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Sorry for the non-post this morning, but if you understood how much work I have all of a sudden you wouldn’t hold it against me. We had the brilliant idea to hold a book drive to bring in “gently used” books to the library; apparently I didn’t realize the lengths to which these competitive children would go to to win a pizza party. Seriously, some of these kids gave me hundreds of dollars worth of books in exchange for maybe two slices of cafeteria pizza. Part of me feels badly about this, the other, more rational, part understands that these children have more books and more money at their disposal than I will ever have in my lifetime.

Of course, if all the books are like this one, then maybe I’m overpaying them with pizza?

Seriously- when is this book from? 1974? What kid is reading that?

I guess maybe I should have realized the book drive would end up like this. These children really, really like to win- i.e.: the magazine drive when they pretty much whore themselves out for weepuls.

Anyway, please pardon me for being so out of it this week. As it is, only three classes have brought their books down to the library so far- that’s out of 30, mind you- and there are already over 200 books. So as you can imagine I’ve got cataloging up to my eyeballs. And did I ever mention that cataloging is one of my least favorite parts of being a librarian? Because it so is.

Happy end of week. Have some fun for me!

This week actually kind of flew by and I realized that there are now only 7 weeks left of school before the gloriousness of summer commences. Woot. I also realized as I was driving in to work this morning that even though there are still a few little patches of snow left where there were once giant piles, all the leaves and the trees are starting to show some green. It’s so very pretty outside I just had to go for a walk, so I went downtown to pick up an iced coffee and drop off some mail and stop in the bookstore quickly to see what they were buying for young adult stuff. Did I ever mention that I love walking when it’s nice out? If it was 75 and sunny every day I would never be in a bad mood again.

Ok, that was a big fat lie. But it would definitely make it that much harder to stay in a bad mood, rather than the days on end of miserable weather we usually get here that seem to egg on irritability and instability. You know how everyone always says that you can only truly appreciate something good when you’ve already experienced the worst? Yeah, I’d like to kick whoever said that in the shins. I’ve paid my dues, yo. Bring on the searing desert heat.

Enough about the weather! I’m sick of the gd weather. Anyway, I thought about doing a Thursday Thirteen today and I just don’t have the time or the energy for more than a couple of weak bullet points.

• The very big news I have to tell everyone is still unconfirmed. It’s likely and probable that I could report the news now and be safe but I don’t want to jinx anything. You know how it is.
• All packages have been mailed. Expect them forthwith.
• I can’t wait for the weekend. Natch. I don’t even have any big plans, I just want to sleep in. Although I must admit, it’s much easier to wake up in the mornings now that it’s actually light out.
• Last night we watched a couple of episodes of the first season of Arrested Development. Did anyone else watch this show? HILARIOUS.
• I am right now resisting the urge to drive up to the MSPCA to see if the Tuki has gone home with anyone yet.
• Ultimate frisbee is starting up again. Wee! I only hope I don’t get knocked unconscious this year.
• Speaking of wee, I really want a Wii.
• I just bought a diet green tea drink and almost choked when I read that one bottle is 6 servings. Six! That may still be 0 calories, but it’s 420 miligrams of sodium. I’m surprised my insides aren’t corroded.
• I bought a cute Proenza Schouler shirt at Target and I’ve received about 12 compliments on it. Good on ya, Target. I love me some cheap one-season clothing.
• Oh, crap. I better bustamove- my to-do list has become ridiculously long and I just keep staring at it uncomprehendingly, hoping it might just go away if I pretend not to understand it. Kind of like Chris does any time I start to talk about something that bores him. Ha!

You know it’s bad when you’re wishing you had a meme to post. See you fools tomorrow for some Friday Fun.

Nerdstar Runners: sorry to disappoint, but I’ve got nothing for you today. My brain hurts and my heart is heavy. My little Tuki doll might have traitorous fur, but as Chris and I were leaving the MSPCA yesterday she kept staring down at him from her perch and meowing reproachfully. She wanted to come home with us. She couldn’t help it that she caused us to itch out of our minds. She misses us.

