after the fall

Well.....America drank the kool-aid. Four more years.

Though I was pretty sure that the election would go this way, I have to admit that in the past couple weeks I had allowed myself to hope for a different outcome. Working in a building that was also functioning as an early voting polling place, I saw the larger voter turnout here firsthand. People were waiting four hours or more to cast their votes, every day, and there was talk about large turnouts in the youth and first-time voter populations--groups who usually favour the challenger over the incumbent. However, I guess that living in one of the few Democratic areas in Florida skewed my perspective of the larger picture.

Watching the networks call state after state for Bush last night, I really felt a sense of despair. Our local "fair and balanced" Fox affiliate station was, of course, all but announcing a win for Bush by about 10 pm. Thank goodness I get better reception with my new rabbit ears and could switch over to ABC/Local 10 and Peter Jennings! I've never seen such biased coverage of an event--I was flipping between the two stations but when the Fox anchor prefaced the announcement of a new Bush state as "more good news!!!" I had to sign off in disgust--I'd rather sit through commercials than deal with that kind of biased garbage.

So. Here we are, having reaffirmed our isolationist America-rules-the-world unilateral attitude, spit in the face of the international community, and washed the States red with the blood of over 100 000 innocent Iraqi civilians. I really hoped that people were smart enough to see through Dick Cheney's "vote Bush or you'll be killed real dead" rhetoric; believed that the mainstream press exposure of the lies and manipulations and hidden agendas and brainwashing behind the invasion of Iraq was enough to convince even conservative voters that Bush was not working in the country's--or the world's--best interests; couldn't fathom how an experienced, decorated war veteran could really be seen as "softer on terror" and "less able as a commander in chief" than a drunkard who spent the term of his "service" avoiding duty in any way possible; thought that "nuanced thinking" trumped "sticking to your guns no matter how wrong you are." Stupid me. I come from Alberta: I should know how this works by now. The way you get elected is by pretending that you're "just folks" instead of a part of the highest, most priviledged social echelons; by pandering to the lowest common denominator possible; by putting on a rural accent, bragging about your lack of education and having one too many with the boys behind the woodshed.

Whatever.

Arabesque

Okay....

I. Want. This. Book!!!!

Not a lot to report except for the usual Gryphoemia with the usual round of coworkers/managers, which is why this blog has been quiet of late. I am trying to get myself more organized, so as to actually accomplish some of the things I keep thinking about, but as usual it's a long slow one-step-forward-two-steps-back process. Which leads to predictable ironies like sitting next to a kitchen full of dirty dishes and empty of useful groceries reading Home Comforts. Sigh.

Other than that...let's see....I attended an interesting video day at my bellydance teacher's house, where we watched lots of Turkish/Romany/9/8 performances. Michael and I bought tickets to see the Princess Diana exhibition at the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art next weekend. Don't know how much Michael will be into it actually, but I guess he's humoring me :) Michael was also nice enough to let me henna his hand with a Moroccan-style design this week. If we get a picture of it we'll post it. Aaahh, my exciting life....

Wiggin' out

Here's a picture from a recent party at a friend's place. It was a wig party, but as you can see I had just taken mine off.

Gryphoemia

Wow, I finally found a word that describes precisely what living here is all about. Courtesy of The Henna Page:

Gryphoemia

A morbid affliction of one's patience. Outbreaks tend to be caused by too much time spent dealing with the stupid. Symptoms of a Gryphoemia outbreak can include increased heart rate, heavy breathing, severe headache, blurred vision and a driving urge to injure someone -- anyone. The most serious outbreaks have been known to cause smoke to rise from a person's ears. Henna artists are particularly prone to Gryphoemia when they've had to be enormously gracious to very irritating people under difficult conditions. Gryphomia can never be cured, but outbreaks can be suppressed by indulging in something you're NOT supposed to do ... like eating junk food, shopping, consuming or imbibing "attitude adjusting substances", and ..... whatever your favorite naughtiness happens to be.

