why did I ever take a Sunday job?

Woke up this morning, Sam and I did our usual Sunday morning tradition--a good breakfast, drinking coffee while reading the paper, afterwards settling down to catch up on whatever reading we didn't get to over the week. A quiet time, well spent. It's times like these I can't believe I got a Sunday job.

I've had the first week at my new job as the Library Assistant at the Simmons School of Management. The most demanding part of my job so far? Getting to know everyone by name; remembering names is something I've always struggled with (when I was younger I even had trouble keeping my aunt's & uncle's names straight) but I'm getting better at it. Have no idea how Sam remembers the names of all the children she teaches--imagine, she has two schools full of children, from first to fifth grade, whose names she remembers. Amazing!

We'll be celebrating St. Patrick's Day tonight, since I'll be in class tomorrow evening, so that means I have to get around to making the beef stew before I go to my job in a few hours. But it also means I'll have a great stew and a couple of pints waiting for me when I get home.

weekends are for relaxing?

Well, I hate to admit that it's been over two months since my last post. The fact that it's been so long made it so much easier to keep letting it go. So for that one individual (you know who you are!) who kept on me to keep posting, this one's for you . . .

A quick recap of events these past two months:


I didn't get either of the jobs mentioned in my last post.

I'm now working full-time between three departments (circulation, cataloging and inter-library loan) at the Simmons library.

I had an interview yesterday afternoon at a public library that went well.

I went to the Book Expo America (the largest book publisher convention in the U.S.) in NYC.

I got to stay with Sam and I's friends Alex and Ally while in NYC. YAY!

Sam and I drove to Philly for Father's Day/Larry & Ilene's 40th wedding anniversary in June.

Big Larry (Sam's father), Little Larry (Sam's brother-in-law), William (another of Sam's brother-in-laws) and I saw a Phillies game.

The Phillies lost. Miserably.

While driving back from Philly the car broke down on the Garden State Parkway.

I got to stay with William & Alana (Sam's sister) in South Orange for two days while the car was being repaired (thanks guys!).

Sam and I drove to Indiana to stay with my parents during the week of the 4th of July.

It was a very relaxing week but we did so much! Got to see friends and family, toured a pickle factory, had our engagement photos taken (I'll post one of them to my flickr page soon), did lake stuff (fished, swam, etc.), ate with my grandparents at Ft. Wayne's Famous Coney Island, toured the new Allen County Public Library (check out my flickr page to see photos!), got a new car (thanks Mom & Dad!), and all sorts of other great stuff that I won't go into.

you can shake it, you can break it

It's officially the end of the semester for me. Had my last class yesterday, handed in all my papers the day before that. Now it's time for job hunting--out of the frying pan and into the fire. A few months ago, I made it my goal to have interviews lined up after classes ended and I've been successful at that. I have an interview today at the Peabody Institute Library, which is the public library for the Town of Peabody. It's for a part-time Reference Librarian position, only 14 hours but a good job for someone still in grad school. Tomorrow, I have an interview at Simmons for a full-time position in cataloging and interlibrary loan. Seriously, the past week I've been more worried about these interviews than I was my semester-end projects. There just aren't that many library jobs out there and the applicant pool is pretty saturated with grad students, so there's a lot of competition for what little there is.

All this worrying and work doesn't mean that I haven't been enjoying myself, however. Since I had all my projects done by Sunday, I've picked up a few books and begun reading for enjoyment. At the moment, I'm reading Moanin' At Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin' Wolf and Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese. I figured it was time to get back to the blues--had been a while since I had listened to the greats and the biography on Howlin' Wolf is a great way to get back to it. American Born Chinese is a graphic novel that's been out for a year and has won all sorts of awards and recognition, so I figured it was high time I read it.

Aside from some recreational reading, I've got a couple of things I'm looking forward to in the next week or two. Tonight I'll be heading into the lovely Town of Brookline (one of the wealthiest towns in the Boston area, home to John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox) where I'll be visiting with classmates and enjoying fine Belgian Ales at the Publick House. Later next week I'll get to see my first Sox game of the season, where they take on the Detroit Tigers. I had tickets for a game in April but it was rained out and postponed until August. Anyway, the game will be shown on ESPN, so keep an eye out and you might see me, cup of Guinness raised high and in full Sox regalia.

