Archive for November, 2007

Nifty idea

Sunday, November 18th, 2007

If you’re around Rochester, you should take the time to check out Central Library’s newest exhibit. Its art all done by staff members throughout the Monroe County Library System. Check out the article here on the MCLS website. What a great idea! It lets people see another aspect of staff that doesn’t have to do with books. I must admit that I am mad that a certain boss of mine didn’t let me know about it until about a week before so that I didn’t have enough time to get it together. Oh, well. Maybe it’ll be so popular that they’ll do it again and I’ll have time to submit something. Hopefully someone will take the time to put pictures of everything on the library website. Then more people will get to see the art!

Maybe in the future, they could have a staff art competition in a couple different areas (photography, yarn craft, jewelry, painting…) and have patrons judge the art. They could make the winners “staff member of the month” and have some prizes or special things for them. How cute would that be?

I may lose some friends posting this…

Sunday, November 18th, 2007

but I LOVE having a harness for my son. He wants so badly to be independent, but he’s still so little that he doesn’t always listen to me. Really, he NEVER listens to me. He never wants to be in a stroller, and god forbid if I want to hold his hand.

Today, I went to the Monroe Community Hospital for their Harvest Craft Fair with my mom, grandmother, sister and Jack. Jack was full of beans while we were there. He was into everything, even with the harness. My sister was holding him as he pulled and she overheard a (youngish) woman saying, “How horrible, they’re children, not animals! That’s disgusting.” How dare she?! Soon after, we were talking to a vendor (who was a grandmother) and she mentioned that she loved those harnesses. She stated that she would rather know that the child was safe and close by, rather than let him run free. She said that it was especially important during these times because there are just so many terrible people out there. Plus they could easily wriggle out of your hand and run into the street.

I completely agreed with everything she said! Why then, did it still sort of hurt to hear what the other woman said? I’ll try not to let it bother me, since I won’t stop using the harness, but it still upsets me that people can’t see how wonderful they are. I don’t go almost anywhere without my harness. I just feel safer.

Oh well, we can’t make everyone happy, can we?

Caught yet again by the crafting bug

Sunday, November 18th, 2007

I want to try and make a couple of those drawstring bookbags. One for me (of course) and a couple as Christmas presents. Supposedly, they’re very easy to make, but I’ve only used a sewing machine a couple of times. I like making special homemade presents for Christmas, and not always just giving presents that I had to punch people out to get. The bags would be for my nieces, and I’ll try to make some things for other people in my life. I think it really shows people that I care about them that I made something unique and just for them.

On a humorous note, the Christmas displays have been going up everywhere (not funny) and I’ve asked Jack what certain things are. He knew snowman, penguin and reindeer, however whenever I point to Santa Claus, he says, “CLOWN!” I love kids.

You tube is evil evil evil!

Thursday, November 15th, 2007


Potter Puppet Pals in “The Mysterious Ticking Noise”

I will thank the LWTeens (a teen library blog) for providing our entertainment for this evening, with the added bonus of driving me OUT OF MY MIND!! 🙂

BTW, I don’t know why my blogs hosted by wordpress can show the video right on the blog, but this one can’t. If anyone out there can explain it to my feeble little mind, please let me know.

Tell me what you think!

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

I changed my blog theme. You can’t imagine how difficult it was sifting through all the themes, but I thought it was time. The previous one was okay, but it cut off my pictures, and frankly, I was getting tired of it. This one is light and fresh, just like a daisy! … okay, maybe not, but I needed something new. So here it is.

What a way to waste 2 hours and 23 minutes

Tuesday, November 13th, 2007

I just lost 2 hours and 23 minutes watching one of the worst movies ever. (Jeff says that it can’t be the worst ever because I didn’t realize it was over two hours until just now. I think it was mostly because I spent the whole time screaming at the screen.) Unfortunately, not everyone believes me. I cannot believe that on Rotten Tomatoes it got as many good reviews as it did. Curious yet? It was Transformers.

My sister and I spent most of the movie hiding our faces and making fun of them. The transformers were all idiots, the government was full of idiots,
Shia LaBeouf was an idiot, his parents were idiots, and I was an idiot for watching the whole thing. There were soldiers too, and they were about the only intelligent people in the whole movie. Even the people who were supposed to be smart didn’t seem too smart.