(Definition by The Fabulous Gwyn)

Gwyn, I've never met you.....but thanks!

Interesting....

Check out Dilbert's Ultimate House!!!

Hey, I'd live there. Wouldn't you?

Spared again!

Well, South Florida got lucky...again. Hurricane Jeanne essentially followed the same path as Hurricane Frances, skipping lightly over us and slamming areas to the north. While many Broward residents lost power temporarily, and there were some nasty storm squalls throughout the weekend, overall we are okay.

I stocked up on canned food, water, dry milk, and other non-perishables late last week, and Michael and I rode out the storm at my place. Libraries and businesses were closed for at least Saturday, some into Sunday, and people were told by the County mayor's office to do their preparations, get inside, and stay there. We spent most of Saturday, especially Saturday night, tracking the hurricane on TV, watching reports as it made landfall up in Stuart and Melbourne. A pretty surreal experience, actually, as the weather was eerily calm in my neighborhood while they were getting hit. We emerged midafternoon Sunday, went to check Michael's apartment (which is much closer to the ocean than mine), and spent most of the rest of the afternoon hanging out at Starbucks with his new roommate.

Seeing the weather--and the damage--inflicted on other areas just drives home how incredibly fortunate this place has been. Florida has never had four storms make landfall in one season. The only other time it's happened in the U.S. period was in the 19th century! Just about every other area of the state has incurred major damage and flooding--some areas more than once--and the estimate for insured losses is in the billions. I didn't even have any power outages this time, and my neighbors told me that they only lost power for a couple hours total with Frances. I think we're all feeling pretty grateful right now even as we empathise with people up north.

In other news...

I hear Kerry is losing ground with younger, married women. This is apparently because this demographic, of which I am nearly a part, is looking for a "big strong protector man" in a president, and Bush is seen as better fulfilling this role. At least, that's what all the old white men newsanchors tell me. Excuse me....I suddenly got this strange foul taste in my mouth....

Mendhi!

My friend Diana came over and did some mendhi on my left hand last night. Here's some pictures she took after she applied the henna paste:

lovely, no? we wrapped my hand so I could wear it overnight. I scraped it off this morning, after it had been on about 12 hours. It's in the process of turning a nice deep brown :)

The weather finally turned nice enough that I could turn off my A/C last night and open the window. So I got to sleep in fresh air last night.

Other than that not much going on. I am battling some of the same old same old at work...mundane petty power struggles that really get me down. The worst of the latest seems to be over but I'm not convinced more crap won't start floating around at any minute. Fortunately both Michael and I have the entire weekend off, so hopefully we can relax, let go of work worries, and have a little fun.

Pretty much says it all...

Ivan the terrible

Well, we're back after a great Ottawa vacation. I got my new passport and visa with minimal problems, so I'm set for another year. My aunt and Jacque's apartment is really well situated in an interesting part of downtown Ottawa, within walking distance of Bytown Market, and we did a lot of sightseeing while we were there. We went into the Gatineaus, one of the area's spectaular parks, a couple of times, and we spent one late afternoon and evening in a small town called Merrickville for dinner and shopping. We took a trip to Upper Canada Village, which recreates an early settlers' farm and town with recovered and restored buildings, reinactors, and working shops and mills. Michael and I bought a handmade broom in the shop there to use in our ceremony next summer. We also spent an afternoon sunning on the beach at Meech Lake, and took a day trip to Montreal to tour the harbor and the historic area of Old Montreal. Our last day was devoted to walking around the market, taking a tour of the Parliament buildings, having lunch at Darcy McGee's (of course!), and some shopping. Michael found a book about Ottawa from Michael Horn's, a great local bookstore, and he saw a wedding band he really liked at Birks Jewelers.

