Our crazy snow dog/porpoise.
Music: Shira Kammen, “Le Brandevin – Holly and his Merry Men – Angelus ad Verginem” used under a Creative Commons license.
Also, the bundt cake atop our picnic table:
In case there was any doubt…
October 25, 2009 By
…yes, I may be officially crazy.
Because, in addition to my commitments at school, work, and home, I seem to have helped craft a new writing project idea for November. You may have heard of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. The idea behind this is kind of crazy, kind of compelling: write a novel-length piece of prose in the 30 days of November. Conceptually, I can see how this might get me past my, “I want to write a novel-length piece of prose, but what if it’s crap?” problem. Because the idea isn’t to write a good novel, just something that is that long. Once convinced of your idea that yes, you can string that many words together about one story, perhaps then you can get out of your own way and proceed crafting something of a decent quality.
It may work, it may not – but I do have one friend who turned the concept into a book contract. There are probably others.
But procrastinating about writing is more than a common occurrence – it’s a cliche. So many of us who like to write, like stories, like to read, and want to tell our own stories end up putting it off indefinitely. Thus it is so that I have about a zillion pieces of ideas around a novel-length piece of prose and have only committed a few of them to pixels. The rest of those ideas keep rolling around in my head like laundry on an endless tumble-dry, going nowhere. Perhaps shrinking. Perhaps I’m letting this metaphor get out of hand.
Enter an idea that sort of bounced around among Rana of Frogs and Ravens, Amanda of Household Opera, and me: NoNaShoStoWriMo, or Not-National Short Story Writing Month. Instead of committing to a 50,000 words in the next month, we’re shooting for the more modest, achievable goal of about 7,500 words. I’ve decided to use the ideas/concepts that have been doing the tumbling and spinning and see where I get with it – perhaps that will get me enough of a start so I can use it as a springboard to an actual long-format work.
Anyone with us?
ETA:
And yes, the name does sound like something in Judoon, for all you Doctor Who fans…
Oh, for crying out loud
October 23, 2009 By
He’s a magic man…
October 18, 2009 By
I got a Wii console for my 40th birthday – because though I may be 40, inside I am 12. I generally use it to work out (EA Sports Fitness – though occasionally glitchy – is surprisingly intense), though I did get sucked into “World of Goo” on a friend’s recommendation. Other than that, we only have the sports game that came with the console. We had a party recently for my school colleagues, and the Wii was the hit of the party. There is something about the game that seems to bring out the positive, encouraging side of people. Miss a hit in baseball? Nobody jeers. Instead, cries of “You wuz ROBBED!” ring out, even from the opposing side.
As someone who really hates what my mother calls the “nyah nyahs,” I have been surprised to witness this sort of behavior. Life has taught me more often that games where there are winners and losers are just… well, nasty.
Even John, who doesn’t really like video games, likes to play Wii. Well, he likes to play Wii Bowling. Since we are both New England kids, I usually respond to his, “Wanna bowl?” with, “Yeah – ya gonna take me bowlin’ an’ buy me a beah?” We’re pretty well matched and the usual score is close. But I found out today that John, well… he’s a magical Wii bowler. He ran upstairs to do something when I was playing my turn, and his turn came before he had returned. Suddenly, his figure went live, and I watched his Mii bowl a perfect strike. Moments later, he ran downstairs and said, “How’d I do?” He had brought his controller upstairs with him and heard it “ding.” So he played his turn blind. From upstairs.
Magic, I tell you.
(He smoked me that game by over 30 points.)
From the rerun file – library edition
September 1, 2009 By
Periodically, I post reruns from the old, hard-to-navigate version of WoT. Today, I was reminded of this post about my experiences as a law school work-study student in our library. The post dates from from April 2005, and it’s especially appropriate now that I am in library school:
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Libraries are where work-study grants go to die, especially at a public university. It seemed that every other student was eligible for a work-study grant at my school, and when you can’t get a job as a research assistant for a professor (or, as in my case, the professor you have your research job with doesn’t have a whole lot of projects for you), you take advantage of your grant working at the library. It’s a pretty good gig – you can drop in for as little as an hour at a time, the work is fairly undemanding, and you can read the papers while you’re attaching them to those long sticks.
The unfortunate thing about the library – at least at Maine – was that random, strange calls tended to land at the circulation desk. Since the circulation desk was generally manned by the shifting mass of students on work-study who were working a 2-hour shift (at the longest), it was a poor choice for those members of the public who might be seeking anyone resembling a clue. On the other hand, since the circ desk students were constantly confounded by the old-fashioned phone (the kind with a row of buttons on the bottom that went “ker-CHUNK” when you pressed them to select a line, put someone on hold, or transfer them to oblivion), it was probably a good way for a harried switchboard operator to get rid of annoying callers.
