Computer Troubles

Well the Unthinkable has occurred and Lappy has gone to computer heaven. I'm hoping the guys at the local PuterHospital can bring him back from the brink with some overly dramatic shouting of "CLEAR!" followed by some healing jolts of electricity to his poor little sockets, but until then I'll be a bit incommunicado a la the blogging and emailing.

The troubles couldn't have occurred at a worse, time, really, as Lappy has been bravely and steadfastly storing for me all my good deeds and sterling words regarding my brilliant career, and I now have a job application to write without any of said work history in written form. So I'll be starting pretty much from scratch - having managed to retrieve an old CV from my sent emails I'm at least partly there - in order to do my best to obtain an awesome job in Australia's Faux Capital (no offence to Melbourne, or indeed Canberra, but I'm yet to meet someone who hasn't been to Australia who is aware of any city other than Sydney).

So depending on how this job application goes, and if they are indeed willing to wait for me to return to the sun soaked shores of Oz in August, I may be Sydney-bound, and sooner than expected. But as my work visa is fast running out here it is likely that after a bit of travel to my have-have-have-have-have-have-have-have-have-have-have-have-have-have-have to destinations (cut down from my have-have-have-have-have to list of 20 to a list of about 5) I will be coming back to Oz in the next few months regardless. With or *hiccup* without Lappy. May the computer angels lull him gently to sleep every night to erase the pain of his tragic illness and sudden death.

Librarian (sadly and reluctantly because I'm being charged by the minute here) out.

Sooo exhausted, must sleep...

BIG weekend. All girl dates, all the time. Something about being sick for weeks makes people keen to see you - not to mention the amazing weather has chased me out of the house into the glorious, glorious sunshine. It's possible I overdid it, though not so much with the sunshine. You be the judge.

So Friday was drinks with my flatmates at my favourite cocktail bar, (2-for-1 happy hour - for three hours!), followed by chips & Magners at a local pub, followed by crazy dancing till 2am at the nearest bar/club to home. I was so *ahem* happy by that stage that I forgot why I stopped dancing years ago: I'm a decrepit old lady whose body can't keep up with her groove thang. My neck is now so stiff I can barely move it, my hip hurts and my thighs are killing me. Oh for my zimmer frame! Thank goodness I was wearing my Sketchers for dress down day, or I'd have destroyed my feet as well. Fell into bed without even considering the possibility of turning the computer on to blog. Thank the alcohol fairy for that one!

Saturday was all girl dates, all the time. The Kylie exhibition - totally tarted up for London compared to the Brisbane showing, with costumes from the latest tour, a massive room playing footage of one of the Homecoming concerts, a recreation of her dressing room (the woman likes her teddy bears, something I can totally respect), and the biggest skirt in the existence of the world - with Irish Librarian. Followed by a girl's night out at this over the top restaurant in Covent Garden - terrible service (being a tourist trap with little repeat service I suppose) but amazing decor and the mains and ice cream are great. Stay away from the "chocolate cake", it's actually mousse and makes Tesco's Finest look gourmet. I was ready for bed by the time dessert was finished, but as one of the girl's was in town just for the weekend we needed to paint it a suitably rockin' colour. The lack of bars open past 11pm in the area led us to a dodge-a-rama club where Irish Librarian and I amused ourselves watching people dance, played "I found you a boyfriend" to great amusement, and discussed ad nauseum every funny thing Chandler has ever done or said. It was GRAND.