Now we are back in Florida, only to find that although we missed Frances, we are right on time for Ivan, whose path gets closer and closer to Broward County with every renewed forecast. Someone must have decided that Florida was getting too complacent/forgetful of Hurricane Andrew, I guess--but three direct hits in a month seems a little much! County government was closed a few days last week because of Frances; looks like they may shut things down for a few days again until Ivan blows over. Guess I'd better get in line at the grocery store for nonperishable food and more gallons of drinking water and be prepared to hole up in my apartment for a few days with possible loss of power and phone. If not worse! One of the big worries is that there is still so much detrius on the ground from the last storm--tree branches etc.--that more high winds could lift it up again and do major damage. And of course the ground is so saturated right now that flooding is bound to be bad. Cross your fingers and hope that we survive this one relatively intact....

Evacuation time

Boy, did we choose a good time to leave town. Michael and I are sitting in Ottawa, tracking a storm the size of Texas as it slowly closes in on Florida. Experts still aren't certain on where it will land, but over a million people have been told to evacuate. This is the first time in 50 years or more that 2 storms like this will hit Florida at the same time. Frances is already a category 4 creeping up close to 5... just as fierce as Andrew was but over twice as big! Broward has been put into a state of emergency...county agencies, including the libraries, have been shut down. Guess this means they owe me a couple more days vacation :)

It's weird watching it from so far away. On the one hand, you're kind of divorced from the whole thing. On the other, you're on edge hoping that your home won't be destroyed while you're away. I'm pretty far inland; Michael's apartment, however, is on the main floor and only 4 miles away from the evacuation line. Makes me very, very glad we could travel together this year! On top of this, given the state of emergency and possible hit from the storm, we're wondering if we will even be able to get back when we planned to, or whether the airports will be closed! Not exactly the way that I'd choose to get an extended vacation.

As to our Ottawa trip, it's been nice and relaxing so far. We've been walking around downtown Ottawa, the embassies and Parliament. We also took a drive this afternoon into the Gatineau Park and saw William Lyon Mackenzie King's estate. Tomorrow I go to pick up my passport, and we may drive into Montreal on Saturday.

So much for that

Well, I got an email from our contact with the UAE Libraries Deanship today. She's so sorry that she didn't get hold of us earlier, but they have selected two other candidates for the Reference positions. I guess it's nice that they want to keep our applications active, "just in case," but this is the topper on a week that was already kind of depressing. All the more reason it's a good thing I'm leaving for Ottawa tomorrow.

The good news is that if Frances hits, I'll miss her. Though I suppose I should take the contact information for my landlord and my insurance company just in case. The margin of error on the projected path of the storm is pretty wide, so we're still not sure at this point exactly where it will come ashore.

long time no blog

Once again, it seems like a long time since I've posted here. Pretty much same old, same old, I guess, and I would rather be absent than boring!

School is back in. Though the kids don't seem to be as bad this year. Maybe it's because with the new time-management software they need to use their library cards to use the computers, as opposed to last year's video-arcade free-for-all. Don't know if it'll last but I'm enjoying it while it does.

Having the usual fun with my TN renewal paperwork. Thanks to a completely, totally, one hundred per cent incompetent secretary, my renewal letter had to be rewritten three times, under intense supervision. Oh, and did I mention her bad attitude and the rudeness and the fact that she argued that she was right and we were wrong when we pointed out basic mistakes like the fact that she got the name of the USCIS wrong??????. Don't ask me why I don't just get over this crap and not let it bug me....every year I'm stressed out by this stuff and my paperwork is never ever done until the last minute.

This year it's compounded by the fact that I am needing to also get a new passport. They tell me before I send in my application that it will be sent to the Miami Consulate when it's done. Then when I call to see why it is late they tell me they are waiting for me to confirm where I want to pick it up! Then when I follow the agent's instructions to arrange to pick it up in Ottawa I get a phone call 3 days later saying that that is a problem because there is no counter for exchange there (they need to invalidate my old one so I don't have 2 valid ones at the same time). Sigh. To give Justin credit he has promised me that it will be ready in Ottawa on the third, and that if he runs into problems there he will bend the rules slightly and have me come to his office in Hull so he can handle it personally. And both of these offices are less than 10 minutes of driving from my aunt's place. But still...come on...you've had an entire month!!

