Winter Wonderland

Mom just sent along these photos of how snowy it is in Westport right now!

Hmmm... California's looking better and better :)

Laptop Case

I actually managed to finish a knitting project (its been years and years... in college I think I managed a scarf and three mittens). It's a little knit case for my laptop with a button flap. I used TLC Worsted Weight 5978 Country Club yarn on 8 US needles. Here's a photo (with my laptop snuggly inside).

Not exactly as I hoped it turned out, but I'm just excited to actually have completed something! Now I have to figure out what to make next so I can bring some work to tomorrow's knitting group!

Tech Now

NBC 11's technology show, Tech Now, tapes at The Tech each Wednesday during my shift. This week the camera angle captured the curiousity counter during most of the shots, so when I tuned in to watch tonight, there I was!

I can't wait until I have the technology to be able to send tv screenshots to my computer! In the meantime, at least with TIVO I can pause it long enough to take a digital photo.

Vote Yes on B

It was a beautiful afternoon here (about 55 degrees... sorry East Coasters...) and I spent it going door-to-door up in Milpitas for Yes on B. Here's a snippet of the script:

"Passing Measure B is necessary to continue the hours, books and reading programs we currently enjoy at our local Milpitas library. The Measure is a continuation of a funding mechanism voters passed overwhelmingly 10 years ago, which makes up 21% of our local library budget."

It needs a 2/3 vote to pass -- so Vote Yes on B on March 2nd!!

I went to 108 houses -- but then ran out of literature, so I'll have to get more so I can go and finish my precinct.

Engineer It! Training

Training this morning for Engineer It!, which just opened at The Tech yesterday. I took a ton of photos to post to the Tech Volunteers' Online Community. This is a quick animation of The Catenary Arch, which requires a group effort to build and ends up being 7 ft tall.

Trying to knit...

Worked on my knitting some more...

and surfed a whole bunch of other people's knitting blogs...

even took a quiz (which I think came out quite accurately):

You're a young knitter, just starting out. Welcome
to the fold! Find yourself some nice soft yarn
and grab a latte- it takes a while to finish a
project but it's well worth it.


Are you a knitter?
brought to you by Quizilla

I even found a local group that's meeting at one of my favorite coffee shops on Sunday afternoon!

3.6 at 6:11

Just had a little 3.6 earthquake, about half way between here and Gilroy (a route I'll know well soon). Didn't feel it (3.6, that's nothing!) but heard about it immediately afterwards on the news.

Great earthquake info at: http://quake.usgs.gov/

Library Orientation, Day 3

Today was the last day of orientation for the internship program. We went over the resources available on the library's web site and the databases the library subscribes to. Here Jean, Trish and Heidi search the databases. (Hi Trish!)

I found out that I've been assigned to Gilroy for my sheltered reference, the next step in the program. Gilroy is the Garlic Capital of the World.

Mad Cow

Since they keep announcing a huge blood shortage, I signed up to give blood today (its cool to be able to register online and find out the nearest locations, etc.) But after waiting down there an hour I found out that I'm apparently a risk for mad cow since I lived in France for more than three months since 1980. Doesn't seem to matter that I don't eat beef, though I can't remember if I was eating it when I lived there. Oh well, maybe they'll lift the ban at some point. I was just trying to help.

VAB Meeting

Long VAB meeting tonight but it seemed like we got a lot done. I'm going to be good and type up the minutes right now while they're fresh (I'm still hoping that one day someone else will volunteer to take the minutes... sigh)

So Many Books, So Little Time

Mom sent me Sara Nelson's So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading, which I finished this morning. I thought it was a lot of fun. Its really more than the books she read, but how they found her and what they meant to her.

Here's a list of some of the ones from the book that I think I'll add to my to-do pile:

Personal History by Katherine Graham

How Boys See Girls by David Gilmour

The Ginger Tree Oswald Wynd

Heartburn by Nora Ephron (an old favorite to reread)

House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (though I HATED Ethan Frome in high school)

Floater by Calvin Trillin (I loved Tepper isn't Going Out)

And Then She Found Me by Elinor Lipman

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich (Which Carrie has offered to lend me next time I visit her)

and I want that: How we all Became Shoppers by Thomas Hine

BobbiLynn's New House!

Congrats to BobbiLynn and Glen on their new HOUSE!

Reference Shadowing

Spent the afternoon shadowing the reference librarians (adult and childrens') at the Milpitas Library. It was SO much fun! I got to help a few people (gave out paper for the printers, found some Tolkein books, taught a woman visiting from China how to use the pay phones, etc.) but mostly watched the reference librarians and asked lots of questions.

