At work on Mother's day. The action on the floor:
3: 15 every computer is being used. Two people are looking through the video/DVD section. No one is browsing any shelves with actual books on them.
Earlier some lady got pissed cause when I was checking her PIN which is used to check out books, I asked out loud if it was 5455? SHe said thanks for telling the whole building...there were three people here...and anyway its the PIN to a library account, not a bank account. We spent time thinking about how to get her back...I suggested manually adding a bunch of fines to her account.
It is slow here today. I spent at least an hour surfing GI Joe websites looking at vehicles and actionn figures I used to own...some of which are probably still in my house somewhere.
3:37 nothing happening.
3:45 i think the clock is moving backwards
4:10 people are always turning in the books to us that belong to Cedar Park; then you have to make phone calls to find out who it was...the most exciting thing to happen today so far. Every computer is full, we have a lot of fat kids who come to this library. I think every half hour the computers should lock and they should run a lap before the computer unlocks.
having tacos for dinner tonight. Dad fries the shells himself, they're awesome.
5:00, only an hour to go. then home to tacos, WKRP and finishing my final for my Preservation class.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Staff Picks
At the library I work out, we have a display with staff picks. So far, both of the books I have put out there have been checked out.
#1
TITLE: A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World.
AUTHOR: Tony Horowitz
Christopher Columbus established Spanish colonies in 1492, the Puritan separatists colonies came along in 1620 and nothing happened in between. WRONG. From 1492-1620, there were several attempts by Spain, France, and England to establish colonies throughout North America. This book covers the wanderings of Cabeza de Vaca across Texas (1528-36); Francisco Vasquez de Coronado’s discover of oil and buffalo in what is now Kansas; French Protestant attempts to settle Florida (and their subsequent slaughter by the Spanish); the failed English colony of Roanoke whose inhabitants disappeared; and the disastrous English settlement of Jamestown (where some settlers turned to cannibalism to survive the winter of 1609-10).
Part history, part travelogue, the book also contains an index of sources for readers who wish to delve in to these largely ignored settlements.
RECOMMENDED BY: Jason
***************
I think it was the mention of cannibalism that got this one off the shelf and in to someone's hands. People are always fascinated to hear those kinds of stories about American history. Horowitz doesn't cover this, but there was an attempt by the French to colonize what is now east Texas. How different Texas history would have been.
#2
TITLE: The War that Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War
AUTHOR: Fred Anderson
On July 4, 1754, a twenty-one year old Major in the Virginia militia named George Washington, yes that George Washington, surrendered to a superior force of French and Indians at Fort Necessity in the Pennsylvania frontier. Washington’s surrender followed a disastrous expedition to dislodge French forces from Fort Duquesne, built to prohibit English encroachment into the Ohio Valley. A year later, a large British army was massacred trying to take the fort.
For the next seven years, British and French forces-aided by their respective Indian allies-savagely fought for control of North America in a series of bloody campaigns in the Great Lakes and along what is now the US/Canada border. The war spread beyond the continent, dragging in the navies of Britain, France, Spain, and Holland and their respective colonies in the Caribbean and the Far East. The end of the war found Britain deeply in debt, Spain weakened, and the French spoiling for revenge thus laying the foundations for the American Revolution.
RECOMMENDED BY: Jason
******************************
I suspect the inclusion of George Washington got this one moving. Notice the date, July 4, 1754. In July of 1776, Washington penned a letter to a friend reminiscing on the irony of that date in his life.
#1
TITLE: A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World.
AUTHOR: Tony Horowitz
Christopher Columbus established Spanish colonies in 1492, the Puritan separatists colonies came along in 1620 and nothing happened in between. WRONG. From 1492-1620, there were several attempts by Spain, France, and England to establish colonies throughout North America. This book covers the wanderings of Cabeza de Vaca across Texas (1528-36); Francisco Vasquez de Coronado’s discover of oil and buffalo in what is now Kansas; French Protestant attempts to settle Florida (and their subsequent slaughter by the Spanish); the failed English colony of Roanoke whose inhabitants disappeared; and the disastrous English settlement of Jamestown (where some settlers turned to cannibalism to survive the winter of 1609-10).
Part history, part travelogue, the book also contains an index of sources for readers who wish to delve in to these largely ignored settlements.
RECOMMENDED BY: Jason
***************
I think it was the mention of cannibalism that got this one off the shelf and in to someone's hands. People are always fascinated to hear those kinds of stories about American history. Horowitz doesn't cover this, but there was an attempt by the French to colonize what is now east Texas. How different Texas history would have been.
