Another Confession

Shhh...don't tell anyone, but despite being a librarian, I am not a fan of library culture.

I think this started way back in library school, which I hated. I don't know if I could ever like someone who liked it.

I judged my classmates (several of whom later became my friends) as geeks. I am a lot of things, and I am not proud of some of them, but I am not a geek. This was confirmed when I took an online test that classified people into geeks, dorks and nerds. I came up nerd, which I was proud of given the options. I still don't think I am that nerdy other than my addiction to being online.

I maybe shouldn't have said so many shitty things about library school and it's ridiculous information transfer cycles and focus on learning styles. I think I developed bad karma.

I am getting my payback now that J. is in library school. I never wanted to talk about all those theories and models again. Actually, I never wanted to in the first place.
I can't believe I am becoming reacquainted with Bates, Belkin, Dervin Hensley, Kulhthau, berrypicking, the ASK theory, and sensemaking. At least J. hates library school as much as I did and we make fun of these people and concepts.

We read an article the other night about cross-cultural communication proposing if an information professional speaks the same language as the person with information need, the user is more likely to get his/her needs met.

How about: if you have a mouth, you are more likely to speak. If you have ears through which you can hear, you are more likely to listen.

Resurrection: I'm back, judging and using run-on sentences

Sorry blog.

It's not just you I've been ignoring.

The combination of moving and changing jobs has been pretty overwhelming and I have been flakier than I've ever been in my life.

Recently, though, it has been suggested to me that I am too content to write. I have also been accused of using The Angry Librarian to say bad things about Seattle.

Since I disagree with both these things, I will make an effort to start writing more regularly.

And just to show the overly-sensitive Seattle people that that I don't think Portland is perfect, I will start by listing things I don't like about Portland.


1. Lines/waiting

The way people stand patiently in line here drives me crazy. The number of times I have had to leave a coffee shop without coffee or I would have been late to work is ridiculous. And it would be completely avoidable, if baristas didn't insist on having long conversations and trying to make a personal connection with each customer. I far preferred the fast-paced rude baristas in Seattle who would pretend they didn't know what size and type of coffee I wanted, despite the fact that I had been going to the same place and ordering the same thing ever day for years.

I am also astounded by the fact that people will wait up to two hours before they are even seated at certain restaurants. Don't they have anything else to do with their time? Whatever ever happened to being able to make a reservation? This is overlapping into my pet peeves about service.

2. Service

Portland has hands down the worst service I have ever experienced in my life. Many times I have arrived at a restaurant and been told there is only room at the bar when it is clear there are ten+ tables available. Servers in many places have acted like they are doing their customers a favor to simply do their jobs. Sometimes when I have been served something that is cold or is entirely different from what I ordered, I will eat it anyway, since the level of hostility or superiority I received from my server was so high just when I was ordering that I am afraid of what would happen to my food if I sent it back. The one time I did do that, at the despised Bread and Ink Cafe, getting my corrected dinner took almost 45 minutes and the friend I was eating with was done by the time I finally received what I had ordered.

3. Drivers

I know, I know, I don't drive. But it doesn't mean that I can't tell when other people aren't good drivers, and I have a special disdain for bus drivers who fall into this category.

I am also amazed by the short term memories of so many Portland drivers. Last Friday it rained more heavily than it has since last spring and I was astounded by the traffic and the fact that in four months, people had forgotten how to drive in the rain.


4. Lack of decent Indian food

I didn't really like Indian food until I was in my mid twenties. I attribute this to my mother being overly zealous with curry in the kitchen when I was growing up. My mom is a great cook, but I was either too young to appreciate her efforts, or more likely, she was prioritizing the nutritional aspect of dinner above the taste. Or maybe she was just experimenting. What I do know was that I didn't have a real interest in Indian food until about 1995 and then I wanted to eat all the time. Seattle really does have great Indian food, and it's also really cheap. The Indian food that I have in Portland can't hold a candle to it, and with the exception of the food cart by my work, is also more expensive.

If I wasn't tired and my eyes didn't hurt, I could come up with some more things I didn't like about Portland. Maybe another day...it has just occurred to me that I forgot to mention the abundance of hippies and the trend of shared tables in resteraunts. But maybe not...I am not so content that I've stopped being judgemental, but I am really happy here.