Sunday was as much of a sleep-in as possible, followed by the heart-attack-a-special. Breakfast is the best meal of the day, I should really eat it more often. Some American Idol to fill in the karaoke void in my life - all I can say is thank Simon the tone-deaf one is finally gone! Coffee with another girl friend for a catch-up at the best Aussie-esque cafe in London. Mmm, coffee. From there to the local Library for travel books, then to the grocery store to fulfil my new month's resolution of buying and preparing food in a frugal and healthy manner - otherwise entitled Ready Meals Are Bad, M'kay? My next activity was also related to working towards my resolution to Not Be A Porker at My Best Friend's Wedding. Apart from cutting down on the Not Really That Good For You But You'll Believe Anything With A Tick Next To It meals, I also plan to occasionally exercise more than my typing fingers. To that end, I called my physio to see if I could take her dog out for a walk. She was out gallivanting, but her husband offered me £5 to lose the pooch on our walk. I declined and he upped the offer to £10. He was happy for me to take her out for a walk, but less happy when I brought her back an hour later! Once the sun set at 6.30pm (so late! so glorious!) I turned my attention to the preparation and cooking of the food for the week, cleaned my room and did some washing and then determined to be asleep by 11pm. Foiled by the lure of the blog again.

Librarian Out.

Four Things you may not have known about me....

Another one of those emails that I'd prefer to answer on my blog than send to everyone. Plus it means I don't have to think of a new topic today. Yay laziness!

Four jobs I have had in my life:
Bed seller
Christmas Caroller
Myer chick
Librarian (you would hope so!)

Four films I would do watch over and over:
Space Balls
Dirty Dancing
When Harry Met Sally The Notebook
Pirates of Penzance (Broadway stage version on video, with Kevin Kline as The Pirate King. It's classic.)

Four places I have lived:
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Kenora, Ontario, Canada
London, England, UK
That's it, actually.
Oh no,wait, as a baby I lived in Bath, England. Wonder why that slipped my mind...

4 television programmes I watch:
Only four? Seriously? How am I sposed to pick? Okay, fine, I'll be controversial
Friends - it's on ALL THE TIME here. No such thing as a "on a break" for E4!
Studio 60 - Chandler + Josh = I heart talk'n'walk 4EVA.
South Park - only gets better the wronger it gets. Speaking of wrong, Little Britain.
And when I was sick with flu I got a hankering for the Aussie coast-line and became addicted to Home & Away. Don't judge me until you've walked a mile in the grey grey winter.

[ABC Kids isn't a TV programme Cath! Isn't it just the programming slot/division/whatever?]

Four places I have visited on holiday:
Start spreading the news... yeah baby. You know it. It's... Vancouver.
Oh, and New York.
French Alps. WORST. HOLIDAY. EVER.
Noosa. BEST. HOLIDAYS. EVER.

Four of my favourite foods:
Only four? First TV, now food? Is this Anorexics Dust-time or something?
Fresh white bread. Mmmmm. Yeasty goodness.
Chips. Lots and lots of Chips.
Dark dark chocolate. With bits in it.
Lasagne...
Can't stop, must go on... Roast lamb. Chicken pesto pasta and chicken pesto pizza with goat's cheese from ASK. Falafel and hummos. Salmon and cucumber sandwiches. Sue Kermeen's One Bowl Chocolate Cake. M&S carmelised onion and goats cheese tarts. Bacon, with CARBS CARBS CARBS.

Four places I would rather be right now:
On holiday. Getting paid to do nothing. Bliss.
Having a never ending massage.
Somewhere sunny but not too hot. So this time of year... Maleny.
Next to a bottle of wine. Okay, you can open it. But I'll just have ten.

Four of you I think will respond
I refuse to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate my friends as regards their lack of interest in my blog. So that limits it to... Kate, Paul... THE REST OF YOU ARE BAD BAD FRIENDS. Not that you can hear me, seeing as you don't read my blog!

Four things that make me smile
Babies. Yes, I'm clucky. You wanna make something of it, punk?
Puppies. They keep the cluckiness at bay. And they're SO CUTE!!!
See entry: girl dates.
I wish I could think of something that would make me seem deep, but I can't even make that up. So I'm gonna go with: Chandler. He cracks me up. Even when he's not Chandler.

