College Colors Day at Mizzou

Today was College Colors Day all across the US. Mizzou participated by having departments dress up in black and gold and take pictures of the staff. We did it. I was surprised at how many participated in our office! Our business manager is really into the event and was sharing pictures from her last few years in another department. She got everyone kind of excited about it and then made the picture all decorated and submitted it to the NCAA for some reason. Here are many of the staff, (plus, Charlie, our wooden ultimate frisbee dog) showing our black and gold pride:

Jeneva decided to title the photo "Historical Spirit".
She's very into this event and we were all happy to support her enthusiasm.

Maggie and Erika chilling out with Charlie, the ultimate frisbee dog. 

Mizzou spirit back at home.

(As an aside: I love that shirt I'm wearing! I found it on clearance and wasn't sure why it wasn't being bought? It was at the student center and maybe people on campus aren't that into the vintage vibe of the shirt or something. I think it's great and I got several compliments on it today! I'm still doing my $30.00 clothing challenge that I began last May. Most all of my 'new' clothes are just new-to-me, as I buy a lot of my clothing secondhand. But, this shirt is actually New! As in, no previous owner! Even on clearance, I think I paid too much for it, but I'm happy with it! And the $30.00 challenge is going swimmingly. Four months in and I've had zero problems and really no desire to even buy anything over $30.00. Shoes are the most difficult things to find under $30, but I've managed to find a pair of Fall boots and a pair of Summer sandals. I had to throw out my running shoes, and those are kind of an issue now that I don't have running shoes...but maybe some giant sale will happen and I'll find some fantastically cheap and well-made running shoes? Eh? A girl can dream.)

"You know what really grinds my gears?"

I have some things to rant about this evening:

1) Hurricane Isaac made landfall in Louisiana today, seven years (to the day) that Katrina hit. Now, you know all these people have been through this sort of thing before. They live on the coast. Hurricanes happen. I understand that some people don't like to evacuate or be extra pre-cautionary. They don't want their houses left unattended. They don't think the storm will be that bad. They think they can handle it, because, you know, they're Gulf people. They don't let a storm scare them away when they can, instead, throw a Hurricane Party with their nearest and dearest and all get stuck in the floodwaters. I mean, after Katrina, you'd think they'd learn to get the hell out of Dodge when you see this whirling, swirling storm plodding across the Gulf of Mexico toward you. But, nooooo. Let's just 'ride it out' in our little dog-run house we own here right on the shore, outside of the levee system. Yeah, that sounds like a great plan. Now, I would feel more sympathy for these fools getting picked up off the roof of their houses if it were something like a tornado or an earthquake where there was no warning. But, I live in Missouri and the weather service has issued a special alert for my area since Monday telling us that Isaac will be here this weekend. And he's not going to be much more than a heavy rainstorm by the time he reaches here. We're not having the winds that they get when that puppy made landfall. I just don't understand the thought process that goes into deciding to 'ride out' a Hurricane when you live in a place like southern Louisiana, which is practically underwater on a nice day with a calm sea. It's just stupid. I feel the worst for the animals that you see the National Guard having to rescue. They're so scared. I feel bad that they have such stupid owners. The people they're interviewing that are being rescued down there are all, 'Those meteorologists got it all wrong! They didn't tell us this was going to hit here!' Bullshit. Get it straight. You've had days to get out of your house and drive inland. The rest of the country saw this thing coming, why didn't you? We heard about it going through Haiti and Cuba and then it was coming straight for Louisiana. Even if you somehow missed the news that Isaac had your town in his sights or you didn't notice that your neighbors were boarding up their windows, everybody knows that when the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore shows up, you have no business being there. When Jim shows up, you need to leave. That's all there is to it.



