Moving Day

Jim and Nancy are getting used to their new home.
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Costume Advice: How to Dress Like a Librarian

(This was originally posted last October; however, I'm starting to get a lot of hits for librarian costumes, and thought I'd post this entry again.)

I've been getting a lot of hits recently by people searching for "how to dress like a librarian." Will there be a lot of librarians trick-or-treating this year? My guess is that most people dressing as librarians will go for the "hot librarian" vs. "dowdy librarian" look. It's been my experience, that real-life librarians fall somewhere in the middle of these 2 stereotypes. That is, we don't look like we'll give you a spanking you'll enjoy and we also don't look like a character from the Revenge of the Nerds movies. As a librarian, I'm not going to offer any thoughts on how to dress like the "your book is overdue and I'm going to have to take you behind the stacks and make a man out of you" librarian. No one needs help on how to dress like a ho. I do, however, have some advice for those of you who plan to dress like your mother's librarian, since there are a handful of those keeping the stereotype alive and well.

Wear a lanyard, and attach as much crap to it as possible: t pass, work badge, several keys...

Don't wear glasses that you think are cute or vintage. Wear glasses similar to those that Angela used to rock on "Who's the Boss?"

Wear book-themed jewelry

And finally, wear sensible shoes.

You Know You're in Southie...

When you see this sign in a storefront. How cute!
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Oatmeal

You know you're getting older when you eat oatmeal for breakfast because it's a "smart choice" rather than because you enjoy it. One more thing about oatmeal: if you cover up the Quaker Oat man's white bushy hair, you can see actually what my grandpa looked like!
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Hands off my pot!

Last night around 2:30, there was a terrible smash outside our window. By the time we located our glasses the stunods who caused the the noise had fled, but we were able to make out that one of the building's ceramic flower pots had been smashed to bits and the flowers and dirt were strewn all over the sidewalk. Those flowers are carefully maintained by two women in our building, who enthusiastically tend to our little garden area on the weekends. Just now as I was leaving the house, I noticed that several other people's pots had been smashed too (like the example in the photo.). Smashing a mailbox or a window is terrible, of course, but to take the time to deliberately destroy nature is pretty low. People can be real jerks sometimes.
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Otto Titsling, Inventor and Kraut

When I first came to live in Boston, it was to attend BC in 1997. Almost immediately, I was struck by how many redheads there were. Honestly, now it sounds ridiculous, but I could only think of maybe 1 or 2 people from my high school that had naturally red hair. I had also never met people my age who went to church without being dragged along by their parents, and was surprised how many students attended the special Sunday night freshman campus mass. Eventually the newness of being surrounded by church-going redheads wore off, and I found something else to admire from afar: the Boston accent.

My history TA freshman year had an Irish surname, a thick head of red hair and an even thicker accent. I forget the context in which he said it, but on the first day of class he mentioned something about Karl Marx and it was music to my ears. "I am in Boston, and I love it," I remember thinking.

Five years later, I started working the 10-6 shift at a company in Norwood. There was a friendly German security guard who introduced himself as Ott. "Have a nice night, Ott," I'd say when I left for the evening. I'm not sure how long I had been there, before someone pointed out to me that Ott was neither short for Otto nor of German heritage. Art was short for Arthur, a retired Boston policeman and thankfully, very good-natured about the misunderstanding.

Now, after living and working in Boston since originally coming here for college, I like to think that the novelty of hearing the accent has worn off. For the most part it has; however, sometimes I hear someone (like I did this morning) that takes me back to freshmen history class and Kahl Mahx.

Tums, Fig Newtons, & Altoids, oh my!

Time for my three o'clock snack... Gonna have to go with the Fig Newtons. This has got to be the world's most depressing snack drawer.
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