Thanks for your kind comments concerning this morning's fat breakdown. I still get taken by surprise when a person who would never dream of saying anything negative about the color of my skin finds it perfectly acceptable to say something negative about the size of my stomach.

And, Kris, I mentioned Joey Fatone LAST TIME I watched dancing with the stars. Steve. you crack me up.

Labels: thanks

The other day, a co-worker asked me how I got to be "so big." Just writing that sentence makes my eyes tear - how do you answer that question?

I don't think she was trying to be hurtful, and actually it was, in a way, a logical question because we were talking about the fact that I had just come from an early-morning cache trip. It's well-known at work that I hike and kayak, and the women watch in amazement when I put the full water bottle on the cooler or heft the case of paper onto the shelf - I'm athletic, so why am I so unsightly?

I said something about eating too much, and something about the fact that I am, simply put, a fat person. That I could lose 50 pounds, and I'd still be round, because I am round. She said, "So eat healthy." I said that, in the grand scheme of things, I do eat healthy. (Am I a macrobiotic vegetarian? No. Do I live on junk/fast food and loads of sugar? Not even close.) I told her that my problem is most definitely portion control - I eat good food, but I eat too much of it. She said, "So stop doing that."

Why didn't I think of that?

Labels: big, delusional, fat, ugly, undisciplined

For the second week in a row, I find myself thinking that Ian Ziering is hot. And not only that, cute.

It should be pretty obvious that I ain't getting any.

Labels: sex

I spent the whole day trying to load Ubuntu onto my laptop. Apparently, my laptop didn't like that. I decided to do a clean install of windows - didn't like that either, mostly because my friend Stevie made off with my drivers disk. Stevie also reset my admin password at some point, and since he is unreachable, a good deal of time was spent trying to hack into my own damn computer (which I did, finally, after finding some backdoor command-line code).

Now my computer has two operating systems that I can't access. Don't ever let me "fix" your computer.

Labels: computer, geek, linux

Or not.

I was starving after work, so I rushed home and commenced making dinner immediately. I poached some salmon in white wine and light (clear) balsamic vinegar with dill, salt, and pepper, and cooked the Trader Joe's Spinach Fettuccine with fresh broccoli. Yum.

Since we finished eating early (for us), we decided to try and catch a movie. Now, I am not a fan of movie theatres, and I don't know what on Earth made me agree to go see Disturbia of all things, but I am rapidly reaching "snark overload" with Geoff, and I just wanted to get out of the house and do something that was his idea (because, you know, I never do anything that's his idea). When we arrived, it was sold out. Darn.

We stopped by the new pool hall in town and decided to shoot a few games. Man, I suck at pool. I haven't played in a while, and I am accustomed to bar tables which are two feet smaller than the 8 foot professional tables at the hall. But, it was a way to kill an hour so that we could pretend we "went out."

Home by 9pm - that's just sad.

I can't even tell you how much I miss 1991, the year I went dancing every Friday and Saturday night with "The Posse" (I shit you not). I often found myself grinding away in a sweaty club, the happy meat in a Hot Black Man sandwich. I have pictures.

Now I'm just the nearly middle-aged meat in an Old White Dude roll-up.

NEWS FLASH!
Geoff's ex-girlfriend is IMing me. She does this from time-to-time. I think it's weird. Should I respond so that I can report back to you all?

Labels: Friday, sad, WTF?

I spent a good chunk of time today posting to my library blog. Has anyone noticed how much time blogging can take?

As I read my way around the online universe, I take constant notes on things that I think are relevant to the library world - things I want to post on my blog. The list grows and grows, and at some point I find that I couldn't possibly post all of the nifty things I discovered, and/or that someone else has already beat me to the punch. I end up with very long, and very interesting lists, and very little actually posted on my blog.

Until recently, this really didn't bother me much. No one was reading that blog, no one seemed to know me, and I had kind of given up on the idea of becoming a librarian rock star.

Then, I started getting email - people telling me that they read my blog and liked what I posted (funny, I don't get tons of comments there). This was heartening. I tried to create some online social portals for librarians - a message board, a community blog - and when I got little response, I crept back under the covers. Enter a very successful online librarian community, Library 2.0 on Ning, and lots of people want to be my "friend." Notes show up in my box saying things like, "I see you all over the place online!" Hmmm. Good thing I have my clothes on.

And then, last week, a library blogger I respect and admire very much named me as one of his Five Blog Heroes. I just about spit out my drink when I saw my name in that list. "Cool!" was my first thought. "Shit! Now I have to actually post meaningful content" was my second.

In other news, one of my professional references told me that she had received a phone call from one of the board members of my library, and that I am apparently going to be granted an interview. I haven't been called on that yet, but I am a tiny bit excited at the prospect.