On top of all this other testing-my-natural-impatience stuff, I've just found out that the engagement ring that we finally found and ordered won't be ready until after we get back. And I want it now, darn it!!!!

hmph.

The good news is that I'm soon out of here for a week of heaven in Canada with Michael, who has been in Spokane the past week with his family. And I. can. hardly. wait!

BTW, if you're looking for some light entertainment to pass the time, may I suggest Etiquette Hell. I'd better warn you in advance though, the site can be addictive....

Thar he blows

Okay, this is just freaky.

We are all obsessively tracking Hurricane Charley, which is now a category 4 hurricane--winds up to 145mph---and twice as strong as originally forecast. Articles from this afternoon describe the kind of effects that places on the west coast, especially Tampa, may expect to experience. Want to see what he looks like? check the map from weather.com.

So far things here in Broward haven't been too bad. We had a heavy rainfall in the middle of the night last night, and things were sunny and calm this morning. However, the wind's been picking up dramatically for the past couple of hours and we expect more stormy weather to come. We are also under tropical storm, flood, and tornado watches until sometime this evening. Naturally, I have to be out tonight...hopefully I won't end up driving to my bellydance gig in the middle of pouring rain.

Here Comes Charley!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5653487/

Forecast to just miss us, thank goodness!

Too bad the storms weren't named Bonnie and Clyde.... :)

Some small consolation

Well, my suspicion was correct. DHL responded to my complaint letter with....coupons! Somehow they just didn't get the "never using your services again" part, I guess. Oh well--at least they promised to investigate and take corrective action. Though promising and doing are two separate things. If you're interested, here's the complete text of their letter.

Feeling pretty tired and burnt lately, as I've been involved with a new software installation at work that has required way too many 7am start times. Not the morning person, just not. But I think that EnvisionWare will make our lives much easier. Much much less computer policework, no standing over patrons well after close telling them to get off the computer now, and so forth. Let's hear it for patron self-management and automatic terminal shutdowns at the end of the day! woo hoo!

The other big news is that SIAST offered me the job in Moose Jaw. But, I turned it down. I think it was the right decision, but it was still a difficult thing to do. It was hard to know that while it would have got me out of Broward County and back to Canada it was still not the right job for me. And the lack of opportunities--professional and academic--for Michael would have made living there difficult. Oh well. I'll just hold on and hope that the UAE works out, or, if not, something else does.

Testing Meme Propagation in Blogspace: Add Your Blog!

This posting is a community experiment that tests how a meme, represented by this blog posting, spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs (and aggregation sites) are most influential in the propagation of memes. The dataset from this experiment will be public, and can be located via Google (or Technorati) by doing a search for the GUID for this meme (below).

The original posting for this experiment is located at: Minding the Planet. (Permalink: http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2004/08/a_sonar_ping_of.html) --- results and comments about the experiment appear at that location.

Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate -- the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.

The GUID for this experiment is: as098398298250swg9e (Note: this replaces the longer, original GUID -- listed below -- which didn't format nicely in narrow column layouts. Those sites still using the longer GUID will still be found in the data set).

The above GUID enables anyone to easily search Google or other search engines for all blogs that participate in this experiment, once they have indexed the sites that participate, which may take several days or weeks. To locate the full data set, just search for the any sites that contain either the short GUID (above) or the long GUID (for your reference, the long GUID is a single 72 character string comprised of the following segments put together with the white-spaces removed: as098398298250swg9e 98929872525389t9987 898tq98wteqtgaq6201 0920352598gawst -- they are listed here as different segments so that they will format better in narrow column layouts.)

Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post (see URL above). (Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this meme.)

