So, I'm sitting in my cozy new office surrounded by shelves of books and crates waiting to be unpacked. The entire organization did a bang-up job of unpacking dozens and dozens of crates today and the place almost looks visitor-friendly. My only complaint is about the lack of a desk drawer in which to put my pens and post-it notes. I will have to buy a plastic pen-holder thingy to serve this purpose. Until then, I will continue to reach in front of me to open my non-existent drawer to find a pen.

Easter was ham-tastic. The whole gang gathered at my mom's for what she called an Irish/Italian feast; there was ham, lasagna, eggplant, and more. And there was an "egg-hunt". I put this in quotes because the only people participating in the hunt were my nephew Noah (3 in May) and my cousin Nick (13). Bryan and I pointed out as many eggs as possible to the younger searcher and in 10 minutes, the "hunt" was finished. The best thing about it was the fact that the weather was nice enough to be outside with just a light sweater for longer than 10 minutes without seeing actual tears in Bryan's eyes.

In basketball news, I am once again second to last in the standings (that's where I finished last year, too), but there are 3 more games to be played and my champ is still in it. Bryan's dad has clinched last so I am now just looking for a respectable finish somewhere in the 20's (out of 35).

I just read the book Codex by Lev Grossman and it was so disappointing that I had to warn anyone thinking of reading this book not to waste your time. It had a great premise: a medieval codex (that's a book) that may or may not exist, young man hired to find out more by a shadowy Duchess, intelligent female Medieval Studies student helps recover the text, a cast of interesting characters. But, besides a few great scenes about libraries and book preservation (and destruction) and an ending where the hero gets mostly thwarted, the book never really takes off. I kept expecting more suspense and a more thorough explanation of the aforementioned shadowy Duchess and all I really felt was frustrated by the hero's lack of motivation and almost total inability to make a freakin' decision.

In a book-to-movie highlight, I saw Vanity Fair with Reese Witherspoon and was very impressed by the acting, cinematography and costuming. I think that Thackeray's plots and characterizations and grand scenes were done justice and I only winced once at Witherspoon's British accent and it was during a particularly tense scene when it didn't really matter anyway. I definitely recommend this one.

Ol' Becky

I was just in the liquor store and somehow Kenny Rogers came up - everyone in the store starting talking about his songs, which were their favorites (Coward of the County [which caused someone to yell out a line from the song which provided the title for this entry] and The Gambler mostly, though I brought up Reuben James and got some appreciative nods), how he was in concert, his first band The New Edition. I left there with a 12 pack of Shipyard Export Ale AND a Kenny Rogers song in my head. Excellent.

So, the company is ready. All 75 rent-a-crates are packed, our computers are unplugged and bagged, 14 enormous library carts were packed with books, and enough trash was generated to cover Rhode Island. The movers come at 8am tomorrow and our new space is ready and it's glo-or-ious.

Other things on my mind: not basketball as I completely forgot that there were important NCAA games tonight. Don't worry, Bryan reminded me so all is well.

The Schiavo case - the whole fight is so sad. I just can't see what's wrong with a family wanting to keep their loved one alive. They aren't asking her shitball "husband" to take care of her, just that they be allowed to. He should divorce her and move on with his life and let her parents spend the rest of their days looking after and loving their daughter. The way people (and I guess I mean politicians or social activists) in this country use a life to make a point disgusts me. While everyone fights over the 'idea' of this woman, the actual woman lies in a hospital bed starving to death. I feel a little heartbroken everytime I see her picture flash by on the news.

The school shooting in Minnesota. I was a teacher in 1997-98, one year before the shootings in Colorado. I had a student jokingly refer to 'blowing away' his classmates and teachers. It is a frightening thing to face. The fact that students are so distraught, so disturbed and so empowered to hurt their peers and their teachers in such a terrible way is beyond scary. And how difficult to be a parent in that situation, of the kid doing the shooting, but also of the victims? You send your kid to school to learn - they are not supposed to end up dying of a gunshot wound inflicted during science class by a deranged classmate.

Way to go mom. Scoring an expensive bottle of wine, a new friend and a ticket to the home opener at Fenway. You're my hero.

Ice cream. It's just usually on my mind cause it's so tasty.

No title

Bryan stole my title, which would've been Madness. And, while he refers to the NCAA basketball tournament going on all around the United States, I only briefly would touch upon my horrible team-picking skills leaving me, not in last, where I would at least win my money back, but 30th out of 35. Terrible.

Anyway, the madness in my life comes in the form of a move at work. Somehow, I have become the point person for moving our entire library. Ok, not somehow, I am the librarian, but whew, I get asked a lot of questions every day and I am still a bit daunted by the thought of packing, crating, moving, unpacking, reshelving, and so on, all while trying to provide high level reference work and assistance to the teachers who are too busy themselves to care that everything around me is in total chaos.

The carts upon which I will pack the 5000 books in the library arrive tomorrow at 8:30am. I fear I will dream about shelving, labeling and categorizing for the next few nights.

Also providing some madness is the class going on outside my door at the moment. Twenty teachers are attempting to learn Chinese and they are saying words in unison over and over. I think I have to go home before I really do lose another piece of my sanity.

Wearin' O'the Green

It's a little strange to me that most US holidays have colors associated with them. Today, St. Patrick's Day, is highly attached to the color green. This makes some sense, since shamrocks are a symbol of Ireland and they, being a form of grass, are green. Shamrocks=green=Ireland=holiday celebrating the Irish=wear a green sweater (and pants if you're over 65).

Some of the other holidays that have color associations:
New Year's=gold & silver. Perhaps, representing money and prosperity for the coming year. More likely the color of the stars you see when you wake up the next morning after having drunk too much bad champagne.

