Andrea Wright

So, this Christmas I went home and spent a few weeks with my awesome family. During that time, I went along to help my sister-in-law set up her brand new kindergarten classroom. My 11 year-old sister Bailey and I were put in charge of organizing the books. Bailey was in charge of fiction. She organized sections of story books, and chapter books, and books about Disney characters, etc. Being a Master’s-toting librarian, I was in charge of the non-fiction and what we called the “issues books,” which is what we deemed books about things like bullying, moving, whether the tooth-fairy is real, why we all have to take a bath, and the like. Bailey did a great job. She really enjoys organizing, reading, children, and helping, so this job was right up her alley. She was good at telling the difference between fiction and non-fiction animal books, not always an easy task at the kindergarten level. Then at one point she came across this Sesame Street book. The book simply gives out hints about the characteristics of a specific muppet, then asks the reader “Who am I?” But Bailey picked up the book, looked at the title, mused “Who Am I?” and then commented, “Definitely an issues book,” and handed the book to me. It was one of my most awesome moments as a big sister. She is growing up too fast, and sometimes, I think, not fast enough, because I want to know all about her now.

The question has been a prevalent one this season since John and I also got married during the long break. It was wonderful and beautiful and happy and all the things a joining of two people into an official sort of family is supposed to be. But there has been some major pressure to change my me-ness, or at least what I am called.

John and I have known for a long time that I wasn’t planning to change my name. We feel that it’s unnecessary, and can you imagine me having to change all of my online accounts?! It would be a total nightmare. It is, however, traditional, and people love to cling to tradition down here in the Deep South. The woman at the Probate Judge’s office tried to convince me to change my mind. A co-worker called the Human Resources department to try to get them to tell me that I was required to change my name (which they of course assured her, I was not). There are some people in my family who aren’t happy, since they feel it is my duty to “honor” my husband in this way. I’m not even crazy about the word husband, since it technically means “manager.” (I’m a bit of an etymology nerd. Wife means “woman.”) I don’t need someone interested in woman husbandry, like others might take up animal or agricultural husbandry. I’m thrilled to have John as a partner and family for life, and that’s what he’s interested in being, so we’re both happy (though he’s not a fan of the word spouse, so we’re gonna have to figure something out with the labels).

A few people seem to be frustrated with the lack-of-name-change simply because they enjoy the activity of spouting the words “Mrs. Husband’s Full Name!” at newly married women. I am keeping the Ms., so I am even more frustrating for these people. I guess we’ve figured out one thing about who I am. I am no fun at propagating traditional loss-of-individual-personhood memes at all! To be clear, I am happy for the happy-name-changers. I may even feel differently when we have a family, and want more of a family label for us, but I really wish people around here were more inclined to respect personal choices for everyone! Defending this decision has been tiring at a time I’ve been exhausted by all of the otherwise-happy activity.

Recently, certain events involving dragon-breathed, unstable landowners and the wonderful old property that I was renting at the time necessitated a move. When we couldn’t find anything in downtown or midtown, we happened upon a place in a little post-WWII cottage neighborhood in an area not all that far from the University where I work. It’s an easy walk to groceries, and a library, and a park, so I’m pretty pleased, though I miss my garden. (I’ll be working on another one, soon.)

While we were breaking cheap bookcases and hauling the things I hadn’t been able to convince myself I don’t actually need (and I don’t), it became apparent that I was enjoying myself. Bearing these oddly-shaped weights back and forth on the ramp, up the stairs, made me feel strong and alive. Like I was capable and unstoppable (at least by boxes of kitchenware). It was very much like what I feel when battling my way through rapids in a raft.

One thing you should perhaps know for this story is the fact that I hate exercise. I hate the machines, I hate taking time out or waking up early, I hate running outside, I hate sit-ups (most of all), and I hate finding parking at the campus gym. I don’t seem to get the endorphins from normal exercise activities that other people do. I’m bored, and it hurts, and I’m done. So at the point when we were in the front yard after the worst of the moving, and I was telling John about the superhero-esque feelings I experience when lifting mattresses, he looked at me and said, “You like country exercise!” (As an aside I’ll say, I may not BE country, but I am FROM the country.)

It is true that I like to power things with my muscles. The elderly man next door laughed and asked how old I was when he saw me mowing the lawn with the cylinder hand reel mower. Too bad I don’t enjoy THAT country exercise! But anyway, now that I’m much, much closer to work, I got my bike repaired.

I used to ride my bike in Tuscaloosa, and I remember it in a rose-colored haze, holding onto the crispness of fall afternoons rolling over fallen leaves on a beautiful campus and all but forgetting the mad dash across Bryant Drive or the winter nights that hurt my fingers to the bone. So I got up this morning and biked to work for the first time in Mobile.

Of course, my campus, like all campuses, has inconceivable amounts of construction happening. And the orange fences, again of course, completely block my way along the side of campus from where my road meets the campus to the library where I work. Also, have you ever experienced morning in Mobile? I assure you that it is like nothing you’ve encountered before (unless you live in the tropics), because the mornings are not cool. And they are just as stinking humid as the rest of the day. !?!?

I still love the way the wind whips past when I am biking. It feels just the same as when I got my first 10 speed. And using my muscles to propel me home in a fashion that I don’t really think about being exercise is pretty cool, too. But in closing, I will be bringing a change of clothes with me, because I do not think the sweat-soaked look at 7:45am is really the thing for me.

See, me? One can post without writing a book.
…
Others? Oh, hello. I moved. I will tell you a story about it…once I have proven that posts need not be interminable epistles or enumerations. I am doing it. Now.

It appears that the only way to motivate myself to write in this bedeviled thing is to make rather large, silly lists. Since I haven’t been in a terribly silly mood this spring, it has indefinitely fallen by the wayside, but THINGS have happened, many THINGS. As a result, you, gentle reader, are entitled to one (1) fanciful picture of an octopod, and a list.

1. Mawage…that dweam wifin a dweam

Not mine. My brothers are both engaged. The middle child’s wedding will soon be upon us and it should make every prince and princess in Alabama swoon with delight. There are hundreds of people to manage and what seems like dozens of lead-up events, and I’m already tired. The baby boy, no longer a baby of course, asked his betrothed at Pat O’Briens famous pub during the height of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. I laughed at him when he told me, but I was present and never was there a more happy couple. Love was in the air even as Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” blared over the loud speakers and we danced ridiculously, and there was much rejoicing (and quite a few hurricanes).

2. Slayage

How is it possible that I had not watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer before this? I think we’re on Season 4 now. I’m not one to weigh the relative merits of romantic, or even rather unromantic, male leads (except for in Veronica Mars, to which I say LOGAN), so I’ve mostly just been enjoying the characters. Almost every fictitious soul that arrives on the scene annoying the ever-living-daylights out of me turns into a character that I would miss if s/he were gone later. (Except Faith, screw redemption.)

