etc.

It’s been a busy week, brimming full not with activity but with hours upon hours in front on my computer, at work, on the couch, in bed, you name it. I’m at a conference next week (a conference I’ve always, always wanted to attend! And, as if that isn’t exciting enough, I also get to meet and hopefully hang out with someone you might know!) and I’m doing two presentations and a panel at this conference, hence the all-consuming, nose-in-laptop work. I haven’t even had a good, long look at the conference program yet, I arrive right after it begins and don’t even know which sessions I’m going to. It will all fall into place, I’m sure, but for the next 72 hours it’s just going to be me, my computer, and the endless rotation of what I’ve come to think of as my Conference Prep Soundtrack:

• Rabbit Fur Coat, Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins
• Say I Am You, The Weepies
• Push Barman to Open Old Wounds, Belle & Sebastian
• Let it Die, Feist
• Careful What You Wish For, Texas

Also, I have some news.

There has been eating and drinking and merrymaking in spades, the holidays are going swimmingly. What is it about this season that makes it okay to have sugar cookies, butter horns, and hot tea for breakfast? Whatever it is, I like it. Here are some films we’ve watched lately, starred out of five:

• Syriana ****
• Serenity ****
• Bad Santa *
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire ***
• The Amityville Horror **
• Boogeyman **
• Munich ****

There was no consensus at all on Munich, the mister insisted that I tell you. We watched it with my family and we were split well down the middle: half of us thought it was brave and balanced, the other half thought it was boring and biased. The four-star rating above represents the right half, of course.

At the moment, I am warmly ensconced in Jonathan Franzen’s embrace: The Corrections is an impeccable book, I commend it to you without reservation.

That title is apropos of the roses I spied on campus this morning, on my walk from the parking lot to the library. They did, upon them, have juicy raindrops. I thought I might explain that.

Harold Pinter has gone and won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Hip hip!

Also in literature, I have just bought a book by a fellow who was in my graduate English class seven years ago. Of all the student-sorts in that class, he was the sort I had pegged to write and publish a novel. And he has. I will tell you if I like it in a few days.

And now, pardon me, I have to go & water my flagging begonias.

I realized to-day that every year, I select for myself (mostly sub-consciously) a sountrack for spring. Not a soundtrack for summer, but one for spring. Something about climbing out of a winter slumber makes me prick up my ears and start paying attention to the sounds on the airwaves. In keeping with this tradition, I decided that the Soundtrack of Spring 2005 is Hopes and Fears by Keane, followed closely by Hot Fuss by The Killers (more realized than decided; both albums just sort of weaseled their way into my sub-conscious and lodged there). The Keane album is soulful and completely brilliant, and Hot Fuss is just the perfect record to wake up to on a sunny, spring morning.

Here are the soundtracks of springs past, as memory serves (which is spotty and not very far back, wish it served better):

• 2004: Good News for People who Like Bad News, Modest Mouse; Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? Metric
• 2003: Avalanche, Matthew Good
• 2001: Odyssey Number Five, Powderfinger; Spiritual Machines, Our Lady Peace
• 2000: Play, Moby; Underdogs, Matthew Good Band
• 1998: Fountains of Wayne, Fountains of Wayne; The Color and the Shape, Foo Fighters
• 1997: Automatic for the People, REM (as you can tell, the release year is irrelevant)
• 1996: The Bends, Radiohead; Viva! La Woman, Cibo Matto; Different Class, Pulp

Thank you for your kind words about Cavity! I forgot to mention that as soon as I finished stitching him together, I presented him to the mister for critical evaluation (the mister buys toys for a living, you see), and he sailed through with full marks and a few words of praise! He’s promised to give him a home on this desk at work (which is not the barren wasteland that many other office spaces are, the mister’s desk is surrounded by toys. Real, professional ones! Made in factories!) but not before I’ve made him a companion or two. Lovely! More monsters have been commissioned! Next up: Gingivitis and Gum Disease.

Well, not really. For the next few monsters, I’m going to try and stay away from oral bacteria and diseased organisms.

Today I bought two books. It has been ages (months, I think; the last book purchases might well have been in New York!) since I’ve bought a book, which is why two new books in one day is newsworthy. You Grow Girl was a bit of a necessity since I don’t own a single gardening book and the mister and I are putting in a garden this Spring, not to mention the fact that I am a big fan of the Web site and Gayla is local, so I must do my absolute best to support the locals. And The Artist’s Way is one of those books that I have been hearing and reading about for a couple of years, and whenever I hear of or read about an artist throwing in a pitch for it, I make a mental note to get my hands on a copy, and today I finally cleared out those backlogged mental notes. I have four days off at the end of next week and these two books, along with the five I have from the library (as well as the assorted holds I’ve placed in the past 24 hours on dollmaking, which will likely come in over the next 48) will be my well-appreciated and much-enjoyed companions.

Finally, I submit that my new sewing fixation has grown out of a fabric fixation that I have secretly been cultivating, lo these many weeks. Here are a few fabric designers and retailers whose work sets my heart aflutter:

• Amy Butler – wonderful vintage-inspired patterns, and colours that are just candy!
• Marimekko – abstracts that command your attention whether you like it or not (I like it).
• Lotta Jansdotter – fabric zen.
• Kaffe Fassett (prints here) – the world in colour! I would very much like to see through Kaffe Fassett’s eyes for just a day.
• Alexander Henry – quirky as all get out. Just try not to smile when you look at his prints.