#2
TITLE: The War that Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War
AUTHOR: Fred Anderson
On July 4, 1754, a twenty-one year old Major in the Virginia militia named George Washington, yes that George Washington, surrendered to a superior force of French and Indians at Fort Necessity in the Pennsylvania frontier. Washington’s surrender followed a disastrous expedition to dislodge French forces from Fort Duquesne, built to prohibit English encroachment into the Ohio Valley. A year later, a large British army was massacred trying to take the fort.
For the next seven years, British and French forces-aided by their respective Indian allies-savagely fought for control of North America in a series of bloody campaigns in the Great Lakes and along what is now the US/Canada border. The war spread beyond the continent, dragging in the navies of Britain, France, Spain, and Holland and their respective colonies in the Caribbean and the Far East. The end of the war found Britain deeply in debt, Spain weakened, and the French spoiling for revenge thus laying the foundations for the American Revolution.
RECOMMENDED BY: Jason
******************************
I suspect the inclusion of George Washington got this one moving. Notice the date, July 4, 1754. In July of 1776, Washington penned a letter to a friend reminiscing on the irony of that date in his life.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
An old story
To clear up a bit of confusion, I wrote this sometime in 2004.
***********
Her funeral was brief, as all funerals should be. And small. Her husband, their children, some people from work. No one from her own family was there. She never knew her family. Raised in a Scottish orphanage, she met Gilbert Elkins in England during the last European war. He was an Air Force mechanic; she worked in a munitions factory.
Being Scottish, she possessed no great love for the Crown, or the Empire. Taking munitions work wasn’t about patriotism, it was a way to get away from Scotland’s endless fog and peat covered mountains, its coal pit scarred landscape dotted with distilleries and sad medieval ruins crumbling year by year. Even Manchester, its sooted brick buildings and provincial Presbyterianism were far more glamorous. And the money was good. When Gilbert left after the war, she applied for emigration to America. As England faded from its place in the world, she lost what little connection she felt with her home. All of her hopes now rested on America.
She telegrammed Gilbert upon her arrival in America. They lived in Chicago and then moved to be near his family in Texas. He continued working as an electrical mechanic she raised the children and did part-time secretarial work. Children, home, church. Three daughters, one son. Years passed. She and Gilbert grew apart. Then she was gone.
Only one daughter had any children of her own. Two grandchildren, both boys. She poured tea into her husband’s glass. They sat around the table in the tiny kitchen. From where they sat, the boys could see the backyard through the large patio door in the rear den. Conversation was brief. The boys gobbled their meal so they could go back outside to join their friends. Husband and wife ate mostly in silence. Small talk about work, her friends, her sisters. And this was her life. Married right out of high school, six weeks after graduation. Two children whom she adored, more to come? Only 24, and the ghost of her mother’s life followed her like a pre-written script. Life, husband, children, her sense of loss of her own youth. Her mother’s life stretched out before her.
She lay in the darkened room that night. Her husband, fast asleep. The children, bathed, scrubbed, asleep in their rooms. Tomorrow, she would wake and fix breakfast, and take the boys to their sitter’s house and then go to her job, a secretary. They needed the money, at least until her husband finished his apprenticeship. She turned on her side and the script of her mother’s life lay on the night table near her, its future already concluded. They’d separated once before, little had changed.
Morning. She sat in traffic, her mother’s ghost in the seat next to her. She ran her fingers over the edges of the sheet of paper with the lawyer’s name on it. She’d written it down during the previous separation, before her mother’s ghost followed her everywhere, questioning, pointing to a script that couldn’t be changed. Could she do it?
***********
Her funeral was brief, as all funerals should be. And small. Her husband, their children, some people from work. No one from her own family was there. She never knew her family. Raised in a Scottish orphanage, she met Gilbert Elkins in England during the last European war. He was an Air Force mechanic; she worked in a munitions factory.
Being Scottish, she possessed no great love for the Crown, or the Empire. Taking munitions work wasn’t about patriotism, it was a way to get away from Scotland’s endless fog and peat covered mountains, its coal pit scarred landscape dotted with distilleries and sad medieval ruins crumbling year by year. Even Manchester, its sooted brick buildings and provincial Presbyterianism were far more glamorous. And the money was good. When Gilbert left after the war, she applied for emigration to America. As England faded from its place in the world, she lost what little connection she felt with her home. All of her hopes now rested on America.
She telegrammed Gilbert upon her arrival in America. They lived in Chicago and then moved to be near his family in Texas. He continued working as an electrical mechanic she raised the children and did part-time secretarial work. Children, home, church. Three daughters, one son. Years passed. She and Gilbert grew apart. Then she was gone.