Next up:
2) How many more baseball catchers have to get practically killed on the diamond before the league throws out the rule that the Catcher is fair game for the most mean and nasty tackle you can muster? I am so sick of seeing some baseball player running the bases, KNOWING that they are really out and they are not going to beat the tag at home plate, and they get all their speed and frustration roiling and slam into the opposing catcher, trying to make him drop the ball. This is not football. I don't understand why this rule was ever implemented to begin with. The point of the game is to beat the ball to the base, not throw caution to the wind and decide that you'll just kill the opposing catcher at home plate. For what? A tally on a scoreboard?! Dumb. I saw the ugly hit that Yadier Molina took last night. A friend of mine bought a car and I drove him to pick it up and we went and got dinner and there on the big screen at Buffalo Wild Wings is the Cards game. I was so happy to get to see a game! And within ten minutes, I was livid. There's Yadi, my favorite Cardinal, sprawled out on home plate, after being flattened by a base runner, who ran headlong into him shoulder-first, slamming Yadi in the face. I was glad Yadi actually walked off the field, but then they had to put in the back-up catcher. And now Yadi's out again and they say it's pain to his neck and back from that hit. I don't care if it was a clean or legal hit, it's not right. Buster Posey had that terrible hit last year or the year before that mangled his leg, remember that? Yadi's been knocked out and taken off the field on a stretcher before due to a collision like that. This allowable-tackle rule is stupid. It's just too dangerous. These are not little guys bashing into these catchers. I hate it. They need to throw that rule out. If you leave third base and you're running home, you have the play in front of you. You can see the ball coming, you see the Catcher ready to get the ball and make the tag on you, you can slide, you can dance the hokey-pokey around that bag if you want to, all you have to do is beat the tag. Same as you had to do at first, second, and third bases. The answer is not to tackle the shit out of the catcher in the hopes that he gets knocked out and drops the ball. I think it's disgusting that it's legal to do that. That's really just unsportsmanlike conduct, right there.


Lastly, something that made the rounds at work this week, which gave everyone a laugh and forced us to stop ranting about Todd Akin and those like him (his name is still thrown around the research center now and again, though the venom has begun to give way to sarcasm and mockery):
3) I think I've mentioned that my workplace is predominately female. One of my co-workers send this link to our administrative assistant to request that we purchase these pens for our office because 'our dainty feminine hands can't take the torture of writing with the gender-neutral pens we're forced to use.' 

I am not all that surprised that a company would assume that women would be foolish enough to buy pens advertised as featuring 'a thin barrel designed to fit a women's hand. It has a diamond engraved barrel for an elegant and unique feminine style.' That's just what women really need in their writing utensils: diamonds. *Girly shriek* Some have purple ink, too!!111! We can't possibly write without a diamond engraved, thin barrel. No wonder my inter-office memos have sucked so much. It's that damned man-hand pen I have. The best part of all of these products on amazon.com are the reviews. Snippets:

"My male co-workers will have no choice but to take me seriously and recognize my work if I constantly write in purple glitter."

"Brilliant - I love these pens! How about a laptop next? It took me 4 hours to write this review as I had to keep running back and forth between each key on my MASSIVE MAN KEYBOARD because I'm a tiny woman."

Sing-along Tuesday night!

I heard a song on the radio one morning last weekend and I was dancing all over the place in my pajamas, thinking about how I really NEEDED to download the song. And then I promptly forgot the song. I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure out what it was via Youtube. I still am not sure, because now I've listened to so many songs that the one I was trying to find is sort of fuzzy in my brain. It's becoming a mash-up of all the other songs I've listened to in the last couple of days.

BUT, I know it was a girl group from the 60s. I'm not sure if it was The Supremes or not. There were so many groups that it could have been. At any rate, my house has been suitably impressed by my 1960s girl group dance moves and vocals for days now. It's time to share the love.

Don't be shy! Grab that hairbrush and prepare to wow the walls with your singing and dancing skillz, my friends. Belt it out!

The Great and Powerful [G]oz.

I'm trying to decide whether I want to re-join the social networking Facebook world again. The kicker is I can't remember my password for my old account and I don't want to start a new account on there. I've heard less and less chitter-chatter about Facebook around campus, which is nice. Seems like you couldn't walk down the sidewalk last year without all the students around you blathering on and on about facebook this and facebook that. I feel like it's kind of fading away though, and that makes me more happier to be a part of it again... It's quieter, somehow. I don't mind quiet websites. I have trouble with hearing about certain websites every single place that I go, whether I'm near a computer or not. I don't like the all-encompassing aspect that Facebook had for a while. I'm glad to see it struggle...  But, let's face it...Google+ isn't working for keeping up with people. The only people who ever say anything on my little website is me and Mark Hoppus. I love to hear what Hop has to say, but it's kind of silly to have nothing but two updaters for months on end. I'm still thinking on it all. I don't want to be completely gone from social networking websites, but on the other hand, they tend to be exhausting at times. Still more thinking to do before decisions are made on this front, I think.

