takin' it to the streets . . . with holy war!

Five minutes before getting ready to close the library, I tend to aimlessly surf the internet. Tonight I was blessed with images of american jihad--holy war, that is. Be the first on your block to know about the Episcopalian Holy War!

whoops!

I forgot to post my weekly music when writing my last post. Knew I had forgotten something . . .

Well, this week I've been reading Barry Miles' biography of Frank Zappa, so I figured I'd put up some Mothers of Invention (Zappa's band's name). The first one, Valarie, is a great doo-wop tune. The second is a tune he played quite a bit, My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama. Enjoy!

'possum vs. opossum

It's an interesting opposition, 'possum vs. opossum. Very delicate.

So it looks like the end of the world is upon us. Jess has begun blogging again, and my friend James Fegley just sent me this picture of an alien that must represent the vanguard of the coming invasion. See below for the terrifying truth!

In other news, it looks like I won't be able to get the job at the Boston Public Library, due to residency rules. Apparently HR is just a little more strict than these people thought (no shit?!?). I kind of got the idea when, on Monday, I opened my fortune cookie and it said something to the tune of "the joy of life is in the journey, not the destination." Dammit, fortune cookie, you ruined my life!

My semester is really gearing up at the moment. Lots of projects coming due, keeping me very busy. This weekend Sam and I will be visiting the Inn at Essex, which will end up being the last place we visit for possible wedding sites. We just don't have the time to keep looking, have to book something soon. This place looks great, near Burlington VT, they even gave us a complimentary room for the night. It's dubbed "Vermont's Culinary Resort" because the chefs all come from the New England Culinary Institute. I'll keep you posted on how it goes, just keep your peepers on this site.

The weekend after this one I get to see my first Red Sox game of the season--go Sox! I'm sure to give my Uncle George a phone call while I'm there--he's a fun guy to talk baseball to, because his knowledge of baseball is encyclopedic. That and he gets a real kick out of it when I call.







Technorati Tags: baseball, wedding, Red Sox, libraries, library, alien, invasion,

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a possible return from retirement?

I've been checking my friend Jess' blog daily to see if he's changed his mind about ending the "blogging project"--I just don't think it's proper to hound him during our conversations--and it appears that he may be weighing a triumphant return from his recent retirement. He's removed the message he left, announcing his retirement, which can only give me hope. Unlike Michael Jordan, I believe this return will show him in better form than his last showing, so expect bigger and better things from him if he does decide to put his fingers to the keyboard for a public display of intellectual prowess. Here's hoping that Jess shrugs off the cape that is draped over his shoulders and, with a primal yawp, begins a madcap boogie--the likes of which the late James Brown would be amazed by.

To commemorate this special occasion, I have decided to dip into my archives of Jess-related paraphernalia and offer this picture, taken during one of our afternoon porch-sitting sessions. Cheers!

Technorati Tags: jess boldt, michael jordan, james brown

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my Flickr badge

Just wanted to draw everyone's attention to my Flickr badge on the right-side of the page (scroll down a little to see it). It's great! I love it! And hopefully you're getting to see the picture of Sam eating a hot dog! Super Duper Weenie is the greatest--see here for a review, and make sure you look at the pictures. Whenever we drive to Jersey or NYC to visit family and friends, I have to make a stop. Simply delicious. Well, before this blog becomes one big rave about hot dogs, I've got to go. Gotta go to Simmons for my 12-8 shift at the reference desk, and then we have friends (Ally and Alex) visiting from Brooklyn, so we'll be up all night.

Technorati Tags: Super Duper Weenie, Flickr, badge, hot dog, hot dogs

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don't start me talking, i'll tell you everything i know

Good news on the job front--I went in yesterday and interviewed for the cataloging position at the Boston Public Library and, pending background check, have been offered the job. It's a temporary position but a good way to get my foot in the door . . . that and it's great money! I never figured I'd be making this much on a part-time job while still in college. The people I'd be working with are great, too--it was a relief to find some librarians who work blue.

So, in celebration of my new job, I'm sharing my good will and posting two new songs! Aren't you the lucky one? I was just listening to an old "best of" disk of Sonny Boy Williamson that I've had for years but never listen to and was reminded of a great song: "Don't Start Me To Talkin'." Really, I wanted to play "Fattening Frogs for Snakes" for you, but this song works better. While listening to Sonny Boy play that wicked harmonica, I was reminded of a version of the song I had heard John Minton play--and remembered that I had a recording of it on disk! It was from a show he played at the now-defunct Toast and Jam, a coffee shop in Fort Wayne I used to frequent. So here they are, in all their greatness, Sonny Boy Williamson's version and John Minton's version of "Don't Start Me To Talkin'." Enjoy!



