Communicating can be a challenge

I can think of nothing more frustrating at work than having to explain library policy to non-native English speakers, or those who don't really speak English at all. Our area has a lot of Somalians, which I think is great in a general way, but it makes for tense situations.

I just got off the phone a little while ago with someone who returned the incorrect VHS in a case. When this happens, we're not supposed to check the item in. We notify the patron and then hope they return the missing piece, but it's not always easy to do this. I tried very hard to explain the situation calmly and simply to this particular patron, using limited vocabulary and in multiple ways, but I'm not sure I got through. It makes me sad.

Normally, I am a competent employee, usually exceeding expectations of my job description, being helpful and friendly with everyone I see. I'm excellent at communication, so it's very frustrating for me at a personal level when I can't really talk to someone. Normally, I embrace a challenge on the job, except this isn't really something I can overcome, it's just something I have to learn from.

Not stressed, just perplexed

It's kind of horrible that I've forgotten how to study for an exam. Professor Humeston told us what to review, and I'm sitting here on the floor in my room looking at the Learning Objectives for each chapter and then the corresponding "The Least You Should Know" bullet points, and I know this stuff, and I'm going, "Yeah... uh, now what?" Maybe I should make flash cards like my sister does, or maybe I should do an outline or something?

I think I'll just make my own notes, since we get to use them on the test anyway, so anything that's in my handwriting could be useful, if not essential to my success on this thing.

In other news, S flies to Canada today to visit his dad, saying goodbye to Alaska after six months. April to October, leaving all the rain and the midnight sun and the bear spray behind, along with his ruined wardrobe and now-useless water bottles. I'm sure that it's exciting and sad for him. He really loved it there, and he saw so much of the place and felt, I think, comfortable even in his discomfort. I hope that he can ease back into the realities of life, but I won't blame him if he wants to seclude himself from modernity for a while, like the Voyageurs who spend a month in Canada, portaging and canoeing all the while, some of whom must sleep in their own backyards for weeks to adjust to conveniences again. At least S can blog about it all and reflect on his experiences.

I've seen this going around

Complete the Thought:

Never again in my life: will I go to a rock concert without ear plugs.

When I was five: I really loved playing with the smooth sand in the kindergarten room. And my family got our first Apple computer. And I was still an only child.

High School was: crappy and clique-filled, until I switched schools, and then it was something I didn't want to miss—so many friends and fun times, making the tape-shape, talking, obsessing, etc.

I will never forget: when S brought me chocolates and flowers for Valentine's day... a day early! (He was working nights, so his sense of time was bad but in a very good way.) And then how he brought me more chocolates on the actual day.

I once met: Christopher O'Riley, the pianist who does the Radiohead transcriptions. I talked his ear off for about 20 minutes about classical music.

There’s this girl I know who: works at the library AND for campus public safety, and had to get sprayed with pepper-spray during her training, and then saved a girl's life during her first week on the job by knowing that she was having an appendicitis!

By noon I’m usually: working at the library, or reading or doing something online, or in St. Paul in my grad class. Unfortunately, there aren't many days when I sleep past noon. I need to work on this.

Last night I: went to Taco John's with my sister and then pigged out and had girl talk.

Next time I go to church: will be on Sunday, 6pm most likely.

What worries me most is: how to review for my cataloging mid-term in one week when I am being a know-it-all and feel like I can't possibly learn anything new by studying.

When I turn my head right, I see: the Hall of Weird, my sister's full-length mirror, my Radiohead poster on my door, a pile of clean clothes ready to be put away, dirty dishes to be brought to the kitchen, a stack of CDs ready to be alphabetized.

When I turn my head left, I see: the sunset through my window, the trees in silhouette, my desk with piles of papers on it, my Curious George, my passport.

You know I’m lying when: I refuse to comment, like a politician.

If I was a character written by Shakespeare I'd: be Helena in Midsummer Night's Dream, wanting the guy who doesn't want her forever and a day—until, by magic! he falls for her, too.

By this time, next year: who knows. Isn't that exciting?

A better name for me would be: actually, I think my name suits me quite well. Good choice, mom.

I have a hard time understanding: physics. And people who find "debate" the highest form of fun.

If I ever go back to school I’ll: get a second masters in something useless, like art history.

You know I like you if: I tell you so.

Three people who bore me are: three boring people? I guess I don't know any.

