I GOT A NEW COMPUTER. IT MAKES ME WANT TO WRITE STUFF.

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I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO WRITE.

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Yesterday Jeff said there are more people who want to write books than people who want to read them. :(

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But I'm happy I have this awesome new computer. It's a MacBook Air. It's light and fluffy and it makes me feel like a girl reporter.

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THIS JUST IN!

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I bet Rory Gilmore would have a MacBook Air. Did you know Alexis Bledel is dating the guy who plays Pete Campbell on Mad Men? Gross.

Ways to Save Money Now That I Have a Car Payment

1. Stop buying lattes! Buy drip.
2. Stop eating out at fancy any restaurants! Make dinner at home.
3. Stop buying new clothes! Shop at Value Village. Better yet, learn how to make your own clothes.
4. Stop seeing 3-D movies. 2-D is good enough. Better yet, Neflix is good enough. No, Hulu is good enough!
5. Stop giving so much money to charity! NPR can survive without you.
6. Unsubscribe from Groupon. It just gives you ideas.
7. See if Jeff will lower your rent if you promise to take up only 25% of the bed.
8. Buy a lottery ticket every week. (Not a money saver, but gives you hope.)
9. Stop buying books!!! You work at the library.
10. Cancel gym membership. Get fat motivated and exercise outdoors where it's free.

2009 Year in Review

A collection of haiku that summarize my aught nine:

Learning math is cool,
But I'm tired of schooling.
Thanks goodness: new job!

Surrounded by books,
People with questions for me,
It's a good life, mine.

Kiera has cancer.
Oh my freaking god, what?!
Phew, she's better. Phew.

Jam Regulator,
We can't find a place to live,
But we have each other.

A dream is a wish your heart makes

Hello my tens of readers! I have exciting news!

I think I got a new job. A nice lady from the King County Library System's human resources department called me and said they'd like me come work for them as a children's librarian. Can you believe it? Is this really happening? I told her I would love to have that job. Then I hung up and checked my caller ID to make sure it was really from KCLS. IT WAS. OMG.

So after eleven months (I'm often told by Jeff et. al., this is not really that long to wait, but it felt like a really long time) of applications, resumes, cover letters, phone interviews, skills assessments, and group interviews I've finally landed the job I wanted when I started library school. I'm so happy, I could spend the next several days (or years) bursting into song and smiling at strangers. In fact, I will soon be paid to do that at story times.

As soon as my 90-day probationary period is up, I'm going to start planning that librarian tattoo I've been talking about. 4 reals. The "shhh" tat is out, though, because not just one but TWO pop stars already have it.

Spring is here!

One thing I forgot about college campuses? On the first warm day of the year the unofficial dress code becomes like half a step removed from that of a beach. It's only 65 degrees and the girls are wearing tank tops and and shorts small enough to fit my baby niece.

They look cold, but happy.

And, speaking of fashion, don't forget to vote in the Fug Madness Final! SWINTON!

Is your blog a boy blog or a girl blog?

My excellent good friend Nathan recently sent me this link:

Gender Analyzer

It's some kind of something that can allegedly determine your gender based on your blog. It's currently accurate 58% of the time (based on the self-reporting of the users). Is that impressive? Not very, but better than if it were total bunk.

How does it work anyway? The site only says it uses a "text classifier" that was "trained" on 4000 blogs. That implies that the makers of this thing don't really know what the substantive differences between the genders may be (uh, in terms of blog writing, obvs).

Still the whole idea of determining gender from writing raises questions like, Do women write a certain way and men another? Do men/women use certain nouns and verbs more often? Ask more questions? Use the word "feel" more often? Is it sentence length? Punctuation? Is it counting gendered pronouns? What if I put in the blog of a transgendered person?