Technorati Tags: John Minton, Sonny Boy Williamson, cataloging, music

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Whopsy frobscottle!

I've been reading Sam my favorite bed-time story, The BFG, for the past year and it's done the trick of getting her off to sleep quickly. We're almost to the end now; the Queen's Army and Air Force is off, ready to capture the nine human bean-gulping giants! As a child, I loved Quentin Blake's illustrations (he did a lot of work for Roald Dahl's books) and, during our engagement weekend, Sam and I got to see original art from The BFG when we visited The Eric Carle Museum of Picturebook Art. Great fun! It even had some of the depictions of what happens when you drink whopsy frobscottle . . . and you get whizpoppers!



So I had mentioned seeing a couple of potential spots for our wedding in New Hampshire this past weekend. Hate to say it but Sam and I had a terrible experience at the Castle in the Clouds, so there's no way we're having it there. It's was such a bummer, because I was so excited about it, but it was a disaster. The events coordinator didn't tell us about the secret rear entrance up the mountain, so we never ended up meeting her. Long story short, when we finally got to the secret meeting spot that she had never told us about, she was already gone. When we got in touch with her over the phone, she was rude and unapologetic . . . overall a nasty character. She stressed that it would take her all of ten minutes to get back to where we were, and had better things to do--this, after we had driven two hours to get there! My mind just boggled. So the next day I wrote a letter to the General Manager. What else can you do in a situation like that?

But with every bad experience, I tend to have a great experience. Don't know if it's how my Irish luck plays out, or if it's karma, or whatever. The next stop was the Bedford Village Inn, which ended up being the "gold standard" we'll be comparing to when looking at our other selections. I've taken video of it all (including the stunning scenery at the Castle in the Clouds), so maybe I'll post it on YouTube.

I got an email last week from a professor of mine, asking if I'd be interested in a cataloging job at a "well-known institution in downtown Boston." I put my name in the hat and ended up with an interview at the Boston Public Library. The job deals with cataloging fore-edge painted books from the Rare Book Department, which will then be digitized and available online. Sounds like interesting work, and the pay is pretty great too! So I'll be going in on Thursday--sounds like it'll be an informal meeting, so it seems like I've already got the job.

Last but not least, it's a new week! And I've got to keep my promise to post music. This week is The Smiths, with "Panic". A great clangy 80's English pop tune with a refrain we can all agree with--hope you enjoy!

hang the blessed DJ
because the music they constantly play
it says nothing to me about my life

slacker!

I find myself again in the position of apologizing to no-one for not having posted in the past few weeks. Why apologize? I don't know, absolves me of my blogging sins?

Two weeks ago I had my fiscal management course, taken over Spring Break. So while all those girls were going wild, I was keeping my shirt on and being studious. Take it from me girls, it ain't all that and a slice of pie. But at least my family wasn't ashamed of me after seeing my Spring Break escapades. The class was great, really--we had a variety of very interesting individuals who gave talks. Most notable was a board member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), who dropped this line: "last week when I was at Warren Buffett's office, I asked him what he wanted to see on accounting sheets . . ." In case you're not sure who Warren Buffett is, here's a good article from Salon, and here's the Wikipedia entry. We also had a Vice President from the Federal Reserve talk to us about media concerns and their impact on the market. Really great stuff, but it's not for everyone.

Sam and I will be going to New Hampshire this Saturday to see a few places we have pegged as potential spots for our wedding. The one I'm most excited about is the Castle in the Clouds, which isn't too pricey and is freakin' beautiful.

So I've just seen word from my friend, Jess, that he's done with the blogging experiment. Or, as he says it, there's "nothing left to write." I find that hard to believe--this from a guy who just published a book of poetry. But sometimes it can get a little silly, writing a blog that you're sure no-one reads or, much less, cares about. That and blogging makes it difficult to divide the truly personal and that-which-should-be-blogged. I know that there's enough going on in Jess' life that he could talk about, but it's not always appropriate for the blogging forum. Same goes for me--I've written one post that was lost because Firefox crashed and, in retrospect, was happy that it did because what I had written wasn't appropriate for a public forum, no matter how little it's read. Along this line, my dad had told me about a workshop he had attended, made mandatory by his employer, that discussed the implications of correspondence through the digital environment, where anything inappropriate you say can and will be haunting you at some point in the future. Just type "MySpace" and "arrest" into Google and you'll see some implications of this.

