little scamp

I have one class that comes to the library every week.  They're second-graders, super cute, the kids really like me and like coming to the library except for the fact that we NEVER have Diary of a Wimpy Kid books for them to take out.

The kids were lining up to leave with their two books each today when the teacher asked one of the girls to unzip her jacket.  Like 20 books fell out.  I was so impressed, both by the girl for thinking she could get away with this heist and the teacher for immediately noticing.

Never a dull day.

say hello to your friends

It's been quiet here at scuttlebuttering, and I apologize for that.  Life has gotten away from me, what can I tell you.  Today's post isn't groundbreaking, but its hopefully a start of more blogging to come.

Today I was cleaning up the foreign language books in the kid's room when I came upon this French Baby-Sitter's Club book:

Some thoughts:

1.)What, what, what are they wearing?

2.) When did Stonybrook become a slum?

3.) What is the title of this book?  My limited french leads me to think it's Mary Anne and the Sadness?  I don't think that's right.  But it does look pretty depressing judging from this cover.

I so wish there were more.

standard in all hotel rooms...

One of the many fine amenities we are provided with.

"Choose way and flee for your life decidedly."

send rescue

Our flight was canceled today. We've got two more days to spend in Beijing.

I don't think we'll ever get home. If I I've to see any more duck on my dinner table, I'm going to get upset.

happy birthday to me

I sometimes get a bit of a hard time because I take my birthday very seriously.  I like to have a party and get all my favorites to celebrate.  And the fact that they're celebrating me isn't such a bad thing :)

However, one of my co-workers has taken celebrating one's birthday to a new level.  She's been talking about her birthday for about a week now, and apparently yesterday sent out an email to a few of our co-workers (I was not on the email - this was a smart move on her part) with a list of things she would like from them for her birthday.  Number 2 on list?  Cash.  I would give everything to see this email as I bet I would laugh until I hurt.

Today, she brought in a few things to celebrate her birthday, including flowers...

...as well as cake and a card for everyone to sign.  For herself.

These are excellent ways to get people to care about your birthday whether they want to or not, and believe me I am taking notes for next year.

Newsy News

Hey Gang!

Nothing terribly exciting has been going on in my life lately, so the blog has been quiet.  I did recently have another run in with super long fingernail man and my boss wore his jumpsuit again, but I feel like these are going to be regular occurrences.

I guess the only change is that I'm going to be making a small job change.  I am soon going to be the childrens librarian at my branch, not the young adult librarian!  I am hopeful that this change will be less stressful and just more fun.  I can do more crafts and things that I like and will hopefully get more interest in those things!

My mother thinks it's important that I wear costumes as a children's librarian because she says that's what my children's librarian did when I was growing up.  I don't quite remember that, but I'm always happy to wear a costume!  My mother has already supplied this beauty:

Gorg.

So I think I'm off to a good start.

Ughewwwwwwwwwww

I can't post a good visual for this one because I might throw up.

I was just helping a patron with super super super super gross gross gross long fingernails on the computer and one of his talons touched my hand.

I almost wept.

i can't even handle

Guys, it's a Monday morning.  I was a little grumpy until I saw my boss a moment ago.  'Cause his outfit today gave me a serious case of the giggles.  And I can't even find a good photo representation for you to share in the ridiculousness.

At first glance, it was fairly inocuous.  Blue pants and shirt under a tan blazer.  But what's that you say?  Those aren't blue pants and shirt?  That's a polyester jumpsuit?

Yep.  It sure is.

I die.

great start

Thanks for all the congrats about the new addition to our family!  I can't wait to meet my niece or nephew.

I had some excitement at work this morning not too long after I got here, which I hope doesn't portend bad things for the rest of the day.  There's been a dude coming in and causing some trouble here for the past two weeks or so.  He seems a bit off, and everyone on the staff has had some interactions with him.  Yesterday the janitor told me that this guy comes to the library at about 8am (when we open at 10) and continuously asks if the library is open and isn't it 10 already.  So that's how he starts the day.

