Halloween Creepiness A Few Days Early.

Have you heard of "Take This Lollipop"? Read this article from cnn if you want to find out about it. If you're at all into freaking yourself/others out for Halloween as well as making a point regarding 'beware what you share', this is a pretty good place to start. I used it to see what the creepy guy would find because I feel like my profiles and things are pretty well locked down where Facebook is concerned. It was uncomfortably weird seeing him flip through my vacation photos though. The video definitely made me look like this llama (click the llama! you won't regret it! It's funny.):

The actor is creepy anyway, he played the scary abusive dad in "The Secret Life of Bees" (great movie, by the way...), and just has that creeper kind of look to him, plus the scary basement and crazy-eyes he has. Anyway, if you're looking for a way to be totally creeped out for Halloween or to totally creep others out, "Take This Lollipop" is a pretty good way to do it. And then go immediately check your privacy settings on everything you can think of. Happy Halloween?

Someone is staring at me in the coffee shop and a fly that won't leave me alone.

It's Wednesday already? Or maybe, it's only Wednesday?! Hmm. Glass half full/empty sort of beginning here.

So... Comps is decidedly less enjoyable than perhaps I thought it would be several naive days ago. It's kind of [nearly] impossible to keep focus on four questions for an entire week and write four research papers on said questions. Especially when your baseball team is in the World Series that week. And one of the questions is on Learning Labs. How much can you really say about Learning Labs? I like them. They're cool. Kids seem to enjoy them. Hurrah for having spaces for kids to try out being a radio deejay. I'm for it. But...there's only so much to write about them and to design one? Well...there's only one extremely good example of a successful learning lab right now and I assume all 40 of us are going to base our labs on that one example. How uninteresting it must be to grade these.

You know those images that are floating around the social media sites right now? The kind where it's a jumble of letters a la those word search things? And you're supposed to look at it and the first few words that you happen to decipher in the puzzle are supposed to describe who you are right now? Yeah. I don't know if there's a science behind that; I don't know if someone took that from a psychologist's toolbox or if someone just decided to make a word search seem way more important by pretending it tells you something deep about your personality. BUT. I did one and I got the following words: impatient (check), restless (check), passionate (check) and naive (check). I can pretty well center all four of those words completely on myself right now in terms of job-hunting and moving forward in life.

I've had spotify on random radio things and it seemed to get stuck on Sufjan Stevens and I didn't really pay any attention until just a second ago when I finally registered this annoying noise coming through my earphones and I was suddenly, 'What the hell am I listening to?'. I'm happy to say that now I have Beady Eye playing who are decidedly more funky and more me than Mr. Stevens. Not that Stevens doesn't have a good song or two...but...no. I have a tendency to chair dance when I listen to music and I have a tendency to need to listen to music when I'm writing my papers and I have a tendency to need write papers away from my house.  All this comes together to mean that this week I've had a higher frequency of bursts of public dancing than normal. It's been kind of eye-opening to realize that I am rocking out enough to disturb other booth-sitters in my coffee shop that I tend to use as study ground #1. I tried to branch out to a second study ground at the local university in town, but they have a major parking problem and even though I had a student parking permit at my disposal, there was NO WHERE to park near the library. They have a really nice library and I was hoping to go in and look around for a bit and see what sorts of services they offer their students as a way to help write one of the comps, but that was kind of a bust due to the parking issue. And aside from that, I kept nearly going the wrong way down one-way streets and after two separate attempts to find a parking space on campus (one in am and one in pm), and after several circles around campus, I gave up and returned to study ground #1. Seriously, Lincoln needs a parking garage or something. It's ridiculous over there.

So now I'm trying to study here but it's kind of not working, either.

Attention! Attention!

I can put a good percentage of my hair up into a ponytail.
[For the first time in years.]

That is all.

Mid-comps musings.