INSTRUCTIONS

To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire posting to your blog, and then answer the questions below, substituting your own information, below, where appropriate. Other than answering the questions below, please do not alter the information, layout or format of this post in order to preserve the integrity of the data in this experiment (this will make it easier for searchers and automated bots to find and analyze the results later).

REQUIRED FIELDS (Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers)

(1) I found this experiment at URL: http://www.podbaydoor.com

(2) I found it via "Newsreader Software" or "Browsing the Web" or "Searching the Web" or "An E-Mail Message": Browsing the Web

(3) I posted this experiment at URL: http://darcysworld.blogspot.com/

(4) I posted this on date (day/month/year): 04/08/04

(5) I posted this at time (24 hour time): 14:42:00

(6) My posting location is (city, state, country): Pembroke Pines, Florida, USA

OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS (Replace the answers below with your own answers):

(7) My blog is hosted by: blogspot

(8) My age is: 32

(9) My gender is: Female

(10) My occupation is: Reference Librarian

(11) I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: none/don't know (sorry for the illiteracy here)

(12) I use the following software to post to my blog: blogger

(13) I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 05/06/2002

(14) My web browser is: IE 6.0.2880.1106

(15) My operating system is: Windows 2000

Written ripostes and some small respite

Well, I played hooky from my dance class last night, because I was feeling kind of burned out and a little sick and just needed a chance to recharge at home alone. And for once, I managed to actually get some time to myself that was not just "crashing and burning." So after a little housework, some reading, some journalling, some at-home spa treatments, and some Chinese takeout for dinner, I feel much better and more prepared to face the world. I didn't even get angry when a big truck with a trailer cut me off with an ill-timed left turn on the way to work!

If you're interested in all the sordid details of my saga with DHL, here's a copy of the complaint letter that I mailed last night. As a footnote to this story, online tracking at FedEx.com shows that my package is moving right along with no problems whatsoever, having left Calgary this morning.

So there.

I hate DHL but I love Al-Ain

So it's been a long time since I posted here. Partly because I've been busy, but partly because some things I've been thinking and experiencing are perhaps better not discussed in a completely open forum. However, with that said, I'll update what I can:

Michael and I are, of course, back from ALA. The job fair was once again very small and very disappointing. Many employers that listed their jobs were not there, and the libraries that were there were the same big public systems that always show up. So unless one is interested in working in the Jacksonville, Las Angeles, or Atlanta-Fulton Public Libraries one is at a disadvantage. However, the sessions were much better overall than last year, so it kind of made up for it. I attended sessions on reinventing reference, the future of academic libraries, job searching strategies, and library technology trends like RFID. I also went to a science fiction panel discussion and got some groovy signed editions of the authors' latest works. Unfortunately, what I expected to be the highlight of my conference, Ben Bova's planned interview with Sir Arthur C. Clarke, didn't work out as scheduled due to technical problems with the audio feeds to and from Sri Lanka. The assembled panel of scientists, authors and librarians provided an interesting tribute and discussion, but it was a little disappointing nonetheless :(

One very interesting thing did come out of our conference time, though, because Michael ran into someone from the UAE University in Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates. They have five librarian jobs open right now. Naturally, both of us found this prospect interesting, and we applied with them as soon as we got back. We've had informal interviews with the woman who was our initial contact, which seemed to go well, but we won't hear anything further until the Dean and the rest of the search committee get back from their summer vacations. We are both pretty excited about the idea of being able to work in the Middle East, and the UAE in particular is apparently quite open and welcoming to Westerners. I am particularly hoping they will interview me for the Special Collections position they have open. Anyone who knows me knows that special collections work is my dream job, and getting overseas experience with that should certainly add an extra bit of spice to subsequent job applications!

The one hard thing is that moving there would kind of mess up our wedding plans. Such as they are at this point. We had finally set a date of August 7th, 2005, but of course if we moved to an Islamic country that operates under Sharia (Islamic) Law, we would want to get married before we left to prevent any problems or faux pas. Not that we've been able to make any specific plans up to this point...we haven't even been able to find an engagement ring! However, I'm getting a pretty good oneline education in diamonds thanks to sites like pricescope and Good Old Gold.

