It's like I'm perched on the handlebars of a blind man's bike

Things I am loving lately:

-Sue Grafton alphabet books. I'm up to her most recent, "S is for Silence," and I seem to remember starting back up in January by re-reading L through O, which is where I'm pretty sure I left off. I'm a little sad that I will almost be caught up entirely, but then I'm going to indulge in the Janet Evanovich number books, which I have been rationing up until now.

-Yarn and quick knitting projects. I got a few books from the library "Quick Knits" and "One Skein" and am getting inspired. I knitting up one and a quarter wrist warmers tonight using some stash yarn (woo!) and have some plans for some other stash yarn, and found a couple of (seemingly) great deals for yarn online which will lead to two projects I'm very excited about.

-The new Shins album, especially songs "Sea Legs" and "Split Needles," but pretty much the entire album is having me grooving and pleased about any car trip. Also, almost has me forgetting entirely the mediocre live performance I saw the Shins give at First Ave a couple years ago (sold out, too quiet, pre-smoking ban, etc. & etc.).

-The fact that I got into the required Management of Library and Information Centers course for first summer session (May 15th-July 3rd) with Marilyn Cathcart, the same professor who I had my intro course with last summer. Unfortunately, Liz, one of my back row cohorts from Reference class, didn't get in, but I hope fervently that this can be resolved. Cathcart is awesome, and once I'm done with it, I can take eight classes of pretty much whatever I want in order to complete the Masters in Library and Information Science. Whoo-whee.

-A possible birthday vacation trip to someplace interesting and fun which will include nature and urban life within budget constraints for me and my wonderful, ever-loving boyfriend.

Quick and lovely

Doing the library delivery went well this morning. It's not as warm as it was yesterday, but it is bright and nice nonetheless. I probably should have had some caffeine before setting out, but I am looking forward to getting a treat for my drive to St. Paul later for class, and Beth + too much caffeine = a bad thing, a very worried and overenergized thing while sitting in class.

I am also looking forward to sitting outside in the sunshine for a little while, and probably eating a salad for lunch, and starting the next book in the Sue Grafton series. Additionally, I will probably see S sometime today, as it seems that if I do not see that man at least once per day, it is as though I have gone without oxygen for an equal amount of time.

Oh, the excitement

This past weekend, my parents were out of town for one of my cousin's weddings. I'm tellin' ya, that's what my cousins do: get married and have kids. Can't go six months without someone doing one or the other, which I think is causing me to want to resist all of that, but anyway.

S and I kind of got to play house for a few days. The whole thing was pretty much a great success. We went grocery shopping on Friday night after going on the downtown Art Crawl with some of my library co-workers. Saturday was spent meeting up with one of S's college friends and going to mass, staying up late to watch "Super Troopers" with my sister and our friend Soren.

Sunday, we slept in and S went to work in the afternoon while I did my reference homework on the local university campus. I'm trying to work ahead a bit on the homework front, as I know my motivation will decrease as the warm weather increases.

Tomorrow, I get to do the library delivery, which was a last-minute thing, and I'm looking forward to it. And it's also back to class after having spring break last week. Excellent.

I want to remember this

From "The Ten Commandments: Laws of the Heart" by Joan Chittister, on the 9th commandment, the law of self-control:

The Buddha taught that "Just as a tree, though cut down, can grow again and again if its roots are undamaged and strong, in the same way if the roots of craving are not wholly uprooted sorrows will come again and again." It isn't what we have that makes us unhappy; it's what we want that leaves us dull to the present, unaware of what we have.

Blogs

Sometimes I think it's kind of interesting to know which blogs people read. Lately, I have been trying to avoid the blogs I read that make me worried about the people writing them, and focusing more on the blogs that just give me information I need/want and entertain. So, just for fun, I will post some of what I have in my Bloglines feed.