So it's getting to the time where I should start thinking about my interview. Means it's time to get to the weekly music! Since I'm reading about the blues, I'm going to post some of 'em.

The first tune is done by Bo Carter, better known as the guitarist for the Mississippi Sheiks. Their tunes are some of my favorites, with songs like "World Gone Wrong" and "I've Got Blood In My Eyes For You" representing greats covered by all sorts of musicians. But Bo Carter was a little bawdy on some of his solo recordings, playing tunes such as "Banana In Your Fruitbasket" and "Pin In Your Cushion," which made for lighter fare than what the Sheiks recorded. The recording I've made available here is a great jumping tune where Bo admonishes a woman that if she doesn't change her ways, "the law's gonna step on your . . . yes yes yes." Seems to me that plenty of times in blues music "yes" is substituted for "ass"--just listen to how close it sounds.

The second tune is by Howlin' Wolf, whose worn his .44 so long, he's made his shoulder sore.

As an added treat, I'm posting the always-difficult to understand Charlie Patton to confound you. It's an amazing display of his guitar prowess and one of the tunes that's easier to understand. He'll be serenading you with tales of "those happy days, where I didn't know your name." Or at least that's how I hear the song--see this great article (the first line of which is "Who was Charlie Patton, and what the hell was he singing about?") on arguments surrounding interpretations of his lyrics. Good stuff. Anyway, enjoy the music, posted below:

Bo Carter "The Law Gonna Step On You"

Howlin' Wolf "Fourty-four"

Charlie Patton "Some Summer Day"

shout, sister, shout!

It's almost the end of the semester--classes will go on until Monday, May 14th, but all my class projects will be over with by this upcoming Monday the 7th. Hooray! It's high time for this semester to be over . . . or so I feel. Taking four classes and working over 20 hours a week has been mentally and physically draining. Sam and I didn't see each other during the week--thank god I made the stipulation of not working weekends when taking the jobs I had. Now we'll have the upcoming summer, where Sam will be home all day and I'll hopefully be off, working a full-time job so I can bring home some bacon and give Sam a break in that department.

And with the end of the spring semester, I was greeted with a pleasure I haven't had since my days as an undergrad student--namely, having some big project due on my birthday! This year it was a fifteen page paper and a fifteen minute presentation on an instruction program (and, for the purposes of the presentation, actually instructing a class) for a library. My specific topic was instructing senior citizens (patrons of the public library) on Internet navigation. The paper was interesting, got me to think about what all goes into having a program like this in a public library. The presentation was fun, I was able to get people to laugh and even had a few ask if they could use, in the future, what I had prepared. If you're interested in seeing my presentation, here's the links:

for the powerpoint:
http://web.simmons.edu/~wick2/User%20Instruction%20Presentation.ppt

for the instructional web site:
http://web.simmons.edu/~wick2/page1.html

So even though I had all that due on my birthday, it was still fun. Throughout the day, I got to talk to family and friends--even got a call from my buddy, Spongebob! My sister found a website (from Nickelodeon, I think)that you could request a birthday call from a cartoon. It was pretty creepy, to tell you the truth, because the association between the voice and the cartoon character wasn't there (no visual representation of the cartoon character) so I was able to associate the voice with an actual person. The more I thought of that the creepier it became.

To end the night, Sam took me to my favorite restaurant in the area--Redbones. There I stuffed myself with BBQ piggies and had a couple of great beers. I have to admit, the only reason I was reluctant to move to the area was because I didn't think it would have good BBQ.

I have the whole day to myself. Well, myself and the two projects I have to complete before Monday. I don't have work at Pine Manor College during May--they don't have the $$ to pay their part-timers during this slow month--so I'm enjoying the fact that I don't have to make that trip. If I drive it takes 45 minutes and if I take public transportation it takes 1 & 1/2 hours.

So I'll be using the rest of the day for these projects . . . but will I be able to get them done? For one thing, I'm worn out. Another, I have the wii I can play. And to add to that, they're working construction on the road outside of my house. Big noise, see below!



