Random things seen

Every time J. and I come home to the in-laws, we see Golf Cart Guy with Two German Shepherds.

He rides around the subdivision in a golf cart with two huge German Shepherds for company. One sits up front, the other sits in the back, tongue lolling as he calmly regards you. Such well-behaved dogs are rare, and in a golf cart no less. (We suspect they are sampling his beer).

I am starting to expect this comical sight when we come down, just as I expect to see Fannie come into the library, wearing those men's clothes from Goodwill, telling us that milk and orange juice are on sale at Kroger.

Insufficient quantities of time

The number of books on my "to-read" list over at goodreads is 136 so far. This number could easily change next week, after I've been in the library. That's what happens when you're surrounded by books everyday.

In one of the classes for Public Libraries, Professor Carrigan remarked on the piles of books waiting for him to read. He figured that, at the rate that he read books, he would have to live at least another 100 years in order to complete his reading list.

Considering how much younger I am (therefore more years of spying many more books here and there), how much longer would I have to live in order to read my accumulated piles of books?

What's a wordle?

I found out about a cool website through Cindi Trainor's blog.

Wordle lets you create tag clouds out of whatever words you want. The results are rather neat and professional looking. You can play around with the layout, font, and colors. While the options are limited (I'm not too happy with the color schemes available), this application lets you feel like a computer pro.

I created a wordle out of Wendell Berry's Country of Marriage. Have a look at it here.

I'd like to create one out of a poem or passage about libraries.

Beauty will save the world

This past Sunday at work, the library director showed me the elecam. It shows what's going on in various parts of an elephant sanctuary down in Tennessee. For a few minutes, we watched an elephant rubbing its rear against a tree, its trunk lazily reaching up to grasp at branches (I was put in mind of Autumn taking her bottle, how she would reach up and touch your hair or pull at her toes, stretching her legs like a yogi). It was strangely relaxing--quite a nice little respite from a busy afternoon.

I've always wanted a house that backs up against a cow pasture (I wouldn't mind a zoo, either, but that would be a little hard to find). Every night I would sit on the back porch with a cup of coffee and watch the cows...doing what cows do. This herd of cows would easily replace the parade of actors and actresses on TV, for their dumb, bovine grace shows me that beauty can be found in the oddest places.

Oh, the horror!

I helped a boy with his homework. He came in asking for stuff on 19th century U.S. history. I asked what it was for, and he showed me the questions he had to answer at the back of a chapter in his textbook.

Everything he needed to answer the questions was there in the chapter--he could have copied his answers verbatim. His problem? He didn't want to read.

I forced him to scan the chapter with me. I even pointed out the sections that contained the answers to some of the questions, and asked him what he thought the answer was, but he still resisted the notion of reading.

It's a good thing I don't work all day with children, because such resistance to reading is foreign to me, and I would become highly impatient.

Twilight fanaticism

A lady called the library one day, her voice a flutter with nervous anticipation: she had to be certain that the sequel to Stephenie Meyer's Twilight was on hold for her.

For those of you unaware of what exactly Twilight is, you've been living under a rock for the past year. I have emerged into the sunlight, and now you will too. Even though I have read the books, I was taken aback by the fervor of the twilighters, as the fans of this series about the love story of a vampire and a human are known. I became acquainted with this fanaticism firsthand when this breathless lady (who was older than me) called the library.

How did a young adult book about vampires and love become so big that grown women sigh over Edward, the vampire equivalent of Romeo? I haven't a clue, seeing as the type of books that deeply affect me are ones like C.S. Lewis' Till we Have Faces.

A room of one's own

I don't know what is more taxing: packing or unpacking.

We're out of the old place and into the new. The bedroom and kitchen are mostly sorted out--those are the important parts to take care of immediately, even if all you do is make the bed and make sure there is milk and cereal available in the midst of piles of boxes.

But there are still boxes. I opened a closet door, thinking it was all set, and found six boxes sitting coyly on the shelves: Remember us?

Check out this living library .

Cats on the belfrey

There is a cat herd here at the in-law's. J.'s sister's 3 cats, our very own Pope, and the in-law's two cats.

Watching them sort out their place on the hierarchy of cats is very interesting. The only real aggression I've seen is between Pope and Toby, one of the mostly-outdoors cats belonging to the in-laws, everything else is just playful altercations.

I think Pope and Bea like each other secretly. It's like middle school, where they tease each other because they're too embarrassed to admit they like each other.

Bea is the strangest cat of the herd. She has to investigate everything--the surface of everything, including the digital TV (she has good balance), the inside of everything, etc. She is quite vocal in her opinions. In front of a door leading outside, "MRow!" If Pope is about to pounce, she flicks her tail and disdainfully says "MRow!" which puts him in his place. If she glimpses a parallel world in the mirror, "MRow!"

Things in the dark

I had a rather interesting experience the night before last. I woke up while I was sleepwalking, in the still unfamiliar territory of the in-laws' basement.

I was not wearing my glasses, and I did not have my hearing aid on. It was very dark, almost pitch black. When I moved my arms around, I couldn't feel anything. As I am almost legally blind without my glasses, deaf without my hearing aid, having all my senses deprived of stimulation was rather terrifying. It felt like I was suspended in a void.

Thankfully, I made it back to bed after shuffling around a little and stumbling across the pet crates, which I knew were at the foot of the bed.

The big guy at work says that I should read Becket's How it is

Aliens among us

The cicadas are out in full force down in Lincoln county. We got to the in-laws in time for the emergence of Brood XIV in their backyard.

I didn't know it was time for cicadas, so when I was walking down by the nearly non-existent creek in the back, I was startled by the sight of countless blank-eyed brown hulls clutching at the undersides of the leaves around me. It was a little frightening at first, when I first registered the existence of those bodiless shells, so numerous the leaves were drooping with their weight, as it seemed the invasion of the body-snatchers was upon us.