The End

I think it was my uncomfortable conversation with Mr. 3:36 that contributed to my nightmare the other night. I dreamed a clown wearing a tie dye shirt asked me out, and I said okay even though there are few things I dislike more than hippies or clowns.

I hate the borrowed ideology of contemporary hippies. And I'll admit it, I think the aesthetic is appalling. Don't even get me started on clowns, and the way they pick on audience members, pushing their comfort zones. Mimes are even worse.

I'm so glad the hippie clown was only a dream. I was really disappointed with myself for being so passive in my dream, and prepared when Mr. 3:36 called back. I knew he would. I made an exception to my renaming rule, and entered him into my phone as DON'T ANSWER so I could be warned when he called. He left a message about how I said I'd call him with my schedule and hadn't, and if I didn't want to see him, that was fine, but at least I could be civilized and let him know.

I thought civilized was an interesting choice of words, given that he had hung up on me. I have tried to be direct, I have tried to have an open mind, but the fact is, Mr. 3:36 is a serious alcoholic. I'm not sure he remembers a lot of the things he says and does, which is why it's not worth it to me to remind him that his own behavior towards me has been anything but civilized. I'm done.

Volume

I can be really loud when I want to be. I developed this skill as a kid; having three siblings forced me to learn to project if I wanted to be heard. Working with large groups of kids makes me practice this skill all of the time. My coworkers are amazed that such a loud voice can come out of my body. I reserve my loudness for the workplace and am on the quieter side in my personal life.

I became really sensitive to noise when I lived with B., who somehow was loud even when he wasn't saying anything at all. I knew the mood he was in by the way he would close the door when he came home. A certain kind of slam would ensure that he would head straight to his office to blast music that I hated, like Melt Banana, Mr. Bungle,and No Means No. When he was in an exceptionally angry mood, he would scream "JOY!"

When I moved out, I lived in almost complete silence. I couldn't really play any music, since almost all the cds had been B.'s. I didn't even have a couch for five months.I spent a lot of time crouched on the floor in front of the heater, holding my own body, trying to get my mind around what I'd just done.

Ironically, during this time, I lived above the most noise sensitive people I've ever encountered. They complained to my landlord about the noise I made multiple times, referencing nights I wasn't even home, saying they could even hear what television show I was watching. I didn't have a television. I became paranoid about even walking around in my apartment. I was overjoyed when they finally moved out. I wondered a little about where they moved to and a shitty part of me that knew they'd never have a quieter neighbor than me hoped their new neighbors were really loud and not as easily intimated by them as I was.

I still live pretty quietly. I know how noise travels in my building, and part of my dislike of the neighbors in apartment four is their noise level. They speak at almost a shouting level. I am constantly overhearing phrases like "DO YOU WANT ANOTHER BURRITO?" spoken so loudly and delivered with such intensity that if I didn't speak English and just heard the sounds, I would think they were fighting.

Invisibility Cloaks

I had a really unsettling series of experiences during my last week in Seattle. My eyes had been bothering me all summer and I decided to give them a vacation from my contacts. This is always a disorienting experience for me because I don't see as well wearing glasses. They throw off my already iffy depth perception and it usually takes me at least four days to adjust to the different way of seeing.

I noticed as soon as I made the switch to glasses that people didn't look at me as often, and they definitely smiled at me less. I also attributed the crappy service I got in restaurants and bars to my glasses. I wondered if I would have had a different experience if I'd had a cuter pair of glasses. I'd still like to get some, but the experience rattled me enough to cut my eyes' vacation short. I switched back over to my contacts after only three days.

I shared this experience with M. the other night, and she'd had something similar happen. She was dating a guy who lived in another state. She'd just started a new job and they were being stingy about giving her days off. She really wanted to see her boyfriend and had already bought a plane ticket. She decided she would go visit him despite not being able to get the day off, and just call in sick to work.

Luckily for M., the day before her trip, she found out some of her coworkers would be on the same flight. She decided to disguise herself, reasoning that they didn't know her very well and probably wouldn't recognize a disguised version of her.