Or, you know, she could be totally fine; maybe she’ll go home with some awesome people who will understand that she’s the coolest cat around and treat her as royalty. Maybe she has no awareness whatsoever that we even wanted her. But those eyes… it’s hard to shake the feeling that she knew we were leaving her there.

Anyway, I’m sure you’ll all be glad to end this week of NPW’s Cat Drama Mini-series and get back to my usual trippy librarian stories. With any luck the end of this week will bring the good news I know you’re all dying to hear. Till then, I leave you with my current list of summer job options:

1. Nanny/Au pair/glorified babysitter
2. Tutor
3. Camp counselor
4. Porn set fluffer
5. Bookstore
6. Pouring concrete
7. Mover
8. Shaker
9. Selling ginsu knives at state fairs
10. Becoming a Mormon, filming commercials

First off, thanks to everyone who left me congratulatory cat messages yesterday. We have yet to pick her up since the MSPCA is conveniently closed on Mondays. Also, I got a snotty message yesterday from some woman that works there. When we saw Tuki* (the beautiful dragon cat) on Saturday, she had a bit of a bald patch on her belly. The person we talked to thought it was allergies, and told us she was taking some kind of supplement for them, but that the vet would check her out on Monday- as in, yesterday.

According to said snotty message, the visiting vet is “only available for emergencies” on Mondays, and she didn’t know who could’ve possibly told me that the vet would be looking at Tuki, but if we wanted her looked at we’d have to schedule a special vet exam.

You know I’m irritated when my brow furrows and I’m frowning while listening to a stupid voice message.

Regardless, Chris and I want to go see her and make sure she’s doing okay before we take her home. Of course, C never leaves work before 7:30 p.m., and the MSPCA is only open until 4. Way to get your animals adopted, MSPCA- close before people even get out of work.

So that is the Tuki drama, up-to-date and current. I just hope she’s not miserable being crammed in with all those other animals and being subjected to all those uncouth degenerates trying to pick her up and mussing up her lovely fur.

*I kind of love the name Tuki, but I also want to just call her Fizzgig because that’s how I think of her. Chris has started calling her Kathleen Turner because of all her long flowing “hair”, which makes me laugh until I pee every damn time I imagine Tuki starring in Romancing the Stone.

edit: We just got home from the MSPCA and Chris and I are both itchy, sneezy messes. This happened last time we went, too, but we ignored it for the sake of our mutual cat love. I don’t think, however, that we could successfully ignore allergic reactions every day for the rest of Tuki’s (or our) lives. What does this mean? I suppose it means no Fizzgig, no Kathleen Turner to sweep us off our feet with bad romance novels.

This is a sad day, my friends. I really loved that cat.

I’m back, nerdlets! Not that I really left, per se, but the true spirit of NPW is back. My vacation seemed to be the very definition of situational irony: the discrepancy between what is expected and what actually occurs. I expected glorious sunshine and lots of walks and iced coffee. What I actually got was a lot of rain and a drain that will not unclog.

Fret not though, intrepid readers. I did manage to accomplish a few things over break. For example, I… um, well, I got new athletic socks. You might not think that was such a big deal, but that is because you have never seen my old running socks. You see, I hate, hate, hate when socks are baggy and so I always pull the backs of them up so that they’re not all loose in my sneakers, but then it’s like the ankles are all up around my achilles tendon and then Chris makes fun of me. And rightly so, it’s pretty unsightly.

Ahem. Anyway, I did not intend to write a post about my athletic socks. What I meant to say was, my vacation was less than stellar, but better than work. And good news for my blog winners of yesterweek, the packages are ready (mostly) and will be mailed out tomorrow (I think). You will be happy to note that Chris is jealous of the packages, as I have them all laid out on my dining room table, and he wishes he commented so that he could’ve won.

I would’ve mailed them all out today, but I have a list of things to do a mile long and it’s only Monday morning. This afternoon is a staff meeting, followed by yoga (hopefully outside, since it’s a ridiculous 80 degrees and sunny, now that I’m back at work), and then I think I’ll go for a run to take advantage of this lovely day.

