2012 at the library

This kid came in today. He looked about 15 (I think the high school had the day off today). He wanted books about 2012. I said I had heard of the movie but had no idea what it was about, so I asked for a little more info. He muttered “you know, about the Mayans and stuff.” I was approaching the end of a tiring three-hour stint on the reference desk, hadn’t had lunch yet, and I felt annoyed at his lack of helpful info. So I quickly looked up the Dewey number where books about the Mayans would be – not even bothering to check if we had anything available at the moment – and sent him on his way.

Then I started to feel bad. This kid might very well end up leaving the library empty-handed and frustrated. I didn’t want this teenager to leave with a bad impression of the library, so I started researching the whole 2012 thing. I came up with a list of eight books about Mayan prophecies, several of which specifically had to do with 2012. Unfortunately, none of them were at my library, but at least there were books elsewhere in the county. I tracked the kid down, sitting at a catalog computer, and showed him the list. He didn’t know how to put stuff on hold, so I helped him request several of the books from the other libraries in the county and then I helped him find Whitley Strieber’s fiction book 2012: The War for Souls, which the kid had found in the catalog. At least he had something to take home with him today.

When all was said and done I was happy with how it turned out. I hope the kid left with a favorable impression of libraries (and librarians!).

Stubborn

A woman came up to the reference desk this evening and a strange and brief conversation ensued.

Woman: Can I ask you a question?

Me: Sure!

Woman: Why don’t you list all the books in Clackamas County ?

Me: We do.

Woman: No you don’t. I know this book is at another library.

Me: Let me take a look. What’s the book?

Woman: No. I know that another library has this book and it doesn’t come up.

Me: Well I can look it up and take a look.

But by the time, the woman was shaking her head and making a beeline for the door. Frustrated at her stubbornness, I called after her, “If the book is in storage or is damaged…” but she cut me off, shaking her head and saying “No” as if I was wrong. “I can’t answer your question if you don’t give me all the information.” But she was out the door, racing away.

I’m not sure what the point of all that was. Why did she come up to me and tell me this and then refuse to let me clear up the situation? Was she so hell-bent on being right that she wouldn’t risk the possibility of me pointing out that maybe she was searching wrong. Maybe the book wasn’t coming up because it was in repair. We did, after all, just get a new catalog a few weeks ago, a catalog that most patrons are still adjusting to. And what if there was indeed some kind of glitch, where a book was on the shelf at a library but not showing up in the catalog? How would we fix this glitch if we didn’t know about it? This woman’s refusal to let me even try to figure out what was going on was frustrating, but what could I do?

Microwavable crafts

While weeding the craft books today, I came across this book.

I’ve never heard of using one’s microwave to do craft projects, so I took a look inside. Turns out the microwave is for drying fruits, flowers, peppers, etc. You then incorporate these objects into wreaths, birdhouses, Christmas ornaments, centerpieces, and other pieces of home décor. Very odd. You never know what you’ll find on the library shelves.

Knitting at the library

I was recently going through some old e-mails and notes and came across this unpublished blog post from two years ago. This is from my days of working as an on-call librarian, and I can’t remember which library I was at when this happened, but it doesn’t really matter.

I am constantly amazed at the kinds of questions people ask at the library. If I weren’t in this profession, it would never occur to me to call a librarian to find out the answer to some life’s more obscure questions (my favorite of all time in my brief career thus far: “Is there a clown college in Portland.” No, it turns out there is not). Not that it’s a bad thing. I actually find it quite entertaining most of the time. It’s just unusual.

Today, I had a lady who wanted to know if I knit. When I said that I didn’t, she asked if any of the other staff knit. No, they didn’t. Turns out she was stuck on a knitting project and needed some help. She already had a book, but it wasn’t helpful. She needed someone to show her. She agreed with my suggestion that the staff at a yarn store would be the best people to answer her question, but she was hoping to save a trip and was already at the library and thought she’d ask. How funny!

No more hole

The hole in my living room is gone. Yesterday they came and filled it back in with concrete. My apartment smells like a sidewalk during rainfall. I’ve also discovered that everything is covered in a very fine layer of concrete dust from the jack-hammering on Wednesday. Everything in the living and dining rooms was covered in plastic, but in the bathroom and hallway and kitchen I now have dust to wipe up. Oh well.

The hole in my living room floor

A few days ago I noticed a wet spot on my living room carpet. It didn’t smell like cat pee and I knew I hadn’t spilled anything there. Also, despite the warm weather, the wet spot didn’t go away. I feared a leak. I called the apartment management.

Sure enough, when they came yesterday to check on it, they discovered a leak. They called me at work to tell me. They said they had to rip up the carpet and the cement to get to it. I banged my head on the table. Fortunately, absolutely nothing was required of me. They would move the furniture and do all the work. And most importantly, they would pay for it of course.

So today I locked the cat up in the bedroom and went off to work. This is what I found when I came home.

Oh dear. At least they covered everything in plastic. My TV and most of my furniture is behind me in the dining room. It’s all covered in plastic too. There is no note and they didn’t call me today. So I don’t know if they found and repaired the leak or not. I’m hoping they did and hoping that they come back tomorrow to pour new cement. It will take awhile for the cement to dry, so they can’t lay new carpet until next week. The sooner this is over, the better!

BC Trip Day 8: Wedding Festivities

[Click any picture to see it bigger and better on flickr. See all photos from the trip here.]

Saturday morning we headed to Siegel’s Bagels for a delicious breakfast. Best bagels in Vancouver, I tell you! We picked up a lunch to go at Capers and then we headed to the north shore. We avoided the expensive tourist trap of the Capilano Suspension Bridge and went instead to Lynn Canyon, where the suspension bridge is just as cool and totally free.

There were lots of people on this sunny Saturday, but we were expecting it. We luckily had the suspension bridge to ourselves for a few brief moments.

Right as I took the picture above, a group of teenage boys came dashing onto the bridge behind me and proceeded to jump and down as hard as they could to make the bridge jump and sway.

Quickly getting motion sick, I hastily got off the bridge. We walked upstream to the cool green 30 Foot Pool up there (I’m not sure where it gets that name because the pool doesn’t look 30 feet deep). The people-watching here was rather interesting. A different pack of teenage boys were jumping off the cliffs into the creek. There were also LOTS of people with dogs. Nothing unusual there, except that all the dogs were off-leash. There was a big sign in the area clearly stating that all dogs had to be on-leash. I see that dog owners read signs about as frequently as cell-phone-talking library patrons do, which is to say, NOT AT ALL.

We headed over to Rice Lake and found a few geocaches there and read about the history of the place. We had our picnic lunch in the shade there, watching all the roller bladers and cyclists as they headed up the Seymour Mainline to the Seymour Falls Dam. We’ll have to do that next time. It’s too far to hike, but not so far when you’re on wheels!

We headed back to the B&B to get ready for the wedding, stopping at Purdy’s along the way to get a box of some of the best chocolate ever (it lasted about 48 hours).We got dressed up for the wedding and headed down to Richmond, to the lovely UBC Boathouse, to watch my friend Jenna and her wonderful fiancee, Mike, get married. It was a lovely ceremony out by the water, with the distant mountains as a backdrop. And fortunately the rain held off until we moved inside for the reception! (You can see the pictures from their wedding photographer here.)

I got to see two other grad school friends, Hanna and Becky. I’ve really missed all these gals since we graduated nearly four years ago.

During the reception we got to see the most amazing sunset. Dark brooding clouds had moved in, threatening rain. They made for a pretty awesome sunset, which turned all those clouds red and orange for a short time.

After the sunset we had quite the lightning storm! Vancouver, like Portland, rarely gets thunder and lightning. We were all pretty wowed by the show. The Celebration of Light fireworks were going on that night. We didn’t see it, but it must have been quite the show with both lightning AND fireworks! You can see a few photos here and here.