Speaking of technology, I'm kind of a hanger-back from some things. A couple of weeks ago I had a meeting with the new retirement people that handle Mizzou's plans and things. The guy gave me an Ipad to use to sign up for something and prefaced it by saying 'You're young so I'm sure you've already used an ipad before, right?' And I looked at him and said, 'Nope.' Then he goes, 'Oh. Well you've got a smart phone, right? It's just like your Iphone.' And I go, "No, I don't have a smartphone, either. I'm an archivist. I kind of specialize in the older stuff...like real books and papers and actual photographs.' I know how to safely remove staples, un-crease papers, and how to stop the deterioration agents for paper collections, but I don't know how to use a tablet computer or a smart phone. But he showed me how to make the alphabet keyboard show up on the screen and I went to town signing up for my little retirement profile. It wasn't hard to use or anything, it's just always kind of a funny moment when people assume all young people own every single new techy invention. Those things cost a lot of money, yo! The people I've seen most with tablet computers have been older people, actually. Ones that have money to spend on those things, I think. I kind of liked the ipad, though! I wouldn't want to carry it around with me everywhere, which seems to be the point of the tablet computer. I'd hate to be connected to people every single moment of my life through apps and internet all over the place and things. But, still, I liked the idea of a smaller computer instead of my laptop computer.

The Hunger Games is out at Redbox and I'm determined to try to get my hands on a copy this weekend. I tried on Monday night to get one and it was all for naught. Maybe I can get one today?! I hope so. I've given up trying to read the books first. I'm tired of waiting and just want to see the movie now.

I've also discovered Pintester.com. She's awesome. She's attempting to actually do the things that we all obsessively pin to Pinterest and it's hilarious. She's failing, exactly like I would, at making perfect thumbprint cookies, ombre nail polish techniques, and all those hairdos (that are much more likely to be a hair-don't when you finish it). If you need a good laugh, go check out some of what she's been doing. It's too great. I think she and I would be friends if all of her baking/cooking disaster photographs are any indication. It's like when I tried to make a cake last winter that overflowed the pan all over the oven, or the cookies that made the oven spew smoke out its little burners, or the peppermint "bark" that was more like leather because I put too much peppermint oil in it and it couldn't go anywhere. I love fellow DIY failers. Anyway, this girl is great. Check her out! Especially if you have been a fan of My Drunk Kitchen...I think this girl is as funny as Harto, maybe more funny, even. Plus, she made this fantastic knock-off "Hey Girl" print for her site and I love it.

Thanks, Goz.

I learned that most of the female staff of the Research Center are all into Ryan Gosling. There was a long conversation this week about him (begun by my asking who all had seen "Lars and the Real Girl" like I mumbled about here in my previous post). I came out of that conversation believing that if we could, we'd have photos of The Goz all over the research center. We're a rather eclectic group of women, but it doesn't seem to matter what type of woman it is, the dude's just got it.

Being part of the whole thing, that's the blessing.

Beatrix has been busy this evening chasing flying bugs. First there was a wasp flying around and now I think there's a smaller flying bug like a little gnat or something? She's been leaping up/off of things and clapping her paws in mid-air all evening. It's much more entertaining now that she's after something less sting-inducing than the wasp. Earlier, I was really just hoping the wasp had enough sense to stay aloft and try to ignore the leaping feline.

I saw the movie "Lars and the Real Girl" recently. I had heard from friends that it was a good movie, and I like Ryan Gosling, but I hadn't ever gotten around to seeing it. It was adorbz. Ryan Gosling is a good actor, I don't care what people say. He made me cry over a doll. The man can act.

My legs still hurt from the 5k on Saturday. Not so much as Sunday or yesterday, but still. I had such a great time this weekend! Everything was a lot of fun. This week at work has been good so far. Yesterday at work I helped completely re-shuffle one of our newspaper storage rooms. We needed a better organizational system and I think we've got it now. At least it's more efficient than it was. I'm hoping that it proves to be a bit of a time-saver. I'm also trying to stay up on a project that I'm trying to finish at work. It's a long-term project but I really want to get a large part of it done in this calendar year. It will make life so much easier at work. Tasks will take half the time, hopefully! Three cheers for efficiency!

All the students are back on campus. Classes began yesterday and campus is buzzing with activity. I like it busy like this. I don't like it crazy-crowded, but where I'm at is less crowded than where I used to be. The sidewalks are bigger and there's much more room for people to hasten around each other without bumping or stepping on each other's heels. It's nice and relaxing to be a terminal degree-holder with a job. No exams, no assignments, no school! I'm really enjoying it all. A lot of our time at work this week has been spent directing students to the auditorium they're looking for, or trying to get them into the actual library when they stumble into our office by accident.