I also have one other errand I need to do, involving something that happened over the weekend. It seems as though Chris and I have adopted a cat. I think. We went to the MSPCA on Saturday afternoon just to look around at the cute animals and we had almost decided it was time to go when we saw her. She looked like a Chinese bearded dragon mixed with a long haired cat, mixed with Fizzgig from the Dark Crystal.

Yep, that’s her! As soon as I saw her, I knew I wouldn’t be content with the knowledge that she might have to go home with one of the nasty white trash people milling about the MSPCA. Especially not with the grubby kids pulling at her tail and matting her fluffy fur with their sticky popsicle hands. No, they would not love her darling peanut butter face like I would, they wouldn’t buy her treats and play laser beams with her, and open the window so she could sit on the sill in the warm sun and stare disdainfully down on our neighbors. So really, the answer was simple: I had to have her. The only minor problem being that our lease specifically says “No Animals”.

We filled out the adoption paperwork anyway, and Chris sweet talked our landlord into agreeing to let us keep her. Now I just have to pick her up and make a pit stop at Petco (where the pets go) for all the accoutrements of once again being a pet owner. This also means that my master plan has finally been set in motion: cat now, dog later. I mean, once we have a cat, how is our little Greek landlord going to be able to say no to a sweet-faced little boxer? Right?

Must type quickly- the sun is shining and I need to get out there before the weather realizes what’s happening and reverts back to its usual state of apathetic gray drizzle.

Yesterday in the brief bout of sunshininess I decided I wanted to go a-touristing and drove myself to historic Concord, home of Walden Pond and the houses of Thoreau, Emerson, and Louisa May Alcott. I quickly scratched the Walden Reservation off my possible to-do list because of the recent flooding- I hadn’t brought my wellies and I sure as hell didn’t want to end up knee-deep in historic, albeit poetic, lake mud.

So then which house to see? Each one cost about $7 with a student ID (thank goodness my grad school ID has no expiration date- that thing saved me one whole dollar!) and I figured I’d try one and see if they were worth the price of admission. So I picked the Alcott house because really, who doesn’t love Little Women?

Let me do you a favor- I’ll save you those seven hard-earned dollars and give you the tour run down, as remembered by my (admittedly faulty) brain:

• The woman handing out tickets for the tour was doing a little needlepoint that read “Jesus love me, this I know”. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she forgot the “s” on loves.
• The first 15 minutes of the tour consisted of watching a video in which a woman pretends to be Louisa May Alcott, answering questions about different problems in today’s society. “Louisa, what do you think about global warming and people harming the environment?” “Well I do believe that people should take care of the places they love. It is our duty to make sure our homes are livable.” Whatevs! I’m pretty sure in reality Louisa would’ve actually said something closer to this: “Huh? What the eff you talkin’ about, global warming? We don’t even got no coal for our stove ‘less I sell these here books and winter in Concord is like 19 months long or some shit and you askin’ me about global warming? Bring that bitch on.”
• I realized halfway through the movie that I was on the tour with about 15 Mormons. How did I know? They had their Elder badges on that said Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints! They seemed very intent on the movie so I thought I might be able to snag some super spy photos, but the needlepointing lady kept peering intently into the darkness and I realized it would be horribly embarrassing to have to tell people I got kicked out of the Alcott House on my break. Suffice it to say, they were satisfactorily horrified when they realized that Bronson Alcott allowed his daughters to choose whether they wanted to marry or have careers, and that some of them actually chose careers.
• The girl that actually gave us the house tour looked like she had fallen off a motorcycle going 70 mph directly onto her face. I don’t know what the road rash was from, but I don’t remember one word of the tour, I was so fascinated thinking of things that might have happened to her.

The place looks a little scary for the scene of Little Women, no?

The house is a landmark, but the actual orchards? Strip malls.

The needlepoint lady told me that 80% of the things in the house actually belonged to the Alcotts, but didn’t seem to like it when I asked if this was an original toilet sign.

