NaNoWriMo

It's that time of year again, the time to hurry up and come up with an idea so I can procrastinate writing it so that I fail at the end of November yet again to win the NaNoWriMo challenge. Yeah, that's the spirit. I really do want to make a serious attempt this year. Last year was half-hearted and I think I stopped about a week into the month. This year I really want to do it, an, while I have several half-baked ideas, I really don't know what I will write. There's the story I started while I was in Okinawa and did quite a bit of character development on and actually wrote the first 10,000 words of before I realized I needed to rewrite it from a different character's perspective. My worry about using that one is that even though I will be starting the story from the beginning, I'm not sure it will be okay with the rules since I've started the story before. I hope to go to one of the events before November 1st in order to ask some of the others who have done this before if it's okay or I could always just email NaNoWriMo and ask them. Oh, and in case you plan on doing it too and want to be my buddy or if you just want to follow my eventually demise into a dark procrastination and flurry of nothingness, then look up my username on the NaNoWriMo site, caribot, which is the same as my Twitter account.

In effort to come up with a new idea to write about, I told my brain to start working on coming up with a new idea, so last night when I slept I had sooooo many dreams. Unfortunately, while a bit of the dreams were cute, they did not make any sense whatsoever, nor could I pull the semblance of a basic story from the mishmash. Oh, well, maybe tomorrow night.

Movietime: The Kids Are All Right

Joy had been wanting to see The Kids Are All Right since she first saw the trailer. We tried to go a couple of weeks ago but it was not showing anywhere at the usual theaters we go to. She stayed home from work today and I saw that it was showing at the Dunvale 30, so we decided to go. In case you haven't heard of it, this movie stars Annette Benning and Julianne Moore as a lesbian couple with two children. [SPOILER] The older child, at the prodding of the younger, contacts the sperm donor. Some awkwardness ensues as does a sexual relationship between the man and Julianne Moore's character. For about twenty minutes I sat there offended. Then I realized that this does indeed happen. And I just realized the opposite scenario has been in a very popular movie (that I regret to say I have yet to see). I am happy with the way things turn out in the end of the movie and think, overall, it was a good movie. I'm just really glad it ended the way it did and not with the guy getting the girl.

This also makes me wonder how this movie would score on the Bechdel test. I found a blog that rated movies based on the Bechdel test, but the last posting was in Janauary. I hope she continues to update it. (I also wish she would change the background from black to another color. I don't know about you but I have such a hard time reading pages like that.)

Digital Projects Practicum

I finished my practicum at Houston Public Library (HPL) and am now volunteering there while going to school full-time. I've worked on several projects there, but this postcard collection is the first thing to be completed and put online so far. I ended up only getting half-way finished with the practicum at UH. I'm glad I had the opportunity to experience both the public and academic library setting in Digital Projects. They both function a little differently, but I would imagine every place functions a little differently.

Classes started Thursday. I'm pretty excited about my management class, which I wasn't really excited about when I signed up for it, so that's a nice surprise. It also looks like I'll get to flesh out my latest BIG idea in that class for the class project. That's all I'm going to say about that for now.

Oh, and I got my first B so far in this program. It was an 89. I'm okay with it and the two-tenths of a point my GPA dropped. Mostly okay. I guess. sniff. But classes are back in session. It's A's from here on out!

New Plants

For my birthday my mom asked me what I wanted and I said houseplants. I'd been wanting houseplants since I heard a wonderful and astonishing presentation at the University of Houston by Interiorscapes of Houston. I found out that plants not only produce oxygen but that they also "scrub" the air clean. They actually reduce the amount of toxins in the air. You can read some of the information he gave us at this website.

For my birthday, my mom bought me four plants and four really nice pots and potting soil. I repotted them all and put one in each room. When Joy got home, she couldn't believe what a difference they made aesthetically. She was quite happy with them but said no more. A week later she dragged us out at midnight to buy more plants. She needed more plants. I was all for it but concerned about finding a place at midnight to get houseplants. She assured me she knew just the place.

Did you know there were 24-hour plant shops? In downtown? There are. Joy explained it's because of the hospitals. People apparently need to be able to buy plants at all hours. So there we were. At midnight. Buying more houseplants. There were two men working there. I'm guessing they were Greek or Turkish. They were very nice older gentlemen. One, the quieter of the two, was finishing up a sale with another customer, so the younger and more talkative one helped us telling us all about the plants and leading us around the shop. We picked out several and he gave us a good deal on the plants. Then, when we were paying, we started talking about the orchids there on the counter. The quieter one is listening and wrapping the pots of the plants and the talkative one is talking away about you can just leave them alone and they'll grow fine like that and Joy and I are avidly listening expressing amazement because we always thought orchids were so difficult to care for. I mention that while I was in Okinawa I saw orchids everywhere and full of flowers. The talkative guy says, "yes, that one used to be full of flowers." And the quiet guy says very quietly, of course, "I used to be full of flowers," and he continues wrapping up our plants. Joy and I look at each other and share a stifled laugh not sure if he's joking or not. They help us with our purchase and we return home to fill our house with more plants amused with the idea of the quiet man full of flowers.

UH Special Collections

I started my practicum at the University of Houston last week. Today, as a part of an on-going series where the different parts of the library invite other library staff to come to a presentation about their services, I went to a presentation by Special Collections. They started by introducing several of the people who work in that area, including talking about current projects, which sounded really great. I'd list them here, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to or not, so I won't. I would just recommend keeping an or an ear out for new exhibits produced by Special Collections. I was able to see some of the old and rare stuff they have like a 16th century King James Bible in excellent condition.

They also took us on a tour of the vault, which is a very large and very cold room where they keep all the really old stuff--and some new stuff. They explained that they also keep all the theses written by UH PhD students and some new books that have been published that they feel are or will be classic works of literature in the future, like Gone with the Wind. As we walked down the rows, it was really neat to get a glimpse of some of their rare books. When we walked out, I saw a whole row of nothing but bibles of varying ages. I do have a question about the fifty years after Gutenberg created his printing press. Why is it only those books published during that time that get a special name? (By the way, they're called incunabule.)

Cataloging the World

Last night I had a dream that two friends and I were traveling around the world cataloging everything. Hmm...now that I think about it, maybe we were a part of that scene in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where they had to replace the earth and everything on it back in its right spot. Or maybe it just means that I have finally taken in enough library stuff that I'm starting to live it...or something like that. It's kind of like you really know when you're truly understanding a foreign language when you dream in that language. Maybe it just means I'm finally getting this library stuff.

New House Update

It's been raining for several days now off and on, but yesterday we had what my landlord described as a driving rain, which was a possible explanation for the leak in the walls of the kitchen. Yep. Just after I finally unpack the kitchen, line the shelves with non-adhesive contact paper, stack all the dishes and glasses into my pristine cupboards, up springs this nicely spread out leak that has run trails of orange colored water in the cupboards, the curtain in the window, and all down the backsplash. As my friends sing, "ooooold houses..."

The nice thing about this house, though, is that it is a good three or four feet off the ground so I shouldn't have to worry about flooding. (I hope.)