Sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing by quitting my full-time para library gig to stay at home to raise Gav, doing the part-time evening and weekend paging thing while completing school. I love being with my son – don’t get me wrong – but sometimes I feel as if I’m missing out on the doings of the library world and that I’m sitting on the sidelines looking out onto the field when I could be in the fray.
Then I read a news report over the weekend. Back in June, an Olathe day care owner, who was running it out of her home, shook a seven-month-old baby, leaving the child injured and with brain damage. The state has shut her down and she’s currently awaiting trial.
The name of the day care was Lovable Little People, which was what caught my attention: my wife and I interviewed her back before we made our decision to go part-time. So yeah: that child with Shaken Baby Syndrome could well have been mine.
How can someone be freaked out and relieved at the same time?
I have no idea how I possibly missed this, but while scrolling through my RSS feeds I came across this article at Cinematical about how J.J. Abrams, of Alias and Lost fame, is producing a movie based on a New York Times article he read a few days ago.
The article is about a family who renovated their NYC apartment and was looking for something classic yet whimsical. Their architect hid several Da Vinci Code like clues and cyphers throughout the house (with an assist from author Jonathan Safran Foer) which led into the entire family unraveling the riddles and solving the mystery. The NY Times article – with the accompanying slideshow – is an amazing must-read.
It should make for an amazing movie, too.
For such a stellar season of the hit Bravo reality show, the finale really disappointed.
One of the main problems was, of course, that Lisa really didn’t deserve to be there. Sure, she outlasted her competition, and I fully give her credit for that, but she outlasted most of the field by being the second-worst chef on most nights. She never really tried to blow anyone away. Even when cooking for the finale, I never got the sense that she ever stretched her boundaries, swung for the fences, or tried to take her cooking to the next level. (Pick your metaphor.) She never grew over the course of the competition; her attitude was “I cook what I want in the way that I want, and screw you if you don’t like it”, which is not in any way the point of the show. Also, she had a complete shitbox attitude from day one, and if I was on the show I would have been sorely tempted to throw a chafing dish at her numerous times.
Second reason: Richard choked. He was arguably the best chef wire-to-wire, and one who I would be the most eager to plunk money down to eat at his restaurant, but the man choked when it mattered most and admitted as much to the judges. (To his immense credit.) Richard’s weakness was always his tendency to be overly complicated and cute with his dishes – on the second day of the finale when Colicchio told the group they wouldn’t be getting help from the celebrity chefs, he wasn’t able to react and change his game plan, which finished him. Had he been able to adjust on the fly, he might have had a chance – I took one look at the frenzied expression on his face and knew it would be over. That, and the liquid nitrogen.
Which left Stephanie. I’m glad she won, but only one of her dishes for the finale was in any way transcendent. You’d normally expect two or more courses from a chef to really kill the judges for the finale – this is supposed to be the greatest meal you’ve ever prepared, after all. In fact, her lamb dish with the pistachio braise was only one of two dishes in the entire episode to wow the judges – Lisa’s soup concoction being the other – which indicated to me the entire blahness of the finale. I got the feeling she won because she was the only person left, as opposed to someone who earned it. I just wish the judges would have called a do-over, like that Restaurant Wars episode from last season, just so they all could take another whack at it.
Again, great season, immensely entertaining on the whole, but I expected more from the finale.
(Now I have a new season of “Project: Runway” to look forward to. Whoo-hoo!)
I’m taking two courses over the summer: LI832 – Information Transfer Among Young Adults, and LI837 – Teaching in the Information Profession. (As you can see, us librarian types call what we do “Information Transfer”. In a few years there won’t be any librarians at all, only “Information Professionals”. This title is used because it sounds wonderfully important and it’s a bit more accurate than “librarian”, which most people use to refer to anyone who works at a library, from the reference desk folks with Master’s degrees down to the part-time janitor. But I digress.)
Both classes look to be a lot of work. This is the fallacy with classes during summer semester where you hope and pray for pud classes, but in reality they turn out more difficult than you expect because you have the same amount of work as a fall or spring class but have less time to do it. 832, the YA class, looks to be the more fun of the two because among our assignments is to read YA lit – on our list is three books I’ve already read plus Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, a human/vampire love story that’s all the rage among the teen emo set and apparently I’m the only person in the western hemisphere who hasn’t read it yet. Rest assured my review will be posted as soon as I finish it.
The big news is, I guess, is that grad school is drawing to a close. After this semester, I have three classes left to go, plus something called a “capstone” class, which is a summation of everything I’ve learned in the program and that terrifies me more than Jessica Alba’s IMDB page. But, yeah: after that, I’m done. I’ve been in school for so long that it seems strange that there’s an ending point. Historically this is the stage where I blow stuff off and sabotage myself into a flaming ball of failed expectations, but this time things will be different. I have a wife and a kiddo who I’m doing this for.
And then I’ll be an official librarian. Or an Information Professional. Whatever.
No no no no NO NO NO no no no NO.
Listen, I like Sarah Paulson. She’s a great actress. But she was woefully miscast in “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” and was almost universally cited as the reason it was canceled, thwarting even the godlike abilities of Aaron Sorkin. Now she’ll be miscast on the remake of one of my all-time favorite television shows.
Wait a second, wait a second- I see Rob Thomas working here. Since the role on “Cupid” was originated by Paula Marshall, who’s gone on to be a world-class showkiller, it might make sense to place another noted showkiller in the role. Well played!
Found via the amazing Logtar:
The concept:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker).
The Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name – Or online handle.
Here’s mine:
