Happy Birthday to Me

Today is the day that I start pushing 40. Actually, I don't start pushing until 3:47 p.m. when I officially turn 39. I just checked my profile on this blog and saw, in print, my age as 39 for the 1st time. I have seen it on cards for the past couple of days, but the blog profile is the first "official" announcement. I am also wearing my special birthday socks. My mother sent me this pair of socks for my birthday when I was away my freshman year of college (1987) and I have worn them every birthday since. This is their 20th year. They are soooo 80s, aqua and pink, but they are my special birthday socks and unlikely to wear out at one use per year.

Fountainhead Discussion Blogging

Sally's comment raises a very interesting point about the actual plans of the Librarian Boulevard Book Club. This whole group reading project started from my desire to catch up on some reading I should have done years ago. After all, you expect your doctor to be healthier and your personal trainer to be in better shape than you. I don't want my patrons to feel their librarian isn't well read. So reading War and Peace was personal and Smashler jumped on the bandwagon and then she felt she should read All Quiet on the Western Front, so I did too, to help motivate her. Now we have The Fountainhead to read and Sally, at another library location wants to join us. We have the opportunity to try out a book discussion in blog format. Both Sally and I lead book discussions at our respective locations and this will give us the chance to see how an online discussion would work. I think we can all read at our own paces and post comments as we see fit. I doubt there will be any spoilers in this book. Now that we'll do this online, anyone else want to join?

Viewing the Internet at Work

At my job I am online all day wherever I am sitting. We all are. Last year I learned about a Web site that streams live video from a game preserve in South Africa. The camera is on 24 hours a day and pans 360 degrees looking for animals, even at night with night vision. We call it the "Watering Hole" but it is really Africam. We have seen zebras, elephants, monkeys, all sorts of antelopes, giraffes, and even lions. If someone sees something awesome, emails are sent or calls are made from desk to desk. One day someone in the "the back" called the Reference Desk to say, "Elephant at the watering hole." Our on-call librarian, scrambling thinking it was some sort of emergency code she didn't know, looked surprised as the others at the desk simply maximized their Africam windows to gawk at the elephant half a world away. The next best moment occured as a group of librarians stared closely at one computer monitor behind the Reference Desk. One of the librarians, a female no less, finally proclaimed, "look at the rack on that one!" The view, of course, was a herd of gazelles. Someone almost always has the site up or minimized. You never know what you will see. It's basically nerd porn. The Web site, is out of Canada and is pretty nifty. They have 4 different nature cams. We also have been keeping an eye on the Grizzly cam on Grouse Mountain and today I found the Eaglecam up and running. The other cool thing about this Web site is that there is a music feature that plays indie artists from around the world. I found my favorite new artist here. He is a Finnish DJ named Slow. His Web site is really cool with awesome features and his album Pronto has become my favorite album.

Birthday News

Tonight officially kicks off my birthday celebration, albeit a week early. I admit that I have been having a rough time with this one. If you have not checked my profile, I will turn 39 next Saturday. Actually, my turning 39 is completely independent of your actions with respect to my profile. My 30th birthday and my 35th birthday seem like they were just yesterday. The 4 years since 35 have been terrific, just fast. Plus, I don't know if I feel almost 40 or if I know what that should be. I remember when other people, adults I knew, turned 40 and they seemed much more adulty. Perhaps 40 is very different now. There are 3 of us turning 39 this year. ScheduleMaster already tumbled. So far she is doing okay. Maybe by next April I'll be so used to the idea that 40 won't be such a shock. For now it's just really weird.

Final Answer

I did what any librarian in a quandary would do...a literature search and I believe that, despite receiving full support to switch to Atlas Shrugged, we will stick with The Fountainhead. In the course of my search I read a review (this link will only work to those of you reading this blog inside an LCLS library, sorry, membership has its privileges) of a book devoted exclusively to The Fountainhead called The Fountainhead: An American Novel that made me want to read that book as well. So...The Fountainhead. Final Answer.

Rand Revisited

I was looking at the amazon.com listings for The Fountainhead to get a better idea of which editions we have in the library and I realized that I never took into account Atlas Shrugged. Maybe we should read that. The amazon.com book description states, "Atlas Shrugged is the 'second most influential book for Americans today' after the Bible, according to a joint survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club." My feeling was that we should read Ayn Rand and The Fountainhead just popped into my head. I never even thought of Atlas Shrugged before the decision was made. I emailed the knitters to seek their opinions.

