Truth be told, I'm not sure if I'll ever start blogging in the long form again. I might, though. I might at that...
But regardless of the future of this particular blog, I thought I'd direct you all to a brand new enterprise (of sorts) I'm starting up. It's a chronicle of the many adventures of Chobee and his friend Harry (the horse).
For now (until I figure out how to do all of this better), you'll need to click on the picture itself to get a larger (and readable) version.
This is something I'm doing occasionally in the evening when I have some spare time, and am sitting in front of the TV with nothing else to do. In short, I don't have any kind of an update schedule right now. This may change if I get more dedicated and all that.
Which, given the sorry state of this blog, would be somewhat...uncharacteristic of me.
You know those times when you've been growing your hair out for awhile? So that now it reaches about to your lower back? And undulates in sort of half-fraying curls? And you decide, sort of on a whim, but not really, that you're going to get your hair cut? Really, really short? In fact, shorter than any previous cut that you can remember? Except for maybe that time when you were five and your sister was playing with your Mom's scissors and basically cut your bangs completely off? And you go to get your hair cut with your Mom and find a style that's pretty short, and is pretty much what you're looking for, but you're not quite sure if it'll work with your decidedly less sculpted face? And you get the cut anyway?
And it all turns out to be one big horrible mistake, and you cry all the way home and for the rest of the day?
Yeah. Today is SO NOT one of those days. (Well, everything up to the 'horrible mistake' part is pretty much 100% true. But not after.)
I have a new haircut. And it's short. And I likes it. Sorry I couldn't seem to get a decent picture of it, but the above at least shows you that it's short. Which is what I wanted. Because, for some reason, the hippie look just wasn't working for me anymore. Time to get with the 21st century. And time to start looking my age.
And time, frankly, to feel just a little bit more awesome.
You may be disappointed, as some of you have come to expect from me (quite erroneously, I must insist) some pithy, witty writings based upon my life's times. (Not 'lifetimes.' That would be silly. I don't believe in reincarnation.)
However, peeps have been bugging me for ages (i.e. about the past hour) for a blog post.
Very well. I will provide sustenance for the masses, despite my writing deficiencies. I will pour sweet words upon your aching brows (sorry--just got an image of a medieval herbalist dumping alphabet soup over someone's forehead) and anoint the Balm of Blogging(TM) in your wounds.
You luckies, you.
So. Here I am, in Utah, hanging with my folks and my 18-year-old brother, who is soon to leave the nest (the same nest to which I have just returned) for a brighter, better life as a starving college student. (O, good luck, my bro.)
This will mean, of course, that I will be the only child left living at home. This will have been, I believe the third time (possibly the fourth? My memory of college is getting a little hazy--good GAS, I'm old) I have done so, and I have to imagine that my parents (in the privacy of their own room, of course) have started to realize and discuss just why Heathcliff Huxtable got so fed up with his own offspring.
Yes, I am in my parents' basement. Yes, I have no job. Yes, I do play video games. Yes, I am over 30.
Oh. My. Heavens. What have I become?!?
I must retire and weep.
But fear not, hope lieth on the horizon. Yea, it verily risetheth muchly bright morningish. Ly.
In short, I have a phone interview with a local library system on Tuesday. So, kindly keep your fingers crossed for me (but not if it means cutting off your circulation--seriously people, use some common sense!) so that at least I won't babble like a rabid monkey during said interview. Avoiding that would, I believe, raise my chances of getting hired. Slightly.
Righto. Now, I will leave you with a picture of a pig rooting in the mud. And that is all I will show you of my vacation to the Carolinas. Because I don't want to bore you. And pigs are kind of cute. In an ugly sort of way. Also, you cannot tell from the picture just how stinky this pigpen was.
First of all, my body did something totally disgusting this morning. It was gross. It was absolute yecha sicko icky. And, naturally, it was also sort of cool. And definitely a bit of a relief. (I've been waiting for it to happen for ages, but why now of all times? Could my ear have been sweating?) But it was still pretty dang gross.
So I'm not going to tell you what it was. You'll just have to imagine. Given the clues above. Um.
Yes.
But that wasn't the cool thing. That was the gross thing. This second thing was the cool thing.
Having a room full of this furniture would be a bit like living inside of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Except without the magic stuff. Which, I guess makes it marginally less awesome than it would be if the furniture were somehow infused with the ability to fly, or turn your best friend into an ottoman.
So, you know how I sometimes like to just embed a YouTube video rather than actually writing something myself?
Well...
I'm doing it again.
The lip movements aren't really synced so much, but it's from the 80s. And it takes place in a library. And there's a chimp wearing a Red Sox shirt. Is that enough awesomeness to make it all okay? Why, yes. Yes it is.
(P.S. Fair warning: There is one little swears. It's relatively mild, but it's there. Just so you know.)
Man. I just wrote most of a lengthy post that was meant to be all introspective and thought provoking... And I found that my heart just wasn't in it. So. No pontification today, people.