I am in the middle of my Master's comprehensive exams right now. Things are going okay. When the questions were released yesterday morning and I saw them, I was pretty happy with them. I feel secure in the knowledge that I can get the needed grade for these questions and graduate. I have two secondary drafts done and a list of sources mostly compiled for the final two. It's not bad. This is exactly what I wanted. I chose this program all those years ago because of the fact that they offered a comp exam option instead of a thesis. I am not a person that enjoys theses. I have a theory that people who choose to get a grad degree fall into either a thesis group or a comp exam group. I am definitely the latter. I think I have some fellow students who fall into the former, based on the panic levels screaming from posts on the online discussion boards for these exams. I understand the feeling though. I had to a thesis for my history undergrad degree and it nearly gave me a panic attack. It wasn't even as rigorous as a graduate level thesis would be and I was exhausted from it. No, no. Give me a test any day instead of a semesters worth of meetings and readings and planning with committees, etc. I pity the fool that has to go the thesis route.

Still. Comps are not all glitter and rainbows. The weather is beautiful right now (70s in late October, areyoukiddingme?) and it's making it rough to focus on comps. I would much rather be doing something like this:

I feel like I'm definitely more of a porch swing sort of human rather than a hammock sort of human. Granted, I haven't had a lot of hammock experience, but the few times I've tried one out, it's been totally uncomfortable. This looks absolutely perfect. I could type my comps and read my books right there. I haven't been to a beach in a long time...I think I've mentioned this in recent months... This just looks so enticing. Maybe a coastal librarian job is what I need?

Tonight it begins!

Go Cardinals!

[I'm really excited.]

Mama said there'd be days like this.

For those days that rough you up.

Mumbling in the late hours of the day.

I'm sleepy but also not quite ready to go to sleep yet. The internet is not that interesting. The book I'm supposed to be reading for the Missouri State Book Review Board can't even hold my interest enough to get through the first five pages...and I have to finish it and write a review for it. Not a good sign that I can't even get through the first chapter.

I messed my whole schedule up for the next three weeks. I don't really know what I was thinking. Maybe it will work out better this way, though. I got the days I'm supposed to work/work/practicum mixed up because someone had a conflict and needed me to alter my schedule. I screwed up the whole week's schedule by telling them I normally work that job on Tuesdays, which is completely wrong. I don't really even know what's going on around me. I'm a bit like a robot just making my commute, parking in the garage, walking to a building, working, walking to lunch, walking to another building, working, walking to the other side of the same building, working, walking back to the garage, driving the return commute, eat dinner, read books, go to sleep, replay. I have such a set schedule and no time for anything but that schedule that I don't even think about it any longer. But when someone needs me to change something, I actually don't have a true idea of what it is I'm doing on any given day any more. I'm just on autopilot. And when forced to come out of autopilot today, my entire system failed and I have managed to screw up the schedule for a few weeks. But maybe that's okay. Next week was going to be messed up anyhow, so a little more screwing with it isn't really going to make it worse.

Iris is cuddly tonight. There were a few claps of thunder earlier and some decent bolts of lightning and she started roaming around the living room doing her high pitched crying like she was worried. So she was pulled up on the couch and is in a little ball sleeping next to me now. The rain is gone, though. But she's definitely a cuddler.

I kind of want things to go by faster. I'm ready for school to be done, but the year's been going by so fast anyway, that I'm also kind of wishing it would slow down a little too. Maybe I would get a handle on things better. Life isn't really boring right now, but it kind of is what with being really busy but busy doing the same things over and over and over every week. No real variety right now. Halloween is in a couple of weeks though. I can't decide whether to buy candy for trick or treaters or not. The doorbell scares the hell out of Iris and it's not really worth the hour and a half of trying to pull the cat from her hiding place to calm her down for just a handful of trick or treaters. Also, I don't get the cute little kids who go as little ninjas or princesses. I get the hoardes of teenage boys that just wear a Star Wars shirt and call it a costume. Lame and unimaginative. I'll keep the sour patch kids candy to myself, thankyouverymuch.

