Several years ago I was introduced to the first book in the Philip Pullman trilogy, and can remember waiting (and waiting, and WAITING) for the other books in the set to be written/released. I had mixed feelings - particularly about the Amber Spyglass (bk 3) - on my first reading, but that was so long ago I feel I should pick up the books again this summer, especially since the first book (The Golden Compass) is being made into a movie that’s releasing this December.
My daemon (after about three tries at the survey; I don’t wanna be a spider! ):
Not sure I agree with the “spontaneous” part, but that came up pretty much every time. *shrug*
Well, “beads”, actually, but the heading, stolen from Crafty blog, was too good to pass up.
From Flickr: (aside: does anyone know how to go from a link to a static Flickr image back to the photographer’s page? I haven’t yet figured out how to suss out the photographer’s Flickr info in order to do that)
CuriousJane took a full summer to gather the hair from her cat to create the 13 beads above - I can only imagine how many we could generate from our 4 dahlings over the course of a summer. I’m not entirely sure I’d want to actually wear a necklace (or other jewelry type) made of dyed cat fur, but the concept intrigues me.
The Library has in its care more than 134 million items, with 22 million items online. That’s a lot of content, by any measure. More and more people online are looking to blogs to help them navigate and make sense of the content that’s “out there,” to say nothing of the world around them. With some 71 million blogs at last count (or so says Technorati), it’s a conversation an institution like the Library should be a part of.
The Library of Congress was producing electronic content long before the Web even existed, so it’s fitting today that we become one of a (surprisingly) small handful of federal agencies with a bona fide blog.
It’s probably a bit early to come up with some sort of grand “mission statement” for this blog, but it will be in keeping with the spirit of the Library’s mission as a whole: “to make its resources available and useful to the Congress and the American people and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations.”
….or at least the Monday Mornings. It’s just a great start to the day when:
The Nor’easter hammering the region is dumping buckets of rain in your area
The zipper on your jacket finally gives up the ghost and refuses to zip even part way
You don’t own a proper rain jacket, and can’t for the life of you find your old trenchcoat
You end up being a little late leaving the house in the morning due to spending an extra 10 minutes trying unsuccessfully to zip the #!%*#!?@ broken jacket and then hunting in vain for the #!%*#!?@ trench coat
Due to lateness, you grab the tax envelopes from the table without looking at them
You chuck said tax envelopes into the drive-by mailbox at the post office, noticing at the last minute, as you watch them drift from your fingertips into the gaping blue metal maw, that they have no stamps
*cry*
Fortunately, the folks at the post office were quite helpful when I called and gave them the sad story of what I’d done; they found my envelopes when they sorted through the mailbox later in the morning, and when they opened to the public I was able to run down and stick stamps on the things. Crisis averted. I also detoured home at lunch and managed to find my old trench coat still in a box - somewhat worse for wear, but better at keeping out the wet than my other is at the moment. Also a plus (knock on wood), the work project I’m frobbing with at the moment is progressing reasonably well. Let’s hope that continues. Aside from the rain that shows signs of continuing through tomorrow(glub), the afternoon is shaping up muuuch better than the morning indicated.
And now it’s snowing again - a big nor’easter that’s supposed to dump another 8-10″ in our area (update: turns out it was only a few inches of snow, then sleet, and now lots and lots of rain & wind). I feel sorry for the kids at school doing outdoor sports this spring - softball, baseball, track, etc. - to still have this stuff around a month and a half before the end of the school year has got to be the pits. Thank goodness for spring break, when a number of the teams travel to warmer climes in order to get some games in.
Has been a relatively event-free weekend for us; I discovered 6 or so more boxes of books that we’d overlooked and got those unboxed (though the proper organization and shelving of our book collection still remains to be done. I am slightly overwhelmed at the project), a dump run has been made, and we’ve entertained my brother with a few hours of Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II, which we purchased this weekend (brother bringing along his own axe to leave with us for multiplayer fun). I have to say, the games are quite entertaining, but seriously screw with my eyes. The notes one has to play scroll down toward the bottom of the screen for a few minutes per song - at the end of play, /everything/ looks like it’s moving. This is particularly freaky when the pattern in our curtains appear to be flowing.