Thirteen Things about NPW’s “Vacation” 1. After 28 years of life here in New England I’ve come to learn that you have to take what the weatherpeople say with a grain of salt. So when they predicted rain for the entirety of my vacation week I admit I scoffed a little- it certainly can’t rain the whole time, I thought. Want to know how wrong I was? I haven’t seen so much as a hint of the sun in the last 6 days. It’s either been pouring, sleeting, or drizzling at any given moment. Yeah, it’s been pretty sweet. 2. So yesterday I thought, screw this rain, I’m going shopping down in Harvard Square. I had some prizes for certain winners that I wanted to pick up, and I also figured I could do some Jasmine Sola shopping and partake of some delicious bubble tea while I was there. I drove down to Harvard (the first mistake of many) thinking no one would be out in these miserable conditions and I’d have no problem finding parking. After 45 minutes circling around trying to hawk a spot, I pulled into one about 10 minutes away from the Square. I got out to put money in the meter and realized I only had one quarter. Well, that bought me 30 minutes- I had better get moving. I started walking and a giant truck breezed by me, launching a solid three foot wall of water onto my torso. Too late to turn back now, I was in this for the long haul. I kept walking, my umbrella turning inside out in the blustery wind and my glasses coated in a spray of drizzly mist. Soaked from the waist down, I made it to the Tannery to look at some shoes when I suddenly felt those tell-tale cramps that signify “I am woman, hear me whimper”. In case you don’t know, there are only two bathroom options in Harvard: the nasty underground hole in the basement of the Garage, or the infinitely preferable Harvard Coop. The Coop was closed for inventory. You get two guesses where I ended up next. By the time I exited, my 30 minutes were up on my parking meter and I still had a ten minute walk back to my car in the freezing (and now pouring) rain. So. That was a fun adventure. I spent the rest of the day huddled in blanket watching movies and shivering. 3. Today I decided that to make up for the Harvard debacle I would serve a little mall time. I gathered up my cousin and Aidan and dragged them to store after store. To their credit, they both handled my aggressive shopping with composure. Especially for a ten month old and a new mom. Thankfully, this trip was indoors and far more successful. 4. But… do you think I have a problem? And those are just the flats that I have unpacked! 5. I have mostly put together the winning packages from last Friday’s contest. I have a couple more things I want to pick up but they’re shaping up. I like them enough to want to keep one for myself, but I won’t. They’ll be on their way very soon. 6. Monday at the gym I caught the winning runners of the Boston marathon and let me tell you, there is nothing more inspiring while running on a boring-ass treadmill than watching those runners hit Kenmore after 25 miles and then bust out in a sprint. For about 2o minutes I thought how great it would be to have such a big goal and meet it. Then I got bored of the songs on my ipod and bored of the treadmill and switched over to the elliptical. And then I realized: my ADD is far too advanced at this point to do anything for a solid two and a half hours. 7. Seriously, this child does nothing but smile. If I knew I’d have such a happy baby I think I could handle the idea of having one of my own. 8. I don’t want to get ahead of myself here, but I think there will be some very good news at the end of this week. Very good news. I will keep you all informed. 9. I’ve been spending some of my many, many indoors hours looking for summer employment. This has been both frustrating and amusing; it seems every job that entails summer hours pays $8 an hour and/or requires no prior telemarketing skills. Anybody need a summer librarian? I catalog real good. 10. I’m also looking to trade up cars. I’ve had mine for three years now, and that’s been about two years and eleven months too many. A few weeks ago I test drove the Nissan Murano. One word: awesome. Can’t you just see me hauling ass on 93 every morning? I would get so many speeding tickets in that thing. 11. Speaking of cars, I was having a discussion yesterday with my mother about vanity license plates. It’s a well-known fact that New Hampshire has the highest number of vanity plates per capita of any state in the country- about one in 4 cars. It really adds up. Sometimes these plates are infuriating (BIGBRAT, NHRULZ, HOWUDOIN), sometimes stupid (ALRITY, T42&24T, DRNKUP), and sometimes just incomprehensible (PRYNCS, ZOBS, PGDIGR). On my quick trip up there today I saw DODIRT and SMAHHT. My mother saw a Corvette with the plates: STRPR. Way to advertise your bidness, hos. I’d post pictures, but I get the feeling that might be illegal in some way. 12. Must go see Hot Fuzz this weekend. And Grindhouse. Yeah, must see both. Movies! 13. How many more weeks till summer vacation? Too many. Must. Get. Warm. Soon.

