013: Winter Wonderland

Yet more snow, falling in very aesthetic huge, fluffy clumps for an hour or so.  Very pretty, and made the roads utterly disgusting to boot!  Ah, the joys of winter.  It reminds me of this old Puke & Snot routine, "A Lovely State," off Are You All Right? (warning: some not-work-safe language).



I can't get as irate as that fictional transplant. It's more of a heavy, resigned sigh than anything else.

On the bright side, there's only five months until summer!

012: With the City of Miami as Itself

Before I canceled my Netflix account, I was working through season one of Burn Notice on DVD.  Michael Westen's voiceovers take an already fun, witty show up to the next level of amusing.  I also like how the whole show is inadvertently (or purposefully?) a how-to guide for covert ops.  One of the local TV stations also runs back-to-back syndicated episodes on Wednesday nights, which my family has started watching with more and more dedication every week.

Having finished Twin Cities Noir, I'm reading Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem at the moment, and the main character is a private detective with the standard wry film-noir first-person narration.  Between the voice and the offbeat situations in which Conrad Metcalf finds himself, the shamus has started looking like a polished-up Michael Westen in my head.  Like so:


from Changeling, via Google


With almost every book I read, I inadvertently play casting director, which means the story plays out like a movie in my head as I work my way through.  I'm convinced this makes me enjoy a lot of books more than I would otherwise, and as a result, I probably think a lot of things I've read are better than they are, just because I've had the cast of Castle acting out the plot for me.  Or whatever.  Does everyone do that, I wonder?  Or do I just watch too much television?

011: Packrattery

Everyone in my household is a packrat.  I am afraid to watch shows about hoarders for fear of recognizing their behavior in myself and my family.  I try to be a little more discerning in what I save, having grown up with clutter that has gotten more than slightly out of control in the last few years.  I have also worked, off and on, for the last five years, at an archival library, where we appreciate important people who are packrats ("important people" being well-known authors and architects, performing arts organizations, etc).  The following is gleaned both from knowledge gained on the job and from sporadic attempts to clean my own home.

A quick list of things to not put in with papers you plan to save for a long time:

• rubber bands, which either lose their elasticity, turn rock hard and crumble to tiny bits, or lose their elasticity, turn rock hard and adhere themselves to your papers like very determined barnacles.
• paper clips, which will oxidize and, if left long enough in the right conditions, start to eat straight through paper.  Even staples can go bad.  Stainless steel paper clips, however, are fine.
• tape.  Fun fact: old cellophane tape leaves a crusty, brownish-yellow stain when the adhesive dries out.  I have yet to figure out a way to get it to come off.
• post-it notes.  As far as I can tell, the longer they are on paper without being peeled off and repositioned, the stronger the adhesive gets.  By the time your friendly neighborhood archivist gets to them, removing them leaves a tacky strip that is more or less permanent.  However, they are awesome for short-term use.
• three-ring binders, especially the kind with the clear plastic window on the front for a cover page.  With laser-printed pages in particular, the ink gets stuck to the plastic both inside and out; I don't know if that's because the plastic is decomposing or the ink is.  Actually, plastic of any kind is bad news, eventually.
• newspaper, unless you put some acid-free paper in between it and other types of paper.  I have, while processing, come across documents permanently marked with the perfect brown shadow of the newspaper clipping filed behind them.
• receipts and other thermal paper.  I just pulled some receipts from the late 1990s out of a drawer in our kitchen, and they had turned from white to neon yellow and all the black ink was faded beyond legibility.  Fax paper (remember faxes?) just develops an even grosser, slimier texture than it had originally.
• rodents.  You'd be surprised.
• insects.  No, really, you'd be surprised.

On the other hand, a few things that may be helpful for you or whoever goes through your stuff in the future:

• keep two copies.  Three copies, if you want a backup for your backup.  It might seem like a good idea to keep a whole stack of, say, identical leaflets, but if you're not going to be distributing them, they just take up space.  On the other hand, if you have only one copy of something, you can be sure a hungry rodent will find it.
• make paper copies.  If there are e-mails to which you will want to refer in the abstract distant future, print them out.  Floppy disks and CDs become obsolete or get corrupted.  It is almost impossible to find a machine to read 5" floppy disks.  It is remarkably easy to read a piece of paper.
• label everything.  Someone else may not know that a handful of scribbled notes is actually the plot outline for the Great American Novel.  You may not even remember twelve years later.  Acid-free tabbed folders, labeled, are your friends.
• date everything.  One of the easiest ways to figure out where something belongs is to date it and organize chronologically.  Even noting when you received an undated letter could be helpful in the future.
• make box lists.  If you're throwing a lot of stuff in a box for storage, take the time to make a list of what's inside.  It doesn't have to be terribly detailed, just a bullet-point list you can throw in on top of everything else before the lid goes on.  I can't tell you how much easier this makes my life as a processer when whoever packed the box tells me what's supposed to be inside.  On the home front, if you're looking for something and don't know which box you put it in, having a quick-and-dirty inventory that's the first thing you see when you open the box makes the search go much faster.
• label photos.  Label photos.  LABEL PHOTOS.  If a stranger goes through your photos (not in a creepy way, hopefully, but rather an archivist or genealogist), chances are they will not recognize your acquaintances on sight.  In my own experience, it's hard to tell some of my great-uncles apart in their childhood photos, and it's hard to tell where family photos were taken when all living rooms looked alike in the 1960s.  Captions help.  A lot.
• go acid-free.  If you know what you're printing will be saved for a long time (and you can afford it), consider printing on acid-free paper.  A lot of scrapbooking supplies are acid-free, since the whole purpose is to preserve the photos and whatever else goes into scrapbooks, and I believe office supply stores carry some acid-free as well.  It's more expensive, but in terms of conservation, it's probably the best option.
• avoid miscellany.  "Misc." on a box means nothing.  It reveals nothing.  It is an enigma.  And it's exasperating when you're searching your dimly-lit attic or basement.