3. Knitting

I’ve been knitting since October, and I rather enjoy it. I made some scarves and a hat and a shawl. Now I’ve moved on to a much more challenging circular blanket, so we’ll see if it sticks. I hope so. Knitted things are pretty.

4. Babies! Of the fictional, alien sort

This season when Olivia, the lead female character on Fringe, got pregnant, I got ill about it. I just get tired pregnancy being one of the only things that happens to female characters (along with falling in love and raising kids). All of these things are great things if you want them, and the majority of individuals seem to want them, but it is not the only thing of which ladies are capable and it is certainly not the plan of Olivia while she was busy saving the world as a bad ass operative this season.

All of that to say, that I came across this video blog called Feminist Frequency about how women are represented in pop culture, and I really enjoy it so I wanted to share. She’s talked about the Bechdel test, and the Oscars, and marketing to girls and boys. She recently began a series called Tropes vs. Women, my favorite so far being on The Smurfette Principle. She hasn’t made a video about Alien/Chosen One pregnancies in sci fi and fantasy, but she did share a link to a chilling remix video about them set to Mary Poppin’s “Stay Awake”. (I don’t even want to talk now about how Amy Pond is having/had a time-head baby raised by the creepiest aliens since the Weeping Angels. Grrrr.)

5. Minneapolis

I’m going to Minneapolis next week for MLA. If you know anything awesome to do in the area, let me know. I probably will not visit the Mall of America. My body hates shopping.

6. Tornados

My home area of the state (the one I’m from, not the one I live in) was hit pretty hard in the tornados last week, as was my adopted home from grad school, Tuscaloosa. If you’re still looking for ways to help, my alma mater has a great page that lists many, many ways to do so.

Image ganked from Kirsten Miller who stole it from William West/AFP/Getty Images, but did not link.

Except for when, of course, I do believe. Or did, anyway. It’s been a long time since I hid my head beneath the sheets, terrified to peek out and behold the grim horror that surely awaited me. I could probably have been awarded a medal for my performances in the little girls’ long jump from the light switch to my bed to avoid the gory monster underneath or the 50 yard dash up the basement stairs.

My family loves tales of the otherworldly. My mother and brother faithfully watch psuedo-scientific tv shows about hauntings and child psychics. It seems curious that I don’t share their love of creepy tales, since I do love the fantastic in general, but there are, I think, a few reasons. The thing that encompasses them all is that I grew up in rural Alabama in the 1980s and 90s. Which is to say, that no one assured me that the dead walked free on All Hallow’s Eve or that the woods were full of demons hungry for roast maiden. The woods of my childhood were bright and green instead of ancient and malevolent and the houses were generally built within the last 40 years by the hands of those who loved me or their neighbors. All of the dead that I knew were dearly missed family (although I did assure Papaw and Jesus in my prayers that I didn’t want to see either of them for now…nor any angels *shudder*).

So I think that the kinds of spirits that would have most captured my imagination were not present among the letterman’s jackets of the dead and scratchings on bridges that were the ghost stories of my youth. Besides, they all involved cars and teenagers, which had nothing to do with me. There had once been a suicide in a barn not too far from my house (I seem to remember), but the walk through the cow pastures adjacent would have cleared the air of any devilish portents, and I probably would have gotten distracted by an interesting bug before I got there, anyway. In addition to all of this, my mom was pressured by our church to disallow Halloween during the years when it would have been most important to me, so today I mostly celebrate it as a reason to craft happy gourds and eat candy. And while I’m not a believer in the supernatural, I do love wild stories dearly. I drink in stories of magic, murderous woods and monsters with murky ethics and suspicious grins thirstily. But the illuminating, young, yellow sun of the Tennessee Valley never seemed to allow for witches, child-starved or otherwise, except for perhaps in basements and under beds where it could not reach.

Now I live in a house that has stood on the streets of an old Southern city for 120 years, built by a long-dead person named Neely. The sidewalks are gaslit and torn by rough, elderly tree roots and you can see the brick streets of centuries before peeking through the worn paving in places. In my neighborhood, stone stairs lead around ivy-covered walls to end suddenly in mid-air. Live oaks and magnolias cover the entire area in dappled shadows and break up the penetrating sun of the Gulf Coast. It seems that things more mysterious than ivy might thrive twisting through the wrought iron. It is a very satisfactory place, in short, to celebrate Halloween. It is an old place, that might even have enough of a history about which to complain, and I’m very much looking forward to reveling in the spirit of the season for a bit.

Some Halloween Recommendations:

Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link
Kelly Link’s stories are deliciously odd and usually disturbing in a very fun way. This is her most recent collection, the first I read and my favorite. There are werewolves and zombies and ghosts, all uniquely imagined. One can read many of her short stories online including “The Specialist’s Hat,” “The Wrong Grave,” and “The Faery Handbag.”

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
I’m sure this one is recommended all over the place, but I loved it, so I list it anyway. You can listen to him read the entire book, a video a chapter, on its website.
 
 
 
 
 
Supernatural
Supernatural is a favorite of ours, and early season episodes are just the right things for Halloween. (It’s not that the later seasons aren’t awesome, just pursuing the story arch as opposed to awesome ghouls.) Some of the best episodes I remember for a spooky night in are “Asylum,” “Scarecrow,” “Roadkill,” and “Bedtime Stories.” This show helps me appreciate America’s own scary legends along with older tales.

Doctor Who
There are some great spooky episodes of Doctor Who. A few that come to mind are “Blink,” in which a creepy race of stone angels attack, “Tooth and Claw,” which involves Queen Victoria and a werewolf, and “The Unquiet Dead,” in which ghost-like beings haunt Dickens. All of them are available streaming from Netflix.

As you can see, I don’t have any favorite Halloween movies, so feel free to recommend them for me.

I say Ma’am and Sir to my elders. I grew up in a town of fewer than 10,000 where everyone knows me and who my parents are. I smile at people I don’t know on the streets. I’m pretty sure that most of the people I meet in my current Deep South haunt think I’m respectful, kind, non-threatening. They’re pretty sure I’m “one of us.” But they might be a lot more suspicious if they knew the truth. I’m a progressive, feminist vegan (and possibly other labels people might find even more threatening if I was willing to lay it all out there for you, but I’m not). I’m participating in a blog carnival today drawing attention to young feminists. Apparently, some young(ish?) women like myself are none too willing to tag themselves feminists.