The other good news job-wise is that I actually got another interview this month, this time with the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology, in Moose Jaw. This job pays well, and after living in Overbuild Broward County Hell, the idea of being in a smaller city in a more seasonal climate appeals. If you're interested in learning more about the library, and the campus I've interviewed at (Palliser), you can check out the campus web site, the libraries web site, last year's Annual Report, and the college's current Business Plan, which has chapters for Palliser and for Libraries. One real drawback is the lack of opportunity there for Michael. He'd likely have to commute to Regina for work or for further education. The other sticky fact is that SIAST is likely going to be offering the job to their preferred candidate before the UAE even does their formal interviews! So we're not sure what we will do in the event that I'm offered the job.

Of course, given the difficulty I've had getting the materials they need to them, SIAST may never even offer. Hence the "I hate DHL" part of this installment's title. This post is already too long for me to detail the saga of my attempts to deal with them, but the short version is that SIAST has a DHL account and wanted me to send a 10-15 minute videotape of me teaching a class to them as part of the interviewing/evaluation process. Between the stunning levels of rudeness and utter incompetence at my local shipping outlet, and the slowness of DHL service, that tape still isn't in their hands after two attempts to ship via DHL, and the only way I could ensure it would actually get there at all, ever, was to take it to a FedEx store today, almost a week after it should have been sent, and pay to have it couriered. Needless to say, I am completely underwhelmed by this new "competitor" in the shipping field, my letter of complaint is in the process of being written, and I advise everyone I know to never, never attempt to do business with them.

That's long enough for now, I think. Signing off....

Fortune and Fame and smooth starting...

Hey, I actually got cited!! Too bad the U of A link to my capping paper is now dead. I should probably find a new home for it, but I have a terrible admission to make: I don't think I kept a local copy of the files. Which would mean pulling out my comp copies of The Progressive Librarian and retyping it all, then marking it up in html. Which is a project that I do not think will get finished anytime very soon. Oh well...I'll keep you posted.

Adventures in Car Repair this week. Poor Macha was long overdue for servicing, and her starter was sounding strange, so I took her into Michael's garage to be tuned up, inspected and repaired. Well, when I got her back, the starter, which had been replaced, sounded about a hundred times worse! It was so bad I wasn't even confident about the car being able to start reliably. I really don't like spending $200 on repairs just to find that I'm worse off afterwards, so I took her back. Well, if they'd done it right the first time and rebuilt my old starter rather than replacing it with an inferior one everything would have been fine...which it is, now that I have the old (fixed) part back. Somehow I think I'm going to be back on the trail looking for another new mechanic...sigh.

Michael and I are leaving Friday morning for ALA in Orlando. We have a pretty busy schedule there, and we'll be meeting up with Cynthia Wilson to let her photograph us for her I am a librarian project. I also plan to hit the job fair at least once...cross your fingers for me and maybe I'll find a good employer in the Pacific Northwest that's hiring.

Stormy weather

Well, the rainy season has finally arrived, and after a couple months of relatively enjoyable dry heat we are back to the normal summer conditions. Which means oppressive mugginess, and spectacular daily storms. Makes getting around Broward kind of interesting sometimes....one moment you'll be high and dry, the next in the middle of pounding rain so heavy visibility is restricted to about 30 ft. The storms are so local that you can literally be in a situation where your front windshield is so covered with water you can hardly see, and your rear windshield is dry! Amazing...

I remember the first time Michael and I went to the Everglades, we were woken in the middle of the night by a thunderstorm. Incredible lightening, deafening thunder, and winds so high we thought the roof might come off. We didn't get much more sleep that night! Kind of gives you a new respect for the power of nature.

Not much other news. I have been reading wedding planning books and they are making my head fuzzy. But in a good way, really! :)