A very happy Spring Solstice to you! I don’t think there is anyone in the Western hemisphere happier than I am that the weather has turned (yes, there was snowmelt while I lay moanful in bed, last week). This morning I drove the mister to a dental appointment and was pleased pleased pleased to step out to large scale dripping, melt-off, and a handful of fearless chirpy sparrows hanging out in the tree above the deck. O, Spring!

I was going to write more last night, all about day two of iBook ownership and usership, but instead I ended up watching Intervention on A&E, which put me in a mostly foul, unsociable mood. Have you seen this show? It is, as the title suggests, a bit of a pageant wherein people with addicitions are confronted by family and friends and given a final chance to enter treatment right away or risk the end of these relationships. As much as I like to be hopeful for these people, I usually find myself at once uncomfortable at the spectacle of a completely personal interaction, stressed over their chances at full recovery, and raging mad over the way the family or friends (most likely, the parents) are mistreated by the person suffering the addiction. Last night, by the end of the hour, I was mostly just angry that I put myself through an emotional ringer in the name of entertainment, and vowed never to do it to myself again. By that point, the evening was lost for blogging, and what a terrible way to round off an otherwise enjoyable weekend of recovery and discovery!

The ill-effects of last night might have extended their nasty claws into today, as well, if it wasn’t for time well-spent with Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Knitter’s Almanac, which I am reading & reviewing for the next issue of Spun, and would it be giving too much away to heartily commend it to you now? (And as a completely unrelated aside, I have given up and gone back to linking to amazon.com when I refer to books here because, who am I kidding, they are building the ultimate in social communities for book-lovers, and resist as I might, I find myself checking their book pages for that “value-added” every once in a while. I’ll continue to provide the “find in your library!” link with reviews though, and because I feel the need to say it every once in a while, please remember to shop independent. Thank you.)

These are a few things.

I feel like the blinds have been raised and sunlight is beaming back in again. Healthwise, it’s onward & upward. Everythingelsewise is pretty well onward & upward as well, I am making plans that will be put into motion over the next couple of months, and bigger plans for the months beyond that. Sorry, that’s annoyingly vague.

Today, I started an “Ego File”, and I’m not kidding, it really does have a label on it that reads “Ego”. While doing a completely unrelated search in a LIS index, I came across the record for an article I wrote & published last Fall. It was neat. Just that, neat. In fact, I printed it off for the “Ego” file and wrote “neat” across the top.

Also in the “Ego” file, a column in the February issue of Computers in Libraries calls that other little site of mine “pretty helpful”. Also neat.

I get an infinite amount of pleasure from knowing that a certain very good library blog has approximately 1,000 more Bloglines subscribers than the NYT Tech section, 1,900 more than dooce, and 1,500 more than kottke. Very neat.

I’m thinking about pink highlights. Maybe not so neat.

Homemade breakfast bars from Deborah Merlo (March 10 entry). Super neat!

I listened to the complete David Sedaris Live at Carnegie Hall on my drive to and from work today and, boy howdy, I would very much like to buy a copy of this CD for everyone I know. I do not know of any other author/comedian who can be so misanthropic and so very compassionate at the same time.

I finished Leftovers (last seen here) last week and wore it for the first time yesterday, and absolutely meant to photograph it for you, but I forgot until it was too late, and I was too sleepy, so you will have to wait for another 6-10 days, until it makes its way to the front-end of the wardrobe cycle.

Remember reformat day? It didn’t happen (the reformat, that is, not the day). I never did find the CD for my operating system, so all plans were shelved indefinitely. The very odd and completely unrelated upshot? My computer has shown remarkable stability and speed in the last 5 days. All those threatening glances and very stern words, they worked!

There may be a few more things to-morrow.

Birthday of Roman emperor, Hadrian, William Congreve, Edith Wharton, and my sister. Happy feast day to you, sisterfriend!

There are six blooms on my amaryllis plant, such a spectacular splash of red in the kitchen that I do not mind at all that all six blooms arrived a month late. It’s a hardy bulb, this one; I will tend the drying and forcing this year, and be sure to provide a progress bulletin in ten months time. Brace yourselves.

I am in the mood for good prose. I have just read A Complicated Kindness, which was very good prose (and I will tell you more about it soon), so away to the library to rummage for more.

Doing this annual roundup at the end of the year provides a bit of perspective, and while this is probably of interest to no one but me, I know you’ll humour me. [updated later to account for last-minute reading!]

number of books read in 2004: 36
percentage of improvement over 2003: -31
percentage of improvement over 2002: -18
percentage of improvement over 2001: 63
average read per month: 3
average read per week: 0.7
number read in worst month: 0 (June & July)
number read in best month: 10 (January)
percentage by male authors: 67
percentage by female authors: 33
fiction as percentage of total: 50
non-fiction as percentage of total: 50
percentage of total liked: 75
percentage of total disliked: 25
percentage read on recommendation: 39
percentage of recommendations liked: 100

Starting a week to-morrow, I’m off for 12 days. I have three vacation days left to take before the end of the year, and those, coupled with nine days of Reference downtime (i.e.: the library is open but Reference is closed), add up to just short of a fortnight of time off. And I can say, with some certainty, that I have never been more ready for time off. Plans are afoot to spend lots of time with family, bake cookies, play board games & cards, eat copiously, and read indulgently. My reading list includes Molly Moon’s Incredible Book of Hypnotism, The Golden Compass, The Griffin and Sabine Trilogy, A Complicated Kindness, and A Million Little Pieces. I’m practically teetering over from heady anticipation!

What’s on your holiday reading list?