Later that night, we went out to the buckeye trees and watched the cicadas rising from the ground and crawling up the trunks to find a spot to molt. There were so many, the surface of the trees rippled like a breeze whispering over a lake.

They seem remarkably dumb, content to crawl along your hand, oblivious to the dangers inherent in being so trusting. I guess that's how it is when you've reached the point of your life where your sole purpose is to carry on your line. Right now the males are singing outside, pining for females. It's the sound of summer--how strange it is that we associate the song of dying insects with the joys of this fleeting season.

Out of the ordinary

We are packing for the move to our new place.

This perplexes Pope. He doesn't know what to do with himself when he walks into a room and some large piece of furniture is missing. His eyes dilate and his ears start swiveling furiously and any little noise sets him off.

I've been seeing more of the bushy-tail Pope--whenever he's frightened, his tail bushes out as he turns so that the full length of his body is facing you while the hair raises on his back, making him look bigger than he is. He also does a strange stiff-legged skip backwards/sideways.

A name you can call your own

Jon's thesis is cataloged now.

Anyone can find the record, not only in UK's catalog, but also on Worldcat (see the link in the right-hand column). His name has an authority record now, which means that no other catalog record can have his name assigned to it unless he actually created the thing that is being cataloged.

Wow, that's lovely and amazing, and I'm sure this post reveals what a library geek I am.

Everything has its proper place

I came across a travel book on Spain that was classed in 919.604.

According to that number, Spain is located in the Pacific Ocean, near Australia and New Zealand.

It put me in mind of a scene from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell where Strange is helping the British army in the Napoleonic War. They are about to be surrounded by the enemy, so the general cries out to Strange to do something, anything. Strange casts a spell that physically moves the land the British army is on to some place in America, where they wait a little while before Strange casts a spell to move them back.

I reclassed the book to its proper place, 914.604, and had this brief, amusing image, of Spain being wrested from the Pacific and planted back in its proper place.

Get the wiggles out

This is the kind of hearing aid I once wore a long time ago (at school):


No, we did not dance around in our underwear. These children are reacting to rhythms they feel in the floor. I tried to find a better picture of body-worn hearing aids, but this is the only one that came up.

And now, hearing aids have to be cool. I find the idea of marketing hearing aids as "sexy cool" rather strange, as they are such a necessary part of my life, almost on the same level as bread and water. Are canes and walkers ever advertised this way? (Note that the models are not actually wearing the hearing aids).

Everything's changing

I've made an appointment to see about getting a new hearing aid. Exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time.

Nerve-wracking because I'm accustomed to my current prop and leery of the adjustment period the new machine will require. My brain will have to retrain itself on the new sounds coming in, so similar and yet not to what I once heard. I don't enjoy change.

The memory of my initial acquaintance with my current hearing aid is still fresh--how I hated that thing! Everything seemed so soft and muted. When the audiologist said that this is actually quite similar to how normal people hear, that everything isn't so magnified (who pays attention to the ruffle of papers on the desk, or the quiet rumble of the dishwasher, anyways?), I couldn't believe that normal hearing could be so frustratingly boring.

The wow factor of the hearing aid lay not in its amplification power, but in its ability to tease out the various frequencies of sound, to suppress background noise and bring human voices to the fore. It took me a long time to appreciate that kind of technology.

Daydreaming a book

When my brain started going cross-eyed at the reference desk last week, I allowed myself to daydream a little, to work the snarls out of my thoughts before they turned into a gordian knot and I would end up staring dumbly at patrons asking questions such as: "Do you have any books on cats?"

This is what I did: imagined who would play who in a movie adaptation of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke's doorstopper of a book on an alternative history of England in which magic returns in the nineteenth century (think Tolkien meets Austen).

Jonathan Strange, young, impetuous magician -- Christian Bale


Mr Norrell, stodgy magician -- Ian Holm


Gentleman with the thistledown hair, fairy king of Lost Hope -- David Bowie


Arabella Strange, patient wife -- Kate Winslet


Lady Emma Pole, condemned to live half her life (she spends her days in England, her evenings in Faerie) at Lost Hope after Mr Norrell bargains with the Gentleman with the thistledown hair to bring her back to life -- Keira Knightley


John Uskglass, The Raven King, the mysterious father of magic in England -- Johnny Depp


One of the fae, a faerie we meet in Lost Hope whose dress is made up of beetles -- Nicole Kidman

Achoo

I suffer from a photic sneeze reflex. Apparently, I'm part of a minority.

Exercise hurts

If you want to torture someone, and they have never done an exercise like this before, make them do decline situps.

Then force them to do it again two days later.

The first time is incredibly difficult. The second time will leave you weeping like a baby. You are using muscles you hardly ever call upon, and they will protest in a painful way (think knives scoring your sides).

This is the ugly truth of exercise. The second time is the worst.

Thankfully it always gets better.

Muscles and looks

I conquered my fear of the free weight room at the Y. That bastion of testosterone, realm of muscled men, was no match for me as I marched in with what feminine pride I had, holding my head high in spite of my inability to lift no more than a fraction of what they could benchpress.

They grinned at each other and looked askance at me as I settled in to do sit-ups, and I realized that I was not leery of them so much as I was of being in a strange place and not knowing what to do with myself while those initiated into the mysteries of free weights could plan their workouts with ease.

I finished and, sitting up, noticed that they spent as much time standing in front of the mirror as they did actually working out. I didn't feel so awkward after all--if guys with thick cords of muscle, at the height of their fitness, still need to look in the mirror and reassure themselves of their appearance, then there's hope for the rest of us.