Weeding, another kind....

Non-native invasive plants, this time, not unwanted books. Today's site of the day: California Gardens, just cruising around trying to find plants that go well with an eastern exposure (for the front yard). I have partial sun there and varying soils. One bed is protected by trees and the other is a little more exposed with drier soil (clay?). I suck at soil analysis. The beds are stocked with the standard crape myrtle, azalea, camellia, ferns, a rose bush (pretty--don't know what kind). I want to get less standard without challenging the sun/soil constraints.

The Weeding Report

This weekend was the first garage sale of the season at my mom's. She tries to have three before the fall weather hits. I've made a good pass at weeding my books and feel fairly comfortable with what I have decided to give up. Among them: Covert Bailey's Fit or Fat Woman, McDougall Program for Maximum Weight Loss (too extreme), Energy Up!: Shed Pounds, etc. There's only so much information you can read in that area. I think I get it now. Not just getting rid of some diet books, also thinning out some of my French literature from the decadent period (late 1800s), Barbey d'Auervilly, Huysmans, a book on Gilles de Rais by Bataille. Gilles de Rais is just an awful figure in French history, I won't say more here, see the Amazon review of the book. My reasons for buying these in the first place were mostly out of titillation (the scholarly version...), but now I think "why do I want this stuff in my life?" The Gilles de Rais stuff is just bad juju. And for the other stuff, if I want to get back into reading French, there is better stuff to be had, like Proust or Balzac.

This is not a comprehensive list of what's going, but it covers a couple of main areas that jumped out at me.

A drought ends....

A week and a half ago I finally made the trip to get my public library card. We were waiting until we had a permanent address, and someplace to store the books we checked out (rather than having them take over my MIL's house). My eclectic taste finally gets to run free again, where I get to check out many books in my usual areas of interest: fashion, finances, childcare. I'm also adding gardening, since we now have one. Right now (and you can see at left), I'm also reading Sting's Broken Music. As a music man and former teacher, he's very good with language, so it's a good read. Not too self-indulgent. Maybe something to do with his Britishness too? Anyway, I'm enjoying it. Since I often have 4-5 books checked out at a time, I don't know if I'll show all of them at left (and still trying to figure out posting images to site--sigh, this former HTML website junky seems to be undergoing a Flowers for Algernon process in this area).

Now dat's what ahm talkin' 'bout!

I spotted the Sacramento forecast. Aw, yeah, getting into the high 80s, low 90s. I will be whining in a month or so, but right now, I'm so tired of rainy cold weather that I'm very excited for the 90s.

DMV was efficient, even friendly. Sweet talk always helps.

Other observations:
This NYtimes article on transformation of libraries by technology. Who's at the root? Bill and Melinda Gates, of course (via the BMGF).

Another short-attention span day so far, lots of meetings throughout the day, hopefully it will mellow out.

The Latest Bureaucratic Challenge

Later this morning I have one of the great life challenges: registering the vehicle at one of California's DMV offices. Wish me luck.

Michael did not have to have shots after all. I am very grateful. We found a great family practice doctor who seems to have similar points of view to our family's. Our Seattle pediatrician was thorough and good, but sometimes conservative and unnerving in his cautious pre-diagnoses. To wit: the craniosynostosis scare when he was one month old.

Heartbreaker

Today is a heartbreaker day: an afternoon appointment for the boy for a checkup and, inevitably, shots. I don't even know what he's up for, but it will be difficult. Not much other news other than waiting for the weekend.

Temptation, thy name is Twinkie!

Walking on to campus, I spotted the beast: even from far away, I could read the sign on the truck "TWINKIES". Oh my. I know our campus is gearing up for one of its famous spring festivals, but setting up on a Thursday? As I neared, my greatest fears were confirmed: it was indeed one of the top ten fat bombs (link may require registration) of our time: THE DEEP-FRIED TWINKIE TRUCK!!!! Run, run as fast as you can!

Library work slowly hobbles along, with developments occuring as quickly as the process of consensus and consultation can possibly move. Forward slowly is better than any pace backwards.

Looking toward 35

I just started a food program through eDiets, to start on the campaign toward a fitter 35 (which I turn later this year). I promise I won't turn this into a diet progress report blog, but I do see it affecting my daily life: better attention at work, more energy for the family, etc. The hardest part in this busy life is doing dedicated exercising. Incidental exercising (e.g. stairs at work, hoisting a toddler) I can do.