Valentine's Day=red. The color of the human heart? Maybe, though I think it's more purple than red. But red sure is the color of overpriced roses and the lifeblood drained from people as they spend too much money on teddy bears and chocolate hearts.

Easter=pastels like baby blue, light yellow, and lavender. A holiday straight out of a 1950's interior design text. I guess bunnies like soft colors. Oh, and Jesus. Didn't he preach about spring greens and cream-filled eggs?


Memorial Day=no color at all. Unless you count the color of hotdogs, cause we eat them at our bbq's, which we hold to remember what this holiday is for.

Fourth of July=red, white & blue. For obvious reasons. Bombs blow up causing fire and death. Red. Lots of caucasians start wars; they're white people. Our current president makes us sad. Blue.

Labor Day=another colorless holiday. What color is work, and why do we celebrate the practice of it?

Halloween=orange and black. Pumpkins and death? I like this. It's simple. But, considering that we put on costumes of all color, hand out candy of all kinds and hang a lot of spider webs and dismembered limbs (is that just me?), having just 2 colors for this holiday is silly.

Thanksgiving=the color of turkeys. I guess that's brown and red. And didn't pilgrims wear brown? And Native Americans were always red in the books published when I was a kid. And when the people in brown entered the land of the red people, wiping them out with disease and land mongering within a few generations, we celebrate this useless holiday.

And that brings us to the end of the year and
Christmas=green and red. Green for pine trees and red for...I'm drawing a blank. Santa Claus? Candy canes? The Red Sox winning the World Series? Or, at risk of exploiting the blood theme, the death of thousands of pagans at the hands of the Catholic church when they refused to convert to Christianity. For their pain, we now celebrate xmas with trees, gift-giving and carolling, much different from the evergreen boughs, gift-giving and the singing of songs from door to door practiced by the pagans. Yay, church!

That wraps up the color associations. Sorry if I left out Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Passover, Yom Kippur, Boxing Day, Chinese New Year, Ramadan and the hundreds of other non-Western, non-Christian holidays. I only know the silly color associations of the American variety.
And don't be offended, mostly I based this on M&M's; they make colors for most holidays which match those described here.

Have a safe St. Paddy's - drink a green beer (of course) or two. It's good for you. And very American.

GARY!

As started on Friday, March 11:
I got out of work early today and was able to run many errands that don't seem to ever get done in a normal week. I visited the bank, post office, target, xmas tree shop, newbury comics, the library, paid bills online, called caterers and inns in Gloucester, ate lunch and had time to blog. Wow!

Ok, I'm done tooting my own productivity horn, and am looking forward to a Irish-tastic weekend in Newport, RI. We will be drinking as much guiness and jameson as we can hold and watching lots of bagpipers run to the finish line of the parade as snow and freezing rain hits their knobby knees.

Finished on Sunday, March 13:
We had a fun time in Newport (well, those of us whose last name starts with J or whose first names is Robyn did). As my blog entry states, the theme of the weekend was "Gary". Joe's friend Robyn accompanied us this year and we learned that her father's name is Gary. Bryan also belongs to a Gary. We met a parade marshall who invited Robin to march in next year's parade and promised to procure difficult-to-come-by tickets to the Hibernia Club. His name: Gary. We also passed Gary's, a local lunch spot, and sang a stirring rendition of Gary, Indiana from the Music Man upon waking this morning after having consumed too much Irish stout and shepherd's pie. The parade was, indeed, snowy, and blessedly short thanks to the cancellations of 40% of the participants (this information brought to us by, you guessed it, Gary). We heard a minimal amount of bagpiping, sang very few Irish songs, and spoke with no people from Ireland. Nevertheless, we wore green, stuck shamrocks to ourselves whenever possible and celebrated the fuck out of St. Patrick's Day, 5 to 6 days early.

Straight lines

are overrated. Why is it when you try to hang a picture on a perfectly flush wall, your entire sense of perception, straightness, centering, whatever, fails? I am sure that Home Depot makes some sort of tool that measures, levels and draws the dot for your nail (all the while giving you a massage and holding your beer), but I of the two handed species, cannot seem to get it all coordinated correctly to hang a Martha-approved picture in my home (sorry, for the plug for a criminal, but I am feeling a sordid glee by how much attention is being paid to one of the richest 'poor lady' liars and I had to join in). Luckily, I have a partner in crime who has 2 hands also and we managed to hang 11 pictures. And if they are all slightly askew, who's to say what straight is?

Hello Life

I'm back to living my life, going home after work without something hanging over my head. Yippee! I mailed the grant application yesterday at 2:30 and have felt lighter ever since. Course, now I have to go through all of the emails that I have left sitting in one inbox or another, (seriously, I'll get to every one - sorry if I've been bad about replying) and I have to make sure that there will be library shelves to move all of my books onto when PS moves to our new location at the end of the month.

So, here's to crockpots that ensure that dinner's ready when you walk in the door. Here's to the nice clerk at the Post Office who said that I was the happiest customer he'd seen all day. Here's to Brain for listening to me worry and gripe about the horrific process of writing a grant. And here's to the sun for at least making it look good outside (even though it's actually cold enough to freeze snot as you take the first breath upon walking out the front door). And, here's to date night tonight and game night tomorrow night.

Happy Birthday to Melisa - so sorry we'll miss the par-ty, we're lame, but we've been trying to schedule the babysitting xmas gift for my brother and his wife and we're running out of weekends. [We'll be free just about in time for your NEXT party in 2006!] Have fun and drink a glass (or two) for us.

Oh, and the first televised Red Sox spring training game is on NESN tonight, against the Twins (aka the Twinkies). Here's to baseball.