She chose a mom-in-tennis-shoes look, wore a wig, enormous sunglasses, and stuffed her clothes so that she looked twenty pounds heavier. She got on the plane, walked right past her coworkers without a hitch, found her seat, and reached up to put her bag in the storage compartment. As she did so, she accidentally bumped into a man in aisle, who visibly recoiled from her. She was angry and thought to herself, fuck you asshole, I'm actually really cute.

A Barstool Broke My Heart

A few months ago, I had a terrible day. The kids at my former workplace were out of control, lifting chairs above their heads and throwing them at eachother. There wasn't an administrator in the building to help me deal with the situation. I left work really upset. I got home, only to discover I'd left my keys at work. I was locked out of my apartment for a few hours. All I wanted to do was take a bath and cry. When I finally got into my building, I discovered that the bathtub had backed up and was filled with rusty water. I went out to get some draino and ran into a garage sale, where I found a vintage fur coat from the '30's for $5. It seemed like the perfect ending to a really bad day.

Today, things have happened in the reverse order. I woke up and was delighted to discover that I'd slept 12 hours. It was sunny, and I decided to go out for an adventure. I walked by Rerun, and found the exact type barstool I have been looking for $24. Everything else I've liked has been about $300. I asked if it would be okay to buy it and pick it up when I could get someone to haul it for me, and was assured that wasn't a problem. I paid for it, and continued on my nice day. I went out for great Italian food, bought myself some flowers, and went for about a five mile walk. I came home, and contacted K. to see if she could run me up the street to pick up the stool.

It wasn't out front when I arrived, but I assumed it was because they'd put it away once I bought it. Instead, it was gone because they'd sold it to someone else an hour or so later. They said someone must have taken the sold tag off, and that this had happened in the past.

What I want to know is if the same thing had happened in the past, why did it happen again? Is it that hard to remember you've already sold a piece of furniture? Or to move it into another room for an hour or so?

Laid back people of Portland, I love that you are friendly. I love if I go out by myself, you talk to me. I love that you say hello and ask me how I am doing where ever I go. This didn't happen in Seattle.

But when it comes to doing business, I wish you'd be a little more uptight and a lot more professional. I've had a crappy ending to a really good day.

I Don't Understand

Lately, it seems like the couples-who-share-an-email-address movement is on the rise.

To me, this is worse than taking your husband's last name. I know many women who have chosen to take their husband's name. None of them have the same reason, and all of the reasons are good; they range from wanting to get away from the last name Smith, to never having known their father and not feeling an attachment to their last name at all, to just liking their husband's last name better than theirs. While I would never change my last name, I can respect a woman's decision to do so.

I find it harder to understand shared email addresses. What sorts of thought processes do couples go through when they make the decision to share an address? What's the motivation? Email is free and anyone can get an address. What does sharing an email address mean? That couples who do have nothing to hide from each other?

I really like most of my friends partners, but that doesn't mean I want to write an email to them as a couple. I usually want to write my primary friend in the couple, and I find it difficult to be as candid as I'd like to when I know someone other than the intended recipient can read whatever message I've written.


Judgments_,

No Fun

The other day, a patron donated some games to my library. I was stunned to see The Ungame. I hadn't seen the game in twenty years and I'd convienantly forgotten it existed.

My mom got The Ungame for my family in the mid seventies and all of us kids hated it. I think my dad did, too. It' a non-competitive game; the cards players draw as they go around the board only pose questions about feelings.

I took the cards home to see if the game was as bad as I remembered. It is, and I am kind of proud of myself for identifying this at such a young age.

Here are some examples of the questions, and I'll even answer them for you, because I made an important discovery. I am too competitive to enjoy non-competitive games, but I kind of like expososing examples of the game's questions and sharing my answers in a bloggable format.


What do you think you'll look like in 10 years? Really good, if my mom at 46 was any kind of indication. I promise not to perm my hair and dye it the wrong color to cover up the gray that is already starting to come in.

Complete the sentence. A time I will never forget is...when my uncle's dog ran up from the basement with one of my guinea pigs, Scarlett O'Hair (a beautiful red head, pink eyed little pig) in his mouth. She died of shock about ten minutes later. Or, how about the time I fell right on my ass when I caught my first glimpse of Anchor Wot? I was so embarrassed I cried.

Complete this sentence: I talk the most when... Oh, this one is almost too easy. I talk the most when I've had a couple of drinks.