My four greatest regrets
That my metabolism doesn't allow me to eat all of the above and stay a size 10.
That it's hard to walk quickly in heels and not look like you're about to tip over.
That they don't make boots/coats/men like they used to.
Handing the razor to Britney.

Librarian out.

Celebrity Love Letters Day!

I was madly in love with Alan Alda when I was a tween and then teen. I used to tape M*A*S*H reruns every night at 6'o'clock on Channel Ten. I ended up with an entire box filled with videos, painstakingly marked in my teenie handwriting (MOSTLY UPPeRCaSe WiTH aLL LeTTeRS oF THe SaMe HeiGHT, UNLiKe THiS DeMONSTRaTiON) with the name of each episode, with little M*A*S*H asterisks between them. I kid you not, I was a librarian in the making, albeit one who was only interested in collecting the Alan*Alda*Show in a pristine ad-free condition. (You should have seen how good I got with predicting when the ad-break would end. Three-Two-One, unpause.) As far as I was (and am still) concerned, he only got better with age. From black to salt and pepper to white, that's an impressive mop at any age.

Sadly, as many fan letters as I began to pen to Mr Alda, I never actually sent - or even finished - one. I always vaguely regretted not fully capturing the intensity of my pre-teen crush on, let's face it, Hawkeye Pierce. I was strongly convinced (and am still not entirely unconvinced) that he helped save my life. Without the laughter I found every night at six, a very difficult period in my life may have become unbearable. That's what I would have said in my letter. Mind you, I probably would have also gone on about his lanky grace, his surprisingly good singing voice, his knobbly nose... *ahem*

That's why I was so charmed to find this post on one of my dailies. A sweet Swedish boy (or someone breaking English in order to appear as a sweet Swedish boy) has written a love letter to Drew Barrymore. While I can't boast to have seen 16 filmen as you with in the filmen nor am I the proud owner of 10 off the filmen have I DVD-filmen, I have admired Drew since I owned a record of her telling the story of E.T.

I screamed! Then the goblin screamed!! I'm a good screamer.

In fact, I bet there are a lot of people out there who never put into the world their Celebrity Love, or at least admiration, due to embarassment, laziness, lack of stamps (a problem I often struggle with) - whatever! But you're an adult now - get over that ridiculous embarassment, turn from laziness to solid procrastination, eschew the stamps, they're a thing of the previous millennium anyway! I encourage you to write that fan/love letter that you never did as an angst-filled tween/teen/fully grown obsessive. Write it today! Post it on your blog, or write it on a piece of paper and burn it (especially if Luke Perry's character in Jeremiah is the reason for your aDORiNG PeNMaNSHiP. In which case, you might want to investigate professional therapy, there's nothing I can do for you.) You can even send it to me and I'll post it (on my blog, not to the celebrity - what do you take me for?) for you.

So get writing. In the meantime, I'm going to see if my local video store (DVD store just sounds wrong) has Everyone Says I Love You, to get my Alan-and-Drew, Together-At-Last fix, which has the added bonus of being a musical riot for the whole family! And yes, Paul, there is a little something in it for you too.

Librarian Out.

Not a Tourist Follow-Up

Was just reading over a previous (and somewhat ancient) post because I linked to it in my latest mammoth effort of verbosity - yes that's right it's called insomnia - and had the brilliant idea of finding the ad with Ron Moss as The Man From Snowy River on You Tube. For some reason there's an alternative version with "I know" at the end, which totally blows compared to the original and the best, "Bloody Oath", but luckily I managed to find the dinkum-di-true-blue-gen-u-ine-article.

Enjoy if you haven't before. And if you have, enjoy again. And drink some orange juice. It's good for you.

Librarian Out. Again.

girl dates

I've been thinking about how important female friends are lately, pretty much since my best friend left the country last week. Now I don't know how much this will apply to any male readers I may have (i.e. my brother, if he ever bothers to check whether I'm posting), except perhaps in a voyeuristic kind of fashion (again, my brother. Sick bastard that he is), but I'm going to talk briefly (if I am indeed capable of that, which is highly unlikely, and there's NO WAY I'll manage it without parentheses* or having imaginary conversations**) about girl dates.