That's all the unsolicited advice I have for the moment.  I hope someone, someday, finds it helpful.

010: Somnambulism

Dead on my feet for no good reason today; just Monday, I guess. Got to work this morning to be told someone broke into the office next door over the weekend -- door smashed to bits and everything -- and stole a laptop and some stamps(?). Bizarre, and unfortunate.

Better things from over the weekend? My Jeopardy! second-place winnings -- minus California withholding tax -- came on Saturday, and my birthday gifts, the three DVD sets my mom had squirreled away in her closet (Castle season 2, Bones season 5, and True Blood season 2). All in all, not too shabby.

In conclusion, Don Draper.

009: One year closer to death

I'm twenty-four years old today, and I'm celebrating by watching Burn Notice and perusing the public library's catalog of ebooks for my Nook. Tonight, I get beef short ribs for dinner and French silk pie. It might sound lame to you, but look up at the header on this blog: "homebody." Happy birthday to me, indeed.

008: Sanity

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head during an event in her Arizona congressional district this morning. Giffords is in critical condition; six others, including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl, were killed. In all, nineteen people were shot. While he didn't confirm a political motive for the shooting, the Pima County Sheriff had this to say:

“The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, I think Arizona has become sort of the capital, we have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry. There’s reason to believe that this individual might have a mental issue, and I think that people who are unbalanced might be especially susceptible to vitriol.”

So I just want to take a moment to use my insignificant corner of the internet to advocate for sanity and civility in the way we talk about politics, especially when talking to those with whom we disagree. From what I've seen, very little gets done and accord is rarely reached by screaming at each other. My thought is this: a little common sense is never a bad thing.

All hopes and wishes for recovery to Rep. Giffords and the others injured today, and condolences to the families of those killed.

007: All a-Twitter

Offered without comment, except to say that between this and Never Mind the Buzzcocks, I totally have a crush on Josh Groban.

006: True colors

I can't think of a single thing to write about today, so have some colorful photos from my Flickr favorites:





Also:

IT'S A TRAP

005: The Very Depths of Winter

Snow on Monday, subzero windchills Tuesday, more snow today. Somewhere around mid-January is when I despair of ever again leaving the house wearing just one pair of socks and dream of the day the long underwear goes back into storage. But lest you think Minnesotans don't enjoy the winter, I direct you to the poem written by Peter Moore (read on Moore on Sunday by his father, the late, great local newsman Dave Moore) about this time of year:

A Great Winter Sport
The best part of winter, the best part by far,
Is kicking those ice chunks that form on your car.
No matter our ages or races or genders
We all enjoy booting that slush off our fenders.
It's deeply fulfilling, that contact and sound
Of boot hitting chunk and then chunk hitting ground.
It makes you feel better, it makes your day brighter,
It makes your Tercel about twenty pounds lighter!
And boy, what a workout! We all could be hunks
By starting each morning with kicking some chunks!
So next time you spot one, no matter how awesome,
Don't wait and think maybe you might let it thaw some;
Go after it mister! Attack it with zeal,
And manfully give it the back of your heel!
It may take you weeks, but of course that's good, too:
The winter goes faster with something to do!

from Gone Writing

This runs through my head every time I clear the accumulated mush off my car. And yes, it really is that satisfying.

P.S. If you don't know what these "ice chunks" are, I suggest the photos here for reference.

004: They call her Lemon

I am reminded on a daily basis that there's a strong possibility I will become Liz Lemon as I get older. Today, I unironically exclaimed "blerg" aloud, at work. Turning into Lemon is not necessarily a bad thing; I want her job and her apartment, and she dates men who look like Jon Hamm and Matt Damon, of which I approve. It's a little ridiculous how much I, a bespectacled brunette writer who really, really likes TV, identify with Lemon.


I went through junior high just before the card catalog became completely obsolete, so they still had to teach us how to use it, and I distinctly remember being the only one in seventh-grade Language Arts who thought it was cool. I'm perpetually on the hunt for a card catalog cabinet I can buy for my theoretical apartment. Liz has a card catalog in her apartment. She might be my home decor soulmate.


look! it's there, in the back!
I share Liz's feelings about people younger than me.


Also, we both have terrible posture.


I know that Liz is supposed to be sort of a sad-sack character, with her emotional eating, her terrible sense of style (which I don't think is that bad, but I do dress like her) and her train wreck of a personal life, but when I think about it...


(gratuitous screenshot is gratuitous)
...she must have awesome stories. So, the point of this picspam and rambling is this: while moving back home after college definitely makes me feel like a loser, it's okay, because Liz Lemon is kind of a loser, and she's doing all right.



Or I could just, you know, adopt Tina Fey as a role model instead. Hmm.