Take my advice, NEVER: tell me what to think.

My ideal breakfast is: bagel and coffee, or breakfast burritos, or toast with cinnamon sugar and milk.

A song I love, but do not have is: "L is for the way you look at me..."—"Love" by Nat King Cole.

If you visit my hometown, I suggest: going to Quarry Park for a walk. It's our version of Central Park, a big ol' protected area in the city limits, ten minutes from the mall and the Caribou Coffee.

Why won’t anyone: buy me real jewelry?

If you spend the night at my house, DO: feel completely at home, plopping down on the leather furniture, kicking back with a Smirnoff or Mountain Dew, listening to music from our extensive collections, watching a DVD from the library, or just enjoying the insanity.

The world could do without: bigots. And homophobes. And scary fundamentalists.

I’d rather lick the belly of a cockroach than: give my phone number to my library stalker.

My favorite blonde is: my cousin Christy. She's 16 and super sweet!

Paperclips are more useful than: library cards. (That's a lie.)

San Diego means: Saint Diego, I think. And probably fun times, if you know where to hang out (I don't).

Feeling cherished

Since cell service in buildings in Indian, Alaska is kind of sketchy, S and I used Gmail chat last night for a few hours of conversation. It's the first time I've ever used a communication form with S that was non-organic and real-time (for us, it's been e-mails since high school, phone calls, and in-person all the way) and it was kind of weird and fun. I tend to have to multi-task while I'm online (reading blogs, checking my accounts, listening to music, on Facebook or MySpace, etc.) so it was strange not giving S my complete attention, as he usually gets and deserves.

Something was agreed upon about a rice cooker, this much I remember. And that he cares about my sanity, which I think I already knew. After a while, we both slacked off with the chatting and then I decided to go to bed. After I had crawled under the covers and was coughing from my cold and trying to get comfy, my phone rang.

"It's so cold out here!" he informed me.

"So go back inside!" I replied. "You don't have to talk to me more."

"Yeah, I do. I love you."

The switch

I switched to the new Blogger Beta and changed my template and uploaded my fall leaves photos.

Even my ears hurt

Today is a day of random errands and feeling icky. I have a sore throat and feel achy and tired and headachy even with medication. So I've been "resting" (whatever that means) and I also went to the post office, the gas station, got my glasses adjusted, cleaned out my car, took photos of the autumn leaves in our yard, got Chinese food for lunch, and picked up my allergy medication prescription. I think I'm going to try to take a little nap here in a few minutes.

S called as he was packing up his gear—he's getting picked up and taken back to Indian, which is near Anchorage. He flies out on Sunday (I think?) to see his dad in British Columbia, so by the time he's back to me, he'll be vaguely more used to regular showers and sleeping inside and not being rained on constantly. We pretty much have to go camping together, now that he's done this whole Alaska thing and I've never even been camping.

I'm just glad I got sick this week instead of next week. I hope I'm over it by then.

I think this is cute

藍帽子的秘密.

A little place to call my own

Every time I see Sarah Susanka's books ("The Not So Big House"), or books on log cabins, I get kind of dreamy and wish that I had my own house, just a tiny little one to decorate and paint and put window boxes on for daffodils. I imagine the bedroom would be red like mine is now, and the living room would be a soothing chestnut brown. Then I remember how much I hate cleaning (dusting, vacuuming, and the like) and the dream dies.

But then I think about a small apartment where they would let me paint. A brownstone, something near Grand Avenue in St. Paul, a walk-up on the third floor. More than likely, I'd have to go to the laundromat each week, but I would love it.

I think either of these scenarios is some time off in the future, but I can dream, can't I?

The way of the world

Today at work is just flying by. I hope the next four hours go the same way. I'm working a lot the next two weeks, or so it seems. I also need to find some time to review for my midterm exam. Tonight, I might try to make something sweet for a coworker's birthday tomorrow since we have our first Virtual Services team meeting. I hope we can get a library blog going, at the very least.

My temporary boyfriend

While S has been gone, my temporary fill-in has been the one, the only, Cary Grant.

No, I haven't raised him from the dead in order to date him, I've just watched his movies and felt very involved with him. Lucky for me, Turner Classics did a full day of Cary Grant's movies (or should I say, Achie Leach's movies?) and I grabbed a bunch of them with the DVR.

