You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February, 2008.
I had two situations happen to me this week, on the same day, that both left me speechless. Not that that fact in itself is earth shattering, given how quiet I am in general, but there was some sort of strange human etiquette puzzle piece that seemed lacking for me in order to know how to respond. That or wit.
I sat on the reference desk as a regular from out of town came in bright and early to view microfilms. We have an part time professor using our only microfilm so this man has to leave his ID with us in order to use the machines downstairs. I’ve spoken to him a couple of times in the last week or so, pleasantries and apologies for our uncooperative microfilm viewer and situation. This day though, the search room empty, when he gathers his boxes of microfilms and then walks to the desk to hand me his ID he says out of the blue, “What’s sad is that my best friend’s mother died yesterday.”
My eyes popped open and I murmured a slight, “Oh no…”
“She helped me through the death of my aunt four months ago, held my hand…” More murmuring from me. “And now I can’t even go to her funeral.”
I say, “I’m sorry” and he just shrugs as he bends toward the table to pick up the boxes and walks out. What compelled him to say that…I haven’t a clue.
Later in the day, as I was working in the back listening to my podcast, a heard a rustle and a flash of black behind me. I gave a little gasp and jumped as I pulled one headphone out my right ear.
“..but I scared you anyhow didn’t I?” said one of the people that works as the IT for the library. Rain or shine, this man always wears the same black leather outfit and slicked back hair. He drives a car that is too small for me. He unnerves me somehow.
I sheepishly coughed out a laugh. The man raced to the other side of the processing room, briefly stood in front of the computer, and as he raced off, “Cushy little job you have back here in hell, eh?” I couldn’t respond in time.
Not that I actually had anything as a reply. Because my first thoughts were, ‘Was that supposed to be a masked show of solidarity or a slight?’ quickly followed by ‘…Alliteration use makes me feel warm and fuzzy.’
Appetizer
Who was the last person you hugged?
J just left for band practice and I didn’t hug him because I’m feeling mentally tart. Which means now I’ll worry that that was the last time I see him and I didn’t get to hug him. Damn you quiz.
Soup
Share a beauty or grooming trick or tip with us.
Oooh, let’s see…Given that my makeup routine in the morning is what my father lovingly referred to as “pit juice” and lip balm, I’m afraid no tips from me are a better idea.
Salad
What does the color yellow make you think of?
The last time I saw a really vibrant form of yellow was yesterday as I was sitting outside during class on a bench conducting an interview. I felt a drop of water on my hand and my head and cautiously went to touch my head and review the color of my hand. It was clear. I looked up though and saw and nice, big pigeon sitting too close for comfort though. It was the leaves that were a shock of yellow against the blue sky.
Main Course
If you were to make your living as a photographer, what subject would your pictures revolve around?
My first thought to that question was that I recalled that Spock actually now does nude photography of nekkid obese women. I then immediately wondered if the photography niche of taking pictures of nekkid Vulcans is already taken. I bet it is. I bet they’re all in Finland. It’s a hunch.
Dessert
What was the longest book you ever read?
Atlas Shrugged was damn long. And Dumbledore dies.
Confession of our faults is the next thing to innocence.
- From a… um, fortune cookie.
Last Friday, while stopping for coffee with E, the wind blew over the sounds of music from the campus. Impulsively, we drove over. It looked like a haphazardly organized event; one band was still left, with only one oscillating and garish, colored lamp ornamenting the stage. It was late and the audience was petering out, clustering closely around and on the stage.
I remember an event similar to this one a few years back. It’s incredible that it’s been years now. As much as I was later touted as the experienced one, I still had to gather all my courage to walk up behind the stage, lean my arms over the cement barrier and to nudge someone obliviously wrapped up in music. His face then lighting up as he turned to me.
I crossed my arms and rubbed them for heat. I shuffled a bit, looking at the circle of people surrounding the band on the cement stage. I mumbled, “It sucks to be the guitarist’s girlfriend.” E glance over at me. “You’ve heard the song fifteen odd times that you really don’t really like but you still come out to ’support your man’. You just make yourself stand around alone in the cold.”
A group of few young students jumped around behind us, one of them in a puffed white jacket laughingly attempted to toot on a trumpet and gave up.
I like metaphors.
Okay, I love them very, very, very much. I have an obsession of trying to simplify the chaos in my mind verbally in a way that merges literal objects and my fondness for trying to tell stories. This doesn’t always work.
My Mom and I were talking today about the duality of genetics that I might be fighting internally. I realized where I was going with this chasm of absurdity, but I just could not stop.
“So imagine Dad hands me a box and you hand me, okay - no. We’re all sitting at a table. Dad gives me a box with his genetic code of restlessness and wanderlust and you slide a box over from your side full of the desire for security. Wait - this is better - in the boxes are bears. Baby bears. So I pull out these bears and they just fight. It’s the baby bear of “The Grass is Greener on the Other Side” and stability bear duking it out on the table.”
I exhaled.
I could feel my Mom furrow her brow over the phone. She slowly and tentatively said, “At least you know… about this…that might make you ahead of the game already.”