As usual, I’ve still got a list of draft posts, but they’re going to require more time and energy than I’m currently willing to expend. Back to hunkering down with another one of the books I bought while on our vacation, watching the snow, and waiting to watch the pilot for the new show, Drive, one of the creators/writers of which wrote four episodes of a favorite show of ours, Firefly.
A test using the “blog this photo” feature in Flickr. This is one of the goats we saw at the Biltmore farm last weekend while on vacation. Alas, I still haven’t learned how to properly use my dSLR, so the light balance is all off.
Hubby, who grew up with an assortment of animals (chickens, goats, geese, ducks, horses, dogs, cats, cow, rabbit), rediscovered his urge to have a goat (and/or chickens) at our new home after seeing the ones in NC. Our barn and land are fortunately well-suited for such a thing, but I’m not sure I am. Yet, at any rate.
My brother sent me the link to this fantastic YouTube vid today with a dire warning not to get any ideas (what with Nephew Andrew one month old!). Just goes to show you what kids’ll pick up when you think they’re not listening. Looks like Mommy’s raising an empowered young lady, despite the “not nice” word.
Via the Maine Libraries Discussion list (MELIBS), I see there’s an opening for a Children’s Librarian at the Camden Public Library. From the email:
This full-time position is critical to fulfilling the library’s mission of
excellent service to the children of the communities we serve. Duties
include: designing, implementing and evaluating library services for
children and young adults, planning and conducting children’s and YA
programs, and development of the children’s and young adult materials
collections.
This successful candidate will possess a broad knowledge of children’s
literature and children’s programming. A college degree is required and
library experience is preferred.
The CPL is one of the loveliest libraries I’ve visited, and has an absolutely stunning view of Camden Harbor. I don’t know a lot about the workings of the library, but as a midcoast native, I heartily recommend the area and the communities - there’s a lot of neat stuff going on - check out the Camden-Rockport-Lincolnville chamber of commerce site as well as the one for Rockland-Thomaston.
Less than a year ago, [Laurence] Frank [wildlife biologist at UC Berkeley] reported that Maasai warriors appeared poised to obliterate southern Kenya’s lion population.
The big cats are speared as part of a manhood ritual and poisoned to prevent livestock predation, he explained.
In 2006 a total of 32 lions in the region were killed.
But a compensation program, combined with a newfound passion for conservation, has allowed the lion population on one communally owned ranch to increase from 15 to 25, or about 67 percent, in the midst of the surrounding slaughter.
It’s an interesting article, but I can’t help myself - every time I hear “lions” and “Kenya” in the same sentence, I think of this (and then can’t stop humming the damned tune all day long):
When I converted my old and nearly-abandoned MT site to WP at the beginning of the year, I discovered several draft posts that were years old and had never made it to the “published” state. Here’s one from September of ‘02 describing a scene at my previous job. I have no real recollection of this event, but can pretty much guess at the players involved. Cracks me up.
I work with a bunch of engineers. Today I was in a meeting with a number of high-level managers and mucky-mucks in our company, which can sometimes be daunting (all that brain-power in one room!) if one doesn’t know them very well. I’ve been here long enough to have interacted with a number of them frequently, so I’m no longer as intimidated or “in awe” as I was when I first started working for this company. They’re really a great bunch of people, and today two of them gave prime examples of how Mucky-mucks Are People, Too:
Gotta love it when you look up near the end of the meeting and catch one of the upper-level managers making a paper airplane from the meeting handout.
We were having a discussion on our corporate email filters and how well they work (or don’t) at keeping out spam. One manager mentioned that he didn’t think there were many filters in place these days, as he’s been getting tons of porn spam in the last couple of weeks. One of the company Fellows, with a mock look of disappointment, interrupted: “Huh. I didn’t!!”
):
I’m not entirely sure I’d want to actually wear a necklace (or other jewelry type) made of dyed cat fur, but the concept intrigues me.