BC Trip Day 7

[Click any picture to see it bigger and better on flickr. See all photos from the trip here.]

Friday morning we headed to one of my favorite places in Vancouver: Grounds for Coffee. They claim to have the best cinnamon rolls in the world, and since I’ve never tasted better cinnamon rolls anywhere else, I’m inclined to believe them! The place was busy and stuffy, so we got our cinnamon rolls to go and ate them at a small park by the beach. Oh the sticky gooey goodness!

We checked our e-mail at the Kitsilano branch library while Greg’s laundry was going at the laundromat. Then we took a little tour of the Kits Beach and Vanier Park area with some multi-stage geocaches. It was a beautiful morning to be out on the beach! I had the hairbrained idea to go Granville Island for lunch, but there was no parking to be found there. Just lots of cars and people. So we continued on to our next destination: Stanley Park. We parked just inside the park and then walked to Denman Street for lunch, followed up by gelato. Greg had a scoop of black sesame and a scoop of green tea. He has weird taste in gelato.

We spent the afternoon seeing Stanley Park and finding geocaches there. I love this park. It has some beautiful trees (unfortunately, many of them blew down in a windstorm a few years ago), walking trails, museums and cultural sites, and the fantastic seawall that goes around the whole perimeter of the park. I’ve never biked it, but it’s a great place to walk and see some great views.

One of our stops was at Prospect Point. While there, we saw a raccoon. Stanley Park has lots of raccoons and people stupidly treat them like pets. For lots of reasons, the park staff don’t want people petting or feeding the raccoons. So I was surprised at the lack of signs stating this fact. This particular raccoon didn’t get any handouts this time.

However, a short while later when I was taking pictures, I happened to glance across the parking lot and saw a huddle of people all focused on the ground. Another raccoon (or maybe it was the same one) was getting handouts. Oh dear.

After dinner at Nat’s Pizza (best pizza in Vancouver!), we toured the West End via a series of geocaches there. One of the things I love about geocaching is the cool places it takes you to, places you would never go otherwise. We saw Barclay Heritage Square and the very cool Mole Hill Community, a neat community revitalization project. We also visited a cool fountain that you could walk through via stepping stones. It was surrounded by lovely summer flowers.

We returned to Stanley Park for sunset. The Lion’s Gate Bridge looked cool silhouetted against the orange sky.

And we saw a fantastic sunset from Prospect Point.

BC Trip Day 6 – Vancouver

[Click any picture to see it bigger and better on flickr. See all photos from the trip here.]

We ate breakfast at our B&B, but it was a pretty pathetic meal. We were offered meat and eggs. Although I’m not a full vegetarian, I almost never eat meat anymore, and I’ve never liked eggs. Greg wasn’t up for either of those things either so we ate cereal and fruit. The last time we stayed at a B&B, we had an English muffin with our choice of honey or jam, along with fresh fruit, and a few other things. I much prefer that kind of breakfast. Oh well, Vancouver has lots of great breakfast options that we would partake of in the days to come.

We rode the bus downtown to see the Vancouver Public Library. I’ve been there many times and even did a two-week practicum there when I was in grad school. It’s a pretty cool-looking building. We checked our e-mail before heading out. Our next stop was Gastown where we just had to stop and see the steam clock go off!

We stopped at a dim sum place in Chinatown for lunch. I’d never had dim sum and was game to try it. Um yeah, so I’m not such a fan, it turns out. After lunch we visited Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Park. We didn’t go inside the neighboring Chinese Garden, but we explored the lovely park outside. What a delightful place!