The great thing about girl dates - at least the kind I go on - is that they can involve pretty much anything. Dinner, movies, ice cream (well I think that's pretty much mandatory, or at least it should be), museums, brunch, coffee, book shopping, live music, shoe shopping...

Okay, that's pretty much mandatory too, even if there are no shoe shops around or the shops are closed. There's always window shopping or my personal favourite, pointing out other girl's shoes.

*just loud enough for her to overhear*Oh-my-God they're SOO cute - look at how they go with her coat! I wonder where she got them? Would it be rude to ask?

*whispered urgently*Oh-my-God check out Skanky-McGrandma over there! Orthopodic toe cleavage is just too much. Promise me you'll shoot me if I ever wear anything half as Irene as that!

Of course you immediately switch into Teen-Speak (i.e. a pseudo-American accent) whenever you discuss random people's footwear.

My favourite girl date friend at present, a fellow librarian and super sexy Irish babe to boot, is, I think, an old hat at girl dates. She's the person who introduced me to the term, though I've actually been having them since I was quite young.

My best friend and I used to go steady when we were preteens, teens, and even into our early twenties - we had our regular Saturday day date Saturday nights were reserved for sleepovers, either of the innocent hair competition variety when we were young, or the not-so-innocent boyfriend variety when we were a bit less young every week if I recall correctly, probably for close to ten years, possibly longer. Certainly it got less set in stone as new commitments - study, new girl date friends, possibly even boyfriends - came on the scene, but we kept up that tradition for a very long time, and I remember it clearly starting in about grade five, it might have been six, when we were allowed finally!! After being treated like children for so long!!! to go to the shopping centre by ourselves.

Oh the fun we had! The hot chips we ate! The vinegar that got SQUIRTED ALL OVER MY FAVOURITE OVERSIZED BLUE yes there was a time when I didn't think blue was the colour of blah itself T-SHIRT!!! The oversized tacky matching-but-opposite black and white speckled geometric earrings we bought from that stand that now rotates as a shoe sale or calendar stall depending on the time of year! Yes Sherlock it WAS the 80s, though the very end, and most of our girl dating years were in the 90s so lots of hair bands gave way to big fringes gave way to that most hideous of crimes the undercut (though neither of us ever got one a short-term-girl-date stand-in got one to supplement her eating disorder... little wonder that budding relationship didn't last), gave way Brenda Bangs (or really a Brenda fringe in our language, but I just can't pass up good bad alliteration) to the Claudia Schiffer bed head look gave way to... um I don't actually know, I think I got less keen on looking like everyone else around that time.

Anyhoo, my best mate and I have always been most into shopping for our girl dates. Something I noticed recently is that she sometimes seems to react to situations that involve having both sexes involved - brunch with the group of friends who have just been to dinner and drinks the night before, will probably be going to have a beer in the pub later on together - by suddenly ducking into a shop with a quick I'll catch up with you guys in a bit, okay? Hey, TravellingLibrarian, come with me for a sec and suddenly we're back in the girl date zone, pointing out shoes or tops or even DVDs that would suit the other but would totally not work on me, so you should try it on! No seriously! It's not my colour and I could never pull off something with that small a waist, I'll take the boob top you're holding onto coz sweetie, much as I love you we both know there's no way you'll be filling that up anytime soon. Maybe when you're preggers, but... hang on, is there something I should know?