So sorry.
But here's the good bits that I rescued from said post (the good bits being the parts that weren't all full of philosophizing junk):
Guys, I had such a good day today.
I spent a great deal of it (probably too much) puzzling over the concepts in Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe, and some of it (probably not enough) puzzling over how I'm going to teach Elder D. Todd Christofferson's article: "Justification and Sanctification" (which, just so you know, is amazing and wonderful, even though it took me two read-throughs (the second time with heavy use of colored pencil) to even start to feel like I understood it) tomorrow in Relief Society.
Also, I went up to the church this afternoon to help out with the Relief Society booth at the open house we (the singles wards) hosted. There weren't a ton of people who showed up, but I did get to have some interesting conversations with folks. So, hurrah for that.
And...that's about it!
Also, I now have a picture of my sister and niece up on my computer as my desktop background. It's so gosh-darned adorable that I just kind of have to share:
Yeah. Her expression in this picture is possibly the best thing EVER. Love that googly-eyed look. (P.S. The sister holding the baby is NOT the mother of said baby. No, indeed. Although she (the sister, that is) does have two lovely children of her own. This baby belongs to another sister. A sister not in the picture. Yes. That sister. All clear? Good.)
I do it all the time. I'll be walking along, and then I'll think something, and then joke about it to myself, and then laugh, all internally.
I really am my own best friend!
Like today:
Ever since reading it at the elementary school library where I volunteer weekly, I've wanted to add The Shrinking of Treehorn to my Amazon wishlist, but kept forgetting. Like, every single blasted week. I'd come across it while shelving and think, "BLAST! There's The Shrinking of Treehorn. I still haven't added it to my wishlist." Then today, oh joy of joys, I remembered it, simply because I was looking up pictures by Edward Gorey (he was the illustrator for The Shrinking of Treehorn) to add to a presentation on the mystery genre.
So, I sent myself the following email:
To: LizardbreathMcGee@loveslibrarystuff.com From: LizardbreathMcGee@loveslibrarystuff.com Subject: Treehorn!
The Shrinking of Treehorn!
I REMEMBERED! I REMEMBERED!
This is, of course, a reference to the classic Sesame Street segment, "A loaf of bread." Which you can watch here, because I'm generous like that.
Yeah. So, the jokeness of this doesn't seem so funny now that I've written it all down. But at least you'll understand me if I sometimes murmur to myself, "A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter." That thing will be in my head for always. (Also, I love that you can find almost anything on YouTube.)
You. You people. You people are the coolest people ever.
And one of you in particular (although you ALL are cool, really) is particularly cool right now.
To that person, I heartily say, "Well, blow me timbers! Thar be The Good Ship Bookend in the flesh! Er, wood. In the wood. On me shelf! Arr. It be good to see her there."
Also, "Thankee."
Also, "Good grief! That's holy amazing that you found that thing and WOW!" But, I don't know how to put that into pirate speak. Maybe it would be something close to "Yaargh!" I'm not really sure.
Also (to all you readers) I'm so sorry I haven't been posting much. I've just been hecka busy with school (even now I'm thinking, "I'm sure there's something I should be doing. There's always something. What the heck is it?!?) and assorted mundanities, which both leaves me less time for blogging, and a mind that is less occupied with thinking up blog topics and more occupied with trying to figure out which books I should toss out (theoretically, of course) for my collection development assignment and what I can say for a booktalk and when I can squeeze in the readings for cataloging that I've been neglecting lately.
But, I must tell you, I saw this charming thing on the T this evening. I was riding up to Harvard Square to meet a classmate to finish up a group project. On the seats just in front of me sat a young man (twentysomething) and a woman who looked to be in her late forties or early fifties who was, I'm guessing, his mom. I noticed the young man, of course, because he was excessively good looking. But I also noticed that they seemed to be having this really charming conversation where they'd laugh, and he'd kind of lean in and intentionally bump shoulders (his right, her left) with her a couple of times. I love that whole bumping shoulders business. It's a way of showing affection without getting too out of control--of a desire for contact, brief and rather humorous. I like it a lot.
And I wish all of you were here right now so I could talk and laugh with you and bump shoulders. Just a little bit.
On Saturday, Stanley and I finally, finally, finally did something interesting. First of all, we got on the T to go to downtown Boston. Here's Stanley waiting impatiently at the T stop:
I'm not sure if it was because it was a holiday weekend, or because it was early-ish on Saturday morning, but the train was pretty darn empty. Stanley still seemed to be enjoying himself, though. (And I felt decidedly less embarrassed about taking pictures.)
We got off the Aquarium stop (which, unsurprisingly, comes out right by the New England Aquarium, which I have previously visited) and started a-wandering. We found this cool sculpture of frolicking dolphins, and Stanley wanted to climb aboard, so I obliged him.
You just can't get enough of cool frolicking dolphin sculptures.