At the library, we have one computer with unfiltered access to the internet, and then 11 computers with filtered access in the adult room.  The filtered computers really don't filter out all the much - I have certainly never been blocked from any website.  Patrons are allowed to use the computer for an hour, and if they are all in use, they can sign up for a reservation and wait until one is free.  For the filtered computers, the wait is usually only 5-10 minutes.  But for the unfiltered computer, it can be an hour or two, depending on how many people sign up to use it.  This dude only wants to use the unfiltered computer, and even though he comes right when the library opens, he sometimes ends up sitting and waiting for HOURS until he can get on it.  And I found out why at our staff meeting yesterday - he likes to watch porn at the library.

Super awesome.

He has also spent some time hanging out in the children's room as well as at the children's storytime - both of which or huge no's if you don't have a child in the room or at the program.

And this morning, when of course I was in charge, he sat down at a table across from a young woman on her laptop and stared at her.  Just stared, unblinking.  For a long time.  She, of course, got creeped out and moved to a different part of the library.  He continued to sit for awhile, and then of course, followed her.  Not good.  I had been observing, waiting until he crossed the line and I could ask him to leave and this was definitely it.  I told him he had to leave for the day because there had been complaints about his behavior (which was true, the young lady told the library assistant that she was really freaked out) and he denied doing anything and said they were lies.  I continued to say he had to leave or I would have to call the police, and at first he said that I should call them because they would send me to jail for lying.  OK.  I was still willing to call them and he finally got up and moseyed over to the door.

So hopefully that will be all the excitement we have here today and really hopefully this guy will stop coming here because he makes us nervous.

Fun Thursday!

new addition

It was an exciting weekend for all of us here at Scuttlebuttering.  I'm excited to finally be able to share it as I am not very good at sitting on good news for long.  But Saturday morning I found out that my brother's wife is pregnant!  However, my parent's were planning on having dinner with M&S for Father's Day last night, along with S's parents, so that's when they were going to hear the news.  Which meant I had to be very good at not giving it away.  I am proud to say that I passed the test with flying colors and now it's official - the Berts are going to be Aunt and Uncle! 

The Happy Parents

The baby is due on Christmas Day, and we are all just over the moon with happiness.  I may be biased, but this is one lucky kid.  And I would just like the next 6 months to go a little faster, please.

My only gripe about the situation - I spent most of the Saturday and Sunday tramping around the city looking for something that had a mention of "World's Greatest Aunt" or "Best Uncle in the World" or anything along those lines.  I was willing to drop some money to get our gear in order quickly so we can start embarrassing the little tyke ASAP.  And there is nothing out there to be had.  I think this is an untapped industry.  Sure, I could have purchased things for the Mom-to-Be or New Grandmother, but what about me?  I like swag as much as the next person, and MORE than most people.  I'll have to turn to the internet, but until then, I whipped something up myself.

This will do until to announce things to the world until I can find something more suitable.

Congratulations again and again to my bro and sister-in-law.  Bert and I could not be even a little bit more happy for you guys.

i know what's next...

on my to-read list.

they do exist!

Today someone came into the library and asked for help getting her documents off of her floppy disk!  I haven't seen one of those in 10 years.  And what was more amazing - the computer she signed on to use had a floppy disk drive!

One more thing we'll have to explain to our children

classic

The sidewalk is my pillow.

paper moon

I would like to send a hearty scuttlebuttering wish to my husband for a very happy 1st anniversary.  It is incredible to believe that it has already been a year since we got married.  It simultaneously feels like no time at all has passed and that we've been married for a very long time.  Bert and I celebrated by spending the weekend at Ogunquit, Maine at a Bed and Breakfast there which was lovely and I will have a longer trip report shortly.  But I just wanted to say that I feel very lucky to have such a great fella and I look forward to very many more fun years with him.

Thanks for the great photos, North Island Photography!

economy boost

I'm glad to see the hair pick industry is still thriving these days.

 My grandmother would be so proud.

Number or hair picks in use in the YA room at this moment: 3.

And there are only 6 people in here.

so they're not alive?

There's a woman who works here part-time and I have trouble figuring out what exactly her job is, other than trying to do other people's jobs.  She got into a huge argument with a temporary librarian my first week here and made the biggest deal of it and was smack talking this librarian to the other people working here.  Highly professional.  I do not care very much for this woman, because, again, I don't think she actually does her job and she keeps trying to interfere with mine.  She has roped kids into doing her work for her, she yells at the teens when I don't think they're doing anything wrong, and she's just kind of a busybody.

