May 2004 Archives
I finally got around to having the talk with the roommate last night. Not that very many of you know what "the talk" is, because I have kept this confidence strictly to myself and a fortunate few. I said a while back that I had some news that I planned on sharing once I got back to Georgia - and no - it is not that I am gay, (although after watching Troy and seeing Brad Pitt's perfectly scuplted bod swinging that big sword all over the place with such reckless abandonment, I did have a scant few moments of doubt...not that there's anything wrong with that.)
No, no, friends and countrymen. As luck would have it I have not switched sexual preferences, but I will be trading geographical ones. It has been a rapid spitfire fifteen years since I was first transported, kicking and screaming, down past the Mason-Dixon line. Now I find myself dragging my tail back from whence I came, slightly disheartened, but enlightened enough to take a big step towards a realm of greater possibilities. Our old neighbor in Snellville, Georgia, Pat McNew, might take some comfort in knowing, for a while at least, that those Damn Yankee Yezbicks have finally cleared out of his state.
Not that I was run outta town by a screaming group of Southerners. Nor do I find in myself any desired want to leave Georgia. Instead, the catalyst for my decision was partly due to watching my friends, one by one, pop out babies and get hitched (not necessarily in that order). The realization that came with this was that I wasn't exactly spending my time very productively. I've decided to do something about that. There comes a time when you have to take the band-aid off, and in my opinion, it's best to get it done in one fell swoop.
So I'm packing my bags, goin' to Misty Mountains Michigan. I'm planning on establishing residency there, my parents being parental (that was a keyboard error - I struggled here with what to say about my parents and how fortunate I am to have wound up with a great pair. Apparently the keyboard hitched and wrapped and deleted as I attempted to accentuate and annunciate how truly defeat the enemy awesome my folks are) enough to take me back into their household, tail between my legs and all. That accomplished, my hope is to be accepted into Wayne State University's MLS and become the world's greatest librarian.
That career path is one I had originally ascended too after living on the floor of my brother's condo in Alaska for a few months back after college graduation. Unfortunately - my eagerness was soon tapped, most likely due to the combination of finding myself working way too many hours at an underemploying and, what I felt to be, underappreciative restaurant in order to pay the bills. It wasn't long before I fell into that dreaded trap that causes us to shirk life's rewards: routine.
My decision to pursue librarianship was and is driven by the fact that I feel the need to give something back. I want to put something positive into the world - and making sandwiches, or supervising the making of those sandwiches for hungry people just wasn't enough. After gradumutation I was tailoring my resumes for non-profit organizations...and the economy was tanking. I wasn't having much luck looking around for something that could take in an idealistic philosophy/english literature major - and in my despair - as I have said before, I wound up in Alaska.
It was there that I began my obsession with this blog, which my brother detailed in photographia...Soon after I was learning the ways and mores of the blogosphere, linking and crediting and discovering new fields of pleasure at every turn. Fueling this voyage of discovery was my own insatiable appetite for information and all things news. It was this obsession that eventually led me to many of the popular sites run by librarians - and opened my eyes thereby to the world of aggregation and newsfeeds. Currently I have quite a few library sites in my Syndirella feeder : shiftedlibrarian, keptup, library stuff, Georgia State Library, library web chic, walking paper, and possibly some others that are just escaping my notice by way of the scroll. In the beginning, when I was first stumbling on these, it occurred to me -- there sure are a lot of librarians doing something I love. Put that together with a couple of other shortouts in the circuitry of the mind - and blammo - you have the makings of a plan.
So basically, since the beginning of this website, I have been keeping one eye fixed on librarianship. I've clipped and linked to articles - and researched quite a bit. I still have yet to perform an informational interview -- and I'm hoping to start some volunteering when I get up to Farmington Hills, (they have a really nice library[more info] just up the street from the parental units house) as there is nothing better than a lil first hand experience.
Not to mention that my resume could use some padding.
There's more to tell - and this blog could quite possibly become yet another in the long line of library blogs out there - beginning with day one of the career decision - flowing through the gathering of requisite materials for application - and ending - well - never. For now - I have let myself ramble on a little too long. I must be off to forage a meal before band night...ahhh band night...
I'm a day late on hitting the road -- but will have rubber on pavement within an hour. Just wanted to make sure the move went ok.