I've seen so many of his movies, and loved all of them (especially "An Affair to Remember," "To Catch a Thief, and "The Grass is Greener"), and especially loved him (particularly as Mortimer in "Arsenic and Old Lace" and as whoever in "Charade"), that it might be kind of difficult to break up once S is here. I told S last night when he called that I was watching "Father Goose" and that I may have him watch something silly like "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House" when he gets back.

"I guess I have to know what I'm up against," S said.

I'm guess willing to trade one tall, dark and handsome man for another.

A perfect day

Things I love:

Autumn
Warm days
Sunshine dappled through tree leaves
Reading while sitting outside
Billy Collins poetry
Listening to music on my iPod
Warm sweaters
The smell of citrus

I've been sitting reading the Best American Poetry of 2006 edited by Billy Collins, enjoying this 80 degree weather. Feeling kind of guilty that it is most assuredly half that temperature in Seward, Alaska today, and probably raining there. But this is S's last week on the job, and then it's onto something new. I am putting off studying for my cataloging midterm, because I want to do that closer to the actual exam, which is two weeks away. So, it's lazing around for me. Excellent.

Made it to the wedding reception for my cousin Matt and his new wife Shannon. I did a quick change into my dress in my car after I got out of class and then hightailed it to the Millenium Hotel on Nicollet in downtown Minneapolis. Lots of dancing, hanging out with cousins, dancing some more, and then getting home quite late. It was a really great time, though, definitely fun.

Judy Garland writing from beyond the grave

Example of a "spirit" work, as mentioned in yesterday's cataloging class related entry.

Look at me, live blogging from my grad class. Naughty, naughty.

Update: if you go to the Library of Congress and search "garland judy (spirit)" in the basic search for author/creator, you will find the bib record I linked to. Silly LOC and their timeouts. Thanks for the heads-up, Amanda!

Catalogers are a weird lot, I think

So I'm sitting here reading Chapter 4 of the Students Guide for LIS 703, and Helen Humeston, the professor and co-author of the guidebook knows how very dry the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules are, so she livens it up a bit in her own writing. Usually this means she just writes cleverly about boring things. But suddenly, I read the sentence:

"Now we come to the only faintly humorous part of AACR2. Rule 21.26A governs the way to enter a work dictated from beyond the grace. Princess Diana has been busy since she died. She is credited for two spirit books."

And then there's a bibliographic record where the MARC field looks like this:

600 00 |a Diana, |c Princess of Wales, |d 1961-1997 |c (Spirit)

And, sure enough, the actual cataloging rule says this, "Enter a communication presented as having been received from a spirit under the heading for a spirit. Make an added entry under the heading for the medium of other person recording the information."

The medium? Um, can I just say—WHAT were they thinking?!!?

Earlier tonight

On my oncoming winter pallor:

"Too bad there's no cure for paleness."
"A boyfriend who loves you."
"Aww... You are horribly cute, you know? Ridiculously cute."
"You should write that down."
"What, so I don't forget?"
"So you can remember I'm ridiculously cute."

New heights of nerdiness (MLA report)

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I attended sessions of the Minnesota Library Association conference. Tuesday, I took an ill co-worker's place at a pre-conference training workshop on cataloging sound recordings. Yesterday, I attended the Millenials/Net Gen presentation by some university librarians, and the "Are You the Librarian?" paraprofessional session presented by Valeria Fike from College of DuPage, who was named the Library Journal paraprofessional of the year.

The pre-conference training on audio cataloging was very technical and the two presenters (Kathy Blough from St. Olaf and Mary Huisman from the U of M) gave many specific, practical tips and cited the corresponding cataloging rules for everything. Learning about how to catalog new formats was actually quite interesting, since I wasn't aware of the kinds of notes that need to be made in a MARC record.

Example from Hennepin County's library catalog:

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets sound recording.

The MARC record (MARC=Machine Readable Cataloging record, a format that library computer systems can read with searchable fields and lots of strange-looking punctuation.)

In the session, we learned what types of notes to make on records for different types of audio, like super audio discs, DVD audio, and other crazy things like those books on tape that come pre-loaded on a player, which is done by Playaway. Everyone in the room seemed pretty excited about the Playaway books.