I now have a morning routine of unloading my lunch, drinks, and snacks into the break room at work. The break room over the last year has gone over quite an overhaul thanks to me being restless. In a fit of tedium, I reorganized and slowly it started becoming more homey. Back when I started at the Archives, it was dingy. The place where old archival boxes went to die. I remember that an old boss had endevoured to have pizza for the students which ended up having ten people shoved into this box of a room, silently munching pizza and staring at the floor.
You have to understand that many people in Archives, especially students, are quiet, introverted People. We’re worked hard to change this. Well, others have.
I bent down to our itty, bitty refrigerator to throw in my sandwich and drink into my claimed area of the door. [Okay, the whole door.] I had a fridge like this when I moved out to college, but then it seemed huge, because, hot damn I had a fridge, and who has fridges - independent folks. My day had come!
As I’m putting in my Coke Zero [How I missed thee.], I saw again the salad cup on the door. I didn’t remember buying salad in a cup. How did that get there? I quickly calculated that I saw it last week too and was going to make the arbitrary decision to throw it out.
I’m one of those people.
I grabbed the cup and I pulled it out…Is it a salad in a cup after all? No… It’s half pineapple, half…decidedly not pineapple. Aww, it’s fuzzy - WAIT. WHAT?
I enjoy fruit cups that the University makes. Easy, if a bit pricey. My abiding antipathy toward pineapples remains. These remains turned into my pet biology project.
I realized I’m not only one of those people, but now That Person. One that will be whispered about. The one leaving the scary leftover food.
“Is that a new organic lunch in there?”
“No, that’s her three week old pizza. He’s quite friendly though.”
I try to take one day at a time - but sometimes several days attack me at once.
-Ashleigh Brilliant
I found this in a very old notebook of mine. It’s still one of my favorites.
Whatever we do, we may fail; but if we do nothing, failure is guaranteed.
-Fynnette Eaton
It’s been in the works for three months now. This picture to the right is a lot of things, but I like to think of it as tangible evidence that I’m trying my gosh darn hardest to move away from what a journalism professor spat at us in class, 
“You guys know nothing; you all have just a subsidized life anyhow.” (How’s that for inspirational academic advice? )
Well, not anymore buddy. Yours truly is now is allowed to use the professional e-mail signature “Library Specialist II.”
I’m the soul possessor of the key to the mailbox at our house. This means I get to peruse J’s gaming magazine’s before he gets home. I love, love, love reading the bad game reviews.
I finding such inspiration in the trashing talking; for example, today I read about how the dialogue and scenarios in a game were so disturbingly impossible that it was like “handing someone a bucket of fish and telling them to invent a new number.”
It doesn’t get much better with a line than that for me.
“If you pray for patience, do you think God just… gives you patience? Or does he give you opportunities to be patient? If you pray for courage, do you think he just gives you courage, or opportunities to be courageous?”
- Morgan Freeman as God from Evan Almighty
I was delighted to be invited out by classmate Camille to watch her train another classmate’s horse and daughter today. She’s an amazing teacher (who I’ve mentioned) and I will take every darn opportunity to watch her with horses. It never fails that I learn something that seems much more connected to life when I watch her teach. For instance, this time I learned that pulling your fingers into claws seems to be an instinctual sign of dominance from a human to a horse in order to get their attention and to assert authority.
[Meaning of course, I had to impress J with my very best claw imitation after I got home. I threw in a growl for effect, even though I don't think that's part of it.]
When we got out to N’s family’s ranch, I got a bit over giddy with showering love via carrots that N had brought, determined that even the shy, mottled donkey who kept getting nudged back by the rest of the crew, got one carrot of his own. I’m an equal opportunity animal lover.
In situations where I’m surrounded by animals, my ADD tends to show. As much as I was listening to the lesson in the round pen, the parade of animals kept tearing me away. I would bend to scratch my calf and a white cat would run into my hand. I would shuffle to a different angle around the pen and bump into a short, golden colored mutt. I’d turn my head from the dust kicked up from the hooves inside the pen and catch sight of a tabby I hadn’t yet hugged.
I turned to catch this huge, squat Labrador meander up past the pen. He was a ruddy chocolate and he was enormous. Barrel-chested and the ultimate image of how football quarterback would translate into dog, he had gentle intelligent eyes that almost spoke up to me, “So there’s this game tomorrow, see, my bets are on…”
I hadn’t even really expected to ride, but one of N’s family member pulled out a horse from the corral and tidied her up and then kept asking, “Wanna ride? She’s a good horse, she won’t bolt.” I hedged a bit, prodded N to get on, before my “Horsie? Me? Yay!!” excitement could not be contained any longer.
The ranch was a bit out of town and the mountains had a different angle and were tinged with a blue. It was blustery, but the dirt just rode waves across the ground and through my hair and I just let go. For about ten minutes, I let go… and let Horse.
I wore my heeled ankle boots and kept lifting one foot or the other so that I would regain circulation to the soles of my feet. His hair hung in grimy stripes across his forehead, accentuating a receding hairline that doesn’t actually exist. As always, there was a strange sort of detachment and nervousness that hung directly under his skin.
He paid for his food before me in line. He nervously tore open his wallet to grab some money. A blue strip of paper fell out and landed in front of him. My eyes glanced down.