The Cards are in the World Series. Last night was a crazy homerun fest. I don't have anything against Milwaukee. I've been to see them play in Wisconsin before. It wasn't very exciting. Milwaukee as a town wasn't all that impressive. Kind of grungy and sad, actually. St. Louis definitely has the upper hand in the cool town category. Somebody's gotta lose. Brewers fans have less to complain about than Phillies fans, in my opinion. And everyone should be happier than Braves fans. Cardinals fans can be kind of brutal to other teams. Generally they will pick on a player who makes the mistake of opening their mouth to a journalist and letting something stupid come out and it goes through the web like a virus and Redbird Nation gets all up in arms about what some young kid you'd never pay any attention to otherwise said about Albert Pujols or the Cardinals in general. The players and the fans are very loyal and very protective about the Cardinals. I am, too. I have a hard time imagining myself rooting for anybody but the Cards. Still, I don't get into the boo-ing of other teams. I did enjoy when Yadier Molina stood up to Brandon Phillips last season, but that got totally out of hand and we ended up the real losers in the whole mix after our back-up catcher's career was ended in the brawl. It's important to learn from things like that. That stuff can get out of hand really quickly and it's detrimental to your own team. This is all to say that I hope both teams and fans are respectful in the World Series and we don't have any players who start to make stupid remarks to create drama. It will be a tense enough situation without booing or fighting or name-calling. Let's play ball (starting Wednesday)!

Boomin' like an atom bomb.

Happy weekend, everybody. It doesn't necessarily feel like Fall, what with it being 80 degrees outside, but Fall it is and Fall stuff I did do this weekend. Pumpkin patches, mum buying, Autumny porch decorating, post-season baseball tracking, winery visiting, and family seeing were all on the agenda. Plus some homework doing and book reading.

And music discovering! Have you heard of Mayer Hawthorne? I was trolling Spotify and came across his new album and gave him a listen. He's a bit of a throwback artist. You don't hear many falsettos rocking the airwaves nowadays. He mixes it up though too, doing a song with Snoop Dogg on his latest album, "How Do You Do". I would put a youtube video on here, but I get tired of them being dumb and restrictive on which websites they allow things to play. I wish you could just share a song rather than having to share an entire freaking video. But, check out Mayer Hawthorne if you get a chance. Especially if you like modern musicians with a retro sound.

Also, I saw the movie "Coco Before Chanel" this weekend. I loved it. Audrey Tautou is wonderful in it (of course!) and I hadn't ever really learned much about Coco Chanel, but I think we could have been friends. I "get" her. I wouldn't have enjoyed wearing the frou-frou dresses and obnoxious hats that the french ladies in her day were wearing. And corsets? No. She's portrayed as a pretty awesome woman in her early years who was not afraid to strike out on her own and be a little different in her style choices. She was practical in her style, but still very unique and classic in her creations. I liked the movie a lot and I was thinking about it later and I wonder if she and Eva Peron ever met and if they were friends? You know how there's that conversation starter about which people would you invite to a dinner party? I would like to have dinner with Eva Peron and Coco Chanel.

This is my last weekend before comps begin and go through the rest of the month. I'm looking forward to them being over. Turn, turn, turn.

The best brownies ever.

Once you go Ghirardelli, you'll never go back to whatever boxed brownie mix you tend to buy. You'll also probably find yourself critiquing brownies from actual local bakers in actual bakeries. This is okay because you have, in fact, seen the light and they apparently have not. So, see the light and share it, please! This is why I'm sharing this morsel of m(mmm!)umbling with you. I pinky swear to you that these are the best brownies in the world, and I don't joke around with pinky swears.

It's actually raining outside.

