This morning I was able to recall my dream. It probably helped that I woke up to my own laughter. I apologize in advance for doing a dream post, I am compelled…

I was sitting at the smaller of the two reference desks – the one normally reserved for handling the majority of phone calls – when a youngish hipsterish type couple with child in tow approached and began speaking to me in low voices. I couldn’t hear a word, and said as much, to which the lady of the duo said – it‘s so quiet in here… – which, in point of fact, it was definitely not.

While they continued to soft talk, a line started to queue behind them. The low rumble of multiple bodies in proximity began to grow. I continued in vain to try to understand exactly what the soft talkers were after – beginning to lose my patience. Some of those in the queue took rest in the seats provided on the other side of the reference desk.

“look – I can’t help you if I can’t hear you – you’re going to have to speak up.”

Then – looking over with concern to find their child who had wandered off some distance – I noticed that another member of the queue had taken the liberty of resting in my chair, which I had vacated so that I could lean in to try, oh how I tried, to pick up any syllable of these mumblers. And she was eating cake! They were ALL eating cake! (It was pink cake, for the record)

For some reason this struck a nerve.

“Excuse me, if you could wait on the other side of the desk, and really – there isn’t supposed to be any food by the computers…”

At this point, shit got real. The growing noise of the gathering masses was beginning to tweak my senses. It was then that I realized that in addition to the shuffling, breathing, mumbling, childing, waiting in the queue conversating – a familiar crescendo of music was rising. All of a sudden, the track lighting began to dim and brighten – like it was some laser show spectacular – over the reference desk – in time to the music – which was similar to Pink Floyd’s “One of these Days” – but different.

I looked over my shoulder to see my brother, Willishrinx, seated before a lightboard – with his familiar maniacal grin face – rapidly manipulating the dimmers in time with the music. This brought on a slight sense of panic – and I quickly looked towards the main desk as if to say “I don’t know what’s happening – I’m SORRRRRRRRY” – before looking back at his shit eating grin and just breaking out in laughter.

That’s when i woke up.

Should be an interesting day.

External Hard Drive

Back in December my external hard drive ceased to be recognized by my tower. I’ve had it for quite some time and use it mainly to store my music files and my iTunes library. When it went, panic set in, and eventually I had to accept that I was going to need some outside assistance to get it back up and running.

Thanks to twitter I know somebody in the business and put my trust in him to set things right. After picking up some chazzano coffee I dropped off the external hard drive, watched him run a quick ear test for the dreaded click of the dying drive, and then left it in his hands. A couple days later he let me know that the data was fine – it was just the enclosure that needed to be replaced.

This led me to go all in and agree that establishing a backup system would probably be the bees knees. I’ve got too much music on that drive to let it all go to waste. So we’re in the final stages of that now. He’s ordered a secondary drive for the tower and a new enclosure for the hard drive and all of that should wind up, at long last, before this weekend with some backup software installed.

No word on the cost yet. It likely won’t be cheap. But data recovery never is.

Furnace

I can’t say that I’ve been too concerned with the data mess. The holidays came and went and I got to spend a lot of quality time with my family. As I continue to grow into my old man years – my love for my family grows exponentially. It was incredible to hang out with seestore, willishrinx, the nephews and my in-laws, including my new seestore-in-law.

A couple of highlights include their first dining experience at Slows BBQ, sledding on the hill of doom with the nephews, a visit to the DIA to see the Fakes and Forgeries exhibit, taking in True Grit, Bloody Marys on Christmas morning and a heckuva lot more.

Shortly thereafter, the parents left for their new snowbird home in Florida. I woke one morning to a rather brisk bedroom – and as I descended downstairs, to an even brisker family room. Something wasn’t right. I still wasn’t awake, but if you ever need a jolt stronger than coffee to knock your senses around – try staring into a thermostat that’s supposed to read 60 and get 46 in return.

The furnace wasn’t keepin on like it’s supposed to keep on. It’d rumble for about 45 seconds and then cut back out. I ran through the troubleshooting in the manual, but nothing seemed to be taking. I’d have to put in a call for maintenance.

Now get this. The guy they sent out was actually named Sammy Lovin. Not McLovin, just Lovin. It took the keen eyes of a good friend to point this out to me when she happened upon the receipt – but I’m glad she did. What a name!

Sammy rigged it so the fan would stay on until they could order a new control board – which meant I had heat over the weekend – but that my electricity bill is probably going to take a hit. That Monday he came back with the new control board – and after $395 – I have a heated house again. Oof.

