Woe is me

I am sick. When I get sick, I get pathetic. Really pathetic. All I have is a cold, but still, it sucks to be feeling crummy. I woke up with a heavy feeling in my chest Saturday morning, and I’ve been developing a big ol’ chest cold ever since. I slept ten hours Saturday night, and actually didn’t feel too bad yesterday. I even went to work. But I coughed all night last night, and didn’t get much rest. So my tiredness and my cold teamed up to thwart my snowshoeing day with Deborah today. I really needed an outing, so I’m pretty disappointed to be spending the day sitting around at home instead of frolicking in the pretty snow. Even worse, it appears that since my roommate wasn’t expecting me back until tonight (I spent last night at my parents’ house), the apartment is even more of a mess than it usually is. Urgh.

Sushi from Fred Meyer = gross

I had a double shift yesterday. 7 hours at one library, then 3 at another. I was gone from home for 12 hours. I didn’t feel like making a lunch and dinner to bring along, so I went to Fred Meyer to get these vegetable wraps with chicken that I like. But they didn’t have any! So I got some of their vegetarian sushi instead. Big mistake. DON’T GET SUSHI FROM FRED MEYER. It is not good stuff. Maybe if you’ve never had good sushi you’d like it. But I have had good sushi, and it was the very first time I ever had sushi, so now my standards will forever be high. I find it highly ironic that I lived in Vancouver, BC, city of sushi, and I never ventured to try any until two weeks before I moved away. The vegetarian stuff – I discovered during my first brave sushi taste-test – is actually quite good, and the place we went had really great stuff, and I’ve never had sushi that good since, though I’ve looked. Well, now I know where NOT to get it.

2010

We’re exactly three years away from the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. This week there has been a series of news stories on the local news about the event. How the construction is coming along, how much you can expect to pay, etc. When I visited UBC in February 2003, Vancouver had just been awarded the 2010 games. And after living there for two years and dealing with their traffic, I was glad I wasn’t going to be around in 2010.

Yet, there’s a small part of me that wants to go up there and see one or two events, probably figure skating. But when I think about how long I’ll sit in line at the border, how awful the traffic in town is going to be (it’s already pretty bad NOW), how expensive everything will be…. Would it really be worth it? I don’t know. It could be fun. This is my chance; the Olympics will never be this close to home again.

Hidden camera

Here is a hilarious video of people getting “mobbed” somewhere in Asia. It sounds like it’s from one of those hidden camera shows. Reminds me of the kind of stuff they do on the Canadian show, Just for Laughs Gags, which was the funniest damn thing in the world. I used to watch that show all the time, and my last few months in Canada I even taped a bunch to take home with me because I knew it didn’t air in the U.S. Man, I miss that show!

Accupuncture

I had my first accupuncture appointment at ITM today. It’s something I’ve considered trying for quite some time, and now I’m finally getting around to it. The whole needle thing gave me the creepies, which is why I’ve been dragging my feet. But I’m finally fed up enough with my pain problem that I decided to go for it. And it wasn’t bad at all. They told me that the needles aren’t at all like the ones used for shots. They said accupuncture needles are no bigger than a cat’s whisker. And they were right. They put needles in my feet, legs, wrists, and head, but I barely felt anything. I’m going to keep going back on a weekly basis, and we’ll see if this helps.

Inconvenient Truth

I finally saw An Inconvenient Truth tonight. It was educational and sobering. I see global warming articles in the newspaper several times a week now, and I can’t bring myself to read any of them in their entirety. They’re just too depressing. But I’m heartened to hear that so many people have seen the movie. An astonishing barometer of how much people around here want to see it is to look at the holds queue at the library. There are 221 holds on it in the Clackamas County library system, 308 in the Washington County system, and 660 in the Multnomah County system. Speaking from experience, usually only new Nora Roberts and John Grisham books get hold lists that long!

My favorite part of the movie was when Al Gore addressed the issue of how combating global warming would hurt the economy. He showed a graphic of scales with one side piled up with gold bricks and the other side containing Earth. Which do we care about more? Money?…..or the entire planet?

Oscar Countdown

Two weeks until the Academy Awards, and I still have a lot of movies to see! It is my goal to see as many of the nominated films as possible before the big night. I’m definitey seeing all the “best picture” nominees, and as many of the “best actor/actress” and “best supporting actor/actress” nominees as possible. I’m not even that much of a movie buff, but I do enjoy watching the awards, and I like to know what the heck they’re talking about, as well as root for my favorites.

Last night I saw Little Children, a movie about the sometimes astonishing immaturity of adults. The guy who plays the uber-creepy sex offender (Jackie Earle Haley) is nominated for best supporting actor, and he deserves to win. He plays the slimy pedophile quite convincingly. Kate Winslet is also nominated for best supporting actress. (For the record, the second-run Lake Twin Cinema where I went last night is a rip-off. $7.50 for a little theather with crappy seats and second-run movies is overpriced.)

For best actress, I’ve seen all the nominees except Notes on a Scandal. For best actor, I haven’t seen any of the five nominees. Better get cracking! As for best picture, I just have Letters From Iwo Jima left to see. I’m not big on war movies, so I’m sure my opinion that Little Miss Sunshine should win will not be changed after I see Iwo Jima. More updates on my movie-watching marathon in the weeks to come!

Man, what a tiny library!

Last night at work it was pretty slow. So while this one guy was sitting near the reference desk waiting for his daughters to return from the restroom, he asked me a few questions, the first one being, “Is there more to the library than just this?” He swept his hand across the expanse of the modestly-sized library.

I was already annoyed by this guy’s tone. “Yup. What you see is what you get. But they’re going to start renovating and expanding this spring, so the library will be more than double its current size.” Take THAT.

“Huh,” he said. “Yeah, this place is awfully small. Not like the downtown library. That place is big.” I couldn’t believe this guy. He was comparing Multnomah County’s big Central Library in downtown Portland to our little city library in a suburb of 25,000 people?

“Well, we’re going to be bigger in 2008 once construction is done,” was all I said.

“Are you doubling the number of books, too?” he asked.

“We’ll have a lot more shelf space for books than we do now,” I said.

“Are you expanding the science collection?” he asked.

“We’ll have more room for every part of the collection,” I pointed out.

“Well you need more science books,” he said a little peevishly. “You have more movies and fiction books than anything else.”

“That’s what people want. They’re our highest-circulating items.”

“Humph,” he said, though to read his attitude regarding this state of affairs, he might as well have said “What the hell is the world coming to?”