Oh, group projects, you are a frustration beyond all frustrations. The problem is that I'm having to wait on others before I can act. I'm not a patient person. I'm not overly impatient, but when I'm ready to move forward with something, I'm ready to go. And I'll wait for a bit (like, a tiny bit), but then I'll get frustrated and just go on alone. I don't have any problem going on alone, but I sometimes think after the fact that perhaps I could have waited a little longer for another person to make up their mind. This is why group projects are a pain. There are a lot of group projects in my life right now. 


Interesting horoscope today:

Worrying won't help you get closer to a solution. Think of pleasant things.

[Thanks heaps, Yahoo. I'll try to keep that in mind.]

I got a really fantastic piece of information yesterday from the museum. They'd like to make my graduate assistantship a permanent assistantship for a Library Science student. This is really cool because they don't have a librarian on-staff and I had to beg my way into an assistantship with them because they generally only hire students from within their own department. So, after nearly 18 months, they've seen the awesomeness of having a library student in their midst! I'm pretty proud of that. It makes me feel like I have actually affected something (in a good way) while I've been there. Sometimes I wasn't sure whether I really fit in there or not, but this semester it's been much friendlier than the previous two were. Maybe it was just sort of a long get-to-know-you phase? Regardless: Go, museum! Good for you! I just hope that someone from LIS takes the position in January. It would be too easy for the museum to want to hold an assistantship for an LIS student and then have nobody want it (or be able to take it mid-year) and then the museum just lets go of the idea and never gets another library student again until one comes and begs them for another job. LIS has no real coursework or practicum or GRA positions available to students who are interested in museum work, but there are a couple of others that I've had classes with who are/have been wanting to go into museums with their MLS degree. So, I hope that it all works out and someone can pick up where I'll be leaving off.

So, I'm about halfway through the semester and I realize I haven't shared much in the way of books on here. I use goodreads, like any good library student does, and have kept track of all the children's lit materials on there. I've had literally no time to read any other books but childrens and young adult books for about six weeks. But here are two books that I've read that I absolutely recommend to everyone. (I'm thinking about asking for Elephant and Piggie for Christmas, personally. Happy Master's Degree Graduation, here's a picture book?):

I tend to like books about time travel. I'm quite the nerd for time travel, actually. If you are, too: this is a really interesting book. It's classified as a young adult book, but I had actually put this on my Goodreads 'to read' list long ago. I think it's YA mainly because the main character is a girl in middle school. The story is very intriguing and has a really impressive and surprising ending (I thought). It's a little mysterious, a little sad, and a little wonderful. And if you liked "A Wrinkle in Time", you'll probably feel a kinship toward the characters in this book. That was not a spoiler, just a fact. It's a good read.

I would challenge anyone to read this book (or really, any by Mo Willems) and not crack a smile. I did more than crack a smile reading this particular Elephant and Piggie book. I was guffawing all over myself on the couch. I'd heard Mo Willems talked about at librarian meet-ups in rather hushed kind of idolized-tones, but I'd never read anything by him. It's sometimes tough to get your hands on a copy of some of the books; they're checked out so often. He is a master at telling a story for children, but making adults fall in love with the book as well. In this book, it's all about the facial expressions on the elephant's face. It's a super simple concept, but done so well. READ THIS BOOK.




That's all for now. The Cardinals are up by a run in the sixth inning of game 3 against the Brewers. I'm hoping they can hang on and win the game. Hope, hope, hope. Don't choke, guys. [Also, it's totally raining outside. It hasn't rained here in weeks.]

Attack of the Polyvore

Meet my newest obsession: Polyvore. It's a site where you can choose from thousands of pieces of fashion, music, artwork, decor, movies and just put together collages of things you like. I became aware of this through the ultra-fantastic site, Pinterest. Anyway, I've now spent oodles of time creating my own looks from the selections over at Polyvore. If I had all the money in the world and access to all of these stores and they had these pieces in my size, I would wander around my life dressed in these things:

GO CARDINALS

We're leading 1-0 in the second inning! Let's call the game right here. It could all go to hell very shortly, so I need to get this picture of the rally squirrel up while we're actually ahead.

Let the imagination roam free.