The Ayns Have It

After a little discussion over knitting this afternoon (I was not knitting, but rather organizing a binder) we came up with the next book for the Librarian Boulevard Book Club...The Fountainhead. This is one of those books that you might feel like you should read and probably have not. At least that's how we felt about it. Of course, we can't start until Smashler finishes War and Peace because then she still has to read All Quiet but she is anticipating an early May wrap up with Tolstoy. The plan is a May start on The Fountainhead.

Librarian Boulevard Book Club

This weekend I finished All Quiet On the Western Front. Let me give you a little backstory on this selection. When I told my neighbor (Smashler) on Librarian Boulevard that I was going to read War and Peace she said she would read it if I did. As we talked about classic novels, she said she always wanted to read All Quiet On the Western Front. I told her I would read it. This is on the one hand. On the other hand is the fact that I never read any of my assignments in school and now I have a patron who is working his way through the Modern Library list of 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century that the NYTimes published in 1998. David has been working through the list for a couple of years and he is just a regular guy. We help him with related reference questions such as plot outlines, character lists, definitions of words etc. Whenever he approaches with a new book I feel like I want to be better read. It's not that I don't read quite a bit now. Like many of my co-workers, I find the answer to the simple question, "what are you reading now?" to be a little complex. Each month I have an adult book discussion book to read and Library Journal has been sending me a book a month to review. The book I read at work at lunch and the book I read before bed are not necessarily the same book. Plus, I usually have a non-fiction book. Despite these many books, I believe I can squeeze one more in and that's where the Librarian Boulevard Book Club fits in. Smashler and I, and anyone else who wants to participate, are going to read various "major" books we never have. I don't know what the next book will be as I have to wait until she finishes War and Peace otherwise I'll be too many books ahead. Any suggestions/votes?

Keeping Up Morale

So our little corner of the world has been rather busy lately with Spring Breakers flocking and Red Sox fans swarming. ScheduleMaster is kind enough to list game time on our weekly schedules so we can plan our driving routes to avoid the ballpark as necessary. I still drive past even during game time. I find it exciting. The software that controls and schedules our public access to the computers and printer has been giving us headaches for some time. Our library is always packed and our computers are always in use. We also have a couple of employee vacancies at the moment. To combat the stress, I decided to install on Librarian Boulevard (the aisle formed by our cubicle partitions) a written form of a car game a friend and I played on a recent trip to Orlando. We have been playing Battle of the Bands. Each week I post a letter of the alphabet on a posterboard and we write down bands, groups, or duos (just not solo performers) who are living or dead, from any era, but not fictional. You can verify the existence and/or spelling but not go looking for groups. We avoid searching our CDs or MP3 players until the end of the week. The Web site allmusic has probably seen its hits spike since we began this game. We have all discovered new music, also. The best part is seeing which staff members come up with which groups. Somehow the stress of the day melts away when you walk by and see a list that includes both Gwar and Gladys Knight & the Pips. We have done T, D, G, P, and now M. Next week is brought to you by the letter...?

Happy New Year

Yes...it is a little late to be heralding the arrival of the New Year, but my blog is new and I have quite a bit to catch soon-to-be-loyal readers up on before it gets even later. The financial guru of the 80s, Charles Givens, used to advocate making a dreams list and a strategies list. I especially like his idea of listing things you want to do, places you want to go, and what you want to be or accomplish. For the past 9 years or so I have made resolutions that sort of evolved into "life lists." Reading War and Peace has been on that list for years and I have never managed to accomplish that goal. This year as I was preparing my resolutions list, I came upon a webinar through the SirsiDynix Institute that ultimately led to http://www.43things.com/. The 43 things website has people listing goals they have. Some goals are lofty, some are small. It's an addicting site. I decided to come up with 43 things for the year of varying magnitude. In future posts I'll let you know how I'm doing. I will tell you that on January 3rd I started War and Peace and finished on March 6th. Happy New Year!

Welcome

Welcome the the first posting of this new blog. I hope you will join me on this great journey. Please feel free to comment (appropriately). Enjoy!