Complete this sentence: A recent movie I enjoyed was...Gray Gardens. I liked it because...the two women it profiles made me feel comparatively sane.

What is you favorite day of the week and why? Until recently, it was everybody's favorite day, Friday, but now I work on Saturdays. I haven't figured out if I like Sunday or Monday better yet, since I've only been on this schedule for two weeks. I have a feeling it's going to be Monday, though. I like the idea of not having to share a weekend with other people. I can go out to breakfast without worrying about places being too crowded.

Complete this sentence: something I really like to receive for my birthday is____________ because_____________.

What a timely card! My birthday is coming up in less than a month. I'm a little nervous about it because I don't know a lot of people in Portland yet. No one at work will know it's my birthday, and also, I have to work until 8 that night.

I would like a lot of things. A new hat to replace my favorite hat that I have used in lieu of an umbrella for the past four years and lost last week. I'd like a new Bose, since my brother recently reclaimed the one he loaned me a few years ago. I'd really like some help painting my apartment, since my job is taking up most of my energy these days and also, I'm not able to move the furniture out of the rooms I want to paint by myself. I'd like a couple of new friends here, and maybe they could even help me paint. But mostly, I want to make sure people remember it. It's October 17th, and just a call would be fine.

Size Matters

Sorry gentlemen. This entry is about bras. But just in case you’re wondering, the answer is yes. In my mind, the question “does size matter?” falls into the “do I look fat?” category of questions. If you have to ask, you’ve already incriminated yourself, and if you’re asking a friend or a lover, they can be honest and hurt your feelings, or lie and appease you.When men have asked me if size matters, I have always told them the truth...if you are an asshole and on the small side, it's realistic to expect that information has been shared.

But back to bras. A. , her daughter S. and I were out shopping the other day. A. needed a new bra, and I decided to take advantage of our visit to the Nordstrom’s lingerie department and get measured. Someone told me a while ago that Oprah had a whole show devoted to “bra interventions”. She claimed 85% of women were wearing the wrong bra size.

I found a nice woman to measure me. She can help me get dressed any day. It felt really luxurious to have someone put bras on for me. She was very thorough, and had me bend over to make sure they fit properly. Sure enough, she said I was wearing the wrong bra size, and pronounced me a 32 DDD instead of a 34 D. I was stunned. I didn’t like the way it sounded. It’s a really hard size to find, and the bras aren’t any fun. They’re full coverage, no nonsense affairs. I found a pink bra slightly better than the offensive mom bras she brought in, and despite everything, I really liked the way it felt.

A. decided to get measured as well and found herself a 32 D instead of a 34 B. She was similarly shocked, but really liked the bra our measurer found her. We bought our bras and moved onto Macy's. A. had to buy a wedding present for her father in law. We decided that while she shopped, I should go get measured, just to see if another bra expert shared the opinion of the first one. We love comparisons, and used to administer the Pepsi Challenge at parties when we were kids.

The Macy’s lingerie department is much larger than Nordstrom’s. They have a wider selection of bras, and everyone knows about their “Buy One, Get One Free” bi-annual bra sales. Despite this, the department was a ghost town, and not just in terms of customers. It took me awhile to locate a sales person, and she looked really inconvenienced when I asked her to measure me. We went into a dressing room, and I started to take of my shirt. She stopped me and told me they didn’t do it like that there. I felt embarrassed, as if I’d done something really inappropriate.

She measured me, taking all of 20 seconds to do so, and told me I was a 36 C. I raced off to find A. and share this inconsistency. I found myself pleased the sales person had done such a half assed job, and seemed to have a fear of breasts. It made a better story.


Adventures_

Words That Embarrass Me

bI’ve been really easily irritated this week. It just doesn’t take much to get me worked up about things that really aren’t a big deal, like words that make me cringe.

My guess is that we all have words we don’t like to say, and that many of us share an aversion to the same words, like fanny, pantyhose and slacks. Am I right?

Of course there are words for foods that really get on my nerves, like home fries. That word and concept emerged out of the blue and onto the breakast plate sometime maybe in the early 90’s, replacing the perfectly respectable hash brown. They aren’t bad, they just aren’t as good as hash browns. And since they’re only served in restaurants, they’re inaccurately named. If I order a breakfast and home fries are one of the options I can choose from, I avoid saying the word and say that I’ll have the potatoes.