See, one of the great things about girl dates is the freedom they provide - that is, the freedom from men - to talk about absolutely anything. The great thing about platonic girl dates - you had figured out I meant platonic by now hadn't you? Coz if not, seriously get a grip a hold control of yourself there buddy - is that they're like a return to childhood, of sorts. Where you talked about everything you could think of - sure, at a certain point that was mostly reserved to clothes, boys, Christian Slater, 90210, and how one day hair dancing would take over the world okay maybe that was just me. But as we grow older we talk about more weighty issues. Fashion, slightly older boys, Johnny Depp, Desperate Housewives... and career choices, whether we will buy a house or more likely unit on our own, or contemplate having children on our own. Whether we'll adopt if we manage not to conceive, or even if we can conceive because we believe in giving children a loving family, no matter what their genetics. What we believe in, what we're afraid of, what we want from and what we want to give back to the world. What we'd give up for love. Things that I wouldn't think of discussing in a public forum so you'll just have to use your imagination or your experience, coz if you're still reading this I'm guessing you're a girl who has girl dates too.

Since sleepovers are now reserved for boys, a lot of the time we spend socialising is in mixed company, and we do a different kind of growth in those environments, and within those relationships. The growth we experience by talking with our girlfriends - and the fun we have too of course! - is one of the most important things, I think anyway, about being a grown-up girl, or as some people like to refer to us as, women.

So when a friendship like that changes, either by distance, a disagreement, someone getting married or becoming a mum, or by the natural growing apart that occurs in many relationships while others of course make up for that loss by becoming closer, it can make you feel like your world is slowly crumbling, or at least like there are some serious cracks that aren't going to be easily or at least not in the long term filled by pretty, shiny shoes. And by a return to childhood I don't mean a return to immaturity. I mean a return to the kind of growth we experienced in our childhood - or maybe more accurately in adolescence.

That quick, intense growth spurt that was insanely confusing, extremely hard and ultimately helped make us into the people we are today, that energy is what I feel when I'm with a close - or becoming close to a new - female friend, on a girl date. But the great thing about having girl dates as a grown up is that you can use that energy - channel it even, to make this post sound even more Oprah-esque - into more than finding the perfect pair of boots as important and futile a search as that is. You can use it to help make yourself the perfect you.

I totally didn't start writing this post thinking it would go here, but now it has it's led naturally to me thanking the women who have helped make me who I am today. Being a travelling librarian is not actually about travelling, or the traditional kind of travelling, as in seeing different places, for me. As I've mentioned before, I'm not a very good tourist. Being a travelling librarian is about never giving up on the search, never giving up on the joy, never giving up on the curiosity about who I am becoming. Who is this person TravellingLibrarian, and how can I make her more of herself? Whether that's through experiencing different cultures or fitting more comfortably into my own culture, through seeing the beauty of the natural world, or the beauty of man-made things... however or through whatever means feel right to me at the time, so that when the light bulb inside me is ready to be switched on, I've got enough power inside to keep it shining for a very long time.

Thank you to all my female friends, those I have loved, do love, and will love in the future. You help to make me who I am. And if one of you doesn't introduce me to my perfect man at a dinner party someday, I'll have to figure out how to find that switch myself. But I imagine I'll need a lot of girl dates in order to figure out how.

Librarian Out.

*I replaced all of my parentheses with pink text. Much less confusing.

**Except when the pink text is in italics. Then it stands for speech.

Well, I can't have a readership who can't think on their feet now can I? I love breaking grammar, but in a fun pseudo-intellectual and definitely sleep-deprived kind of way. And only because I respect is so much.

Pink Librarian Out.

Book Recommendations

A friend of mine has just started reading, after years of deeming it too boring. Turns out she just needed some good recommendations. I was on IM to the most uber librarian I know, and said "guess what book got her started?" She knew straight away of course - it was The Time Traveler's Wife, possibly the saddest and most beautiful book ever written, which Uber Librarian actually introduced me to. I also recommended My Sister's Keeper to my newly bibliophilic friend, and she keeps asking for more recommendations.