Tame the Web, Michael Stephen's Librar* blog, Library 2.0 proponent, and faculty at Dominican University in Illinois, posts a lot.
Dooce, the blog everyone reads. Can't get enough Leta. And stories about poop and boobs.
Mason-Dixon Knitting, my favorite knitting blog.
Stitch Marker, Larissa's blog from Portland, Oregon. Makes me want to live in Portland, Oregon, and knit a lot, with a cute baby like Sebastian and a cute dog and a cute husband. Dangerous and lovely.
Wilful Sunflower, in Malaysia. Christian, but makes me worry about her.
Sweet Juniper, and don't ask me why I read blogs that are mostly about babies. I love little Juney. And Dutch and Wood seem cool, too.
Greek Tragedy, Stephanie Klein's now mostly about Abigail and Lucas, her twins, but just a very honest writer. Love it.
May December, Melissa Morris's preppy blog from New York. I love the pink and green, I love Monty Monday, and I love her advice and recipes. She's like my Martha Stewart—I can never be that wonderful, but I like that there's someone who is.
Mimi Smartypants, whose true identity I accidentally discovered a long time ago. I started on Diaryland the same day as she did, but she's still with them and I can't stand their design compared to Blogger, but her writing is freaky good.
I also read Unshelved nearly every day, which is a comic strip set in a library.
And I check PostSecret every Sunday, along with everyone else.
And I can't wait for Jessica Hagy's Indexed book to come out.

Don't hold back

The past few days I have been feeling kind of bored, so I went to the tanning salon (gasp! skin cancer! in five minutes!) and bought some hair dye (dark brown). It's been drizzly and misting all day but refuses to rain. On Sunday, when I didn't have to work, it was cloudy and grey all day, and, back to work, Monday and Tuesday it was sunny.

I think I have spring fever. So I'm sitting here with hair dye on my head, waiting for it to be 5:17. I think I need to sing and do some yoga and possibly drink Bailey's out of an old shoe. Or a lime-gasm. Or just get over this cold that has been haunting me for more than a week now.

Ugh

So I am sick with yet another illness this week. This time, a regular honest-to-goodness (or awfulness) cold virus. I have been taking the NyQuil and the DayQuil and generally trying to lay low while also seeing to my responsibilities (see: work, school, boyfriend) but it's kind of rough. At least I can sleep, thanks to the medication, a humidifier, and my weirdly messed up brain. When I am healthy, it takes a lot for me to get to sleep, but when I am sick, it's lights out almost as soon as I hit the pillow. Go figure.

Today after work, I called S, and he informed me that his cousin Nate would be picking him up to go flying very soon, and he would like it very much if I could go with to Buffalo with them and possibly even go up in the plane. What else was I going to do this afternoon, with next week as my spring break from class? Nate is working on getting a real job as a pilot—he needs more twin engine time to apply for jobs—and also one of my former high school classmates. Kind of weirdly cool to go up in a little plane with the kid I sat behind in history class in 10th. Good times.

Now, to let the medication kick in once again and try to kick this bug.

A sad day

I got a call from my sister Andrea this morning. She was crying, very upset, and through her tears, she told me that her pet bunny rabbit, Sugar, died during the night.

Sugar wasn't sick, but she recently turned 7 years old, which is a good life span for a rex rabbit. She was a very good pet. When let run loose in our yard, she would never run far, somehow knowing what was "her" yard. She was litter box trained in the house and in her outside hutch. She liked chewing electrical cords, which angered our father. She loved oats and carrots and parsley and even Oreo cookies and graham crackers. She liked laying around the house, hopping through snow, and staying in the shade in the summer.

I don't really know what else to say. It's a pretty sad day.

Evidence

I don't care what anyone says, I definitely have the best boyfriend ever.

I have been bugging S to watch "The English Patient" with me for at least two months. Tonight we were hanging out, doing nothing, and wanting to do something, but not really go anywhere. S said, "How about a movie?" and went into the family room and put something in the DVD player before I could object.

It was "The English Patient," at last.

We paused it just now to take a break, and I suggested going out to get some ice cream. S said, "I don't really want to go anywhere and leave the movie. I'm really enjoying it and I don't want to leave it."

I said, "Are you serious?" and he insisted that he was. "It's really good!"

And this proves that I do indeed have the best boyfriend ever.