Then there are smoothies. Saying that word out loud makes me feel gross. It’s a sleazy word, when you think about it. Additionally, smoothies are guilty of being part of a food trend, though the trend has fortunately already seen its peak.

A food trend still going strong is the panini craze. I saw an ad for a panini sandwich the other day that made me crazy. Panini means sandwich! Panini sandwich is redundant. And panini isn’t even the right word, unless you are referring to more than one. We should really call a panini a panino. But why can’t we just call it a grilled sandwich? We aren’t in Italy and the ingredients in them are rarely classically Italian.




Judgments_,Bon Appetit_

Confession

Forgive me, but I judge.

I hate the Myers-Briggs test. I have a distain for both corporate and touchy-feely things and the test somehow manages to achieve both. I’ve been forced to take it in the workplace and in graduate school. While my personality apparently changed between the times I took it (though I strongly believe it was the moods I was in when I took it that influenced the way I answered the questions), the J for Judgment was consistent.

I judge food. I hate food trends, and was particularly appalled by the wrap craze that has thankfully come and gone. The syrup-infused, calorie-laden, milkshake-like drinks at Starbucks send shivers down both my spine and taste buds. I think sweet bagels (with fruit, chocolate chips, or berries) are just wrong. Anyone who knows me well has probably heard my monologue on muffins on numerous occasions. I harbor a special hatred for muffins from COSTCO. These stale monstrosities are no substitute for breakfast and I won’t eat them no matter how hungry I am.

Of course my judgment extends further than food. I judge books. In the early ‘90’s, when I worked as a bookseller, I played a little game with myself and tried to figure out what books customers would buy, just based on my first impression of them. I have to say my predictions were often right. I learned to spot little giveaway clues. Women carrying ethnic bags liked Barbara Kingsolver. Another group easy to spot were those in search of The Celestine Prophecy.

I am suspicious of best sellers, though not always above reading them. Yes, I confess I read The DaVinci Code. It’s the perfect plane book. I took the cover off so that someone like me wouldn’t spot me reading it. I am similarly judgmental of Oprah’s book club books. I recognize she has done a great thing and got people reading who otherwise might not. But I don’t want to read the same books as other people! When she switched over to classics, I couldn’t help but notice all the books were ones I’d read in high school.

I don’t really have a problem with my judgment of things like food and books. It’s not really hurting anyone and it’s kind of funny. But I am trying to be more mindful of the judgments I make about people. I’ve been hurt by snap judgments people have made about me and I don’t really want to pass this on to other people. I also love changing my mind about people I’ve initially disliked.

The other week, I had dinner with L & E. We lived together a couple of lifetimes ago and to be honest, L. and I didn’t have the best relationship. We were living in an apartment too small for four people, and we weren’t really old enough to have figured out that we could actually talk about some of the issues between us.

I’ve run into L. & E. several times in the past few years and it’s been great to discover that anything difficult between us is well in the past. We finally made a real plan, so we could actually catch up on the past 15 years.

L. is a great cook and made an insanely high-fat dinner, pasta with sausage, cream and parmesan. I ate butter on my bread and I even had gelato. The evening merited it. We had one of those symphonic conversations you can only have with people you have either just met or haven’t talked to in years.

Then I said something catty about someone we both know and I was immediately embarrassed. I didn’t want to present myself this way, when things were still new between us.

I started to apologize, but L. interrupted me, telling me that if a person finds herself at a point in her life where she is not judgmental of anything or anyone, a part of her has died.

L., I am so sorry we wasted our time judging each other in the past. I had no idea how much we had in common.

Judgments_

Bad Habits

I've been thinking about some of the things about guys I've been involved with that really bothered me. I never said anything about these things, I was just silently horrified.

Since it's not good to keep feelings bottled up inside, I will share.

•Constantly buying condiments rarely or never used

•Wearing a poncho

•Talking in a British accent for no apparent reason and seemingly without irony

•Occasional utterances of "sweeet Jesus" during passionate moments

•Borrowing another person's reasons for becoming a vegetarian

•Compulsive collecting of obscure action figures


Lists, Judgments_