Anywhoozle, one other interesting thing is the Gender Analyzer doesn't just say M or F, it gives a percentage of how M or F. I've put in most of the blogs I read, including mine, and most of them have come out as "quite gender neutral." One though, librarian.net, came out 98% female. Whoa. AND HERE IS THE CRAZY THING: librarian.net is written by a lady named Jessamyn who also has a personal blog and when I put that in, it came out 88% male. Oh, SNAP. Busted!

HardlyWorking.com

Today I've been thinking about starting a website for people who don't have a lot to do at their jobs.

I've noticed a lot of Facebook status updates in the vein of, "I got so much done at work today! And so little of it was actual work I'm paid to do," so I'm confident there is an audience for this kind of thing. In fact, just recently I was at a bridal shower where the maid of honor informed us that most of the wedding planning had been done while the bride was at work being paid to do something else. And anyone who watches The Office is familiar with just how unproductive a work day can be.

So I'm thinking the purpose of this website would be to give examples of things people have done while ostensibly "working" for their paycheck. We could also have forums for people to discuss any guilt they feel due to how little they actually get done/happiness at having landed a job that requires fewer than 10 actual hours of work per week.

There's probably a website like this already, right? But what domain could be better than hardlyworking.com? I checked and it's available.

Situations in which Seattleites will make conversation with total strangers

1. A dog is involved.

2. A small child is involved.

3. The weather is unbelievable awful.

My Review of the Opera

Yesterday was my first day off in two weeks. I went to the opera. It was not as relaxing or exhilarating as I'd hoped it'd be; it was pretty creepy. Both operas (it was a double feature with an intermission in between) were about tragic love that ends in death--but not in a romantic way, in a chilling, cringe-y kind of way.

Opera 1: Bluebeard

When I was little, we told the Bluebeard story around the campfire to scare each other. Bluebeard was a pirate who took his new wife on his ship and told her not to go in this locked room. But, duh, she goes in the room and finds all these dead women (his previous wives!). She gets blood on her dress (or maybe on the key she used to unlock the room?) and can't get it off, so Bluebeard finds out she saw the dead ladies and...SHE JOINS THEM.

The opera was pretty much the same story, only Bluebeard's not a pirate and it was all sung in Hungarian. The moral of the story: You don't need to know too much about your man.

Opera 2: Erwatung

Erwatung apparently means "expectation" in German. Whatever. I hardly read the surtitles because they were almost total nonsense. The gist of this opera is that a crazy lady (she's in a straight jacket) goes crazy about a guy having sex with another woman. Then I think she killed him. Or maybe she was just fantasizing about killing him. I don't know. But the guy was naked and rolling around on stage for a few minutes, so it held my attention.

The moral of the story: Bitch is crazy!

So what did I learn from the opera yesterday? Hm. Stay away from insane people. Or people who have blue beards and many previous wives that have disappeared.

My Review of: 2008

Let's see how much of 2008 I can remember.

January: I remember nothing.

February: I remember Jeff and I ordered pizza on Valentine's Day.

March: I remember nothing.

April: Yeah, I got nothing.

May: The weather got nicer? Did it really, though?

June: Aha! I graduated from the iSchool and became a Master of Information.

July: I turned 26!

August: Hm. It must've been pretty hot? Oh, yeah! Hawaii! That was great.

September: I worried that I hadn't found a real job yet, but I was subbing a lot for SPL.

October: I started my current job at the EngLib.

November: Kiera came home from Florida.

December: It snowed A LOT.

So my powers of monthly recognition are not strong. I do remember last year's resolution: REMEMBER TO BRING REUSABLE BAGS TO THE STORE!!!!! I think I did pretty well on the reusable bag tip, so let's make this year's resolution: KEEP REMEMBERING TO BRING REUSABLE BAGS TO THE STORE!!!!!!!111

D$ out.

My Review of 7 Brides for 7 Brothers at the 5th

Through his work, BJ got free tickets to this show so, even though I was never a big fan of the movie, I agreed to go.

Did I mention this Seattle production stars Mo Brady as youngest brother (and true romantic) Gideon Pontipee? It does! So of course I had to go.