I actually have a lot of experience with the phenomenon of someone deeply devoted to gender equality believing the moniker is just too upsetting to wield. My mom has worked with abuse victims for 13 years helping them find safe places to stay, sitting with them in court, running support groups. She was also a single parent for some of my childhood and ran our home with strength and skill. Because of her, I never thought that girls were less than or that there was any reason I shouldn’t excel at whatever I chose (although the things I chose were rarely the things she would have chosen for me). But my mom is a real Southern lady, and she doesn’t care for conflict. For some reason, it just seems like it might be offensive to others to call herself a Feminist. People might get the wrong idea. (The nerve of some people! Demanding equal rights?! How rude.)

I’ve also read that some young people think the job has been done. We’ve achieved equality, so what is the fuss about? So it must be escaping these folks that in America women still only earn 77 cents to a man’s dollar (this holds even in highly skilled jobs like academic medicine when performance and skill levels are the same). Or maybe they don’t consider that girls all over the world aren’t allowed to receive a basic education or are forced to marry when they are as young as 9 or 10. I’d like to think that in the face of problems like these people everywhere would stop focusing on trying to shirk away from a label that they were taught was unpleasant and throw themselves behind the “Feminist Agenda,” a better world for all of its citizens.

What we call ourselves is important. The choices that we make about how to identify ourselves to others in society affects how we are perceived, how people react to us. But it can work both ways, if more women were willing to wear the label, it would give the world the opportunity to see that making the world safe and equal for women is only threatening if you are someone who is actively working to undermine women. (In which case, watch out, we’re coming for you.)

So if you believe that girls and women everywhere deserve access to the same education, opportunities, and rights as men, and you’re willing to do something about it, welcome to feminism! There are a lot of us! We’re just like you. I mean, some of us have pink hair, and some have kids, and some of us like licorice (which is just frankly, wrong), and some were born with penises, and some are currently able-bodied, and some are not. There are also many, let’s say, mature feminists. But we’re young, too. And we’re here to support you, and other women, and some us of have good recipes, and some of us can fix your computer, and some of us will tell you the truth no matter what. We’ve all got things to offer, so feel free to join us while we make the world a better place.

Be sure to check out the other posts in the awesome This is what a young feminist looks like Blog Carnival.

Evolution of a young feminist:


 
Easy things you can do:

1. Let people know, that you, the sweet girl (or boy) next door, are a feminist
2. Encourage women in their pursuits
3. Join the blog carnival to let everyone know that there are young (or mature) feminists out there
4. Write your congressperson about important legislation for girls or women
5. Donate time or money to organizations that support women or girls’ educations

Have more recommendations or know some great organizations? Share them in comments.

I promised I would write more, but I haven’t had any daring adventures or fascinating discoveries lately, so you all (all 3 of you?) get another list.

1. Psychic Psephalods

Ok, so I don’t believe in psychic phenomena, but I do believe in fiercely intelligent/awesome invertebrates who occasionally eat bivalves out of transparent boxes which happen to have flags on them. The only way Paul the Octopus could be more awesome is if he were a cuttlefish. Sorry, Paul. I know Octopods are full of awesome, too, but come on. Cuttlefish. (I think the cuttlefish’s hypnotizing display may have gotten to me when I watched NOVA, because I realize now that the octopus’s wily tool-using ways outstrip the cuttlefish adorable predator act. Darn you and your amazing display, cuttlefish!)

2. Writing

Growing some of my own food has helped me feel a little closer to the billions of humans that have inhabited this world before me. Another tie with past humans and cultures in which I’ve always taken an interest is story telling. I love to read stories, and I would love to be able to share my own with others, but I’ve always been pretty shy about letting anyone else read anything I’ve written (with the exception of canonical newspaper articles from the Harry Potter universe…yep). I want to get started but it’s hard to know where to start even though I read a pretty good book about it last year called Writing Down the Bones. I was hoping to take a Creative Writing class in my area this fall, but I can’t seem to find one offered by any of the local colleges. Any ideas?

3. Soccer

The World Cup was addictive. I want to start following fútbol more closely, but I’m not really sure where to start with that either. I think John and I are going to root for Everton in the Premier League since Tim Howard plays for them and they borrow some other US National Team players, as well. But who do I support in the states? When do they play? I need to do more research.

4. Robotics

This one is stretching it a bit as I have no training in engineering or mechanics at all. But there are so many awesome robots out there lately! There are soccer-playing robots, teaching robots, oil spill fighting robots, robot vehicles, and space robots, but the new robot butlers are just terribly unimaginative. If anyone can help me make my AI butler happen, you just let me know.

5. Awesome Things

I looked through my email to see what else I had been trying to learn about lately. I email myself lots of notes about music, books, websites, apps, and recipes. So if you know of anything awesome for me to email myself about looking into later, feel free to leave it in comments

When one fails to post on a modest little blog like mine, the need to make the next post that one would post be a uber-fantastical post blossoms and grows and consumes until it is nigh impossible to post any post at all. After considering for weeks now what knowledge I could possibly share that would be of interest to anyone other than myself (and perhaps my grandmother who would celebrate any small accomplishment of mine, but hates pretty much every topic in which I am personally interested), I have decided to disappoint anyone who comes here to read this at this moment rather than allowing my own (or any one else’s) expectations to unnaturally balloon any further. I turn 27 next week, and I haven’t the energy to think that I might have something amazing to say that no one else has said on the internet ever before any more. Perhaps, in my soon-to-be advanced age, I will have the proper life experience to know that if one fails to write on a blog for such an infernally long time, the necessity to do so transforms into a giant, yellow-eyed, furry, 14-headed manticore of suckage. So let me delay no further with my pitiful effort,

List of things to which I am currently looking forward:

1. Dr. Who

I look forward to this every week now. Before the current series (11th Doctor), I had never seen more than a partial episode, and John had not watched the show since he was a kid. We decided that a new Doctor was a perfect time to hop in guilt-free without having to do the life-consuming Netflix catch-up. Of course we fell in love with the Doctor and Amelia, so now we are watching all of the series prior to this one since the show returned in a slightly-less-than-life-consuming Netflix catch up. So far, we have been sampling the series in a rather Time Lordly manner, watching the current episodes as they air, watching recommended episodes from earlier seasons, watching episodes with awesome sounding premises (Victoria and werewolves, etc.), finally settling into a semi-chronological manner. We just lost Rose. *sniffs*

2. The World Cup

Nothing makes me feel more like a citizen of the world than getting excited about the World Cup. Now I just have to decide which team to cheer for when we fall out.

3. iPhone 4

I have been so restrained. A whole year with a new iPhone out, and I haven’t budged. I’ve waited, and Steve has rewarded me. I can’t wait for this beauty. If I weren’t a woman of science, I would be sure that the fact that pre-orders start on my birthday was preordained. (I don’t want to hear about how awesome Android is, btw. As a librarian and a geek, I have a lot of closed-network guilt about my iPhone lust, but I’ve used Androids and the experience is not even close.)