Heated Car

So the house is heated and all is starting to be right with the world again when what should happen but another heat related catastrophe. Whilst out with said good friend, after a delicious encounter with dessert and drinks at Cork Wine Pub, the fan in my 2000 Ford Focus went schizo. When I moved the switch from 3 to 2 – it cut out, and then full on blasted – and then cut out again, for good.

I just finished piecing that back together. It started with a $25 resistor, as I’d replaced that part before and it was my prime suspect. No such luck. Had to pull the blower motor. Took that up to O’Reillys auto parts, where they were having some problems getting some juice into the motor to test it. They kept running the wires to it and to other things and were having no luck. They were at wit’s end and even at the point of giving up, suggesting that perhaps it was the $81 motor. But one guy kept at it, improvising with some motorcycle jumpers – which created a delightful shower of sparks – but also spun that motor to no end. It wasn’t the motor.

That left the switch. That simple thing on the console that goes from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4. I had to special order it but it was delivered this morning. Picked it up and about two hours later I had heat coarsing through the car. Awesome. $26

Headed to work and realized the turn signals weren’t working. Not a good thing for the anxious. I just finished one of my worst shifts ever in the public librarian realm — came home — popped out the stereo and saw that I had forgotten to hook up one of the wires. That’s done.

Wire DVD

Speaking of wires… After much urging I decided that I’d take up another friend’s repeated suggestions that I watch The Wire. Apparently people that watch The Wire must make other people watch The Wire. She has the complete season – and had lent out Season One to the friend that had introduced us.

Tiny Apartment #103: “The Wire” from Tiny Apartment on Vimeo.

(video via said friend)
I’ve misplaced disc two of season one of The Wire you guys. IT’S NOT LOST. It’s just misplaced. If, for some reason, it doesn’t reveal itself soon — I’ll likely be purchasing Season One of The Wire. $30.49. Or losing a friend. She really wants to not be my friend right now because of this.

So that’s another 1000 word update. Sorry it’s not quite so uplifting as the last.

(Update) Found it. Hiding under the keyboard.

Work

The office these days

Oh work. You little time occupier you. I see so many opportunities for you to grow and improve yet you keep insisting that I change to be more like you. Don’t you know that’s not how you love, work? Don’t you know that that isn’t change at all, but rather a recipe for stagnation and slow death? Look, I know we’ve had some rough times, work, but obviously we’re going to have to see this thing through for a while. Why don’t we both try to come to a better understanding? I understand that you like things done a certain way. I’m frustrated that your way of getting things done moves along at a snails pace, and that it requires having at least one committee, more often two – climb aboard that snail and make the travel that much more infuriating. I get that, work. I don’t know if I’ll ever dig it though. I’m beginning to suspect this is done intentionally to allow a meticulous purging of topical ignorance. If that’s the case, work, why not just say so? I don’t mind talking one on one. I like communicating with people. But when you put me at a table with a bunch of other people, each trying to convey something different from the other, that’s when I tend to bury myself.

Oh, it’s not all bad, work. I like the shopping bit. I like finding new and useful resources. I don’t even really think of that as work. I think of it as social networking and sharing and only realize it’s work when I incorporate it into a reference question. And the reference questions – sometimes you really do bring up some interesting and challenging queries. I do seem to learn something new everyday. Perhaps I should keep track of that as a way to stay positive…

And then there are the things that I made an effort to incorporate into work that were put on the backburner for so long until they could be properly supervised that I have lost any ambition to pursue. I like the spontaneity of social networking and the conversations they create. If every little blurb I put out there under the library’s name is scrutinized by somebody else – it just saps the energy – it’s a chilling effect.

work work work, no time to fix glasses

Ugh you guys, enough about WORK.

Ferndale Library
I’ve been spending my time off from the library working with…another library. I volunteered to be the President of the Friends of the Ferndale Library last year and have been making an effort to help out however I can with the newly renovated library in my neighborhood. It’s been a rough year. The library had it’s grand opening last summer, but unfortunately a loose pipe over the Thanksgiving holiday flooded the library, knocking it out of commission until sometime in February. More recently I’ve learned that the Director submitted his resignation and a search committee is being rounded up to find a replacement. It’s a lot to deal with in your first year as a Friends organization. I’m still hoping we can put together a number of successful projects we’ve been discussing throughout the year.

Yoga
I started hitting up this yoga joint last year but slacked off over the holidays and can’t seem to get up the nerve to go back. I need to, as is evidenced by the above stress points and the growing feeling that I am morphing further into a fat, lazy slob.