In case you're not familiar, let me break down the plot of this little show: A mountain man goes into town to find himself a wife to take care of him and his six grown brothers. The lady he marries is not exactly thrilled to be taking care of seven slovenly dudes, so she helps the brothers shape up their act so they can go into town and find their own dern wives. Unfortunately, the other town girls are not so easily won, so the brothers take a cue from a story they read in a book (Plutarch's Sabine Women) and decide to just kidnap the girls and carry them back to the mountains. Just your standard romantic abduction plot, I guess.

The show's jokes pretty much revolve around how clueless and horny the brothers are (except for Mo's character, the youngest brother, who is clueless, yes, but more lovestruck than aching for any available warm body). You'd think that a bunch of jokes about dopey, sexually frustrated mountain men would be kind of one-note, and you'd be right, but I had a good time.

The misogyny in the book and lyrics runs pretty deep (to illustrate: at what is probably the emotional crescendo of the play, Mo and the female lead are singing about being deeply in love while the male lead is singing the musical theatre equivalent of "one bitch many faces"), but the whole thing is so lighthearted that it's hard to take it too seriously.

Besides, though the softer sex gets short shrift in the play, the male actors have to dance around in various degrees of undress, making them more the objectified than the the objectifiers (at least from where I was sitting). There is something icky about romanticizing the sexism of olden times, but if I'm watching a lot of hot, shirtless men do flips while it's happening, I get a little distracted.

My Review of: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was extraordinary this year for the following reasons:

1. It was marked by Kiera's (temporary) return to Seattle from Florida. Happy graduation, Kiera. You are now officially trained to do a real job.


2. The Sutton-Raineys had a joint Thanksgiving with my Mom's BFF's family, the Moores. There were like 20 people over at Carl and Marilyn's house, including an exchange student from Vietnam that Tristen brought through Highline Community College's Thanksgiving Adoption program. Her name was Anne and she was very nice. I hope we didn't scare her too much.


3. The Seahwaks lost spectacularly.


4. We got into a debate over whether Thanksgiving is a religious holiday. That was weird.


5. Amelia wore a super cute dress and learned to flap her arms like wings and say "Gobble gobble gobble."


6. I didn't spill anything!

The day kind of went by in a blur because there were so many people. We were about halfway through the meal when someone (I think it was Carl's brother) remembered to say Grace. We all stopped eating so he could thank Our Heavenly Father, and then we went back to eating. Normally, my mom makes us all take turns saying what we're thankful for during dinner, but we didn't do that this year. We did try to explain to Anne what Thanksgiving is about, but that led to the aforementioned disagreement over the religiosity of the holiday. (It's totally not, right? I think Abraham Lincoln made it a holiday because the woman who wrote "Mary Had a Little Lamb" wrote to him and suggested it.)

All in all, the day really affirmed something I've been thinking ever since Amelia was born: babies make family gatherings way better. She was pretty much the center of attention the entire day, and, when you think about it, she's probably the thing we're all most thankful for. I'll put up some pictures soon.

Standing cold and scared on top of some hill

So here you go, Nathan. This blog's for you! (Thanks to Facebook, I was able to find a picture of this momentous event courtesy of Emily Johnson.)

Christian thought we were going to see the current T-Tones until about two minutes before the show. When I told him this was just a reunion concert, he said, "You mean we're not seeing guys that have been practicing three times a week? We're seeing guys who haven't sung together in 4 years?" His face said "Oh crap..." but he stayed in his seat. Lesson: We are all powerless to deny the Testostertones attention.

Considering the fact that a lot of the guys up there didn't even know there was going to be a reunion show until the day before it happened, I think things went pretty well. There were some moments where I almost cringed, but those were outnumbered by the times I chuckled and thought, "That Jimmy is still socute."