We hopped a bus to Granville Island. The place can be a bit overrun with tourists, especially in the summer, but it is undeniably cool. I finally got myself a late lunch of pizza and then we wandered around the public market. We got a cup of fresh blueberries, which lasted all of five minutes. Mmmmmm….. I picked up some day-old bagels from Siegel’s (such a deal!), got some delicious-looking cakes from one of the pastry places, and stocked up on some of the best tea I’ve ever had at Granville Island Tea Company. If we’d had a kitchen to cook in, we could have gotten so much more. There is an endless abundance of fantastic food at this market! We found some geocaches around the island and then had fish and chips for dinner at this little hole-in-the-wall place called Tony’s Fish and Oyster Cafe. Ooooh, yummy! Full and satisfied, we hopped the bus back to the B&B.

Later in the evening we drove down to Kits Beach and ate our desserts from the market while we watched the sunset. I do love me a good sunset. Vancouver has good ones, being on the coast and all. What a great way to end the day.

BC Trip Day 5 – From the mountains to the city

[Click any picture to see it bigger and better on flickr. See all photos from the trip here.]

Wednesday morning we packed up the campsite and got ready to leave. Before departing we headed down to a little spot at the edge of the campground called Coudre Point. It was a rocky beach where the Green River made a sharp 90-degree turn. It was a beautiful sunny morning and the river – full of glacial silt – lived up to its colorful name.

We did the short hike out to Nairn Falls. It’s not much to look at. The sound is more impressive than the sight. The rushing waters of the Green River shoot through this gap in the rock and then tumbles over a frothy drop.

We had planned to stop at Brandywine Falls on our drive back to Vancouver, but road construction kept us from doing so. Dang it. We tried to stop at Brohm Lake for lunch, but the place was totally packed. We snagged the only parking spot available, but we couldn’t find anyplace to have our picnic lunch, so we continued down the road to Alice Lake. It was packed there too, but there was a lot more land for people to spread out. BC Parks is sneaky about the day use fee here. There are no signs at the entrance or along the access road about a day use fee. There aren’t even any signs in the parking lot. It’s not until you’ve parked, unloaded the car, and hauled your stuff down to the path to the lake that they say “oh hey, please pay at this machine and walk back to your car to put this ticket on your dash.” It was a minor inconvenience, all things considered, but I really would have appreciated a heads-up.

After a windy lunch at Alice Lake where the screams of hundreds of swimming and playing children provided the soundtrack for the afternoon, we stopped at Shannon Falls just outside Squamish. I’ve been here several times before. The water flow is pretty small this time of year, but it’s a huge waterfall and still looks impressive despite the low flow of summer.

We snuck into Vancouver just ahead of the afternoon rush hour, which was a huge relief. When I lived in Vancouver, there were many times I sat in the long lines of traffic waiting to get onto and across the Lion’s Gate Bridge on my home from a hike. The bridge only has three lanes and the middle lane switches direction depending on the time of day. In the afternoon there is more traffic going north out of town than going south into town, but there are still four lanes of traffic being funneled into one southbound lane and it creates long backups. I was glad to avoid all that.

We checked-in at our B&B and took showers. Oh boy, post-camping showers feel so good! We headed down the hill to Broadway to grab some dinner, then went back to the B&B to chill out for a few hours before the fireworks. Greg had twisted his ankle on the Joffre Lakes trail a few days before, so we took the bus for the short ride down to Kits Beach. We staked out a spot on the grass and watched the evening light SLOWLY fade. Summer evenings in Vancouver are utterly fantastic. This far north, the days are long and the evening light lingers for a long time. Another advantage of being this far north is that the weather is pretty mild. “Hot” in Vancouver is a lot more tolerable than “hot” in Portland.

I’ve loved the Celebration of Light fireworks ever since I first saw them in the summer of 2004. Every summer there are several different countries that compete. They each produce a 25-minute fireworks show that is synchronized with – not accompanied by – music. The distinction is important because the timing of the fireworks and the music actually match up. It’s all computerized, and when it’s done well it is very very cool. The music on this night was the soundtrack from the Wizard of Oz, which worked so-so for this. It was still great to watch them with my sweetie on that beautiful evening!