4. My Future Artificially Intelligent Butler/Familiar/Companion

I’m one step closer to my synthetically sentient straight-man since scientists have devised an algorithm to detect sarcasm.

5. Maturation of Climate Modification Science

Have you visited Alabama lately? It’s freakin hot.

6. Communing with Veggies

I have a plot in our community garden and some container pots on the back porch. Some of them have made delicious food for me. Some have thrown themselves onto their own swords rather than suffer my poor gardening skills. I’m hoping the new iPhone will allow me to commune with my plants Pandora-style.

7. Mamaw’s Chocolate Cake

Have I mentioned it’s my birthday next week?

When I wrote my first post of the year, I felt the need for some change in my life, and so I’ve chased it down. I’ve moved…this blog. My hosting with GoDaddy was expiring, and I was seriously sick of their gross, sexist commercials, so I moved all my junk on the net over to GreenGeeks. They buy wind energy credits for 3 times the amount of energy they use, and they don’t have sickening commercials. Also, they’ve been super helpful by moving everything for me and being very responsive. So far, I’m thrilled.

I’m also moving my real-life stuff downtown. I’ll be in a historic neighborhood with a community organic garden within walking distance of all of the shops and restaurants of LoDa (the Lower Dauphin Street area of downtown). I’m renting a floor in one of the awesome old houses. I can’t wait (except I could totally wait on all the painting we have to do tomorrow)!

One to my favorite things to do there has just been to walk around the neighborhood and look at all the neat homes. (There’s a wikipedia article about the area where you can see some. They definitely didn’t pick my favorites in that article, but I haven’t taken my own pictures of them yet.) But there’s one house in my area that is my favorite to contemplate, the one that is missing.

There are a few empty lots in the neighborhood of historic homes that didn’t make it, but for the most part, those lots are open and have had shared space items, like swings or fountains. This lot is mostly hidden behind a wall in which there are two openings. One opening is guarded by the curious pair fools or scholars (it’s hard to tell which) pictured above. The other features a small curved staircase that leads nowhere. The lot contains one magnolia with a “Beware of Dog” sign, but the dog appears to have vanished with the rest of the property. I’ve searched the address in Google looking for a tragic accident and found none. After the move settles, I’ll probably visit the local history library to look for information about both the house I am in and the one that has been abducted.

 
If you are my friend on Flickr, you can see a few pictures of the outside of the house in this pool. (If you aren’t on Flickr, but I know you, I can give you a password to view. Just ask.) I’ll post inside pictures after my things (and my cats) are there. It won’t be the same without them. Until then, Au’revoir!

Now I’ll have to make a new playlist in iTunes.

I’ve not been a huge fan of my life in the past year, so I’m trying to do more things about which to be excited or proud. Mobile is a challenge because there aren’t many ways to meet people and there aren’t many things to do. To help hold me accountable, I’m keeping a daily photo journal, so if all I do is come home from work and eat cereal while watching TV in my pjs, I’ll have to post a picture of it.

Things about which I was proud/excited this year:

1. Organizing a local community center library for MLK day
2. Judging an Egg-O-Naut competition at the Science Olympiad
3. Organizing a book drive for our Children’s & Women’s Hospital
4. Kayaking with alligators
5. Taking a karate course at the university
6. Atlanta trip for football victory, book festival, and Ethiopian food
7. Hanging out in New Orleans on Halloween
8. Eating much less meat
9. Reading 83 books this year

Failures include: not traveling more (We traveled a lot in day trip range. This is mostly a being poor fail.), not keeping up with German study, not creating anything, not accomplishing any big things at work, not cooking more, and not making any friends in Mobile.

But I’d rather talk about books. My big favorites since my last post in August have been The Abhorsen Trilogy by Garth Nix (Sabriel, Lirael (a librarian!), and Abhorsen) and Fire by Kristin Cashore. I’m also looking forward to reading more of the Mistborn trilogy after reading The Final Empire.

Wishing you amazing things in 2010!

Every summer when we were growing up, Mamaw Peggy took us to the Summer Reading Program at the Russellville Public Library. I remember getting my picture taken next to a giant cardboard tree, receiving Pizza Hut coupons, and, most importantly, searching through the stacks for new books to read every week. Since then, I hadn’t found much of a reading community for myself. There aren’t many book groups in Mobile for 20-somethings or speculative fiction fans. As much as I love LibraryThing, I haven’t been able to use it socially. Goodreads has been the first place that I have been able to connect with people I already know, as well as interesting new people who share my literary tastes, and actually get to see what they think about what they are reading. So when a group of young women formed a Summer Reading Program group, I joined up. Ostensibly, summer is over (although it will be hot here well into October), and I passed my goal by reading 25 books, so I now have a chance to win a $25 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble, which I think is better than a greasy trip to The Hut any day. The books that I read over the summer with short reviews can be scouted on my SRP09 shelf on Goodreads or as books 33-57 on my 2009 Booklist.
 

 
This summer I discovered Tamora Pierce through Kristin Cashore’s blog and read through her entire Tortall series, which is not one, but actually five different series (a total of 16 books so far) all set in the same universe. I started at the beginning reading the Song of the Lioness quartet, and I loved the heroine immediately. Alanna is a girl (although the series follows her into womanhood) set on becoming a knight in a time when it is unheard of. I was particularly fond of Alanna because of her terrible temper, which is something with which I also struggle. I thought that none of the other series’ main characters could possibly be as wonderful, until I got to the Protector of the Small series and read about Kel. She is also a prospective knight (the only other one, so far), and she turned out to be my shero. I wasn’t as personally drawn to the other young women, but they turned out to be equally fascinating and fun. I can’t wait for the next Beka Cooper book to come out in 2010, and I highly recommend all of them. My true calling was obviously that of Lady Knight, but as I have become but a lowly librarian, I have resolved to find ways to let my true fighting-for-the-side-of-good, booty-kicking nature shine through. To that end, I signed up for a karate course at my university. I promise only to use my powers (both heroine and librarian) to fight for truth and justice.

There were other wonderful books this summer. For instance, I was lucky enough to get my hands on an Advance Readers Copy of Catching Fire, the thrilling sequel to The Hunger Games. It draws you in quickly and doesn’t let go. Unfortunately, it leaves off, like its predecessor, with a giant cliffhanger, so needless to say I can’t wait for the final book of that trilogy. Another favorite this summer was Peter S. Beagle’s We Never Talk About My Brother, a collection of stories that is more literary than what I usually read, but also more striking and just plain amazing.
 