In fact, the highlight of the show was, IMHO, Jimmy Maize's adorable onstage antics. He read the lyrics to "Tempted" off of his phone and he made eyes at his screaming fans at the right moments. Blake pretended to shoot arrows at him during "Cupid" and Jimmy pretended he was being hit in hilarious places. After the show, Jeff's only reaction to the whole thing (and keep in mind he completely despises a cappella in general) was, "Boy, people sure do love Jimmy."

Nate also had the idea to try to auction off Ben Shardlow (the Twin Cities' Most Eligible Bachelor) to earn some drinking money for the group (apparently, Ben did the same thing to someone else once, blah blah blah), and while the premise was funny, no one but Erin Roden actually bid on him and he later told me they didn't collect from her. But he did give her a hug. Those T-Tones are the sweetest!

In closing, I'd like to say that the T-Tones are nothing without Scotty the Body. Sigh.

Whitman Reunion: Part 1

Wow. This reunion has been so exciting, I haven't even been able to actually live blog it. Right now it's Sunday and I'm at one of the only public computers in the Penrose Library. Charlie and Jeff and I just checked to see if the same Rothko print is down the cafe, and it is. (We also saw David Beckley down there and kind of awkwardly said hi to him.) Remember when the trees outside that cafe were just little babies and Alden was making jokes about that yellow block sculpture? The trees are so big now! You can barely see the yellow block sculpture.

Jeff and I are about to go back home. We ended up picking Christian up at the rest stop and so we're going to take him home, too, I guess. I don't really want to drive all the way to Olympia, but I haven't figured out if I'm going to tell Christian that. Suggestions?

Before we go we're going to stop at the Iceberg and get milkshakes. Today I taught Darrell how to use Facebook so he could stalk the freshmen he knows who go here now. Libby and Darrell are having lunch with Parke right now and Jimmy is holding auditions for In One Room. As it turns out, one of the best people to catch up with is Claire Willett because she talks fast and makes a lot of jokes. Last night we saw a T-Tones reunion concert. I could probably write an entire blog post about that, so I'll save it. We went on a mini wine tour of Walla Walla. We crashed a college party on Friday night that was next door to the Haven. Alden and his Sidecar friends took their shirts off approximately 45 minutes into the party. Jeff tried to help an awkward freshman make friends at the party. I got drunk on 4 stolen beers and felt terrible all day Saturday. We saw Cullen's movie about D&D L.A.R.P.ers. We went to the green. We ate stinky cheese at the place where Grapefields used to be. We talked to Anna Batie. Darrell got sad that Joe Hickock (Heecock?) isn't going to be a doctor and is instead teaching SCUBA lessons in Kaua'i. Charlie says the best part of the reunion was seeing people who got fat and pregnant.

This is all very stream of consciousness because I'm in a hurry. In fact, we are leaving right now! A more thoughtful Part 2 may be coming your way soon.

Whitman Reunion: Prologue

Though I graduated just four short years ago, I'm already being called back to my undergraduate alma mater for a reunion. It's for the classes of '02, '03, and '04 (a so-called "cluster reunion") and at its root is probably some kind of scheme to get us to donate more money to the alumni fund. I'm actually pretty happy for an excuse to go back to Walla Walla. I want Jeff to see where I spent some of my most formative years, and it's such a nice little town. Also: Wine tour! Woo woo!

Jeff and I were supposed to leave at 4, but we're running behind. I just heard from Darrell, who's on his way to pick up Libby and then head out. I also heard from Christian this morning and his car apparently broke down somewhere on I-90. Oh noes! Hopefully he'll be picked up by Alden or whoever he can get ahold of. If he's still stranded by the time we come by, we'll save him (and Rose, who's travelling with him, I think).

Charlie has his own troubled story, which is that he thought he could stay with his 86-year-old aunt in Walla Walla, but he forgot (for three months) to call her and as of last night he still didn't know if it was cool for him and his friend to stay there. So Charlie may be forced to find shelter with some poor, unsuspecting freshman. Some things never change!!!!1 JK/LOL.

