Nice knowing you

My roommate moved out today. She and her boyfriend got an apartment together. She and I have been roommates for a year and eight months. When you factor in the previous roommate and my stint living with Mom and Dad, I haven’t lived alone since leaving Vancouver, BC more than three years ago. I was particularly fond of my roommate’s black lab, Besa, possibly the sweetest and most loving dog ever. Although it will be kind of nice to have a whole apartment to myself, I sure will miss that friendly happy dog.

Greeting cards

Yesterday at work someone asked me if we sold greeting cards. I stared at her blankly for a moment as I processed this totally unexpected request before telling her that we did not. I don’t know why she thought we we’d sell such a thing, but I guess that this is not as unreasonable an assumption as that of the guy who wanted to know if we sold printer cartridges.

Conversely, a different woman prefaced her question with “This is going to sound a little strange” and the proceeded to tell me that she was looking for a book whose title and author she could not remember. I kind of laughed and said that wasn’t strange at all, that we got questions like that on a daily basis. She was genuinely surprised to learn this. In any case her description of a book that was loosely based on the life of Laura Bush and had a woman in a wedding dress on the cover was enough for me to know that she was talking about American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld. I put her on the hold list and she was on her way, surprised at getting such a quick and correct answer to her question. If only they were all that easy.

Vacation planning

At my work, we turn in vacation requests on a quarterly basis. The deadline for the April-May-June quarter will be coming up in a few weeks, so I’m already thinking about my summer vacations, even though they’ll probably happen in July or August, not June. Vacation planning is a great activity for these cold January days. I dream of the long warm sunny days of summer, and all the camping, hiking, backpacking we’ll do. Oh I can’t wait!

I have so many ideas for this summer that it’s going to be hard to narrow it down. There’s a good chance we might go back to the Wallowa Mountains in NE Oregon again. But we also both want to go to Yosemite at some point. There’s also Rainier and North Cascades in Washington, although Washington has gotten more of a pounding from winter storms than we have. The various forest road and trail damages that will be revealed after the winter snows melt will be horrific, I’m sure. I want to squeeze in a trip to Vancouver this summer. I didn’t make it up there last year and that made me sad. Ideally, I’d like to be there for a fireworks weekend (yay for Celebration of Light!), bum around Vancouver for a day or two, see friends, then head up to Whistler or over to Manning Park and play in the beautiful British Columbia wilderness.

Sigh. So many places to go, so much to see, and not nearly enough vacation time.

San Francisco

Greg and I went to San Francisco for four nights last weekend. What a fun trip! I had never really spent any time there and now that I have I think it’s a neat city. We’re already looking forward to going back and exploring more, especially some of the nearby hiking (of course!).

Disciplinarian

Part of being a librarian in a public library is disciplining other people’s kids. Sad to say, but true. Many parents who bring their kids to the library are responsible and make sure their kids aren’t being disruptive and destructive. Others are shockingly oblivious. Or they just don’t care. Since I don’t work on the kids desk, I don’t have to deal with kids too much, but today I had to deal with two different behavioral incidents that are very typical at my library (and many others, I suspect). I don’t blame the kids in these situations. They’re just being kids. I blame the parents. Kids need to be taught right and wrong and that’s technically the parents’ job.

This morning I was on the reference desk when I heard some kids in the lobby screaming and banging on the handicapped door buttons. I heard some adults talking in the lobby and I thought they were the parents, but since the screaming and banging continued I went out and checked. The moms were standing there talking to each other doing absolutely nothing as their kids continued to scream and bang. I told the kids to stop or they’d break the buttons. One mom gave me a look that I couldn’t quite interpret. Not hostile, but not friendly or apologetic either. Just doing my job, lady. I’m sorry to see that YOU are not doing YOUR job as a parent by keeping your children from destroying public property. Those buttons are for handicapped people to use. They are not a toy and they can and do break.

This afternoon I heard a kid banging on a keyboard outside my office. I gave the parent a few moments to intervene, but it was clear that wasn’t going to happen. So I went up to the kid and gently told him that the keyboard was not a toy and to please be careful. As I walked back into my office, I heard the mother gently telling her son to not play on the computer. Why did it take my intervention for her to step up and do her job?

End-of-year meme

A few days late, here is an end-of-the-year meme I found somewhere.