Anyway, I hope Jess will get off his duff and come back to blogging. I've been enjoying his posts, there hasn't been a dull one yet.

I've been kicking around the idea of posting a song to the blog once a week, so this will be the first one. And in honor of St. Paddy's Day, I bring you The Dubliners singing Finnegan's Wake. If you're interested in understanding what they're singing, I suggest seeing the lyrics here. Enjoy!

the land of cheese steak and brew pubs

Samantha and I are down in New Jersey for the weekend to visit her parents and talk about preparations for the wedding. We've come up with some great ideas so far--we're kicking around the idea of each table having its own "Dewey" theme, with a subject taken from the Dewey Decimal Classification system being the theme of the table.

Being at Sam's parents in New Jersey means that we're about 15 minutes from Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. Imagine my joy when I found out that it's also the city of brew pubs! We went to one of them on Thursday, when we had dinner with a friend of Sam's. The name was Nodding Head, the name coming from the hundreds of bobblehead dolls they had in their case. I got to try almost all of their beers. The one that stood out was named Grog, their take on an English brown beer. An interesting beer was brewed using hops, engineered by the Sapporo brewery in Japan--can't remember the name for it, and it's not listed on their webpage.

I've also been able to indulge myself in the cheese steak, of which I've had two. I can't stop myself!

my first link! (other than Jess)

I know this is pretty bad of me, but I was looking at my blog just a minute ago and decided to see if anyone has linked to my blog (with the exception of Jess--not saying I don't appreciate it!). So I clicked on the "blogs that link here" link on the right-side column, and damned if I wasn't quoted in another blog! It was a post about the Espresso machine which prints books on demand, where I was quoted as the "thoughtful, more bookworm-ish perspective" from what I had said in this post. Hey, it's not much, but it's what I got! I just hope this isn't my fifteen minutes of fame 'cause if it is, then I'm pretty dang pathetic.

Recommendations and CRM

A month or so ago, I had posted something about Amazon's personalized recommendations going a little wonky. Now, I had heard that gmail (Google's free email accounts) had been giving recommendations as well--these recommendations were based on keywords plucked from emails that gmail users had sent and received. Well, they're not so much recommendations as "personalized" advertising from sponsors of Google's gmail. So I had heard that there were some problems with this as well, and obviously it should be so. I mean, when I write an email to someone, I'm not expounding on my shopping habits and bemoaning a lack of advertising directed towards my personal interests. Usually, I'm complaining about the weather, talking about baseball, loved ones, so on and so forth. So how does gmail extract keywords from those conversations? Well, that's the problem. And it's a problem that my friend Jess has had recently, leading him to post about this hilarious personalized advertisement he received. Jess, I just hope to god that you weren't writing about that in your emails . . .

beavers and their eating habits

Samantha's been entertaining me these past few weeks with a funny story about one of the kids in her school. Apparently when Sam asks this kid a question, she can't answer it but instead goes off with some nonsensical statement. This is a recording I got Sam to make, with my favorite nonsense response yet.

Dice-K's just a blur in the headlines

Got an email from my Uncle Dave this morning, where he forwarded an article about the Red Sox's knight in shining armor, Daisuke Matsuzaka (see the link for a good blog, Matsuzaka Watch). It got me to thinking about the two articles I've seen about Dice-K's training day appearances--well, actually about the photos that accompanied the articles. In the photos (below), Matsuzaka's a blur. Now, photographic technology is well enough advanced that we can capture most any moments without accompanying blurring, so why was Matsuzaka blurred? Well, to give a little background, Boston laid out $51 mil. to his former Japanese-league team just to sign him, and another $52 mil. for a five-year contract (not figuring bonuses paid for game statistics and other perks like the $150,000 for relocation expenses or the ten round-trip tickets to Japan per year that Matsuzaka was able to get figured into his contract). The reason that they paid all this money is because Matsuzaka's figured to be the best pitcher in Japan, where he can throw blistering fastballs and, in some baseball fan's fantasies, can even throw the mythical gyroball. So he's being touted based on his speed--he's fast, man! I can just imagine the word that went out to the Boston press corp from the Red Sox's clubhouse--Theo Epstein saying that not only does he want them to write about Matsuzaka's speed, he wants it in pictures too. Smart PR move, guys!

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!