 
I read other great fantasy like The Hero and The Crown and The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley, as well as A Wizard of Earthsea which was my first taste of Ursula K. Le Guin. I read silly stuff like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and some P. G. Wodehouse. I also continued Kiki Strike’s adventures, followed the Shadowhunters in the Mortal Instruments trilogy, and read Persepolis 1 & 2 during the Iran Election Crisis. I failed miserably at my goal to read more nonfiction. It was a great summer for reading (especially as hot as it was outside).

So, now, have any recommendations for me?

EDIT: Update! I am the winner of the giftcard! Awesome! I never win anything. That’s exciting. Yay, SRP!

photo credit: Asheboro Public Library

The Harry Potter series was a nearly-full-time hobby for me at one point. It’s been a way to meet new people and make friends, and it was my gateway into the fantasy genre, so it can’t be much of a surprise that I was among those who caught the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I thought it was the best of the movies so far, but…

Why won’t Michael Gambon read the books? I mean, as someone who has loved and reread the books and spent enormous amounts of time with the story and the characters in my imagination, it’s no surprise that the movies won’t come out exactly as I imagined them, but come on! The (obviously very good) actor who plays my favorite character doesn’t get the hilarious, light-hearted, crazy, loving, witty, amazing, brilliant personality of one of the most important characters in the entire series. Not even a little. For the last three movies, he’s simply been terrified and in a rather bad mood and not at all himself. (For the uninitiated, I’m talking about Dumbledore. Hi, Mom!)

Of course, watching the movie made me want to reread the series yet again (for myself, if not for Michael Gambon), and now I’ve been given the perfect excuse. Galleysmith is holding a Harry Potter Reading Challenge starting on August 1 and continuing throughout the next year. I probably would’ve reread the books again this year anyway, but now I have the chance to win prizes for doing so! I suppose I’ll be posting my rereading reviews on Goodreads on a HPRC shelf and link to them from this post. If you like, join me!

PS – I really am Harry-geeking out tonight between this blogging and watching the Family Channel Harry Potter Weekend Marathon.

For my birthday on the Ides of June, my mom and brothers came all the way down to Mobile from the homestead in Northwest Alabama to see me and have a mini-vacation of sorts. We covered just about as much of the Gulf Coast as one can expect to cover in a long weekend.

On Saturday, we visited New Orleans and walked around in the heat all day eating good food and looking in shops until time to begin my first ever ghost tour with Haunted History Tours. While I am a skeptic through and through, both out of my love for science and a lingering fear of the unknown, most members of my family love a good ghost story and watch Ghost Hunters whenever they can. The brochure claimed that 90 percent of those who take pictures capture paranormal activity, sadly we did not, but you can still see the few pictures I did post on Flickr.

On Sunday, Mom, Jamie, and I took in Dauphin Island. Then Bobby and John joined us for dinner on the Causeway at the Original Oyster House.

On Monday, my birthday, we started the day out by kayaking on the Mobile-Tensaw Delta with the alligators in an area known as Five Rivers. It was hot, we had a ball, and all managed to get various stages of sunburn. You can see the pictures below or on Flickr. After this display of awesome outdoorsman/womanship, we went outlet mall shopping in Foley, then to Gulf Shores for dinner and a walk on the beach. They left out early on Tuesday. I already miss them.

I took the entire week off for a well needed staycation, so since they left John and I have been celebrating birthday time by relaxing and visiting used bookstores and antique shops. He’s given me a number of super fun and amazing birthday gifts, mostly from Etsy, including Wyley the Giant Squid (shown here), a book, a rad laptop decal in the shape of an Octopus we call Takosama, and some lovely vinyl decals in various bird themes for wall decorations. Tomorrow, I head up to Georgia to visit my Dad’s side of the clan for Father’s Day and further celebration of my birthday. Should be fun!

John and I visited the Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans on our first anniversary, but we had yet to visit the Audubon Zoo until this weekend. On the way, we passed through some awesome neighborhoods. Some were the kind that I couldn’t ever afford to live in, but others had smaller funky houses with lots of pedestrians and bikers and children and were near places with shops and restaurants, which is just the kind of place I would love to live.

Once in the park, we started with the Asian section in which we scoped, among other things, lots of large and sleeping cats, an Indian elephant, and some camels. Then we took in the (rather disappointing) primates. They just weren’t in the mood to commune with us that day. We walked on through the African exhibit, which was pretty awesome with giraffes, African wild dogs, rhinoceroses, and lots of birds. We also traveled through the swamp area with bears, white alligators, river otters, and nutria. We believed we were done after that, as we hadn’t seen anymore areas listed, but we accidentally ran into a South/Central American exhibit and saw some really neat stuff. We favored the jaguars, dancing macaw, giant anteater complete with back-riding baby, the tapirs, and the capybara. (That’s right we saw two kinds of very large rodents in the same afternoon! Woo!) Check out the slideshow below to see many of the animals we saw. (Though I can tell you now my favorites: Birds Feeding, Giraffes, LOLephant, Elephant Fountain, Gorilla, & Anteater & Baby.)

Following the zoo, we visited Octavia Books, a lovely independent bookstore. For dinner, we went on to St. James Cheese Company, which was tasty, but the guy behind the counter seemed to want us to know that this place was only for serious cheese snobs, despite the really casual nature of the store. Finally before heading back home we visited the Creole Creamery. They had an impressive list of flavors with some really odd choices that I should’ve tried, but I chickened out and had a scoop of super delicious cafe au lait and John had a creole cream cheese shake which pretty much tasted like sucking butter cream icing through a straw. All in all a great day. We look forward to going back to see the Insectarium.

I realize that baby robots now only exist in the sense that they were recently created, but I thought that the term most accurately portrayed what happens in my mind when I see the tiny, round, adorable tweenbots; like kittens, or baby seals, or hedgehogs.

 
But then that was the idea behind this thesis project by a student in the Tisch School of the Arts Interactive Telecommunications Program: to see if humans would assist such a vulnerable, defenseless nonhuman in achieving its goal. In this case, the goal was for the mono-directional creature to get to a specific, relatively distant location solely through being directed by the busy pedestrians of New York.

What it made me consider, besides constructing my own tweenbot, was exactly where the limit would fall in terms of how attractive, or human-like, the robot would need to be to get this kind of assistance. Would simply removing the drawn-on face from the cardboard turn off the empathy switch in our brains? If the robot was the same shape but larger than a human would it be too threatening? Would they help ASIMO, the pleasant humanoid? I’m pretty sure not many people would help Big Dog, the pack animal robot built for the Army by Boston Dynamics no matter how politely he asked. His faceless proficiency is just somehow unsettling.