Because things are moving in this direction, I will probably be moving this blog to a different URL and disassociating it from the coollibrarian.com domain. This would also mean that the rss feed will change. Though I am not ashamed of what I say here, and I will fight for my right to say whatever the fuck I want here (like, um, fuck), the reality is that employers have gotten wise to Googling their prospective employees, and using what they find against them at times. This blog is not linked closely to my full name, but a tech-savvy person could make the connection, and anyone plugged in enough to Google my professional persona would find this place in a few minutes. I am not overly worried about this job, per se (for a few different reasons), but I expect that my job hunting will continue (I hold no fantasies about getting a Directorship), and I should be more conscious of how my online identities fit together.

So, you may see some "sanitizing" in terms of how I identify myself here, and how this blog does, or does not, link to the other facets of my online life. I will keep you posted on important changes/moves.

Labels: blogging, job

Two days ago my mom started asking me if I had any Easter plans with Geoff. Naturally the answer was, "no," as he always goes to see his kids on holidays, and I knew what was coming next - she wanted to go visit my brother - mostly because his birthday is tomorrow.

You see, Mom doesn't drive, and Matthew lives half hour away. Which means if she wants to go see him and the kids, I have to take her.

I love my brother - he's a good guy, and, well, he's my brother. But few things make my hair stand on end like a visit to his house. A trip to Vegas is more calming than a trip to his place, and since my "nerves" make me sensitive to sensory over-stimulation (funny, a Barenaked Ladies concert doesn't bother me at all - most of the time), I tend to leave there feeling like I spent the afternoon at Abu Ghraib.

What is it, exactly, that drives me batshit? It's the unbelievable noise level - you'd think they had 17 kids and not two. Matthew's wife is a life-long alcoholic, and as such she operates on the level of a glassy-eyed 12-year-old. She yells constantly, the same thing over and over and over and over, and the kids, who yell plenty themselves, just ignore her causing her to yell some more. In order to drown out her yelling, the 60-inch wide-screen tv with home theatre sound (really) is turned up to max volume. Sometimes the stereo is on as well (really). Josh (13) is playing his hand-held, 250 dollar video game without headphones, Jasmine (10) is jumping around like she's been mainlining cocaine and chocolate, and Matthew is telling his wife to "shut up already." It drives me insane, and I am forced to go to my happy place to get through the visit.

I think what freaks me out is that it is so different than how we grew up. "Shut up" was almost never said in our house, and I find that phrase a million times more offensive than "fuck you." Though, if I lived there I might be saying it, too.

The heinous Wal-Mart Easter baskets were torn open and strewn about, though I can guarantee that neither child could tell you what had been in them. As children our baskets contained paper mache eggs and those sugar eggs you looked into that were family heirlooms (and collected every year so that they could make a return visit the following year), and I can remember both of us sitting quietly - at least for a few minutes - so that we look over everything in the basket. We colored eggs, we had an Easter egg hunt. As we got older, the egg coloring evolved into making Pysanky eggs, and the egg hunt came complete with clues and instructions that rivaled anything you'd see on the Amazing Race.

It makes both Mom and I sad that these traditions - or anything even remotely resembling tradition - seem to be gone. In an attempt to do something special last Christmas (and perhaps keep the kids quiet for a few minutes) Mom brought a cool "project" for us to do. Jasmine was entertained for about six minutes before the sugar rush overtook her again, and Josh told us that "Pimps don't do crafts."

My head hurts.

I'm all set with holidays - I am not a practicing Christian, I am no longer a kid, and I gave up any delusions of a functional family meal years ago. I wish I had the money to just go someplace else so that I was unavailable to participate in these little trips. And though my mom feels the same way (she was supposed to come back to my place to watch a movie with me, but said she just wanted to go home to "decompress"), Matthew is her son, and those are her grandchildren, and she feels like she has to go (and I have to drive her there).

If nothing else, though, the drive home is always nice, and I make sure to tell Mom how much I appreciate the holidays she created for us when we were kids.

Labels: Easter, holidays suck

Here's my father's Celebrity Look-alikes



You'll notice that we share one celebrity, which I guess makes sense. But, you'll also notice the lack of brown faces - again. Which leads me to believe that perhaps their database does not contain many brown or black celebrities - perhaps? Because what's funny is that when people see that picture of my father (which is grainy at best and taken in the early seventies) they say, "Your dad was Shaft?" My father looks very much like Richard Roundtree.

Here's Mom - same photo



Very odd.

Labels: celebrity look-alikes, dad, funny mom

OK, so aside from the fact that I apparently look like Christie Brinkley and Heidi Klum (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I will never stop laughing about this!), what else do you notice here? Um, with one exception, everyone is white. I am half white, and I guess my features tend toward "white," but I have to say that I am surprised nonetheless. I was really expecting a Queen Latifah in there someplace.

You have got to try this - it's worth the annoying sign-up process. Let us know who you supposedly look like.

I'm still laughing. Wait till I show Geoff - he'll probably pee his pants.

Labels: celebrity look-alikes, delusional, funny, hahaha