I was tempted to throw up a random post about stuff like what I had for lunch, and who won the Boston Marathon, and the fact that I have Full House on in the background while I write this (did you know that Bob Saget was supposed to be 33 years old on that show?!), but then I thought it might be just too mean to keep you all in the dark about the results of last week’s contest. And what a contest it was!

Seriously, you people pulled it out big time. It even exceeded my pipe dream of 40 comments, which is no small feat for this small time writer. So I think I owe a big thank you to everyone who read and commented over the last few days. Sure, I pretty much had to bribe you all, but whatevs!

Without further ado, the winners:

The “secret magic” number I had chosen beforehand was #23. No reason for it, it just popped into my head as I was writing. And since I didn’t really think things through when I posted I’m going to go ahead and designate two winners- one for the 23rd comments including mine, and one for the 23rd comment not including mine.

#23: Ween! This sunny CA lady is currently studying to be a librarian and I often feel her pain when she describes the trials and tribulations of Cataloging homework. And if I know library school, she could probably use a good grin.

#23 (not including my comments): Megan! My lovely friend Megan now lives far away in Denver and I miss her terribly. Especially now that she’s totally preggers with her first baby and I probably won’t even get to see him until he’s 18 and flies here to follow in our footsteps and spend his college years drinking in Boston. Meg, you don’t know how hard it was for me to refrain from posting the picture of you wearing those goggly-eye glasses freshman year at Brandeis! I can’t wait to send your stuff.

And the very special comment #40 goes to: Aaron! The Acerock has been a bit gloom and doom-like lately, but I aim to change all that with a mini-package of smiley face odds and ends.

Congrats to everyone! And if you didn’t win, please know that I still love you. A lot. And maybe, if you’re good, I will host another contest sometime in the future. For now though, it will be good to go back to my regular number of comments- the thrill of seeing those numbers go up was a bit much for my poor little librarian heart.

So if the big winners could kindly mail me their addresses I will make it my Spring Break Goal to get those packages mailed out before I head back to school for the long haul ’till summer.

Happy National Library Week, everyone!

Despite my best efforts, the number of comments I usually receive hovers around the 6 to 12 mark, and I want to see that number get above 20 before I sign off for my vacation. Call it ego-boosting, call it shameless self-promotion, call it whatever you want, but as a blogger I would be remiss if I didn’t push the limits a bit to see what I can get out of it. I mean, besides the satisfaction of writing something every day, of course.

So I’ve decided to host a little self-run contest! I am going to pick a random number, and the person to be that number commenter on this post will receive a personalized gift from yours truly, sent directly to your doorstep. Or P.O. Box. Either way, you’ll get something great.

And by great I mean something that will forever remind you of me.

This might be pushing it big time (and tempting fate for me to get no comments whatsoever), but if someone manages to be the 40th commenter, I will also send that person a prize. A fabulous, life-altering prize.

Here are the rules:

• The contest begins… well, when I post this. And ends… oh, hell, I don’t know. The next time I post.
• It has to actually be a comment. It can be on any topic you like, or it can be some burning questions you have for me that I haven’t already answered in the myriad of memes I’ve completed, but I will not accept jumbled up letters as a comment. Unless, of course, it’s from Aaron, since I know that’s all he’s capable of.
• You have to be willing to send me your address so that I can send you your gift. I promise not to stalk you, unless you are Matt Damon and your address is in Southie.

I so just pulled those rules from my ass. Let’s just see what happens with this, ok?

In fact, I’ll make it even easier for you with a couple of photos you might discuss:

And I know you have something to say about that last one.

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