But, man, is she fascinated and confused by zombies.  Each month I have been setting up a display based on a theme for that month.  April is National Poetry Month, so I set up a display of poetry books in the YA section.  And this month, I was having trouble finding a good theme, until I read somewhere that May is Zombie Awareness Month.  I thought that was pretty awesome and something the kids might dig, so I collected a bunch of books and movies about zombies and set up my display.

Apparently, this woman has never heard of zombies before so every time she comes in she asks me more questions about them.  She doesn't understand that they are undead, confuses them with vampires, and asks me if this is something that kids like.  The questions have been going on for a month, and it's like talking to a 4 year old, I really don't know how to answer them anymore.  She keeps bringing me books and asks if they're about zombies.  Today she told me she did some research on them and found out that they come back from the dead and was so proud of herself for knowing that factoid.

It's just been a bit bizarre and she won't let it go, so I'm rather looking forward to May being over.  I hope my next display isn't as confusing.

What is a zombie?

bootylicious

I was just yelled at by an extremely agitated older male patron because two of the pictures of Beyonce that he had printed off of the internet did not print out as he wanted. 

I had a difficult time understanding what he wanted me to do.  It seemed that he wanted reimbursement for how the pictures came out, but as I was pretty sure they came out incorrectly due to user error and not through any fault of our equipment, I was not going to do that.  However, he was quick to inform me that he's got a $40,000 car out in the parking lot, he doesn't care about getting $1 back.  He was yelling at me and he wasn't happy when I said he needed to calm down or I would have to ask him to leave.  I said I would be happy to re-print his pictures, but when I went to do so, being guided by the website address printed on the bottom of the pages he had given me, he accused me of watching what he was doing on-line.

They weren't even naked pictures of Beyonce.  What was this dude getting so worked up over?  He must be crazy in love with her.

All right, I do understand why he was so worked up. Damn you, Beyonce, for putting us mere mortals to shame.

phrase origin

So I'm watching some 'Glee' last night, and at one point Kurt said the phrase "eat your heart out."  And this morning I woke up thinking about how disturbing a thing this is to say.  Seriously.  Think about it for a second.  I'll wait.

Gross.

I wanted to know the origin of this phrase, so I turned to the interwebs for help.  I'll tell ya, I wasn't thrilled with some of the answers.  A lot of people seem to think it has to do with eating a whole lot, but that sounds even grosser and I don't believe that's true at all.

The best definition came from Scorpio Tales - "The ancients believed that sorrow or envy were bad for the heart, and would eat away at it, each sigh draining blood from the organ. This idea made its way to England and became well established - Shakespeare often refers to it, as in, 'Might liquid tears, of heart-offending groans, / Or blood-consuming sighs recall his life, / I would be blind with weeping, sick with groans, / Look pale as primrose with blood-drinking sighs' (Henry VI, part 2, III.ii). We still describe someone as broken-hearted by grief. By the beginning of the 20th century, to eat your heart out was well-established as a term for pining; but more recently, it has also been used as a cry of triumph when someone else has cause to envy the speaker."

Not great, but hopefully it's enough to get my mind off the disturbing nature of it.

I'm having a difficult time choosing which picture to use for this post.  I don't want to look for pictures of people eating hearts.  Instead, as often happens when thinking hard about a particular word or phrase, it lost all meaning for me.  Which led me to this gem:

Glorious

fact #3

My family has been spending the February school vacation in Puerto Rico since I was a wee young thing.  We have had many a run-in with celebrities down there including Billy Baldwin and Chynna Phillips, George Hamilton, Paul Schaffer and Regis.  While we did do a great deal of the bonding with Billy and Chynna, my best encounter was with Kurt Vonnegut.

Judging by my horrific haircut in pictures from this trip, I was in 5th grade on this particular trip.  And I was at an age where I was good at making vacation friends, which is how I met Kurt's daughter, Lily.  We hung out at the pool and the game room, the usual.  And then one afternoon she asked if I wanted to play a game with her and her dad.  What game?  Oh, you know, just some Battleship.  No big whoop.  But I bet not many people can say that not only did they play Battleship against Kurt Vonnegut, but beat him at Battleship. 

I can't believe he didn't write a story about this event, it must have been a big day for him.

Sorry I sunk your Battleship, Mr. Vonnegut

kids these days...

...can't get enough of their Civil War comic books.