I was whiling away my time at the circ desk late in my career at U. Maine one spring afternoon when the telephone rang. I answered it, and was greeted by a slow, stentorian voice obviously belonging to an elderly gentleman who was most likely hard of hearing. “I would like to speak to the Law Librarian,” he boomed.
Hmm. There was nobody with that title at the library, to the best of my knowledge, and I had worked there for two years. “Er – sir, do you have a reference question, or would you like to speak to the director of the library? There is nobody with the title of ‘Law Librarian.’”
“I would like to speak to the Law Librarian,” he repeated – as one would with a particularly dim child.
“Sir, as I told you, there is nobody here with that title –”
“I would like to speak to the Law Librarian.”
Fine. It seemed my best choices were a.) the reference librarian, or b.) the director. As I had no more information than that, I selected the director by a semi-random selection method: I liked the reference librarian. He was a very decent chap. Also, the director had a secretary who was probably better-equipped to handle this than either I or the reference librarian. So I said, “One moment, sir,” and put him into transfer mode, got the secretary on the line, put him through, and went back to replacing pocket-parts or whatever other gripping task the circ desk had for me that day.
About a minute later, the phone rang again and I had a sense of doom. Sure enough, when I answered it, I got, “I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK TO THE LAW LIBRARIAN.” Either my ancient telephone-fu was weak, or he had gotten confused when he was put on hold and had hung up.
“One moment, sir,” I put him on hold again and called up to the director’s secretary’s office. Now she was not there. Hell.
I took a deep breath and got back on the line with my elderly friend. “Sir, nobody is there at the moment. I would be happy to take a message for you –”
That was when he exploded. He began to yell, ranting about how he needed to speak to the fictitious “law librarian” and how he was retired Maine Supreme Court Justice Hoo-Ha, and on and on. The serials librarian, who had been shelving journals in the open shelves behind the circ desk looked at me as I held the phone’s receiver away from my ear. I felt like one of those cartoons where the noise from the phone actually blows your hair back. Finally, his tirade wound down and he ended by sarcastically asking, “So what do you suggest I do?”
I had a split-second conversation with the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other, took a deep breath, and said, “Well sir – the way I see it you have two choices. You can leave a message as I suggested at the outset or you can continue to be rude to me. Which will it be?”
The serials librarian in the stacks behind me inhaled audibly and I waited.
“Um. I guess I’ll leave a message then.”
Score one for the work-study student.
The surreality of living in DC
August 24, 2009 By
I just got off a Metro train that, among the usual scaff and raff of us, contained one tidily-dressed gentleman whose uniform shirt quietly proclaimed him to be a U.S. Marshall Service Bomb Specialist.
Sometimes it is just deeply weird living here.
My body language says “no” and so does my mouth.
June 27, 2009 By
I used to feel like I had a neon sign over my head that said, “Wackos and emotional cripples – come talk to this one!!!” Many years ago, I even managed to attract the same utter nut-job twice over the course of two years, in two radically different zip codes. But it has been a long time since I was catnip to the people whose coat sleeves come with extra inches and buckles. Maybe it’s one of the side effects of being older, or being married. Whatever it is, I haven’t missed it.
And then came yesterday’s commute home.
I was sitting by the window, earbuds in my ears, knitting away on my latest sock, sublimely minding my own business, when someone sits down next to me. I have an impression of weediness, but otherwise I don’t really pay attention (I try not to be completely in my own world: it is wise, after all, to pay some attention to what is going on around when on public transportation – but as long as you don’t smell, don’t fall asleep on me, and don’t intrude unduly on my personal space, I don’t care who you are). After just a few moments, I get the impression I am being observed. This isn’t completely uncommon: I have had some delightful conversations with other knitters, interested teenagers, and those just generally curious as a result of knitting on the Metro. But there is that other feeling of being watched – if you’re female, you know what I mean. That kind of creepy, weird, can’t-put-your-finger-on-it feeling. Weedy Guy was giving this impression.
I also get the impression that I may have been spoken to. I remove an earbud and say, “excuse me?” Weedy Guy says, “Oh – I said hello.” Great. I don’t know about you, but when I’m on public transport I generally maintain the fiction that my fellow passengers are invisible, unless there is some sort of natural opening. Sitting down next to someone who is wearing earbuds and is obviously engrossed in some sort of project – there’s no natural opening there. So Weedy Guy also has inappropriate boundary issues. I put my earbud back in and continue to knit and listen. I also make sure my left hand is turned to prominently display my engagement and wedding rings. Back off, Weedy Guy with Inappropriate Boundary Issues.