What's hot in the children's section? Science fair projects, missions and native Americans in California (4th graders), endangered species, Lizzie McGuire, Ancient Egypt and Ancient China, and all sorts of other interesting topics. Adults wanted Indian newspapers, consulate phone numbers, diabetes cookbooks, QuickBooks and Photoshop tutorials, video documentaries about army bootcamp, and more.

Newsclip, 1956

From the New York Times, October 3, 1956, p. 51

News of the Advertising and Marketing Fields

People

Ralph Sheffer has been elected president of The Masthead Corporation, publishing affiliate of Spencer Advertising Company, Inc., organized to meet special book and booklet requirements of national and regional advertisers. He will continue to serve as vice president of Spencer Advertising Company.

Door to Door

Spent the day walking door to door (57 doors I think) in Palo Alto for Barbara Nesbet, who is running for state assembly in my district (21). It was a lot of fun (lots more fun than it was 12 years ago (this week?) in the New Hampshire cold for the 1992 primaries (for Harkin)), but definitely exhausting!

Tech Meetings

Spent the day in meetings at the Tech. First there was the board advance (not a "retreat", since we talk about moving forward, not back) and then a meeting of the scholarship committee, which I ran.

Here's my table for the board lunch, including many of the panelists from the discussion. I have a ton of notes too type up, but am too tired tonight to deal with them.

Friday fun, 1/23

Spent the afternoon at BobbiLynn's. Here's us doing our craft projects, watching Ellen, eating chocolate-chip/m&m cookies and dreaming up all sorts of other projects to start! Plus, I'm wearing a scarf which she crocheted for me!!! (Thank you so much for that and all the other wonderful holiday gifts!!!)

Home: A Short History of an Idea

Finshed Home: A Short History of an Idea by Witold Rybcznski last night. I had bought it with Carrie at our trip to the GreenApple bookstore in SF.

Its a quick journey through time tracing the history of the idea of home and of comfort.

He writes that:

[Comfort] is an idea that has meant different things at different times. In the seventeeth century, comfort meant privacy, which lead to intimacy and, in turn, to domesticity. The eighteenth century shifted the emphasis to leasure and ease, the nineteenth to mechanically aided comforts -- light, heat, and ventilation. The twentieth-century domestic engineers stressed efficiency and convenience. At various times, and in response to various outside forces -- social, economic, and technological - the idea of comfort has changed, sometimes drastically. (231)

and urges that, "We must rediscover for ourselves the mystery of comfort, for without it, our dwellings will indeed by machines instead of homes." (232)

I liked the book and the way each chapter started with an image of the home in art and a quote about home or comfort from literature (similar to how Alan talks about Hay in art and literature). This is one of the paintings he used, Georg Friedrich Kersting's Girl Embroidering (c. 1814) for the chapter entitled "Ease" (along with a Jane Austen quote from Emma: "Ah! There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.") [I found the image on a site with notes and illustrations on Regency clothing styles from a site called The Republic of Pemberley: Your haven in a world programmed to misunderstand obsession with things Austen.]

New Adobe Tower

Volunteered at a Community Fair celebrating the opening of Adobe's new tower.

Here's the Mayor Ron Gonzales and Adobe President/CEO Bruce Chizen about to cut the ribbon.

and Erinn at the Tech's table

Short Stories

This is being filed under friends and family rather than books for now, since I haven't actually read the books yet, just heard sections of them being read tonight at Kepler's, a fabulous independent bookstore in Menlo Park.

The collections of short stories were: Where the long grass bends by Neela Vaswani and Curled in the Bed of Love by Catherine Brady.

But it was a big extended-family event. Pictured here: Alan and Brenna wait to get their book signed by Neela. Annie and Herald check out Catherine's book. Brenna, Grace, Alan and Devan search the crowd for friendly faces. Margaret (not picture) and I exchanged reference question stories :)

Library Orientation, Day 2

Just finished my second day of orientation for my internship. Sometime over the next week I'll be doing a round of shadowing at the Milpitas library (the sheltered reference experience comes later, and at another library in the system).

Here's a quick picture of my intern cohort group -- Heidi, Jean, Amytha, Chris and Eric, with Paul showing us how to access our new webmail accounts.

Library Orientation, Day One

I am now officially an intern in the Santa Clara County Library system. I should find out tomorrow which library I'll be doing my shadowing/training at, but meanwhile there's been lots of good information and some great people to meet.

Random Hay Images

Added a rotating random image from the hay database to Alan's site. It even links to the entry. (Its the image in the top left corner of the front Hay in Art page).