Next, Stanley and I walked in back of a building (I think it might have been an apartment building? Or a hotel, maybe?) and found a lovely spot to sit and admire the harbor and also all the seagulls that flew up to us all of a sudden in apparent expectation of an outpouring of breadcrusts. (I almost got a picture of them, but they flew off again in disgust as soon as it became apparent that all I had to feed them was a flat boy made of paper and a shiny silver box that made irritating whirring noises.)
So, here's a shot of Stanley in front of Boston Harbor:
And another shot from the same location, facing a different direction:
And, just because I'm kind of silly, here's a video that pans around so you can get a sense of the view from there.
Ohyeah. And that wind? It made it all feel about 5 degrees or so. Wee bit chilly, I say.
Stanley and I got up then and kept meandering, where we found (if you can see it--it's a pretty bad picture) this building with an AH-mazing entrance: the Boston Harbor Hotel. (Which...Oh my. Hello, Fanciness.) Hm. Kind of funny, actually; as I was taking the picture, a couple of women were walking by, and I could see them making confused gestures from the corner of my eye. Suddenly, one of them laughed, and I heard her say something like, "Oh, it's Flat Stanley!" I turned and laughed and said, "Yeah." I've been amazed how many people know about Flat Stanley. He sure is one popular guy!
Here's a shot of some buildings downtown right by the Boston Harbor Hotel.
Stanley and I still weren't tired enough to stop exploring, and our noses hadn't yet become frostbitten, so we decided to keep going. We found this cool bridge:
(and here's a view to the side):
(and a look back from whence we came):
which led out to the Fan Pier. There's a long curving walkway that goes around this crazy-looking courthouse building. Along the way are plenty of benches and a good deal of thorny bushes that I'm pretty sure are roses (although I'll need to come back in the summer to make sure). All along are these gorgeous views of the harbor, like this one:
And this:
And here's another panorama video, in which Stanley becomes a serious camera-hog. (Yeesh, Stanley!)
We got really, really, really cold on the Fan Pier, so we walked a little bit further to the South Station T stop to get warm for a bit before heading out to see more stuff. Here's a picture of the South Station building (which is the station all south-bound commuter rail and Amtrak trains head out from):
We got off at Copley Square, which is one of my favorite places in Boston. First reason, it has the beautiful and impressive Trinity Church:
And the main, bigger, BIGGEST reason I love Copley Square, the Boston Public Library:
And here's Flat Stanley in the stacks:
As I was taking the above picture, a woman actually came up to me and talked about how her niece had sent her Flat Stanley to show around Boston, too! Crazy! She suggested that I check out an exhibit the library was doing of some bird's-eye-view drawings and photographs of Boston. So, I did. And Flat Stanley really enjoyed it! First, of course, we had to pass through the BPL's gorgeous courtyard:
Then, we found the exhibit. Here's Stanley hovering over an old view of Boston inlaid in the floor:
And here's Stanley with a more modern photograph of the city:
This picture shows how Boston has changed over time. As you can see, the land area just keeps growing and growing. Boston is like an enormous lichen! Or. Something. (You can tell by Stanley's expression that he thinks my jokes are lame.)
Then, because it was getting pretty close to my working time, we decided to head off to, well...work. On the way, we stopped and looked at the Museum of Fine Arts, just because it's a cool building and I wish we'd had time to visit it. But alas, 'twas not to be.
So that, my friends is the end of Stanley's adventures in Boston. (With me, at least. Apparently he's visited here before in other incarnations, and is, very likely, visiting it right now and will be visiting it again for a long, long time to come.)
I'll be sending Stanley back to my niece with an accounting of all our doings together.
If you read up on your Blogger Buzz, you fellow bloggers you, you may have already found out about this. But for those of you who haven't, or who aren't really bloggers, or who are bloggers but just aren't Blogger bloggers, I have provided the above link.
What I find really intriguing about this concept is that it provides a snapshot (literally) into the lives of numerous people. There's something appealing about the anonymity of it all, and although you could turn on the "show info" feature, (which gives you the user profile of the person who uploaded the pic as well as a snippet of the accompanying blog post), I almost prefer to watch the faces and scenes go by and wonder, who is that bald man with a goatee and why is he standing in a kitchen with a tub of salad? Who is that couple in their 50s wearing straw hats and sunscreen and smiling at the camera as though they're having the time of their lives? Why did someone take a picture of that shoe?
It just serves as a reminder that every day we connect tangentally with hundreds and potentially even thousands of individuals, each of whose lives are so absorbing and so intricate that it takes an entire person to live them. Seeing just tiny glimpses of these people (and the things they consider important enough to blog about) is suddenly making me fall in love with humanity all over again.
(And I really, really hope that you don't find any pictures of nekked people on there because I would just feel terribly guilty about it.)
Edit: I just saw the photo from this post being uploaded and--ohmygoodness. If I had had milk in my mouth it surely would have spewed out of my nose.
