, such as a sprinkling of Maladon salt crystals or a teaspoon of Madagascar vanilla extract or a grating of fresh ginger instead of the store-bought powdered spice, can pretty much blow the taste buds away.

I have become somewhat of a faux-bois freak during the past few years, so the wood-grain design became central to this year’s cookie theme. (emphasis mine)

Commentary: Perhaps it’s only noteworthy to someone like me, an almost thirty-something professional who talks like an enthusiastic and dramatic teenager, but to read Martha use the phrase “pretty much blow away” (a la Napoleon Dynamite) and “freak” within two sentences made me laugh out loud.  It had me convinced that she was lightening her voice and approach to her obsessions a bit, until the 2009 issues started arriving in my mailbox.

January 2009: My Matter-of-Fact, 10-Step Plan for Healthy Living

My day starts at 5:30 A.M…I shower, wash my hair, dress, and am out the door to the gym three houses away…

Commentary: Who showers and washes their hair before they work out?  Clearly, she is a time traveler.  I just don’t know what else to say.

February 2009: Taking the Problems Out of Packing (AKA how to make everyone hate you when you travel)

I always watch my luggage like a hawk–I do not let hotel bellmen whisk it away for later delivery to my room.  I stay with it and insist on accompanying it to my room.  In taxis and limos, I watch how it is stored so that nothing is ever crushed or damaged.

Security Measure: Many luggage locks are forbidden under security regulations.  So I tie the zipper pull tags on my suitcase together with a piece of waxed twine.  That way, I can tell if it’s been opened.

Commentary: Meanwhile, my suitcase is an ancient artifact from the thrift store that still has the grease pen price of $5.95 written on it.  I have never seen a bellman.  Nor have I been in a limo.  I’d be so super afraid of dealing with any of Martha’s luggage.  OMG if you worked for the airline that accidentally broke her twine?  The horror.

I still love Martha Stewart though.  She has really helped me to enrich my life and the lives of those around me.  I have four absolutely perfect words to conclude this post: Chewy Chocolate Ginger Cookies.

to be less gullible

That is my New Year’s resolution: to stop believing everything I read, to question authority more often, to consider the source, to check more than one source for verification, etc.

As a librarian, you’d think I’d already do a pretty good job at this, wouldn’t you?  Oh, but no.  Someone once told me that Jimmy Carter was the only U.S. President to not be a Freemason and I believed it (perhaps my love for Mr. Carter clouded my discernment?).  For the record, this is at best impossible to verify due t0 the secrecy of Freemasonry.  At worst, it’s totally wrong.

Yes, I am probably less gullible than your average person.  But I want to stop reading something and automatically assuming it’s the truth.  How can I add an extra step to this process?  How can I get my brain to slow down for a second and mull it over?  Does the immediacy of the interwebs agitate this problem?

Want proof that you have this problem too (because I’m SURE you do)?  It’s simple.  Read an article from a reputable source on a topic about something you really truly know almost everything about.  It could be someone you personally know quite well, a topic that speaks intimately to your profession, an attribute of your lifestyle.  Anything like that.  And then listen to yourself gasp as you read error after error, half-truth after half-truth, incorrect term after incorrect term.  Yes, the author gets the general point across and some do better than others but not without lots of painful errors.

It’s great press and I’m so glad the article was written, but this is exactly what happened to me when I read this article about our department director.  I could barely continue reading past the first line, where Helene is referred to as the Digital Initiatives Librarian.  Unless they’ve changed something around here, this is not her job title.  She is the Director of Digital Strategy.  Contrary to popular belief, working at a library does not make you a librarian.

Sometimes it’s a matter of old habits dying hard.  For example, we’ve called ourselves Columbus Metropolitan Library for almost 20 years.  Yet, the so-called reputable local media still to this day calls us the Columbus Public Library!  I don’t think that’s ever been our official name.  WTF.

So, if every article you read on a topic you’re intimately familiar with is full of mistakes, doesn’t that mean that every article you consider to be accurate and informative about something new to you is actually lying to you?  Beware of what you read!  It could be misleading you.

(Old School Librarians may want to skip this paragraph).  Perhaps this is why I almost always find Wikipedia to be the most accurate source.  Rather than a journalist or commentator on a soapbox getting a little carried away and failing to check the facts, it’s a consortia of lots of people correcting each other’s little errors over time.

Something my husband often says:  “Always trust the historian, never trust the journalist.”   Yes, he’s a biased social studies teacher…but don’t you think he’s on to something here?  You may think this is about bashing journalists.  It’s not.  My point is: the onus is on us, as learners and consumers of information, to pause and consider: Is this really true?  We live in a culture of the short view.  We are too impatient to wait for the long view, the view that often comes with more accuracy.

I hope I can keep my resolution to integrate the long view and the pause button into my information consumption habits.  Wish me luck!  Also, I hope there is an ever-growing pool of good public service librarians out there who are modeling this behavior to their customers and encouraging them to do the same.

if only the library were this shiny & clean

A few month’s ago, our director told me that I remind him of the girl in these commercials.

ten random (and perhaps TMI?) things

1.  I met my husband Austin on his 15th birthday; the same day his then straight edge punk band, Point of Order, got a new PA.  He is the funniest, kindest person I know.  Thin Lizzy is his all-time favorite band (and maybe mine too?).

2.  I have three younger sisters.  Zoey, the youngest, is 14.  She is a jam.

3.  My car is a beautiful 1983 Mercedes-Benz Turbo Diesel wagon named Brownie.  It will run on waste vegetable oil as soon as the European conversion kit that’s been sitting in my house for the past six months gets installed.  Austin drives a 1982 Benz Diesel coupe that already runs on veggie oil.

