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“I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.”
-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Today I just wanted to comment on the differences between how people perceive school librarians (or any librarians, for that matter), and how we really live. Although I cannot say in all honesty that the librarians I know, myself included, are “normal”, we are more normal than you’d think. We do have lives outside of the library that do not involve cataloging or the Dewey decimal system.

So take a minute and think about the librarians you might know. And despite their appearance, try to imagine hanging out with them. From what I hear, they’re actually a pretty wild bunch.

Christmas is the worst holiday of the year. That’s right, I said it. Everything goes downhill from Thanksgiving until January 2, with Christmas Day as the lowest point in the year. It’s expensive, guilt-ridden, and commercially depressing. I mean, even being in the holiday dumps is cliche now. Christmas is so over.

So Halloween has been declared the new Christmas. Now, I know Christmas has some catchy tunes, and eggnog is delicious, and it’s probably a better holiday for money-makers… but I see it as our duty as adult Americans to ensure that Christmas is ousted as the biggest holiday of the year. Come on, you don’t even get to dress up on Christmas.*

I read an article that said adult costume sales are up 6% from last year and that most people spend $50-60 on their costume. (Don’t these people know the wonder of thrift stores?) You can even dress up your pets, if you’re that kind of person. And you get bags full of candy from strangers, what other day is that socially acceptable? We need to take full advantage. I’m even thinking about having kids, just so I can dress them up and eat their candy.

Let me sum up: Christian holidays- out, pagan holidays- in.

*Unless you have season-themed sweaters. In that case, refer to my post from 10/26.

If you ask me what I have come to do in this world… I will tell you I am here to live my life out loud.
-Emile Zola

Come November, I will be 27 years old. For me, that is a scary thought. For you, maybe not so much. But in any case I have decided that this is the year to start living my life out loud. And not just in my writing. Socially, personally, and at school too.

I watch these kids every day and I think about how it seems so close to me, like I was just here myself. How did this happen? I’m sure every one of you reading this has felt something similar at some point, some kind of quarter-life crisis. Of course, no one ever tells you how they deal with it, and in fact, I am not going to either because… well, frankly, it would bore you. And that’s not what I’m here to do.

Suffice it to say that I will be making some changes and reinforcing some of the better aspects of year 26. Maybe you’ll notice, maybe you won’t… but it’s all about growth, right? Or something like that.

Look at me, with all this adult talk… Damn you, adultdom!

If you have ever wondered what it’s like to go to a two-day librarian conference, I can tell you from first-hand experience: it’s total geekdom.

Now, usually I’m all about nerdiness and geeks in general. I like techies. I enjoy a nice pair of glasses. But I feel the need to set some guidelines, to clarify (and maybe justify) exactly what my love of nerds entails.

Some Geeky Things I Do NOT Love:

1. Those chains that hold your glasses around your neck. If you don’t need your glasses all the time and simply cannot keep track of them, just take them off and put them in a case, fools.
2. Any floor-length dress that has a lace collar/flower print combo.
3. Dandruff.
4. Frizzy hair. I’m not talking about the “it’s a little rainy out and my hair got frizzy” frizz. I’m talking about the person’s hair in front of me during a lecture going down my throat when I breathe in because it’s so large and has apparently never been brushed kind of frizz.
5. Jumpers and/or overalls. This should speak for itself.
6. People who feel it unnecessary to wear deoderant. Simple hygiene goes a long way.
7. Orthopedic shoes- these shouldn’t even count as geeky, just old, but I saw so many at the conference I felt they were worth including.

These are a few major offenders. The types of things that give us nerds a bad name. It’s not the pocket protectors- those are just protection, man. It’s not our love of sitting in badly lit library stacks with ancient monographs- that’s just cool. No, it’s the people that insist on season-themed sweaters that drag us down.

I will admit whole-heartedly that I am a big nerd. But I saw a lot of these offenses going on at the conference and I am going to say right here and now that we librarians needs to band together to show everyone the cool side of geekdom. Get your geek on! (But in a cool way, please.)

Never a dull moment here in library land.

This morning before school, the fun and games of library social time were rudely interrupted by a gas leak in the school kitchen. Can you believe it? The nerve of those lunch ladies smelling gas! I had to actually evacuate the library, kids were busy throwing their Pop-Tarts onto the library shelves, sneaking iPod headphones on when I wasn’t looking, and frantically trying to finish their last game of Zombie Survival on the computer, seemingly unperturbed that the entire school might at any moment blow up. I, on the other hand, in my anxiety over their safety*, yelled at them to get moving and herded them like sheep to the auditorium. Where we proceeded to sit for an hour- them, happy and excited to miss first period, me, semi-bored, semi-uneasy about the halls being filled with flammable gas.