Since I'll be listening to jackhammering all day--then again, maybe not! I hadn't heard regular construction noises (engines, beeping, scraping, hammering, shouts, hoots and hollers at the pretty women, etc.) in a little while, so I set out to investigate. Here's what I found--at 9.00am in the morning it was already break time!



It's a hard life but somebody's gotta do it.

Enough of that, I have to cut this short and post my music of the week! My mom and dad sent me a compilation of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a gospel, blues, and jazz guitarist/singer from the late 1930's into the 1940's. And since it's gospel music I'm playing I can't leave out Sam Cooke. Enjoy Sister Rosetta Tharpe singing "Rock Me" and Sam Cooke singing "Jesus Gave Me Water."

It's another day in Lake Wobegon . . .

So Sam and I went to see Garrison Keillor this past Sunday, at Boston Symphony Hall. It was a great hall but, as always, the seats were so uncomfortable. I think it's for the many symphonies and operas that get played there--or at least for the people watching them, because they couldn't get comfortable enough to drift off to sleep if they wanted to.


Sam did start to doze off, however, just about mid-point in Garrison's talk. She said he just had such a nice voice to sleep to . . . I'm sure he'd be happy to hear that. That, and it reminded her of when I read to her at night, just before she goes to bed. We've been reading Roald Dahl's The BFG for the past two years, because I can only get two pages into it before I notice that Sam's asleep. That and I have to preface every reading with what happened last time she fell asleep. Anyway, Sam had another comment about Garrison Keillor . . . after we left, she told me that she understands where I get my storytelling style from. Must be a Midwestern thing to tell stories that have a definite beginning, meander for an (indefinite) period of time, and, if you have the fortitude to pay attention long enough, will return to the definite beginning with an inconclusive end. It's not the story that's the point, it's the journey we take in its telling . . .

What did Garrison talk about? Well, he started off with a poem, then sang "Pretty Polly," a folk song in the tradition of the Child ballads (it has its roots in this particular Child ballad). After that he groused about literary traditions (paying particular attention to T.S. Elliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", which he called "the poem that singlehandedly turns students off from poetry"). After all that, he began a thirty-or-forty-minute story which culminated in the meeting of a wedding, a funeral, Bruno the fishing dog, and thirty Danish Lutheran pastors in Lake Wobegon (the actual lake, not the town). It was great--if you want a recounting of it, just give me a call and I'll be happy to give you the gist of it. In the end, he had me laughing so hard that I was crying. It reminded me of all the times my Grandma Mack, Mom, Nicole and I would sit around, listening to his recordings on tape and laughing 'till our sides hurt. I'm looking forward to the next time I'll see him . . .

Not enough time in the world . . .

Amongst other things, there's not enough time in the world. At least when you're too lazy for your own good and don't get around to blogging for a week . . .

So my mother wrote me an email today saying she was going to catch up on my blog while she and dad drove to Chicago--hence the reason I'm getting off my duff and blogging today, because I'm sure there wasn't enough for her to catch up on.

Big news--my friend, Quinn Walker, was recently signed to the Voodoo-EROS label. He's spent quite a few years playing the part of the struggling artist and, if all goes well, he'll have some time to spend as the road-weary musician who just wants to go home and spend his hard-earned money. As a side note, I decided to play a joke on Quinn and made a Wikipedia entry for him, which is where his linked name will take you. He was very modest about it at first, not wanting to have a thing to do with it, but when I told him the wild lies I had put on there, he decided to get his hands dirty and set the record straight. You can see the wild lies here. Beware--some are inside jokes. Sorry. Here's an article that was written about his signing, with a really wacky picture to go along with it.

I've been enjoying my time back in school, taking some interesting classes: Public Library management, user instruction, and collection development and management. The pub. lib. management course is taught by a great professor who rattles our cages constantly, so that's always fun--especially so because it's Monday morning at 9.30, so it keeps everyone awake. The User Instruction course will be very helpful, as it's a type of crash-course in teaching--something that librarians do all the time. Collection development is kind of dry, but so is the professor's humor--he's British, and he likes to repeat himself. It's great, he spends the first fifteen minutes of class telling us what he's going to teach. I think he's just trying to get himself revved up. I'm sure I'll have more to say about the courses as they take over my life . . .