Oh, happy Friday!

Today is Cardinals make it or break it day. Game 5 of the NLDS between them and the Philadelphia Phillies. I am so proud of the Cardinals. I was definitely among those who thought our season was done in August. I was prepared to just throw in the towel and prepare for next season and the return of Wainwright, etc. And here we are, still playing in October. I'm so amazed at the way they've turned their season around and I would LOVE to see them continue this amazing run they're on. Even if they lose tonight, I still think this has been amazing, and even if Albert Pujols doesn't return to us next season, this is a great way to go out. Really proud to call them my team and glad to see how relaxed and fun-loving they are right now. The entire last two months have been so odd as far as typical baseball go, that it's been a happy surprise for everyone and the team seems especially happy with themselves. As they should be. Go Redbirds!

I am currently scanning a Civil War diary. There is a lot of downtime when you do scanning work. I've finished reading a book for Children's Lit. I've finished work on a practicum assignment. I've checked my e-mail oodles of times. I should have brought another book with me. Nobody is working today, either. We're not off work on Monday like the state workers are, so it's not a three day weekend for us, but somehow multiple people took today off. It's super quiet except for me and my scanner. Kind of drives me nuts. I would blast some music, but there is a little meeting going on in a room nearby with some donors. Maybe later I can blast some music. Hmm. Or just go home after this scanning work is done. It's awfully beautiful weather we're having lately and I might as well enjoy it while I can.

I've got Watson this weekend. Watching him while Dad goes to St. Louis for a photography class. Watson is on pills now, but he seems to enjoy taking them. At least he does when Dad gives them to him. I'm hoping he keeps his same optimistic outlook when I have to give them to him.

The jobs outlook in the library world has a little blip in it right now. Over 300 jobs are available on just one posting site. This is unexpected. I hope this is becomes a trend rather than a little blip, but for now I'll have to continue calling it a blip. A few are just contract positions, but I'm not turning my nose up at those. I'm pretty much looking at everything on an even playing field. I'll go pretty much anywhere for the right job. And I'll go plenty of cool places for a not-quite-right job. Like England. Or Quebec. Or even coastal New Hampshire or North Carolina. There was a term job listed about a month ago that was very intriguing. It was a term position for an archivist to assist an author in The Hamptons with arranging and processing their personal papers for a memoir. The author was anonymous, but if they're living in The Hamptons and someone wants them to write a memoir, I figured they've made something of themselves and it could be an interesting job. I'd be into doing something like that. Something different, even if it was just a short-term gig. I don't have anything holding me back right now in the form of family commitments, so there are plenty of paths for me to go if I was offered something awesome like that opportunity. I have the house and a needy cat, but I could probably figure something out with those two if I found something like that short-term archivist job. Oh, the imagination runs wild.

"Someone Like You" cover

Wow! I love Adele and think she's amazing, etc. "21" is definitely one of the best albums to come out this year, but major bravos to this duo who covered Adele's "Someone Like You". I still like Adele's version, but it's nice to hear it as a duet.




Damn.

Letters, letters, letters.

I am a big fan of letters. If you know me or read this blog very often, you might already know that... I still write letters sometimes. I mail letters to people. I work with letters. I have read books full of letters of famous people and made-up people and nursery rhyme animals. I've loved letters since I was little. Not e-mails, mind you, but letters. Handwritten, preferably. E-mails are okay, but can have a lot less of a personal feeling to them sometimes. Handwritten letters have more than words in them. They have scribbles in the margins where the writer thought maybe the pen was running out of ink, they have crossed out words in the middle, they have cursive handwriting that gets more difficult to read the more emotional the writer gets, they have drawings in them, they have misspellings that the author didn't know were misspelled because there is no spell check except the author's own brain, they can be written on unique stationary or on the back of a receipt from a restaurant. They're amazing and fun and sometimes, kept for years and years. I love the human element of these letters.