Only one daughter had any children of her own. Two grandchildren, both boys. She poured tea into her husband’s glass. They sat around the table in the tiny kitchen. From where they sat, the boys could see the backyard through the large patio door in the rear den. Conversation was brief. The boys gobbled their meal so they could go back outside to join their friends. Husband and wife ate mostly in silence. Small talk about work, her friends, her sisters. And this was her life. Married right out of high school, six weeks after graduation. Two children whom she adored, more to come? Only 24, and the ghost of her mother’s life followed her like a pre-written script. Life, husband, children, her sense of loss of her own youth. Her mother’s life stretched out before her.
She lay in the darkened room that night. Her husband, fast asleep. The children, bathed, scrubbed, asleep in their rooms. Tomorrow, she would wake and fix breakfast, and take the boys to their sitter’s house and then go to her job, a secretary. They needed the money, at least until her husband finished his apprenticeship. She turned on her side and the script of her mother’s life lay on the night table near her, its future already concluded. They’d separated once before, little had changed.
Morning. She sat in traffic, her mother’s ghost in the seat next to her. She ran her fingers over the edges of the sheet of paper with the lawyer’s name on it. She’d written it down during the previous separation, before her mother’s ghost followed her everywhere, questioning, pointing to a script that couldn’t be changed. Could she do it?
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Christmas cookies
So at the library its decided to have a Christmas Cookie exchange day, where everyone bakes cookies and brings them in with the recipe.
Point one: I don't cook. When I was a kid, I was always shooed out of the kitchen so I do not have the warm fuzzy memories of spending heartwarming Hallmark moments in the kitchen with my folks. Nor have I acquired any desire to learn since then. Maybe one day when I no longer share a kitchen with a 65 year old man who thinks grease is the fifth major food group and doesn't own a 40 year old can opener, I can get in there and see what happens.
Point two: those "cooking relaxes me" people. Here's what I need to relax: a book and a couch. If I can work in a blanket, maybe a little booze and a topless woman so much the better.
I know people who cook and appreciate their skills, but not for me.
ANYWAY, there is an option to bring in cookies from a bakery. Well I live in Leander, so I don't know where the bakery is other than the HEB. It's not like I have a map of them memorized along with all possible routes.
So I buy cookies, taking care not to violate the list of cookies not to buy--mainly the ones with all the thick frosting that come out this time of year.
I get to work and everyone has brought home made cookies and put them on adorable little platters. I cut them open and dump mine on someone's platter. The fuckin' end.
It feels like fuckin' elementary school all over again.
"Children, we'll have coookie day and your mothers can bring homemade cookies and we can all blah blah"
"Um... my mom works three jobs, I don't think she has the time to bake or come down here and watch me eat."
"Well Jason, she can buy some at a bakery and you can bring them."
"Um, yea me again. Listen she works three jobs, we ain't but one step ahead of the free school lunch program, can I skip this little event and hang out in the library since books are the only real friends I have?"
hate all the hoopla over this holiday,
j
Point one: I don't cook. When I was a kid, I was always shooed out of the kitchen so I do not have the warm fuzzy memories of spending heartwarming Hallmark moments in the kitchen with my folks. Nor have I acquired any desire to learn since then. Maybe one day when I no longer share a kitchen with a 65 year old man who thinks grease is the fifth major food group and doesn't own a 40 year old can opener, I can get in there and see what happens.
Point two: those "cooking relaxes me" people. Here's what I need to relax: a book and a couch. If I can work in a blanket, maybe a little booze and a topless woman so much the better.
I know people who cook and appreciate their skills, but not for me.
ANYWAY, there is an option to bring in cookies from a bakery. Well I live in Leander, so I don't know where the bakery is other than the HEB. It's not like I have a map of them memorized along with all possible routes.
So I buy cookies, taking care not to violate the list of cookies not to buy--mainly the ones with all the thick frosting that come out this time of year.
I get to work and everyone has brought home made cookies and put them on adorable little platters. I cut them open and dump mine on someone's platter. The fuckin' end.
It feels like fuckin' elementary school all over again.
"Children, we'll have coookie day and your mothers can bring homemade cookies and we can all blah blah"
"Um... my mom works three jobs, I don't think she has the time to bake or come down here and watch me eat."
"Well Jason, she can buy some at a bakery and you can bring them."
"Um, yea me again. Listen she works three jobs, we ain't but one step ahead of the free school lunch program, can I skip this little event and hang out in the library since books are the only real friends I have?"
hate all the hoopla over this holiday,
j
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