What else? Oh, Sam and I are going to see Garrison Keillor this weekend. Should be fun--I've been reading Lake Wobegon Days to counteract the effects of reading library texts. Wish I could tell stories like him.

Well, that's all I can come up with in the time I've alloted myself. Now I've got to go make a sandwich for my dinner tonight (I work 12-8 at the Simmons Library) and I want to stop off at the Irish bakery in town to pick up some Irish stew and brown bread for my lunch. Yum!

I thought that was funny?

Just wanted to make my apologies for the last two really terrible posts. I think not being in school has allowed me the leisure to relax my brain and not think too hard. But that's changed--today is my first day back. So far, so good . . . .

Sam and I had Dan, a friend of mine from my time in NYC, visit this weekend. We did much of our (what used to be) usual, drinking like sailors until the early hours of the morn and laughing our heads off the whole time. After he left the next morning, Sam (with an upset stomach and rings under her eyelids) told me we need to do that more often. Not the reaction I expected, I'll admit. It was the best "get it in before school begins" weekend I could have had, though. Thanks, Dan!

This past Thursday I had my first day on the job as Evening Supervisor/Reference Librarian at Pine Manor College. It's a very small (500 students) college west of Boston, which focuses on lower-middle class students from varied ethnic and cultural backgrounds. That's a roundabout way of saying I'm not very busy. Last Thursday I counted 15 students who came into the library, 10 of whom came to use the computers to surf the internet. I did get my first reference question, however, which was exciting. And I think it's one I won't forget soon, also. A girl came and told me she needed an article on twins and telepathy. After figuring out that it was for a psychology class, I let her know that she wouldn't likely find any scholarly articles dealing with telepathy since it isn't, after all, real. Ended up getting her an article on twins and empathetic feelings, which she seemed happy with.

mama, it's cold outside . . .

Ah, the great Louis Armstrong. Oddly enough, on the coldest day we've had yet, the song from this post's title came up on my iPod while it was on shuffle.

So yes, it's getting cold again in New England. The weather's been warm, like most of us have been experiencing (except them lemon farmers!). Oddest of all was getting off the plane a couple of Saturdays ago to a 70 degree day. Sam and I didn't look a gift horse in the mouth, however, and happily made our way to the Fells (a beautiful reservation just a half-mile from our house) and took a hike.

But now I'm getting busy again and the weather is in the teens, things are feeling like they're getting back to normal again. I gotta say, having all that free time was really getting to me--but I'm damn sure I'll long for days like these in the future.

neglecting the blog

Sorry it's been a few days since I posted anything. I've been real busy getting ready for this weekend, where I'll be proposing to Samantha. I picked up the ring last night and it is amazing. I've been so excited about it that I just can't help looking at it every few hours. Beyond sneaking peeks at the ring, I haven't had a minute to myself today. It's a culmination of our car being in the shop, last-minute shopping for Hannumas, preparing for our weekend away, and working on job applications--oh yeah, and I have to polish our menorah. Can't forget about that, as Hannukah starts tomorrow at sundown. I probably won't be posting any more, as I have class tonight and tomorrow morning, but I'll write all about our engagement after we return! I hope to have a picture of the ring as well, which was custom made (Sam had a hand in its conception, which is great).

My wandering mind

Don't let anyone tell you that you can't have fun when you're in grad school. When a particularly entrancing three-hour lecture is failing to make its mark on me I tend to let my fingers do the walking. These are a few drawings taken from my notes from Reference (a study of sources available to, and the theory of, reference). Unfortunately, that particular class is taught in a very uninspiring way that is well-suited for doodling.

This is my number monster series. My favorite is the number two on the right-hand side, and the number eight that's on fire and running down the highway.


Sometimes I like to make patterns. The worm pattern is one I have repeated a few times, this one being the first, and best, example.


