How's this for arts and crafts: (guitar riff).

I'm still here. Blogging. I have 1 and 1/3 finals completed. I don't only have one written though, I have one submitted. You will probably be seeing a lot of me in the coming days, just as you have seen a lot of me in the last several days. I cannot just focus on evaluation techniques of libraries, which are what 3 of the 4 finals are about. I can't do it. It's impossible. I need a break. My brain is too easily distracted from the boredom of circulation statistics and list-checking to maintain a steady stream of sentences on the benefits of evaluation. Evaluation is helpful, truly. Ahaha. I slipped there and typed hellpful at first. Evaluation is hell[-pful] is the best I can do.

I drive a subaru named Tinker. I'm sad to say that she's getting kind of hoopty. She's a good car: reliable, tough, safe. However, she is also minus a hubcap, spontaneously spits cds out of the cd player when it feels like it, and the driver's side window is a diva that requires me to both pull on the window up button while manually dragging the glass upward at the same time. Sigh. She's looking worse for wear. She was egged on Halloween and it was humiliating for her because I couldn't get the egg off very well. In my naivety, it took me a few days to even realize that it was egg, not bird poo, and by then, the egg was pretty well stuck on there. Her paint is still a little streaky in areas. She's eleven years old, the same age as my Dad's cat, and both are getting a little slower in their golden years. She passed the 100,000 mile mark a few months ago, which was exciting. People can hear us coming down the street. Her brakes squeak a little, even though the car folks say the brake pads are still okay. Her radio blares like crazy and it's fine by me, but I've noticed an upswing in the number of bystanders that turn to look at us as we drive by in recent months and I think perhaps the driver's window issue also means that sounds come out louder from inside the car. Her rim is getting a nice rusting effect where her hubcap should be. I still have the hubcap. I chased it around town a few times when it would fly off but, finally, I quit putting it back on the tire and deposited it in the basement. I am kind of hoping to not have to get another car. I'd love to end up in a place that had decent public transportation in lieu of having to drive. We'll see. Me and Tinker are still plugging along for hopefully another year or so. Overall, she still runs well, she's just looking and sounding her age, poor thing.

My birthday is tomorrow. I don't really celebrate my birthday, though. A few years ago I went to KC and rang in my birthday while drinking fancy drinks in a rotating restaurant on top of a hotel with a friend of mine. But, that was really unusual and I hadn't celebrated it for years prior to that or since. Mostly, my birthday comes and goes without much fanfare, which is the way I prefer it. Everyone's got a birthday and it's kind of special for you when it's yours, but I've never been to into sharing it with other people outside of my family. I was sung to by waitstaff a few weeks ago at a restaurant in a mistaken birthday incident and that'll hold me on the public birthday thing for a while, I think. At any rate, my little birthday dinner with my Dad is going to be tonight and my actual birthday tomorrow will be filled with work, cataloging, class, and not getting home til late, which can be a bummer. But, you know that happy feeling that you get on your birthday? I fully expect to revel in that in my own mind most of the day and it should be fun. Maybe the sun will even come out.

Aside from blogging, my procrastination has included making photoshop collages, and writing poetry and lyrics on myself with a Sharpie. I wrote the second stanza of Shel Silverstein's "Where the Sidewalk Ends" on the inside of my left arm, and I gotta say: I thought it looked kind of cool. I've mentioned my love of tattoos but inability to get over the idea of the pain and cost of actually getting one. Maybe I could just draw on myself when I want to feel tattoo-y. Temporary tats for the fickle cheapskate? Here are some possibilities:

"Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends." (Shel Silverstein)

"Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise." (Maya Angelou)

"I am the terror that flaps in the night.
I am the wrong number that wakes you at 3 am!" (Darkwing Duck)

"And afterall,
You're my wonderwall." (Oasis)

"I watch the world from my window sill
The whole world is moving and I'm standing still." (The Weepies)

"Everybody get dangerous,
Everybody get dangerous,
Booyah." (Weezer)