When I am angry at something or frustrated with a situation, I often write letters to try to deal with the situation. I rarely give the letters to the person. I keep them for a few days and then usually get rid of them. I used to give them to people. My father can probably attest to the letters he and my mom used to get when I was upset or had my feelings hurt. I would scrawl a letter in my little grade-school handwriting and leave it in their room for them to find later. Usually kind of saying things like, 'You really hurt my feelings!', etc. I also used them to try to explain my actions. The best one I remember was a letter I wrote when I was about 13 and I would get home from school and hang out for a couple of hours before my parents would get home from work. I discovered that I could blast the stereo in the living room and pretend like I was a gymnast and race down the hall and into my parents' room and use their bed as a vault and do flips and it was pretty fun. I got major air a few times. Eventually, after days of doing this, the vault broke. That was an apology letter...kind of. It was sort of an 'Ooops' with a 'Huh..your bed just broke by itself' kind of fib letter that totally didn't work out. At any rate, I still write letters and probably always will. I like it better than journal writing. 1) letters are easier to throw out when you're over the problem and 2) blank journals are kind of intimidating in that it feels like you have to write in them pretty regularly. But no matter how you do it, writing out the problems and hurt feelings and confusion or explanations of actions in a letter meant for a certain person seems to make it easier to get over something. And you never have to give it to them if you don't want to. If you do decide to confront the person, you have already worked out some of your points that you want to make. It's win/win. I don't like confrontation, but I dislike feeling angry even more than that. Sometimes the anger is more at yourself than at the person. Writing a letter can help clear up the confusion. And, sometimes, make it glaringly obvious that what you're mad about is incredibly petty and maybe you end up laughing at the absurdity of it all when you re-read what you just wrote. It has always helped to put things into perspective for me. Maybe for you, as well? Long live the handwritten note.

If you like writing letters too, or have a penchant for reading them, make sure you check out website "Letters of Note". It has some very cool letters and stories to go with them some days.

World is whirling by.

Galajsdfaldakmngoiweaflkfas.

That's the best way I can come up with to try to explain how I feel and how I've felt this entire year. Things are going by so quickly and I feel so busy. All. the. time. It's not bad, it's just confusing some times and exhausting almost all the time. I like having things to do. I like being busy. But this morning, I was just lying in bed trying to wake up and suddenly felt like I could really use a break from the galkasdafklajke of this year.

School is good. People are healthy. Work is fine and promising to stay that way for a while. It's just been a whirlwind. As a clear indication of how overwhelmingly busy I've felt, I still have my Christmas tree up in my dining room...yes, from last Christmas. I looked at it last night, lounging against the dining room table, where it's been lounging for over half a year now, and I thought, "Well, I could just decorate it again and at least be actually ahead of schedule for something this year?"

I didn't decorate it....yet.

Also, turns out I have class this Saturday. I thought it was next Saturday, but it makes no difference. I am not surprised in the least when I nearly miss a deadline or am corrected on the date/time of something I'm supposed to be a part of. I'm just running in circles. I knew it would be crazy. This month especially. I've known all year that October will be crazy. I feel prepared for the craziness of this month, but not really for the overwhelmingly busy feeling of all the rest of the months leading up to this one.

So, lying in bed this morning I made myself a promise that I hope I can stick to. I have comprehensive exam week in a couple of weeks (the main reason this month will be crazy) and I decided that, although the exams themselves seem to me to be not that tough (deceptively so?), I will take a break that week. I can cry off from class that week. I've decided that I will stick with practicum because I don't want to fall behind on that, but I think I'll cry off of much of my working schedule that week as well. I will need the time to actually do the exams, but also, I just want a little break. I want to not drive an hour and a half every day, I want to make myself lunch at home, I want to just hang out by myself and chill a little. Maybe after this month is over, things will slow down just a little bit. Or I'll get a handle on things again. It's been a while since I felt actually in control of anything that I'm doing. I would welcome that feeling again, just for a couple of days.