Sometimes I just begin to draw a squiggly line and follow my subconscious thoughts of what it is. This time it turned into a lion (I think it was because I had watched Calder's Circus, which I had bought for Samantha's birthday the month before). I added to the menagerie with an ostrich.


This one started off as a series of high-rise buildings and turned into an odd party hat for the birthday boy. You might have noticed that the face is like those of the squid people in my last post. It's a really nice, easy way to abstract the face and draw attention to other embellishments, like the dancing radio.


So if you're wondering what I'm spending $10,000 a semester on, consider it an art studio that produces librarians. I had the idea that I might do a weekly post where I gather my doodles and put them on my blog but, thankfully, I've done more learning than doodling.

Oh the weather outside is frightful . . .

It's the first snow of the year in the Boston area, and it's a pretty one. Started off as sleet and now it's big, wet flakes that are drifting down. I went outside to get a picture . . .


It's amazing to think that, just last Wednesday and Thursday, it reached almost 70 degrees.
This weekend Sam and I decorated for the holidays, which mainly consisted of Christmas decorations. We have a couple of menorahs but that's about it that you can do for Hannukah--Sam complains about how our 7 foot tree makes the menorah seem insignificant, but I hope to get an electric-light menorah for the window so it can pose a challenge. Oh wow--I just decided to take a look on the internet to see how much it would cost and I found a blow-up lawn menorah! The best thing is that it's already sold out at this web site. So it's not only the Christians that have bad taste . . .

So this is our tree. Mom, you might notice the guitar and percussion decorations are on it this year.


After putting up our decorations, Sam and I did a little shopping for gifts and we made our holiday cards on Snapfish, which is a really great deal. To end the weekend, we drew in Sam's scrap book and watched The Librarian, which was a like a nerdy Indiana Jones who likes to remind you that the library can be cool. Oh yeah, he also gets busy with a girl, so he's cool like that too.

Here's what I was drawing . . . I had started a few months ago, and added the Nativity scene last night.

Free at last, free at last!

Well, not quite--but I did get through this last week, which was a real bear. I had four papers due, which are where some of the ideas I've blogged about came from. I want to go into the idea of folksonomy further, and will do so tomorrow. Tonight, I'm going to drink some beer, eat a bratwurst and watch some Sopranos. Maybe even Marlon Brando's "The Wild One".

Sunday @ The Museum of Science

Last time Sam and I went to the Museum of Science, we saw the Star Wars exhibit (really cool!). This time we decided to get an anatomy lesson and went to see their Body Worlds 2 exhibit. I really enjoyed reading the bits of philosophy they had on banners throughout--philosophy, of course, relating to the impermanence of the body and death. Regardless of how fascinating it was--the process of plastination, the anatomy lessons, the flayed and butterflied bodies--I couldn't stop wondering how many people passed out while taking it all in. One of the compounding elements to this problem, I thought, would be the fact that it's been cold in Boston recently (no shit?) and it's really warm in the exhibit hall. So, you have all these people, wearing heavy winter coats, packed like sardines in a room of dissected, plastinated bodies. Seems ripe for a fit of fainting, wouldn't you think? Well, I didn't get the pleasure of seeing anyone pass out and fall into a case full of preserved gonads, but I did ask one of the staff from the exhibit how many people passed out while viewing all this. Guess how many? Only 4 or 5 a week, she said. That's 5 people out of, say, 8000 people who view it (a rough estimate). So what does that imply? Well, I've got a couple of preliminary thoughts about it. First, I don't think my mom would have let me see something like this until I was old enough to understand it. But there were so many children there that they accounted for at least a fourth of the people, possibly a third, as a lot of school groups go to it during the week. Also, this is in Boston, so there's a lot of people who work in hospitals or are training to work in one--so they're used to it, or should be. But to go further, is it perhaps that our media overload has something to do with it? I mean, fifty years ago this guy would have been considered to have an abberant personality. Now it's difficult to imagine something we don't have access to hearing or seeing. But I just wanted to touch on that . . . .

After taking a trip through the exhibit, Sam and I went to see something a little more relaxing--the butterfly garden in the Museum. Sam took some pictures, most of which didn't turn out, but I thought I'd post these as well. It was a really small room but it was filled with butterflies.