4.  The bathroom policy at our house: If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down.  I’m just keepin’ it real, people.  This is one of our many feeble attempts at sustainable living, which also include vegetarianism, organic food, keeping the thermostat no higher than 65 in the winter, having a roommate, etc.  This doesn’t mean that our home is some unwelcoming go green or die boot camp.  Rather, we love to practice hospitality and open up our home.

5.  On a seasonal note, it takes me at least 12 hours to decorate our Christmas Tree because I have a crap ton of vintage ornaments and I meticulously wrap each branch in lights (I bet that amount of lights totally cancels out our sustainable living attempts).  In order to save my wrists and fingers from the hours of poking and prodding by the live tree, I wear gardening gloves secured with rubber bands.  Why do I torture myself like this?  Insanity.

6.  In 5th grade, I won my school’s DARE essay contest and had to read my piece in front of the entire student body along with the other winners.  When the medal I won was placed on my neck (Olympics-style), the ribbon caught on one of my HUMONGOUS ears.  I have since grown into my ears somewhat but I still have the Arwen point on the left, which is pretty cool because a lot of people think I look like Liv Tyler.

7.  I am currently trying to wean myself off of Luna Bars and other sources of junky soy protein isolate.  Just when you thought I couldn’t get any more restrictive with my eating habits, I can!  But don’t worry, I still love me some occasional Dairy Queen.

8.  My house, purchased from the original owners, was built in 1973.  The retired couple loved gardening something fierce.  This past summer, our fifth one there, was the first time we cultivated the garden.  My best friend did most of the work.  Before that, besides the raspberry patch, the garden became a jungle each summer.  I blame our grad school careers.  Our biggest success this summer was probably green beans.  Austin recently read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and is now pumped to turn our entire yard into a garden (and to make our own cheese, and to raise our own eggs, etc.).

9.  I love to watch Family Feud while running on the treadmill.  Something about everyone clapping to the music and the audience refrain pumps me up.  What is wrong with me?  As important as I know working out is, I’d much rather be cuddling on the couch with my two cats Spooky & Sophie.

10.  Some of my best friends have exposed me to Yacht Rock and my life is so much richer now.

me at mah job

I lied.  This is my last Learn & Play post.  Those Rainbow Brite accessories normally live at my desk but they decided to make an appearance in the video.

Now you know what I do all day.

thing #23: this is the end

This is my last Learn & Play post, my last thing.  I can’t believe it!  It seems like it went by much too quickly.  I am so happy for the process, because it has brought me out of the depths of blurkerdom and into the heights of participation.  For me, it was the perfect amount of accountability.  Not to mention the virtual camaraderie that this journey has cooked up at CML — thanks to Twitter, etc. I now know my colleagues better.  Like the first Care Bears movie, it’s kind of adorable.

Now, the challenge is to keep it up: to maintain my professional presence on the interwebs. (Should “professional” and “interwebs” be used in the same sentence?).  Can I do that?  Egotistically assuming I have been already, can I be terribly witty and impressive in the long haul?  Only time will tell….

thing #22: MOLDI…er, Digital Media!

More so than the name (believe it or not!), MOLDI‘s non-compatibility with iPods & iTunes has always bugged me.  As a Mac girl through and through, hypocritically typing this on my work desktop PC, I am so happy to say that MOLDI will now play nicely with iPods!  Yesssss!  I am so happy to now be able to sell it to customer’s without embarrassingly saying, “There’s a catch….”  I look forward to watching this collection grow and grow in depth, breadth, and usage.

However, besides occasionally watching a DVD on my laptop while traveling or blasting my iTunes while cleaning the house, I am not the biggest fan of digital media.  Again, I am a major un-plugger.  You won’t find a cell phone or iPod on my person. (Isn’t “my person” one of the goofiest phrases ever?)  I prefer tangible books, especially for fiction titles — physical items with weight & scent, whose pages beg to be turned, whose only requirement for use is a brain and a source of light.  I wonder how long it will be before I eat these words?  The time when I no longer check out physical books at all but instead download them to one device or another.  Will I be able to say my life is better for the change or is it just an inevitable/neutral change?

P.S.: Don’t you just hate it when you find a rotten one in your crate of clementines?

thing #21: podcasts

I am not super into podcasts.  Perhaps it’s because I try to be un-plugged as much as possible?  (Remember, I don’t even have a cell phone).  My husband, on the other hand, lives by podcasts.  They help get him through his long commute.

Almost exclusively, I listen to NPR in the car.  For road trips, I break out the audio books.  You guessed it, I don’t have an iPod either.  What is wrong with me?!  Since I don’t have an iPod and because I don’t really listen to anything while working, I guess podcasts don’t (yet) have a place in my life.

However, let’s assume that I did listen & subscribe to podcasts, my list would probably include something like The Sound of Young America, recommended by my brilliant & resourceful friend Nathan (he claims I bounce ideas off him too much and rely on his input too often without giving credit, so this should cover me for the next year or so).

thing #20: youtube

Since I secretly hope my future kids become bgirls or bboys instead of soccer players or football players or whatever, and because it’s timely, I thought I’d share this video:

But seriously folks, I heart YouTube.  It’s therapeutic.  If I’m having a crap day, goofing off on YouTube for a few minutes often helps me out.  It works the same whenever I need inspired or motivated (I’ll spare you links to boring stuff like that).  And on those nights when you’re sitting around with your friends reminiscing about old movies and such, YouTube to the rescue.