It's been a bit since I book-talked on here, but I've been reading an interesting book lately: The Train of Small Mercies by David Rowell. It's a novel based on the history of the funeral train trip of Bobby Kennedy. His funeral train went from NYC to Washington, D. C. I didn't know he had a funeral train. I don't know too much about him, really. I'm learning a lot but it's hard to decipher fact from the fiction in historical fiction sometimes, you know? Like, for instance, was there really a train that rushed by the funeral train and ran over spectators? It seems like there could have been because it was an awkward tid-bit to throw into the plot if it wasn't true. It kind of came out of nowhere. The book itself is really well-written. It follows several different characters and their stories. The common thread is that all are somehow connected to the funeral train. Most are just going to watch it go by. One is working on the train. I just did a quick search on the subject and it seems like the bizarre twist of a train rushing past the Kennedy train is true. Two people were killed and four were seriously injured. So, that's where I'm at right now in the book. Really sad. The overall book is good, though. Rowell doesn't write about the Kennedys. They are nothing but (important) background characters for the 4 or 5 stories he's threading together. It's pretty good. I recommend it if you're interested in historical fiction.

Enough about funerals, though: on to newborns. I have a baby shower to attend this weekend and I'm a book-buyer for baby showers. Not only because I have rediscovered my own love of picture books, but because books are such a great gift for new parents. They're always getting loads of stuff that eventually they aren't going to be able to use any longer. Books are different. Books are the baby shower gift that keeps on giving...for years and years. Anyway, the mama-to-be already knows that my present will be books. I had a great time shopping for them. I bought a couple for me in the process. Books, books, books. I've been looking at a lot of children's books lately. People seem to equate the genre of Children's Books with 'simple', 'silly', or 'unsophisticated'. They aren't. Most children's books cover some pretty heavy subjects. They can try to lighten the mood with pretty illustrations and artwork, but don't ever shrug off a book as a 'kid's book' because it has pictures in it. It might be one of the most intelligent and touching books you'll ever read! Here are some quotes I've come across recently to illustrate a bit of my point:

But, reader, there is no comfort in the word “farewell,” even if you say it in French. “Farewell” is a word that, in any language, is full of sorrow. (from The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo)

It’s funny how humans can wrap their mind around things and fit them into their version of reality.  (from The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan)

Dying’s part of the wheel, right there next to being born….Being part of the whole thing, that’s the blessing. (fromTuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt)

Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering. (from Winnie The Pooh by A.A. Milne)

When you have done a great many good things, you forget to speak of them….It is those who do very little who must talk of it. (from Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorensen)

Meet Me In St. Louis!

I spent a really fun and happy weekend in St. Louis! Between my first attempt at a 5k, visits with friends and family, good food, ten-story slides, elephants, beautiful weather and lots of laughs and smiles, it was a perfect weekend!

Photos, etc!!(I tried to re-size most of them, but I might have missed one or two. Beware if you decide to click on one that it might be gigantic):

St. Louis Color Run! I hope it returns someday!

I started the race with these ladies, they were very fun! They kept things happy when people were getting restless at the back of the pack of runners. Good people!

The first wave of runners after running through their first color (pink). My dad was taking pictures around the course and got some really good ones.

Orange color! The last color of the course. It's hard to not cheer and laugh when getting color thrown on you, but then you tend to get a snoot/mouth full of color dust. It's all part of the fun!

Completed my first 5k as part of "The Happiest 5k On The Planet!"

It was kind of chilly on Saturday morning, but if I do it again, I won't wear such dark colors so I can tell that I'm getting colorized. It was hard to tell sometimes if any color was sticking. But, my arms were color-icious and I had 'color lines' instead of tan lines. All very fun!