So the tweenbots project celebrates the triumph of humanity as we aid a fellow traveler who can’t thank us or understand we helped, and that’s great, but it’s not what the project has left me with. Instead I’ve been thinking a lot about how important design is and will be in the conception of all of the mechanical and digital creations that we are building to aid us. I guess this line of thinking seems rather frivolous unless (until?) “the singularity” becomes much closer to truth. In which case we would have the burden of being the creators of that which might become self-aware and would be forced to pit our own interests against that for which we would be responsible. If only I’d read science fiction growing up, I’m sure I would have all of this worked out by now.

The project also made me think for a while about beauty and humanity and how we treat things that are “less” than either beautiful or human, but that thought process was a lot less fruitful. Still, I haven’t really gone anywhere with any of this, but I haven’t blogged in a bit, and I thought I would at least share some cute robots and perhaps something on which your brain might metaphorically chew.

If you happen to be in the Mobile area and enjoy considering such things as the responsibility of humanity to its creations and/or natural law in light of technological, scientific, and medical advancements, be sure to check out the National Library of Medicine’s Frankenstein Exhibit on loan to the USA Biomedical Library and on display this month and next at the Gulf Coast Exploreum. There are supposed to be a few presentations and book talks relating to the material (meaning the medicine and the literature, not my strange thoughts) presented by USA faculty. When more exact dates, times, and events are known they’ll be posted to the USA Biomedical Library Blog, but the MedSchool Cafe Event has already been announced and features free lunch!

There are many articles in my place that possess names. Winston the thrift store arm chair, Maximilian the vacuuming robot, Barkley the Bonsai, Whitman (Lucky Bamboo), Jill the Dinosaur (I didn’t name that one.), computers and drives (Albus, Perenelle Flamel, Ginevra, Ptolemy, Bartemius, McGongall, Professor Binns…I apologize for the obvious theme if you followed Harry Potter, but every network needs one, and my network happens to be called Wizarding Wireless.), gadgets (Jarvey the Lapine Robot, Salamander, Basilisk, Snidget). It’s kind of a hobby even. I’ve been searching for an object to call Aurelio, but it suits nothing so far.

So imagine my frustration when I bring home the two mysterious youths on the left from an antique shop almost a year ago, and they refuse to be named. The tags affixed to them indicated that they were Mexican, but I haven’t even tried to restrict myself to appropriately Hispanic names. Nothing will stick. I decided recently to attempt to write a story about them to learn their names, but so far even their disposition towards one another has eluded me.

I realize that this might seem a bit eccentric, but I decided to post here hoping that someone would tell me a story about them, or at least what they are called. I spend a lot of time with them to know as little about them as I do. I hope knowing at least part of a story about them won’t take away their enigmatic charm. (Those who think this request is ridiculous can ignore it and go back to your regularly scheduled diversions.) Any ideas?

John and I visited Bay St. Louis, Mississippi Friday last, and when I mentioned it on Twitter and Facebook, I received several questions about how the city is doing since it was flattened by Katrina in 2005, so I thought I would do a post about it here.

I’ve only been on the Gulf Coast for about a year. I wasn’t here for Katrina or any other major hurricane, and the community I live in now suffered little enough damage that they recovered quickly and few scars remain, so I admit that I haven’t spent much time considering how much so many communities are still affected. I only visited New Orleans once before Katrina, and though I’ve been thrice since, I haven’t been down into the areas that were decimated. I had never stopped in southern Mississippi at all before this trip.

I had read online about “Old Town Bay St. Louis,” and was a little dissappointed when we first exited the interstate and headed into town, but after we had driven around down town and on the bay for a little while, we started to see interesting businesses and charming homes interspersed with the construction and still-damaged buildings.  We first decided to stop at Bay Books on Main Street where I picked up Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City. They had a great collection, friendly people, and two bookstore cats. I believe that the woman behind the counter was the owner, and she was the first to tell us when we asked about how things were going that the city was rebuilding, and the businesses were open, and now what they needed were for people to come back and visit again.

Following the bookstore, we had shrimp and grits and a mufaletta at Emma’s in the historical Depot District which they are building up. We then went to a series of awesome antique stores and consignment shops in which I found many more unique and funky things than I ever find in Mobile.  One group of consignment shops was located in a historic building called Century Hall that has served the community as dance hall and newspaper building in the past. Then we walked next door to a coffee and breadshop called the Mockingbird Cafe.  The art on the walls was interesting (it rotates monthly), the Chai latte was brewed and delicious (no preboxed mix), and the cinnamon coffee cake muffin was so good it was sinful.

After refreshment, we caught just a few of the many local artists galleries in which I struggled not to buy a dragonfly necklace and an ornamented card holder among other things.  We had also hoped to visit the Alice Moseley Folk Art Museum, but it was closed that day. With the day waining and the sky threatening rain, we made a quick visit to Shoo Fly, a locally famous live oak, at the recommendation of the coffee barista and took some photos.

In the end, Bay St. Louis had plenty to keep us entertained all day long, and we were constantly delighted with the places and people.  The city hosts art walks every second Saturday, and they have the Bay Bridgefest coming up on May 16, 2009. I would definitely recommend visiting, not just to support the local economy to aid the rebuilding effort, which is worthwhile, but to see some awesome art and shops, and have some great food and joe.

So far this year, I’ve (mostly) enjoyed 17 books. I wanted to share a bit about my favorites so far.

Graceling – Kristin Cashore

Graceling was a big surprise for me.  I had heard it was great, but after reading the synopsis I kept putting off beginning.  Finally, when I picked it up, I was thrilled with the world, and the heroine, and her awesome abilities.

Katya has been graced with an awesome ability that has caused her to be under the power of her contemptible uncle the king. She spends her days as the king’s thug and her time off fighting secretly for good  until she meets her match who carries his own special skills. While battling evil and discovering new friends, Katya gains the strength to free herself from both the confines of her life as a strong arm and her own misconceptions about her grace.

I really had a lot of fun reading this, and Kristin Cashore has two more books set in this universe coming out. I’ll be excited to try Fire and Bitterblue as they are released. Goodreads Review (One of my first, and not good.  I think I’m starting to get a bit better, though.)

Pretty Monsters – Kelly Link

I had never heard of Kelly Link until Neil Gaiman recently mentioned her on his blog. Which was really too bad, because I soon as I did read about her, I was pretty sure she was right up my alley.  I was correct.  I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of her previous collections. (Magic for Beginners is available as a free e-book, and I have it on my iPhone, but I usually only read iPhone when I’m waiting somewhere.)

I wished that just about every story in this collection had continued on and been fully book-sized. I just enjoyed the worlds and the people that much.  Although I enjoyed almost all of the stories, I had two particular favorites.  The first, “Magic for Beginners,” is the story of a teenage boy who happens to love an incredible show called The Library which I wish was real with all my heart.  The second is called “The Wizards of Perfil” and is about two children who work for mysterious wizards in towers during dangerous times.