Racking 'em up

I got my first graded source assignment back in Reference class last night. S and I were running late because we stopped at an art supply store on Grand Avenue so S could look for a planner, which will come in handy when he's back in school.* Then, we were both hungry and decided to stop at a pizzeria four doors down from the art supply store. Even though we got a thin crust (so it would cook faster), I was about ten minutes late to class. Apparently, the professor had my assignment at the top of her stack to return, and when she called, "Beth?" and I wasn't there, one of my sit-in-the-back-row cohorts said, "Tardy!" Thanks, Liz. (I find this quite hilarious.)

Anyway, I got a A-, which was super satisfying, no joke. I worked hard on that assignment, answered all the questions (we only had to answer 6/9, but to attempt an A, we had to answer all of them) and found answers for every question, spending hours at the St. Cloud State University Library. We turned in our worksheets on using Dialog and as long as we answered every question, we got an A on that, as well. That's three A's so far! So, barring any unforeseen problems, and as long as I keep going to class and participating (%10 of the grade is participation; can you imagine, me, no participating in class? I think not!) I should have a nice grade for this course. Sweet.

*S got into college! He's going back to university (SCSU, home of the huskies, my alma mater!) to turn his BA in Political Science into a BS in Social Studies so he can be a teacher. At least, that's the plan right now. He's going to start with summer classes, and I am so proud of him, I could burst.

I have the best mom

Somehow, I got something in my eye at work this morning. It itched, so I'm guessing it was a particle of dust, which would not be surprising in the environment in which I work (oh, libraries). It was causing me to rub my eye, which made it itch even more. Finally, I text messaged my mom, "Are you out running errands?" because Tuesdays are her days off and she usually is out and about town doing random mom duties.

She texted back, "Yes, I am downtown right now."

I texted, "Do you have any allergy medication with you?"

She wrote, "Yes, I have eye drops and tablets."

As I was texting back to ask if she could stop by the library, she walked into my work area. She looked at my eye and offered to put the drops in for me, and gave me an Allegra pill. We chatted for a couple minutes, and when she left, she said my eye was already looking better.

Reasons my mom is the best: 1) She knows how to text message. 2) She has everything you'd ever need in her purse. 3) She is willing to administer medical assistance. 4) She is often in the exact right place at the perfect time.

Thanks, mom!

Not there yet

Last night at dinner at S's house, we were drinking some wine from a vineyard that shares S's family's last name. I had just a taste of the syrah, which was okay, but super cool to see his last name on a wine bottle. His mom was just talking casually, and said, "When you two get married, you could go visit the vineyard for your honeymoon."

There was enough other conversation happening at the table so I didn't have to say anything in response, thankfully. But I thought about it, and I've decided it's definitely kind of weird to hear your boyfriend's mom use the phrase, "when you two get married" in reference to her son and you. Or rather, me. Kind of nice, I guess, in that I don't think she would be shocked or surprised if we got married, but strange nonetheless.

We hung out as friends for a couple years before dating, having known each other in high school, lo these many years ago (a phrase I love to use when talking about S). S mentioned a while ago how it might be weird for his college friends, when they meet me, to think that I've known him longer than any of them. Like, they think they're old friends, but really, we saw "Star Wars: Episode I" in the theatre together, our "first date" in 1999. Now we spend so much time together, we joke that we live together nomadically, in the time/space between my parents' house and his grandma's house.

S and I aren't engaged, though we have been dating a little more than a year. S and I both have a number of friends who are engaged or married, and honestly, we're not at that point yet. For one, we don't fight nearly enough (hah, hah). We are both figuring out the whole career/school/life stuff, and while it's nice to think S could be part of my future, it's not as though we are in the specific planning stages of how to get from point A (dating) to point B or C (engagement and marriage).

The exciting times of me

Yesterday in the snow and bluster, I went and got a haircut and bought a couple pairs of jeans on sale at the Gap. I know, exciting life I lead. I also did some homework and had dinner of delicious vegetarian lasagna with S's family (his aunt Jen cooked, which was fabulous) and ended up watching the episode of "Wife Swap" with the pirate family. Pirat-titude forever!

Today I'm working and then S and I will go to mass, and then I hope we can do something fun, like watch "The Castle of Cagliostro" which is super overdue, or possibly go cross-country skiing at Quarry Park. We shall see. I'm up for anything that doesn't involve more reading about Boolean searches.