Ran across this book club site during my online email travels (web page advert). It looks like a good deal, but not as good as your local library, especially for the stuff you don't think you'll keep on your shelves (see below). Maybe for reference like gardening, home decorating, cookbooks, etc. But maybe you can have too many of those too.....

Refreshing Personal Library Query

Hey folks: shuffling the personal library question to the top today (see below). We're getting ready for Mom's garage sale on Saturday, and I'm anxious to lighten the load book-wise. This type of task always has me keeping more than I initially had planned. D and I did manage to trash many cassettes this weekend, which is a good sign. Especially considering all the nostalgic "really cool mix tapes" we could have kept.

FROM THURSDAY: Also, more boxes to unload at home. Nesting after a move is an all-consuming task. Unfortunately, our other life obligations do not allow for it to be all-consuming in reality. Work and a toddler call. Now, I have a question for my librarian and book-oriented friends. I'm thinking of weeding my personal library collection in a major way, maybe even making a list of things I will have owned in case I need them again in order to let them go. Not for the central stuff, just the funky stuff that I've been hanging onto like this book on Bakhtin and Dos for Dummies. Do you have any advice for me undertaking this project? Should I just box them up and store them at my mom's? Or mother-in-laws? Part of me feels that it's just time for them to leave my life. I know, I should be able to sort this one out on my own, given that I'm an information professional and all, but sometimes you just need to go outside your own brain.

busy busy busy

Just busy, in all areas. Trying to move forward several projects at work, with the finesse of a new hire under scrutiny. Also going to a librarians' meeting tomorrow in the Bay Area, driving in the morning from somewhere in the central state. No small feat during rush hour. I look forward to the solo time the drive will provide and must remember to stock the car with rockin' CDs.

Tidbits and bigger bits

Useful site of the day: Capital Community College's semicolon page. I was working on a memo with a big list of stuff and got stuck on the last item of the series--does the semicolon go before the "and"? This site had my answer.

Oh, were it possible to take the whole week off work to unpack boxes! There are fewer boxes that on Sunday, though.... Thanks for the help, Mom.

Truth vs. fictions

God-talk alert: One challenge that this new Christ-follower faces is sorting out Truth among our fellow persons and professing believers. I think it must be a common task of our demographic: over-educated in a secular environment, and previously suspicious of anything with the C-word attached, still suspicious to a large extent (especially of the white bouffanted tel-evangelist brand of things), but also trying to sort out the more subtle ways that Truth can be commingled with all of the fictions. We're supposed to learn from/support/have corporate fellowship with our fellow believers, but sorting out what is supportable is a difficult task. I think about this in light of one of my previous posts about the college for homeschooled Christian children and how a large percentage of them are being funneled into the White House. I have to say that I'm suspicious about the hidden agendas here. How does one tell when the sheep are sheep, or when they're wearing wolves' clothing? And what to do when those two aspects are within the same person?

Library talk: yesterday afternoon, through megnut, I was taken to the Kinja site, and I had to try it out to see how it worked. I put in a few library-related sites, and spagblog, of course. It was before a meeting, so I printed out the "about" page to share. I mentioned it in "pre-meeting" chat, and the main question was "how would something like this benefit the library?". I talked about perhaps using it to aggregate subject-related blogs, something that our subject specialists could work on. I wasn't totally prepared to talk about the tool's relevance, and maybe I should have been. Was I off-base in thinking that "isn't this cool?" was a good-enough reason to share? I'll keep grinding away and maybe I can develop a library-related Kinja assemblage that will really knock socks off.

Spring Wooziness, and CULCHA!

I didn't forget about the Sacramento Valley during springtime, and the effects all of that floating seedstuff. Well, maybe I did. Last night had me floored by a massive allergy headache. Today is windy beyond all belief, but I need to stay strong. Tonight Mommy and Daddy are going out to get some "culcha", listening to Michael Cunningham as part of a fabulous lecture series, the brainchild of a good friend of ours. We missed the first 3 lectures, unfortunately, but now that we're back in the area we can be regular supporters. Hey, at least it's the arts and not sports, otherwise we would be "athletic supporters."