I get exercise anxiety. I get too nervous that there are eyes on me or that my form is completely off and these are things that yoga is supposed to ease you out of, and it did for a while – but then the studio went ahead and put themselves on groupon and what was a smaller, less intimidating class became a crowded room that I couldn’t deal with. Also, the holidays. Also, I missed somebody farting in class recently, which would’ve been hilarious. Also, ugh.

Food and Drank
Again, relating to the above – I’ve become more attentive to food and drink in the past year. On occasion I will find the time to experiment with a new recipe, often with a good measure of success. I’d like to find more time to cook and create – including getting back into the groove of homebrewing. Somebody suggested incorporating scheduling into my Sunday evenings. I think I’m ready to take that plunge.

I’ve also started subscribing to a greater number of food related sites. In addition to subscribing to search alerts for “Quick and Easy Cooking” through my library’s Gale PowerSearch database, I’ve managed to attain “participant” status in the forums of Gourmet Underground Detroit. There are a lot of good people lurking there that have opinions and tips, some of them expert, on the food scene in the Metro area. A number of them are on twitter, easily found through #GUDetroit.

Greenmarket Produce Scans

www.Scanwiches.com:

Also of late, in addition to staring at pictures of scanned food, I’ve been wanting to begin making bento boxes.

Social Customs
Things are the best they’ve been on the social scene in quite some time. I’ve made some really great friends since I’ve been back up here in Michigan and seem to meet someone interesting and intriguing every few weeks.

I occasionally hear from the Georgia peeps. There were rumors of a visit last summer that never seemed to materialize. I’ve kind of made a promise to myself to not head down there until one of those rascals becomes a houseguest up here.

I also don’t hear from the Westside Librarians as much. Hopefully they are still my frenz, cuz I like having them as frenz, especially when they are frenz with you even though you fell off the deep end.

WELP. That’s it. A 1,000 word update on life at the moment. Hopefully I’ll make this part of the Sunday scheduling.

This dude made stargazing cool for me.
Keep looking up Jack.

Following the Beerfest we marauded over to Brian and Debbie’s for a graciously hosted cookout.

Then I closed my evening out on a roof in Hamtramck with Seestore and Nicole. We saw a Wendy’s scraping monster and fireworks with a nice breeze.

Anyways, I made a quick video.

Beerfest 2010, Ypsilanti MI from kevinyezbick on Vimeo.

This is an inexcusable lapse as I am waiting for a call alerting me to the arrival of a factory part for my air conditioner which has been out of service for THREE WEEKS. That’s easy enough to remedy though – call the company when I get to work and give ‘em my work phone number. Settled.

But OH MY FRIENDS, we aren’t THROUGH just yet.

While walking back into our technical services department to place a DVD incorrectly catalogued as a Videocassette on the SNAGS shelf – what do my eyes behold? There upon the brown carpeted floor before me, its white form and lazy edges accentuated by this soil-like solid background, a lone teabag. It struck me as quite preposterous. Ludicrous. HILARIOUS. I reached into my pocket for my cellphone to share it with all of you and — spacious pockets. No phone.

It’s a shame that the world will never come to realize the oddity of the lone teabag in the tech services area.

My sincere apologies.

and the bounty of pizza was had by all.

I also had two valid reference questions today that I totally rocked out. The one I’ll mention was from an education student at a local university who was looking for information on Resource Rooms in Special Education.

I have no idea what Resource Rooms in Special Education means – so I did a quick google search and fell onto the about.com web page that gave me a little bit of background. I knew pretty much off the bat that we weren’t going to have much in the public library on the topic, especially in our print materials. The student related that she had already been through WilsonSelect and ERIC without much success. She said she had found one article that she Interloaned from 2000, but it wasn’t enough, and that she wasn’t finding much at her University Library.

I did a quick keyword search for “resource room special education” in ERIC and came up with something from 2008. But she was right, this was gonna be a little bit narrow on the results. I’m not familiar enough with educational terms to do the whole synonym thing – so my next step was to head to Google Scholar with the author’s name as a search.

We found the original article and I pointed out how Google Scholar shows you who has cited the article – and how you can use that to kinda expand your search. (Forgive me, but I’ve forgotten the official citation search database I was using at WSU — somebody refresh my memory please.) Then – once she grabbed the journal names that the articles were in – she could likely use her University’s resources more wisely. Her professor had enlightened her to ERIC and WilsonSelect – but something was nagging at me that she had failed to mention the specific journals as opposed to the conglomerate databases.

The end result was that she walked out with what I’m going to take as a swing in her step – a little confidence – ready to do the business herself. It really saved MY day today – almost as much as my sole.

*edit* Oh. I almost forgot to mention Google Reader Play. There. I mentioned it.