1. What did you do this year that you’d never done before? Hmmm….I’m sure there’s something, but nothing is coming to mind.
2. Did anyone close to you give birth? Heck yeah! Three of my girlfriends had babies this summer, plus several library friends had babies too.
3. Did anyone close to you die?  Thankfully, no.
4. What places did you visit?  My big trips were visiting Olympic National Park in Washington and the Eagle Cap Wilderness in NE Oregon. Both exquisitely beautiful places!
5. What would you like to have in the next year that you lacked this year? Fitness!
6. What date from this year will remain etched upon your memory?  November 1, the day that Greg and I celebrated being together for a whole year.
7. What was your biggest achievement of the year?  Becoming a Mac convert! Actually, I was already convinced the year before that I was going to switch to a Mac, but this year I took the leap and bought one and I’m so happy that I did!
8. What was your biggest failure?  Nothing comes to mind.
9. What was your biggest surprise?  Again, nothing comes to mind.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?  Yes, both. At the same time. I had a stress fracture in my foot and came down with mono.
11. What was the best thing you bought?  I really tried to curb my spending in 2008. I have a lot of credit card debt that I’m trying to pay down.
12. Where did most of your money go?  Rent.
13. What did you get really, really, really excited about?  Being able to hike again after my broken foot kept me laid-up for two whole months!
14. Compared to this time last year, are you: Happier or sadder? I’m about the same. This time last year I was pretty euphoric about the new job and the new boy, but I wouldn’t say that I’m “sadder” just because I don’t have exciting new things to be thrilled about at the moment. Thinner or fatter? Fatter, sigh. Richer or poorer? Both. I’m making a lot more money than I did in 2007, but a huge chunk of it is going to pay the bills, so I don’t feel like I had a lot more spending money than I did the year before.
15. What do you wish you’d done more of?  Hiking. I did a lot, all things considered, but the bad spring weather, my foot, and my job kept me from spending as much time outside as I would have liked.
16. What do you wish you’d done less of?  Working. I didn’t work overtime or anything like that, but I still wish I spent more time playing and less time working.
17. How did you spend Christmas? Actual Christmas Day was spent with my parents, just the three of us. There was still far too much snow on the ground to have the big family thing on Christmas Day, so we waited and did it a few days later.
18. Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?  Greg. Living so far apart, we spent a lot of time e-mailing and calling each other, plus sending lots of text messages.
19. What was your favorite TV program?  You know, I don’t watch much TV anymore. I stopped watching TV when I was working on-call so much in 2007. I worked a lot of evenings and it was too difficult to keep up with my programs, so I just stopped. And I found that I actually didn’t miss TV that much so I never went back when my work schedule became regular. If I do sit down and watch something, I always hope to catch an episode of “Animal Cops” or “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”
20. What was the best book(s) you read?  Oh man, I read so many books last year. One that comes to mind is Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World. It’s a great story about a library cat in Iowa. Being a librarian and a cat-lover, I loved this book!
    
21. What was your greatest musical discovery? Pandora. I had known about Pandora before, but this year I really started playing with it and I LOVE it! I’ve discovered tons of great new music.
22. What did you want and get?  I already mentioned my Mac, but I also got a Kitchen Aid stand mixer for Christmas, which will make baking SO much easier!
23. What did you want and not get?  More photography equipment! I’m saving my pennies….
24. What were your favorite films of this year? I loved Wall-E. What a great Pixar movie!  Tell No One is a French film that came out in 2006, but it didn’t show up in theaters here until this year. EXCELLENT MOVIE.
25. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?  I turned 29. Greg took me to Manzanita (at the Oregon Coast) for a long weekend. It was lovely! My birthday is in January, so I’m now just a few weeks away from turning 30!
26. How would you describe your personal fashion concept this year?  Ha ha ha ha! I don’t have a “fashion concept.” I go to Macy’s, look for clothes that I think are cute, and buy them. I do seem to have an addiction to skirts, though. I almost never wear pants anymore.
27. What kept you sane?  The calming and loving words and advice I received from both Deborah and Greg. I would be nothing without those two.
28. What political issue stirred you the most?  Well, the election, of course.
29. Who did you miss?  My sister. In November Deborah moved to South Africa for a whole year.
30. What do you hope the next year brings?  Well, I already know the thing that I really hope for isn’t going to happen, so I just hope for health and happiness for myself, my friends, and family.