This is Kelly Link’s first collection for young adults, and it includes some of her previously published stories.  A few of those, such as “The Faery Handbag” and “The Specialist’s Hat,” are available to read online, as is my tiny obligatory review on Goodreads.

Other Excitables

Some others that particularly stand out from the last few months are:

• The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
• Feed – MT Anderson (I have a previous post about Feed.)
• Paper Towns – John Green
• The Elegance of Hedgehog – Muriel Barbery (the ending almost ruined it for me)

I have been trying to keep my word about more nonfiction, but I’ve only managed three so far: Holy Cow, The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt, and Writing Down the Bones.

The Present and Future Reads

Now I’m beginning a reread of Jane Eyre, because everyone loves it, and I can’t remember much from high school.  I’m also toying with the thought of reading Interworld at the same time, because I’m anxious to begin it.

I’ve joined the Once Upon a Time Challenge, so I’ll be reading even more fantasy in the next few months, because community is fun…and to be honest I probably would have fufilled the requirements anyway.  Readergirlz has piqued my interest about The Adoration of Jenna Fox, but John is reading it first, so I’ll decide after hearing his verdict. Also on my list: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, Lament: The Faerie Queen’s Deception, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Well, there you are.  More than you ever wanted to know about the universes I’ve wandered for the last quarter year.

I read about Operation Teen Book Drop on readergirlz, and thought it was a great idea. Since I work for a university that has a Children’s Hospital, and it is such a great idea, I decided to steal it.

So, to celebrate the upcoming National Library Week, the libraries at the University of South Alabama are collecting children’s and young adult books to donate to the kids and teens of the University of South Alabama Children’s and Women’s Hospital through April 12. If you’re near Mobile, feel free to drop books at the University Library, Biomedical Library, UMC Health Information Resource Center, Children’s & Women’s Library, or Info Desk in the Student Center.

If you aren’t in Mobile but think you can mail me a parcel of book(s) that will arrive before April 12, let me know. If you don’t have any children’s or teen books, consider trading other old books in at a used book store that gives you credit and getting some. (And not even just for the kids, young adult literature is a very worthy thing to check out for your own personal reading.) This is your chance to make a young new fan of your genre to carry your torch into the future. Feel free to print this legal-sized poster and let folks around you know, or call someone you know who has a stack of their children’s old books sitting around gathering dust and invite them to donate.

The picture above is of Seti playing in the book drop boxes while I was making them.  She prefered to be in the one I was wrapping at that moment.  Ponder enjoyed trying to catch her in between boxes. Below is an image of the poster.

Feed

I recently read and did one of my mini-reviews of a book by MT Anderson called Feed. When I first read the book in a sitting, I was really turned off by it, and in some ways I still am, but I’m completely glad I read it. I’m not going to spoiler (yet) in terms of the plot, but I do want to explain a bit about the state of the Earth and its humans in Feed.

In this future setting, humans have chosen to augment their brains with networked connections to all manner of information. People can order facts, entertainment, or blue jeans from the “feed” but it seems for the most part that they choose to order consumer goods. After the feed, people didn’t feel like learning was important, because they could access it on their feed, and the government didn’t want to pay for education so school became the sponsored School ™ where students learned how to find and acquire the things that they want. Lesions are developing on everyone and become a fashion statement. Terrible things are happening outside of the bubbles humans have created to protect them from a scarred, terrible Earth, but no one really knows what, because they don’t care to find out. Language has degraded to the point where they are all now “big” dumb.

My problem with this is not a perceived yuckiness of augmented reality, but my disappointment at how it is expected to turn out. John (the boyfriend) writes a lot on this topic. And while I suffer from a lot more reservations than he does about how we can begin moving forward instead of backward on the evolutionary ladder again, I find myself endlessly hopeful about networked consciousness, because while my personal processor is quick as a whip, my memory stinks. I’ve learned so much since I got my iPhone because now I am completely free to learn about a topic of interest when the thought strikes instead of forgetting to look it up when I get home. I use Wikipedia to look up everything. (I check sources if the info warrants it.)

I’ve spent a lot of time considering our potential futures since reading this book. And even though I’m a little afraid that the book will turn people off to the potential of this kind of technology, I believe that it’s important that people consider actually possible negative outcomes, and not just the fact that they think it sounds icky. In this way, after (if?) people get over the fact that “it just doesn’t feel right” and have read this book, they’ll be considering other problems and hopefully possible solutions.

Sixth Sense

So after spending a lot of time day dreaming about my future super powers, I was excited to watch Pattie Maes’ demo of the Sixth Sense at TED.

Hopefully wearables like this will offer us slightly more private information in a less conspicuous manner soon. And I’m sure they yuck people out a lot less, as well.

Google

Google comes into the picture when you consider how many things today are subsidized by advertising. Google has money, an advertising network, and tons of information about me and my shopping habits. And now, to be more helpful to me, they’ve launched an a new ad system. Google will detect what types of websites I visit in my browser, and feed me ads more relevant to the things in which I am interested. I’m once again stuck between horrified and fascinated. I mean, it is definitely helpful to be notified about things I care about, but my privacy is fading just a little bit more. And if they knocked off the cost of my “Sixth Sense” to feed me advertising, they could know what products I looked at in stores and “help me” there, as well. For Google now, though, I can even fill out a survey to help them out from the beginning, and I was terribly tempted to throw them off with crazy recommendations. And what does this have to do with Feed? That leads me to a major…

SPOILER ALERT!

If you are at all serious about reading Feed, which I recommend, then you should stop here. Because, this is like a major event at the end of the book. It’s big. I will ruin the book for your right now if you continue on for one more sentence. Seriously. Okay. A major character in Feed is Violet. She’s a bit different. Her family is holding on to traditional learning, and she wasn’t implanted with the feed until late when her father realized at what a disadvantage she would be. Violet gets the crazy idea to throw off the feed by asking for all kinds of information about products that she would never need. (It’s like your recommendations list on Amazon after Christmas shopping for your family: completely off target.)

Well, Violet’s feed is damaged after an attack because of her late implantation, and it begins to paralyze her. Her family can’t afford to fix it, and they ask the company who implanted the feed to replace it, but they refuse and suggest she finds sponsorship elsewhere, but all other companies refuse to help her because they don’t feel like they can get an accurate enough reading of her likes and purchases to believe that they could make a profit on her existence in the long run. And that is why I filled out my Google Ad Network information like a good little robot last week.