Yeah yeah...there's a jumbled mess on the right side of the page (or at least there was until I scrapped a bunch of it). I realized while I was in the shower this morning that the stylesheets are pulling some algebraic equations on me...See - the dealy-o is that everything on the right side is in box X - and I'm trying to get another page (W) containing elements Y and Z imported into X. Unfortunately -- I hadn't realized that the styles of Y and Z are directly effected by the styles of X - which up till now have been the same as W. So that -- if Y and Z are dictated to be 50% on W, when they are imported to X - they are further delineated by 50% - thus resulting in 25% - and one messed up browser window. I know I know! Way too exciting!
Also -- My server contacted me today telling me I've gone over my 1 GB/month transfer rate...the result of a brief 20 minute lapse of judgement in which I pointed the way towards "THE" video on another site on the sideblog...That 20 minute lapse caused a mad rush of 16,000 people scrambling onto my site -- about 6,000 more than I usually get in a month - over the course of two days...Thankfully things are quickly getting back to normal - yesterday traffic was up only about two times the norm. Twenty minutes...Stupid.
Anyhow -- I doubt I'm gonna be able to do anything about this mess in the next few days...In fact - I'm probably not gonna be doing anything in the next few days...Tomorrow I drive back to Georgia. Monday I ride out to a lakehouse retreat. Tuesday disappears. Wednesday I ride back. Thursday I have an interview. Friday, I'm in love.
Must. Make. Tab. Key. Relevant.
Gaffes: They couldn't hide the fact that Courtney Cox was preggers.
Shocker: I saw Lisa Kudrow nippin out instead of Anniston.
Summation: TV Land's Watching Friends was a welcome distraction.
As I sit here perplexed by the inability of certain images to render themselves on the sideblog archive pages, now annoyed by the realization that it probably has something to do with absolute url's - I realize that I am a marked man.
I have a pimple on the back of my right ear - the thin part of the cartilage - right at the beginning of the lobe's descent.
I was bit by a spider in my room in Tucker a few days back. Left wrist, left edge, about three inches south of my palm. Several nights of unconscious scratching turned what was a slight bump into a red region large enough to arouse a cartographer.
My right foot, now healing, has for the past week been home to a blister - which for some reason took the form of a rice kernel. Wait a minute. That's no coincidence -- that's the result of trying to flip cooked rice in a pan, even though the pan is obviously not a non-stick pan. The flip is thwarted by the sticking, which upon its ultimate release, flings the rice high into the air, whereupon gravity takes over. That's when I manage to catch some of the just finished boiling rice as it falls, with my bare feet - bare save the leather sandles. Why stir when you can flip and inflict pain? And why not inflict pain while wearing leather?
And last but not least -- a true sign that the freak out is currently running in full gear - the worry wart has returned. Whenever in full stress mode, I have acquired this really bad habit of grabbing a portion of skin located about an inch and a half from the furthest protruding point of my chin, then another inch to the right, no - my right, and massaging that skin. Turning it over and over again between my forefinger and thumb until several layers have worn away and a nice callous is brought into the world. Then my tic continues, its appetite increased, voraciously twisting anew at this wonderful bump that has formed. Such is the strength of my rubbing that the area surrounding this plateau is no longer arable for the five-o'clock shadow. A ring of desert surrounds this bump, no blade o' whisker to be seen. It is something like an upside down uluru upon me - only I doubt that there are any beings who would feign honor my landscape as sacred.
In my peculiar situation - erosion can only be brought about by blocking the surface from the winds, or any other intruding element, by way of band aid. This is the only cause that will effect a cessation of increased mass - and the action must be taken forthwith. Thankfully I am miles away from anyone in my quickly vanishing social circle, feeling more and more lately like an ostracized member of the tribe (though rightfully so I must say, perhaps even disgraced would be a more accurate adjective for my current state) and therefore not needing to worry about the hazards of displaying such a hideous blemish, nor the awkward results of hiding one.
(dramatic sigh)
To bed.
I lost two months of the sideblog archival records. And my mind. So I'm at my folks house in preperation for mom's day.
(7:44 PM) Fixed it...the archives - which you have no link to other than the direct link, but no link to category or individual - as of yet...obviously the mind is still broken.
