Library problem.

I had this problem with books getting recalled when I was away on Christmas break last year, so I complained to the student liaison for my division, and recently she got back in an e-mail to me and other students who had given her feedback with answers from on high:

Fine structure:

1) Quoting in full from a student email: “I've had a problem this year with the fine structure around recalls, since it's not appropriate for Christmas break. I left the week of Christmas for a 12-day break, and on Dec. 23rd (!!!) someone recalled 3 books from me - and I had a $30 fine when I got back! The same thing wouldn't have happened if they had recalled them in the week after Christmas, since I would have returned within the 7-day grace period. It's unrealistic for people to return all their 60+ books at home over christmas break (the response of the circ desk to me), as it is if someone is gone for the entire summer. Because spring break is only a week, the same dynamic doesn't come into play then. Could the fine structure be reduced, or the grace period extended for the time between fall and winter quarters? I never recall books from people at the beginning of Christmas break since I don't want to stick someone with fines, but it seems some library patrons don't have that same common-sense courtesy.”

While we understand that receiving a recall over winter break is inconvenient, the Library is used quite heavily during this time by faculty and students who choose to remain on campus. For many patrons, this interim is the best (perhaps only) time to do research between September and March, and it’s equally inconvenient to them to not have the books they need.

This answer kind of annoys me. While everyone has the right to recall during this period, it's probably not the best thing to do, at least between Christmas and New Year's. Campus is a ghosttown - don't people realize that? Sometimes I see these old professors roaming the streets, or in the library at 10pm at night, and you realize how socially maladjusted they are...

Like a friend said to me once, if you can smalltalk in academia, you're a rockstar, the standards are so low. And that's not even if you know how to work a room at a reception, she clarified, too.

Anyhow, I imagine one of these lonely people sitting in front of a computer just recalling books the day before Christmas Eve. Some people just have sense at all.

Pimple.

I forgot -

When I was in Montreal for my conference, I got back the 1st night from reception-hopping, and though I wasn't even wearing a sportsjacket, just a collared shirt and a sweater (and pants etc., of course), when I was in the hostel bathroom undressing, I look, and I have this *huge* pimple on my left upper arm, where it's red and angry and coming up from the skin like a little vesuvius, even though it hadn't been there earlier when I was dressing up in the bathroom... I guess I must have been sweating more than I thought, and so the pimple built up.

Anyhow, it took me a bit to get my fingers around it, but I did, and when I popped it, all this white gunk about the size of 2 pinheads combined burst out onto my fingertips. I squeezed the pimple a bit more, and some clear juice came out, too, and then that was it.

2 more (black) cashier women.

1) I was getting a coffee the other day at Starbucks, to read a bit before going to karaoke, and the younger (black) girl who rang me up for $1.53 was like, "That will be one hundred and fifty-three dollars, please."

I didn't know how to respond for like a second, but then I was like, "That's it? And people say there are no more deals anymore!", and I handed her my two dollars.

"Thanks," she was like. "I'll be back with your change after I go hit up the shoe sale next door."

2) On Sunday when I was getting my groceries, there was this older (black) lady who had a very small purchase (not even half a bag of produce), and while she was getting out her money, I pulled out my canvas bags, and put them on the part after the scanner so I could start pulling out my produce from the cart and weigh it on the scanner/scale thing, and because my canvas bags touched her produce (the bagger was just starting to bag it), she looked at the young (black) cashier and was like, "I know that some people are in a hurry, but do we really have to do that now?"

As soon as she turned to go, then, I apologized to the cashier if I made the other patron feel rushed.

"Oh, don't worry," she was like, "Older black women always yell at me."

That made me surprised, and I said so, and she was like, "There's a lot of them, they have no money and they're mean and their husbands are dead their families want nothing to do with them, so they come in and take it out on me. My boyfriend thinks so too."

She was really pleasant, so I said again that I was surprised, and then I told her that my mom says people like that deserve what they get, since if they haven't learned social cues by now, that's there problem. The cashier liked that.

Purple sweater update.

So, on Saturday I stopped by the store where I got the purple sweater for like $60 last year, since they tend to carry a lot of staple wardrobe pieces for several years running. As it happens, they not only had $20 off of sweaters that day, but I was able to talk a cashier into letting me use a "$10 off your next $30 or more purchase" card I had gotten in the mail but left at home...

The one girl cashier on the men's side said no when I asked her, that I'd have to have the actual discount card, so I went to the women's side, and the male cashier there gave it to me! So, I got a new purple sweater for like $27, tax included.

My mother is repairing the holes in the other one so I can wear it everyday now. Some of the holes are really big, though, and she's having a tough time of it. When my dad saw a few of the holes, he was like, "Man alive, that moth must have weighed five pounds when it got done!"

From John Edward's one book...

I love how this is the first quote on the blurb page opening John Edward's book "One Last Time", right after the heading "Praise for John Edward's One Last Time":

"My lifelong obsessive fear of death ended when I met John Edward. He put me in touch with my parents and others that I thought were dead. They are alive and still loving me."

--Patty Duke


Later in the book, he described going to see the Casper the Friendly Ghost movie with his wife and enjoying it so much, that he buys the soundtrack (I've always wondered when I see CDs like that in music stores, who buys them?).

In his other book, he reveals one of the three pre-arranged signs with his mom that he's kept secret, so that she can contact him from beyond through other psychics and he'll know it's her: Pooh-bear, since he has a big Winnie-the-Pooh collection ever since he was a kid.

I find the Long Island background to his book fascinating. (He's from there.) Long Island and New Jersey are undervalued American places (the recent attention to New Jersey from the Sopranos notwithstanding).

Went to see a scary movie last week.

I was pretty excited to go see "Paranormal Activity" the other week - I like scary and suspenseful movies, but only if I know that there's no gore involved, which will make me sick. I had asked a friend who had seen it if it was bad, and she said no, and then I asked her straight-up what was the worse thing that happened in the movie, and she said someone was thrown across the room, so I shouldn't be afraid.

So, I went to go see it, and knowing the worse that would happen kind of deflated the movie for me, but it was still nice, though not as scary/freaky as "Blair Witch Project" or "Sixth Sense", so I was a bit disappointed, both by that and by how inconsistent the movie was on demons and possession.

But, when I was going to bed, I swear I heard something in the walls, so to calm myself, I read a chapter or two of John Edward's "One Last Time: A Psychic Medium Speaks to Those We Have Loved and Lost", which happened to be the book I was reading anyway, but was also pretty effective, since it had a much more benign view of the supernatural. It amazes me that all these people can try to contact the dead, and are sure that it's their love ones that are coming through. In a way, it's naive. How do they know?

From my friend who works the library desk...

My friend who works the library desk on Sunday nights also does hair.

She says this woman who sings in her church choir is really proud that she never puts anything in it, and she has the nappiest, nastiest hair ever.

One time, then, the woman had her hair tied up in back, and she took off the hair-tie or whatever and shook it down, and was like, "I have virgin hair."

"Yeah," my friend was like, "But it needs to get fucked."