Yesterday's sessions were less hands-on practical, but I did learn that I am a millenial, part of the net-gen (or generation y) and the panel of students from Bethel was, I'm sure, enlightening for everyone in the room who isn't part of our generation. We watched a "60 Minutes" clip on this generation of kids, and it kind of grossly overgeneralized what we are like, but it was still apropos. The students on the panel were asked to talk about their typical days, and they described being very plugged in, with iPods, palm pilots, laptops, cell phones. A coworker at my table was like, "What's Facebook?" when all of the panel members admitted logging into e-mail and Facebook upon waking up. I had to raise my hand and ask them to describe it and I promised to show my coworker what it's like.

Since I am a library paraprofessional, that session was kind of affirming, except I tend to disagree with Valeria Fike on the matter of library paraprofessionals as real professionals. In that room, I didn't want to admit that I'm in school for a MLIS degree. The tips on resumes and keeping a portfolio were good, though, and I will probably do many of them to help my chances of getting a job at some later point.

After the sessions, I walked the convention floor and got some chocolate and some goodies (a tote bag from Spotlight that's pink and says, "Read!" and a few buttons). Overall, a good day, but I went home and took a long nap. I was exhausted and didn't feel all that well, but now I'm up and at 'em today with not much to do. Cataloging homework, here I come.

How the models look that good

Wow, with the retouching. And this is why sometimes I just don't even try.

Noooooo (MyFaceSpaceBook?)

Okay, well, Facebook has gone and done it. Opened the gates to the masses. And guess what? It took minutes for me to log in just now, and it's taking a loooong time to load my profile/home links. Freakin' A! If you're not someone I know in real life, don't expect me to add you.

And here I wanted a t-shirt that said, "I went to grad school and all I got was this stupid Facebook account."

Just kidding. Sort of.

My life, a list

In the next three weeks before S is back, I have the following:

Two classes and the homework involved therewith
Attendance at the Minnesota Library Association conference
A pre-MLA training session
My cousin Matt's wedding to his longtime girlfriend, Shannon
Approximately 90 hours of work
At least two Netflix DVDs to watch each week
Four books I want to finish or start reading

Yesterday evening, I got to talk to S for almost three hours. We haven't done that in a while, since he was out of range for two weeks, and before that, when he was in range, the service would cut out on us every couple minutes or so. Kind of hard to have a meaningful conversation when every other minute the call would be dropped. Last night we made up for that, and my phone even died. It was great.

Beth, an artist?

I was looking for something else online (a comment I made on another site) and came up with my debut as reader with the band my friend Val Snobeck and her husband Andrew Neher have, The Wood Knots.

I remember recording that in their Uptown apartment late one night a couple years ago. I had a cold, and Val made me tea, which was so hot I could barely sip it. Andrew let me do multiple takes with their Macintosh laptop, and all I had to do was read Val's story, banged out on a typewriter with handwritten notes. Good times.

So far away

Went out for dinner tonight after work for a coworker's going-away celebration. Waited nearly an hour to seat 12 at the Olive Garden (it's central Minnesota, okay?), planned on splitting a bottle of wine with one of my favorite coworkers. Chatted, learned my boss loves watching "Jackass" and "Ali G." Said we should all go see the Borat movie when it comes out as a group of coworkers. Totally awesome.

Ordered pasta, of course. Started feeling the wine and enjoyed the conversaton immensely. My half of the table was watching a nearby couple on their date. We guessed possibly a first. It looked so awkward, the girl with her hair in a tight updo, both of them dressed nicer than business casual. Saturday night. We all swooned when he reached for her hand, held it in both of his for about 10 seconds, then sighed when he let go. We couldn't tell if it was a dying relationship or a brand new one gaining momentum, but my sister said it would have gone better if she'd worn her hair down, for heaven's sake.

Now I'm here, in bed reading Stephanie Klein's book and listening to Carole King and wishing I could talk to S so much, but his crew is on the road to Seward from Homer, so it will be tomorrow before I can tell him about my day.

I can't wait to sleep in and knit and watch "Northern Exposure" tomorrow while it continues to rain. I'll make coffee and add whipped cream on top and eat bread all day, probably start another book if I finish the current one. And then it's another work week. Only three left until S is back. I can't help it. I think about him all the time, am so attached to him even with him away, and I'm almost sick of myself talking about him, but he's my boyfriend and I can't help it. I liked him for so long and being able to call him my boyfriend is more precious than anything else to me right now.