Here's a taste of a random image (but without the nice database link):

Reload for a different bit of Hay

TV Tonight

I'm planning an evening in to watch the very strange juxtaposition of American Idol and the returns from the Iowa Caucuses...

My blogger code

My blogger code: B3 d++ t+ k- s- u- f i o+ x e+ l+ c-- (decode it!)

After taking the survey I realized that I hadn't visited very many of the sites they quizzed me on, so here they are for future reference:

bradlands.com, camworld.com, evhead.com, haughey.com, kottke.org, megnut.com, plasticbag.org, powazek.com, rebeccablood.net, saturn.org, scripting.com and zeldman.com, among others.

... and yes, a lot of today has already been spent reading blogs (I really liked this one: http://www.lisa-jill.com/) and I should go do real work now...

20 Years of Macs

An article called The Mac that roared in today's Mercury News talks about the last 20 years of Macintosh computers. You can watch the original sledgehammer ad that kicked off the revolution (it announces that the first macs will be available on January 24, 1984... promising that 1984 won't be like '1984') -- but in this one she's now wearing an iPod.

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Time for a Sunday afternoon matinee: Saw Girl with A Pearl Earring. I really liked the book -- and think it worked better than the movie did. The movie looked great, but was painfully slow at times and really missed the perspective the book allowed us on the girl's feelings.

The movie did fit in well with what I'm reading now, which is Home: A short history of an idea by Witold Rybczynski. He uses art and literature to show the evolution of the idea of home and comfort through the ages. Of Vermeer, he writes:

Jan Vermeer, another Delft painer, was predominantly interested in the female human figure and less in the domestic interior, but since almost all his masterly paintings are set in the home, they also convey something of its character. His subjects act with a concentration that is mirrored in the still atmosphere of the room and its furnishings. Through Vermeer's paintings we can see how the house has changed: it has become a setting for private acts and personal moments. (71)

Carrie's New Blog

Announcing the creation of Carrie's New Blog! I'm looking forward to being able to see what she's up to and to get to see all her great photos (plus, hopefully she'll let me continue to help format it and we can push the limits of Movable Type even further.

She also pointed me to http://campaigndesk.org/, a new blog that should be a good resource for campaign news information (also using MT).

More CA Dems

I'm home watching the coverage of the convention now on TV. Its always so much fun to come home and see the work we did all day reflected immediately in the media. Many of the news people that I credentialed, signs I had taped up or passed out to delegates, elected officials I escorted around (I was part of a "flying wedge" to escort Nancy Pelosi from the main exhibit hall to her press availability), were all nicely shown on the NBC 11 news.

Yay! DSL!

Received my new modem today and things seem to be back up and working - finally!! Of course now our work servers seem to be down, so I can't do much there anyway... Guess I'll just have to play with my blog instead :)

CA Democratic Convention

Spent the day working at the California Democratic Convention working as a volunteer press assistant. I'll be back there tomorrow at 7am and then may watch some of the later parts on their webcast.

UCSC Library

Visited the UC Santa Cruz Library today for the first time. Margaret invited me to attend a talk by James Mullins, Associate Director, MIT Libraries, who is one of the short list of candidates there to be the University Librarian.

Its an amazingly beautiful campus (I had driven right to the edge of campus once years ago, but this was my first proper visit) with fabulous redwood trees and huge hills.

Mr. Mullins gave an interesting talk, and we watched a cute flash piece about Creative Commons licensing (which I should probably apply to my blog). Then Margaret gave me a quick peak at where the new renovations of the main library will go. I'm definitely looking forward to returning and spending more time on the campus and at the library there.

Plus I had a nice visit and tea with Alan (who is now google-able -- now we just need to get to #1)

Better Together

While Mr. Duncan continued to work on my DSL (including taking the modem with him to the central office for a few hours for more testing), I finished Robert Putnam and Lewis Feldstein's Better Together: Restoring the American Community which Lisa had sent me for Hanukkah (and which I had read most of before leaving for London). Not as good as Putnam's Bowling Alone, one of my all time favorites and most-quoted in papers in college and grad school, but there were lots of interesting elements. Its a selection of case studies of social capital -- including an example of branch libraries in Chicago and of Craig's List, as well as churches, schools, neighborhoods and cities from around the country addressing a variety of issues.