Hold on, my phone is ringing.

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Ok, it was Christian. He said he got a tow truck to take his car back to Olympia and he talked to Libby and Darrel. So whoever gets to him first will pick him up, I guess. Gotta go. The race is on!

I Got a Job! Part Deux

So I had a difficult decision to make last week. My boss at the Engineering Library offered me a 9-month gig right after I found out that a Seattle children's librarian job will be opening up soon.

This triggered a debate between the two halves of my personality. One half says, "You are in no position to turn down a job, young lady. You have student loan payments to make and the economy is on the express train to Recession Town." The other half says, "Life is about taking chances! You will get the job of your dreams if you persevere! Just keep subbing and praying, girl!"

The debate raged on until my guilt complex convinced my idealistic notions that having health insurance is more important than holding out for the job of my dreams. To put it in terms of cliches, "Follow your bliss" lost out to "A bird in hand is worth two in the bush."

So this is where I'll be spending my 9-3 (I'm only .75 FTE) until June:

It kind of makes me think of Meg talking about "fuck you architecture."

Kaua'i Vacation Pics

Check them out!

Highlights were: the sun, the beach, and the crazy luau fire dancers.


I also really enjoyed eating papaya for breakfast. It's best when you squeeze lemon juice on it.



And, finally, in case you did not know, I will inform you that Kaua'i is bursting with wild chickens. They're lousy with them.

Even though our trip was at least 80% relaxing, I'm still exhausted from it. My head is pounding and my legs feel rubbery. I'm signing off. Mahalo and aloha!

Step One: Get job. Step Two: Take a vacation!!!!!!!!!!11

Working full-time for almost a month has worn me out, folks. I mean, do people really do this? Sit at a desk for 40 hours a week? I mean, I just finished grad school so I'm used to working full-time, but I'm not used to working working full-time. Ugh.

It's time to go away, and having never been to Hawaii, I figure that's about as good a place as any. So Jeff and I are off to Kauai on Saturday. It's his birthday and our anniversary, so we've got some celebratin' to do. Woot!

What I really want to talk about, though, is how a patron just shushed me in the library. Me, the librarian. I was talking to this kid about The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (the kid thought there were chapters missing from the book and I explained that the chapters were numbered using only primes) and we're laughing and a woman in mom-jeans comes up to me all sour-faced and is like "[Ahem] Can you quiet down?"

Apparently, this lady missed the Library 2.0 Revolution. Nowadays, the public library is not just about quiet studying, it's about community-building and social interaction. Okay?

I totally lowered my voice, though. I felt a little embarrassed, and an old worry that used to haunt me in graduate school returned: Am I too loud to be a librarian?

I got a job (sort of)

So I'm not some big shot librarian with an office and ongoing responsibilities. But I do work at a reference desk and get paid like someone with a graduate degree (NB: a humanities graduate degree). I'm a substitute librarian! I get the call, I spring into action.

It's actually pretty interesting because I get to be at a different library every day and meet a ton of library people. Library library library. The obvious difficulty is that every branch is different and I have to start all over every day. Darrell said subbing is good when you're starting out because it gives you a chance to absorb a lot without having to commit. Sort of like playing the field before you settle down with one person for awhile.


In other news, today is my niece's first birthday! Happy birthday, Amelia!

My Review of A Streetcar Named Desire at the Intiman

For my birthday Jeff got us tickets to see A Streetcar Named Desire. I knew I hadn't seen the movie, but I thought I'd read the play. About 20 minutes in, though, I realized I hadn't ever read the play and then spent the rest of show feeling slightly embarrassed that I didn't know what was going to happen.

It was a really good show, too. Excellent performances, great set, etc. I hated Stanley more and more and felt worse and worse for Blanche as it wore on. And then suddenly it was nearly over and I realized I did know what was going to happen! She hadn't said that famous line yet! And I knew what it was and she said it and it ended. Redemption.