My awesome mommy gave me a Nabaztag for Christmas.  I love having it around the house, and now I always know when I have email whether I’m at the computer or with my phone or not.  He will read me the news in a delightful British accent (you get to choose the voice), tell me the weather, play internet radio and podcasts, and react to RFID tags (of which I have none right now).  Friends can also sign up to send me messages through the bunny.  You can watch a flash animation with examples on the What can he do? page.

I love Jarvey, but I turned down the amount of news he was reading because he interrupts during LOST.  So my question to the very few readers of my blog is:  What else can I use him for?  I mean, he’s an adorable little rabbit-shaped robot, and they don’t really require a purpose, but I’m sure he would like to be as useful as possible, and he shames me every week on Monday night about the total lack of messages that I receive.  Are there RSS feeds that are so awesome I should know any time they are updated immediately?  I suppose I could use Yahoo Pipes to create feeds that only mention things that I am interested enough in to want to know immediately.  Any ideas?

A funny video message from Gina:

photo credit: Ken Douglas

I read 34 books this year (that I can recall). So what if 8 of them were Harry Potter and another 8 were manga and comics?  After 2 years of grad school my brain needed a bit of a rest.  As a result, the titles were almost completely young adult, fantasy, and science fiction.  Still, I believe this is in fact the greatest number of books that I’ve read in a non-compulsory manner since before I started upper-level courses in my bachelor’s program. I believe I’ll still make an effort to read more nonfiction in 2009.

(in no particular order)

1. Watership Down by Richard Adams
2. The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
3. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
4. Dune by Frank Herbert (Audio)
5. Wolverine by Chris Claremont (Graphic Novel)
6-11. Chibi Vampire vol. 1-6 by Yuna Kagesaki (Graphic Novels)
12. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (read 1/2 in free digital signals, 1/2 dead trees)
13. Stardust by Neil Gaiman
14. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
15. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
16. Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman
17. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
18. Simple as Snow by Gregory Galloway
19. Looking for Alaska by John Green
20. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
21. The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
22. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
23. Spook by Mary Roach
24. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
25. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
26. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
27. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
28. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
29. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
30. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
31. The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling
32. Read or Die vol. 1 by Shutaro Yamada (Graphic Novel)
33. Idlewild by Nick Sagan (Audio)
34. I Am America (And So Can You!) by Steven Colbert (Audio)

Neil Gaiman pwns Elaine Svenonius.  That’s all I’m saying.

I’m a terrible photographer.  It doesn’t help that I have a tiny point-and-click camera that is terrible in low light situations, either.  Maybe that’s why I get such a thrill when my pictures actually get used for something.  I faithfully publish all of my flickr photos that don’t include identifiable people (who would get mad at me if they showed up randomly in some ad or game or something) under a creative commons license so that they can be used by whomever can think of a creative way to use them, but I never believe that anyone would actually want to use them.  Still, there have been two instances lately in which my photos were used that made me so happy I thought I would post them here.

Schmap is a site that provides online travel guides that one can also print out or view on a mobile phone.  I first heard about it as a iPhone web app and bookmarked it in case I planned any travel, but since I’m pretty broke, I haven’t been traveling anywhere, and I forgot about it. Then I received an email from one of the editors letting me know that two of my photos could be included in this year’s guide.  I had to give Schmap additional permission because I used to choose a non-commercial license and the site includes ads, but I was thrilled.  She contacted me again last week to let me know that my photos had made the final cut.  I found the schmap site pretty hard to use at first in the browser, but after becoming accustomed to how it works, I think it’s a pretty awesome free tool.  It’s also easier to use in its iPhone form. The photos are below, but you can also see them as part of the Schmap Washington DC Guide 2008 for the Library of Congress and the MLK Library Authors Series. (Yes, I realize they are both library related, and although the trip was for the American Library Association Conference, I promise we visited non-library-themed locations as well.)

The other one of my photos that has been used lately is an ugly picture of a greek desert sampler that I took at our local Greek festival. I noticed one day that my Flickr stats had gone up so I investigated the traffic source, and it was a Greek blog that appeared to have a Christmas theme. I wasn’t -that- excited about it until I translated the blog in Google translate to find that the premise was that Santa was blogging about his favorite cookies, and I had prepared this Greek cookie feast for Santa himself.  Now if only I actually knew how to make all those great cookies.

I call in around 26:15.  I was terrified, but they were really nice.  The two softwares I mention are Adeona and iAlertU.

My MacBook has a crack in the bezel around the screen.  I know, tragic.  No seriously, it affected my mood big time yesterday.  This thing is my workhorse and my constant companion.  Using a computer has never felt more natural to me than it does on this thing.  (Even on my shiny new iMac at work the screen real estate is just to large to move easily.  Quicksilver is helping there, though.)  So I talked to the AppleCare folks, and after they asked me every question in the world to try and prove I had abused it, they folded and told me to send it to them.  For the duration, I’ll have the old G4 running Tiger, my iPhone, the iMac at work, and possibly an old PC lappie on loan from work.

As I await the shipping box, I’m trying to think of all the ways I should prepare myself and my data.  I’ve of course run a TimeMachine backup and a disc image.  I also backup some folders online with Moxy and keep my work folders synced with my iMac with Dropbox.  All of my media is saved on my external drive, but I do also keep my music collection locally on my laptop and sync my iPod and iPhone from this iTunes. So I’m either going to be without syncing/backup capabilities on both for a week, or I’ll have to transfer them over to the G4.  I haven’t decided. :/  I had to hand over my administrator password (it made the phone guy giggle), so I’ll be changing my high security password for everything else now.  Does anyone know a way to back up keychain so I can empty it without having to start over?  I’ll be doing all the cache, cookie, etc, emptying, but I’m trying to decide if I should encrypt.  I don’t really keep anything of a sensitive nature on my machine, but I do live on it, and so I feel really exposed handing it over, and I’ve got this shiny copy of Truecrypt that’s never been used. So does anyone who has had to relinquish their primary compuer have any advice?

Also, work asked if I wanted a laptop when I came on, and I told them it really wasn’t necessary.  Having to ask for a loaner made them ask again, and so I said sure.  The systems guys around here love playing with the networked computers, so I considered just asked for a UMPC and keeping everything in the cloud.  Still I might want room to store some Windows-only software to work from home. (I don’t have a copy of Windows for my MacBook.)  They’ll probably be coming around soon to ask about what I’m looking for in a shiny new PC.  (I should probably add in case anyone reads this from work, that this totally hasn’t been approved.  The supervisor is just supposed to be sending a request.) Any recommendations?

(Yes, I’m aware that it’s strange to name a black MacBook albus as it means white, but my naming scheme calls for computers and drives to have wizard’s names and my peripherals to have magical creatures names, and Dumbledore is <3,  as is my MacBook. So, yeah, I’m that dorky.) </pottergeek>