So, that was my first 5k experience. It was a blast! I can't say that I'm a converted runner now, but I would definitely do the Color Run again in a heartbeat. It was so much fun and everyone was cheerful and smiling and laughing. I ended up being almost in the very back of the 15,000+ crowd of runners that showed up for the event. I didn't mean to get in the very back, but it just ended up that way. I never trained for this run or anything because it's not competitive and it's just for fun, but I didn't want to miss the party at the end and people were already done with their 5k before I had even begun! It was kind of a longish wait in the 'start chute' for those of us bringing up the rear. I ended up jogging about half of the 5k! I was really impressed by that, since I don't run at all and didn't train for this or anything. It was purely trying to not miss the fun color party at the end that kept me jogging through parts that I would normally have just walked if I had been able to begin the race with the earlier groups. It was fun! Everyone was in a good mood once we got started and everyone was really happy to have the dust thrown on them. If I ever do another Color Run, I'm much better prepared now for the process of the 'dust-throwing'. I'll be better ready for the lanes and stuff that I need to be in and not just run through it because you need the volunteers to really douse you with the dust to get really colorful. I ended up much less colorful than I thought I would due to learning this kind of late in the game. Still, the entire thing was fun and I'm so glad that I did it! I recommend it for everyone! There were lots of kids, infants, and even a couple of dogs that went through the race! The volunteers were trying to not get the dust right in the face of those three categories of participants, which was nice. The dust is just made up of some non-toxic dye and corn starch, but it does kind of get up your nose and in your lungs and you do kind of cough color dust for a bit. I might share a few more pictures once I get some from my dad. I think he got a really good shot of the after-race party when people threw a lot of their color dust packets all at once. But for now, these are what I've got to share! 

The entire weekend in St. Louis was a blast! The race was just the beginning. 

We went to the City Museum and wandered around for a while. If you've never been there, you should check it out! It's a lot of fun and really amazing all the stuff there is to see/do. I was busy climbing things and sliding down ten-story slides and didn't get many pictures, but here are just a couple:

The second floor looking down toward the entrance of the City Museum. 

Quasimodo-type architecture details that were salvaged from a building in St. Louis. I love it!

There were visits with family and friends and really good food to be had this weekend, as well. It was really nice! Then, this morning, we went to the zoo pretty early in the day and many of the animals were very active and happy. I saw bouncing/twirling hippos, super-lively sea lions, and (what I went to see) the elephants (including two baby elephants)!:

Two baby elephants playing in their pool. One of them is Kenzi, who was born last Fall. I didn't know there were TWO babies, but it was really fun to watch them playing and jumping in the water. It was like a tidal wave when both babies would flop into the pool and swim around. They were having a great morning!

Raja, the male Asian elephant at the Zoo. I remember when Raja was born and going to see him when he was a baby. Now he's the father of the babies that were flopping into the water. He was really bored and just pacing around. I don't know if they allow him near the babies or not. He was separated from them this morning.

Google wins again.

Curious discovery on Google Earth. Yesterday I went to see if Google had re-done any of its images of my house. I'm hoping for a new Street View shot sometime because the image of my house is really old and not at all what it looks like now. Well, Street View is (boo hoo) still outdated, but I noticed that the satellite must have gone over JC earlier this year because the main satellite view is different. I know this because my neighbor's SUV is seen on Google Earth now and they didn't move in until January of this year.

So, I scrolled in and out around my house for a bit and then (as you do) went exploring around town. I could tell that the image was taken in the Winter because the trees are all bare, around mid-day because of the shadows, and on a weekend because the government office parking lots are empty. Sunday seems likely because St. Joseph Cathedral's parking lot is kind of full. So, after deciding to go with those tidbits, I went looking for my dad's house to see what it looked like. His house is no more than 4 or 5 miles from my own and I expected it to be Winter on that side of town as well. I was deceived by Google, though! It's Summer at my dad's house!

So, then I started trying to find the dividing line in town to see where the satellite stopped taking its images this past winter and then I started laughing because it chopped the Country Club's golf course in half. And you can see part of the course with golfers on it enjoying one of the golf greens, while the neighboring hole is all dead and bleak. Ahahaha.

Good job to Google editors for making such a seamless connection between the two satellite images, though. I am impressed. And very amused.

Birthday greetings, bottle of wine.

Today is my Dad's birthday! I expect to hear a few lines of the Beatles "When I'm Sixty-Four" sung today. We're having a little get-together that includes brunch and then possibly (nom nom) cake? Oksana and Damiano are in from Minnesota this week and we're all going to celebrate together. Yay!

I don't know what sort of music most men his age play on the stereo, but he's the only one I know who blasts Joe Bonamassa, Santana, Eric Clapton, Robert Randolph or some other wailing guitar player so loudly that you can hear it when you're walking in the neighborhood. (This is one of the things I am most proud of him for doing. It's like walking into a loud, awesome concert when I go to his house.) So, here's Clapton and Bonamassa at Royal Albert Hall (he got this dvd for Father's Day this year and really likes it):



Here's to my Pop!

I don't know when this was taken, probably in the late 1970s or early 80s.
My mom and dad moved to JC and would try to fly kites at Binder Park.
I remember them taking me to fly kites a few times when I was little, too.

Dad beaming after getting his gelato fix in Italy.

Me and Dad in San Francisco in 2008.