I found it interesting that the book distinguishes between two types of social capital: "Some networks link people who are similar in crucial respoects and tent to be inward looking -- bonding social capital. Others emcompass different types of people and tend to be outward-looking -- brindging social capital." Bonding social capital is compared to "a kid of sociological Super Glue, whereas bridging social capital provides a sociological WD-40." (2)

In discussing online communities (a pet topic of mine of course), he writes:

Computer-based technology matters not because it can create some new and separate form of virtual community, but because it can broaden and deepen and strengthen our physical communities. Just as an alloy is a mixture of several metals that has different and more advantageous properties than those of any of its consituents, so we should be aiming to craft alloys of electronic and face-to-face networks that are more powerful and useful than either kind alone." (293)

Tech friends

Here are some of my Wednesday Tech Museum buddies this morning on our shift:

Steven, me, Rika, Julia and Amy (with Cosmo, our AIBO robot dog)

Dinner in Santa Cruz

Had a great dinner with Alan and Margaret and their friend Lorri (who may come and read this... so hello!) at their great neighborhood Thai restaurant (Sabieng Thai Cuisine, 1218 Mission St)

Mr. Duncan the Verizon Guy

Thank you to Rick Duncan the Verizon guy for spending the whole afternoon pulling out wires and getting my DSL back online (for the most part).

Betty the Camp Counsellor

Congrats today to Betty, who just got accepted to be a camp counsellor this summer at Brant Lake Dance Camp in the Adirondacks!!!

Happy Birthday Annie!

My step-sister Annie turns 14 today! Happy Birthday!

We celebrated early with a cake on Friday before I left (Annie is pictured here with Eduard and Bill and her Nemo ice cream cake)

Back.. but Dialing In...

Ack! Nothing more frustrating than not being able to get online! Especially when I'm just getting back from a long trip and have thousands of messages to download and things to catch up on! It took 6 calls to Verizon, and I still may not have DSL for another 24-48 hours, but they finally managed to let me dial in so at least I can post!

It is PAINFULLY slow though!

Carrie Visits!

I drove up and met Carrie for dim sum (at Yank Sing) and some shopping in San Francisco today. She just has four months left until she finishes her journalism program at Columbia.

She took me to a fabulous used bookstore called Green Apple Books where we both did quite well... and to Cheap Pete's Frame Factory where she got photo mattings and I got some new frames.

What Should I do with My Life?

I bought Po Bronson's What Should I Do With My Life? at Hethrow airport and thought it would go well with the career counselling I got as my brithday present. I read the whole thing flying across the country today and thought it was fabulous. I'm going to pass it on to Carrie next, but I'd definitely recommend it to everyone. It has great stories of people who are trying to figure out what to do -- something I'm certainly working on.

Well of Lost Plots

I was in the airport at Heathrow and saw The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde, the third book of one of my favorite series -- and it doesn't come out in the states until next month!!! It was as good as the others -- plus there are deleted scenes and other treats at http://jasperfforde.com/. I had just recommended the first one (The Eyre Affair) to Hanna while I was visiting and was able to finish this one in time to leave it with Mom to read next.

Congrats to Liz

Congrats to Liz who just found out that she's been accepted to The University of New Hampshire! Many more schools for both her and Betty to hear from in April, but this should certainly make it easier to sleep!

So cold!!!

It is SO cold here in Westport that the river has frozen!

Back in CT

Flew back to CT yesterday and I'll be here for a couple of days before heading back home to CA.

Altered Carbon

At Hethrow Airport this morning I finished Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan which was a fast-paced cyberpunk detective story. I can't remember who had recommended it or where I had read about it (it may have been an Amazon suggestion), but I really enjoyed it. It takes place in a futuristic Bay Area where people are able to be resleeved into other bodies...

Back in London

Just got back to london and will be heading back to CT tomorrow! This is Hanna's building on Queensdown Road in Hackney.

Le Loir Dans La Theiere

Just a quick posting to hold the space for photos from my favorite spot on the planet, a wonderful tea shop in the Marais with Alice in Wonderland murals. Le Loir Dans La Theiere (the dormouse in the teapot) is located on 3 Rue de Rosier.

Larry, Cynthia, Hanna, me and Dad (taken by Jane)

Paris

Bonjour from a cute little hotel in Paris where they have Internet access from a little closet off of the lobby (its a French keyboard though of course so I'm having a terrible time with my q's and a's.) Hanna is napping but then we're off to explore until Dad and Jane arrive.

2004

A nice relaxed start to the new year -- we all slept very late and then got up and watched The Sound of Music on tv in front of their fireplace and ate all the leftover cookies from last night. We just walked to the downtown Hackney area in the rain for some groceries and Hanna's starting to make a "winter bake" for dinner. We're catching a 5:30 am train tomorrow to meet Dad and Jane in Paris, so I may not be posting for a couple of days...