Seeing as I read quite widely, but am not Nancy Pearl, I was a bit afraid of recommending stuff that may then turn her off reading - not my responsibility I know, but as book lover I feel a certain responsibility to not let anyone (especially the newbies) drop out of the fold. So imagine my delight when I got an email (from Library Link of the Day, which I'm really enjoying receiving, as a certifed Library Nerd) that linked to an article about LibraryThing.

Now I'm not likely to catalogue my books anytime soon - I am so not enough of a nerd for that right now (not to mention I don't have that many books here: I actually am having to recycle them due to the fact it's ridiculous to send books back to Australia - I'll keep the ones I really love of course, as I like to lend them out and one day want an entire room with bookshelves on all the walls, with big comfy couches in the middle and a really cute little puppy dog to accessorise it. Okay, fantasy over. And point taken, I am enough of a nerd.), but the suggestion search is awesome - well from my limited testing I thought it was really good, and I passed on the recommendations to my friend. Some of them were books I'd read but hadn't though to mention to her, so as well as suggesting new ones for her to try (and me!) it reminded me of others I'd loved.

As librarians can't know (or at least remember) everything - even though some people expect us to - it's really good to know about websites that can help give us the illusion of knowing more than we do. You're a fan of Zadie Smith? You'd probably like Monica Ali. But I'd stay away from books on Christian theology. (Okay so the unsuggester is a little weird. It seems like the database includes books from people who read fiction and those who read biblical and scientific texts, and the algorithm states that ne'er the twain shall meet. Which is probably completely true - I love fiction and am extremely unlikely to pick up either What Jesus Demands of the World or Against Method for a lazy Sunday afternoon, or in fact any time of the day read, and I'd be surprised if the owner of What Jesus Demands also owned The Red Tent. But if you need it suggested to you that you probably wouldn't like a book on programming in C, you may just need to go browse in a library or bookstore. Or try reading the introduction of that programming book and staying awake. I'm just saying.)

I think it would be a great idea for libraries to use a similar technology - having users of the local library share their book choices. After all, it's not just the books we buy but the books we read that are important. For example, I love Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, but I don't buy them because I know I won't reread them and I'm unlikely to lend them to someone. I think they're perfect for libraries, however, because they're light and fun and quick to read, and as a public librarian I'd make sure I had the whole series in my library. I'd still suggest them to someone, but probably only if they were asking for something light to read on holiday, which is how they were recommended to me. Of course a search that recommends books based on the type of reading you wanted to do is just making the whole thing more complicated... not to mention boring to read about on my supposedly new, improved and no longer verbose blog, so...

Librarian Out.

New focus

Okay, so the occasional extremely lengthy thing hasn't really been working for me. I'm going to try short and regular. Not much going on in my life at the moment - I've had the flu and am still laying low, not to mention Jess has left the country and everyone else is away this weekend - so all the more time for me to draw your attention to stuff on Teh Interweb.

First up, it turns out MicroGatesSoft is still evil, despite those amusing ads from Mac (the British ones are fewer but everything sounds better in an English accent, especially when the word humdinger is used). Speaking of Macs, I think I might purchase one once Lappy decides it's over between us. MicroGatesSoft not taking feedback in a positive way and all. As much as I love my computer I'm noticing some limitations with MS and think I may be quite influenced by that Mac advertising, after all. Not really a shock considering my advanced consumer abilities.

If you haven't yet heard this song and all the associated wackiness go download it NOW. Goose is the man, there's even a video clip. It's awesome, and the name Ray just regained some of the coolness it lost when associated with the Foxx's one-musical-removed lame performance in the Beyonce-Isn't-The-Best-At-Everything-All-The-Time Show. If someone can figure out how I can get that streaming thingy to play in my iPod (seems to work in iTunes so no idea why on Job's Green Earth it won't work on the NaomiPod) please let me know. I could do with some of that on the tube - yes you buddy get OUT of my personal space and may I SUGGEST you CONSIDER anti-perspirant?

Okay even short posts are time consuming.

Librarian out.