The whole movie was unconvincing, and I’m not talking about two opposing groups of autonomous robotic life forms coming to earth and killing each other in order to get this special cube that is host to extraordinary amounts of power. Enough to destroy earth. Of course, before they destroy the earth, they want to steal all the earth’s knowledge… hmm, if I’m a robot with the ability to cross the galaxy and the ability to harness incredible amounts of power that humans can’t even begin to understand, do you think I’m going to care what a race of measly humans know? On the other hand, if these robots are smart enough to traverse the universe, wouldn’t you think that they would be reasonably intelligent? Even the robots are idiots (which I said before, but I want to repeat my point). Their mannerisms are silly, they say completely silly things and they behave like 11 year old boys. Of course, that could be their target audience. Who cares about the 28 year old woman who remembers watching it when she was a kid? Its not like she is very likely to buy transformer toys or anything… (well, not anymore, anyway).

The cube that the transformers are looking for contains UNIMAGINABLE amounts of power. And yet, the robots need a pair of glasses with the cube’s coordinates etched into them in order to find it. Don’t you think that if something has that much power within it and you were a robot with some pretty impressive powers yourself, that you would be able to sense the cube?

I mean even us pathetic humans radiate heat energy and we’re nothing. Don’t you think that something that powerful would release some energy or leave a mark somehow? I know that I’m thinking too much, but I really hate it when movies treat us like we’re all idiots. Sometimes movies play to the lowest common denominator. I guess that if situations are unrealistic within the real world, I get distracted and can’t get into the movie. As I said before, I can believe the autonomous robots from space. What I can’t believe is that soldiers would be allowed to use video instant messenger in order to talk to family members. I know I know. Nit picky stuff. But that kind of stuff bothers me, when you know that rather than taking the time to do a little research and find out the truth, they go the route of sentimentality. I know I know! Stupid! Why can’t I just enjoy the movie? For the same reason that I had to do some research on my own to make sure that soldiers really couldn’t do something like that. As far as I can tell, they can’t. They can send videos, but no real time videos. I found a couple of sites that help you do that: Army FRG and My Army Life Too, but nothing beyond that. I am willing to take a big leap and say that they probably wouldn’t allow stuff like that because of two big things: security and trauma. If their camp gets bombed while the officer is talking to his/her mom and they die, what kind of effect is that going to have on the family?

Anyway, its things like this that ruin movies for me. Not the extraordinary stuff, but the little things that they didn’t take the time to make realistic. I’m sure other people will like it.

I think I’ve even forgotten what I’m trying to say, so I’ll end with this. Transformers was a stupid movie. Not a fun stupid like Evil Dead or Pecker. A stupid stupid like, well… I’ll have to think about that one.

Good night. I’m off to read some scary kids books now, and not STUPID scary. 🙂

What do I have on my card that I should be reading right now?

Monday, November 12th, 2007

Naylor, Phyllis Witch’s sister (kids – scary)
Snyder, Zilpha The trespassers (kids – scary)
Thompson, Richard The follower (kids – scary)
Hurst, Carol Otis The wrong one (kids – scary)
Block, Francesca Weetzie Bat (teens – surreal contemporary )
Moriyama, Daisuke Chrono crusade 1 – 5 (teens 0 manga)
Morgenstern, Julie Organizing from the inside out for teens (teens)
Morgenstern, Julie Organizing from the inside out (adults)
Morgenstern, Julie Time management from the inside out (adults)
Zevin, Gabrielle Memoirs of a teenage amnesiac (teens – book on cd)
Caroline Murmurs (music cd)
Sakaki, Ichiro Scrapped princess 1- 2 (teens – manga)
Pearson, Ridley Peter and the Starcatchers (teen – downloaded audiobook)

I’m on a kids book committee to create a scary stories book list, so I should have more scary stories checked out, however I really want to read the books to teach me better organization and time management skills. Plus, I always need to keep up with my manga reading, much to my husband’s disgust. 🙂 When I was looking at Amazon for the books, the scary ones received some pretty good reviews from School Library Journal, which is very encouraging.

I’m trying to get through Peter and the Starcatchers, but I can’t get into it as much as I thought I would. As I speak, I’m downloading The Immortals, Book 1: Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce. Hopefully, it will be better than the other one.

I guess maybe I should actually read some of them now. 🙂