Oh, but Weedy Guy with Inappropriate Boundary Issues isn’t done. A few minutes later, I get another impression that I am being spoken to again. Again, the removal of earbud and, “Excuse me?”
“Is that going to be a sweater?” Not an uncommon question – the cuff of a sock could easily be the cuff of a sweater sleeve.
“No, a sock,” I respond. I am about to put the earbud back in when Weedy Guy with Inappropriate Boundary Issues says, “But where is the toe?”
I have about 2 inches of this sock worked at this point, but to me it clearly looks like the top of a sock if you orient your mind away from thoughts of sleeves and towards thoughts of socks. I don’t know anyone outside of a newborn who might need a 2-inch sock, and the cuff on this sucker isn’t going to fit a newborn. It is also clear that even on a knitting machine, an entire sock doesn’t just… materialize. You have to start somewhere. I gesture a few inches below the cuff and say, “Well, it’s going to be somewhere down here when I get to it.”
“But where is it?” Oh, great. He isn’t just Weedy Guy with Inappropriate Boundary Issues, he’s Stupid Weedy Guy with Inappropriate Boundary Issues. He’s also slightly agitated, which is freaky. It’s just a sock, dude. A sock you will never see again, God willing.
“I haven’t knit it yet. I’m knitting the sock from the top.”
“But how do you knit from the top?”
It is so self-evident to me how you knit from the top that I don’t even know how to answer this. I mean, it exists – it’s there. The top of the sock is in my hand. I say, firmly (possibly rudely – by now, I know I’m deep into neon-sign territory), “YOU JUST DO.”
Earbud firmly jammed back in my ear, I am no longer at home to Stupid Weedy Guy with Inappropriate Boundary Issues. After all, there are only so many adjectives you can append to a total stranger before things get out of hand.
Oh, sweet bandwidth, how I have missed you
June 14, 2009 By
We finally have our home internet service back. It only took a week, a bunch of phone calls, another useless visit to our home (which told the tech that the problem was, in fact, outside — again), a bunch more calls, and a guy named Erroll with a shovel.
Of course, our cable TV box is now apparently busted, so we’re chained to the house this morning in the hopes that Comcast will fulfill its promise to deliver a new one. We have 46 minutes left in our appointment window – who cares to wager that they’re actually going to show up? Anyone?
ETA: Well ho-lee cow. Not two minutes after I posted this, the guy showed up with the new box. 1 point to Comcast.
A few phrases I would be very happy to never hear again
April 24, 2009 By
What follows is a small catalog of annoyance. I am sure I have uttered these words. I am sure those I love have uttered and will utter these words. Those of us who live on the planet are bound to irritate someone at some point. But henceforth, anyone who hears these words uttered around me is going to know what’s going through my head, even if I am sporting a socially correct veneer of facial politeness.
“Doesn’t [person] have anything better to do?”
Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, knitting, reality TV, insert your guilty pleasure here. We all have them, but some killjoy is just dying to make you feel like a fool for your choices. This cute little number is intended to make the target feel like a frivolous, time-wasting moron. On the other hand, I suppose one is to infer that the speaker is a virtuous ascetic who only expends effort to create great beauty or value. Right. Get back to me when you’ve won the Nobel Prize.
It also makes me wonder, “Why do you care so much? What about this activity gets up your nose so much that you feel the irresistible need to sneer?”
I would also venture to guess that the subset of people who are superciliously passing judgment and who have also tried that thing approaches zero in nearly every circumstance (which would tend to account for the fact that speakers of this phrase seem to think that typing out 140 characters a couple of times a day takes So Much Time). Therefore, I shall now respond to all such questions by saying, “No, actually — and don’t you have anything better to do than to make fatuous judgments about stuff you don’t understand?”
“I am the kind of person who…”
This one reminds me of the quote often attributed to Margaret Thatcher, “Power is like being a lady; if you have to tell someone you are, you aren’t.” (I can’t find an authoritative source for this — at least not swiftly). The point is, all too often the quality that follows this statement would rarely be attributed to the speaker by anyone who knows them. It’s almost a guarantee of willful blindness to one’s own personality.
A close cousin to this statement is a manager’s boast that he has an “open door policy.” Generally, this person only has the door open the better to swing it firmly shut on your ass and your ideas.
“I have to be honest with you.”
After hearing this, I always think to myself, “Okay… how many lies did you tell me prior to this statement?”
“Get a life.”
You first.
Got any choice hateful phrases you would like to see banned from polite conversation?