Anyway, then I started wondering- what would I do if there really was an emergency, like Columbine-style? Or an explosion? Or anything, really? Was there some kind of evacuation plan? Well apparently there is- we get the kids out and meet at Old Town Hall- but according to other teachers, there wouldn’t be enough room for us all there and we wouldn’t have any record of which kids were in the building and which kids we had managed to get out.

Good to know we’re prepared.

*actually, more my safety than theirs.

If you are any kind of Tom and Jerry fan you’ll remember the episode where Jerry’s backwoods Uncle keeps stealing Tom’s whiskers to use as guitar strings so he can play Cr-Cr-Crambone. That’s what I feel like in the guitar class I am taking. Sans mustache, of course. Of course, learning to play the 6-string guitar at age 27 is no easy feat… I just really hate to admit I might do poorly at anything. I’m not used to things being difficult. Thus, my fingers have permanent deep grooves in them from practicing the four chords we have learned in class and I’ve managed to (sloppily) strum a very basic Stand By Me and Happy Birthday. Thrilling, yes?

I realized (while sweating with exertion over getting my fingers wrapped around the correct frets) that learning to play an instrument is a lot like writing. You play and play and play until something resembling a song comes out. I’d imagine it’s the same for most creative arts. Only unlike writing, the guitar does not come naturally to me. I don’t feel any pressing need to play. I just thought it’d be a fun hobby. Now it’s sheer stubbornness that will not allow me to fail at it. I’ll learn to play that damn thing at least as well as Jerry’s Uncle.

I’m making a promise to all of you: if I can’t produce an acceptable Stairway to Heaven by the end of December I will wear a mustache and sing Crambone in my library. During class. While being observed by the Principal.

Friends, friends of friends, random countrymen:

It has happened. The last of the spider crabs has passed on to a better place. I would have held a mini-burial for him, but A) I am not reaching into the bottom of that slimy-ass tank and touching him, and B) most of his furry horrific body was already consumed by the puffer fish, so would it really be worth it?

My flags will be at half-mast today. As should yours.

Ok, I didn’t post yesterday. So sue me. Who else can you honestly say posts every day? Actually, I didn’t get one sad email from anyone wondering where the librarian was on the Thursday in question… no one concerned that perhaps I was taken out by the super-powered crabs, my body sliced into shreds by their razor-sharp pincher claws. No one the teensiest bit worried at my possible assassination by anti-library conspiracy theorists or my likely abduction by aliens. Come on people, where’s the love?

I think maybe having a blog has caused my already inflated ego to reach epic proportions. But I’m working on three hours sleep here, give me some cred.

But now the librarian is back in the hizzy, ready to get down and dirty with the cataloging of audio books and the eradication of mold from the hallowed pages of my beloved texts.*

*Oh, and also, my new theory is that it is the super strain of mold I’ve discovered in here that is causing my brain to run in overdrive, in turn causing me to stay up all night doing squat.

People often ask me what it was like to go to graduate school for Library and Information Science. I blather on about “good background information” and “useful course work”, when really I should just illustrate what it was like with this anecdote:

Towards the end of my last semester, I was frantically working on a stressful Cataloging assignment in the school’s computer lab, poring over the Library of Congress Authority Control database, when a guy my age sat down next to me. I recognized him, he was also in the dreaded Cataloging course, and nodded briefly at him.

“Hello, whatever your name is,” he said to me.

I looked up again, momentarily taken aback. “Hi.”

“I’m Patrick. I sat next to you because every other girl in here has a restraining order against me.”

Patrick proceeded to pull out his copy of the AACR2 and start typing his assignment. I proceeded to pack up my stuff and left to buy myself a laptop.

Here is my secret mission (well, as secret as a blog can be): I want to buy a Wal*Mart store. Buy it outright. Then I’ll have a free-for-all getting rid of all the stuff inside so I can use that giant, 10,000 square foot area as my very own personal office space. The entire store will be pitch black, except in the very center where I will keep my desk. There, a giant spotlight will shine down on me doing my very non-important work like unsticking Post-Its from each other. If someone needs to schedule an appointment with me, they will have to face walking all the way to my desk with a smaller spotlight following them as they approach.

Screw education, I’m going corporate.

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