19 Tuesday May 2009
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Hanna maintains these are the dorkiest pajama shorts in existence; I maintain they are comfy. Realize this is not a refutation of her basic point. Thoughts?
As a bonus (since Cynthia ‘specially requested ever so sweetly) you get to check out the new ‘do: got it cut in my (likely) fruitless quest to look like a certain psychic tarot card reader.
19 Tuesday May 2009
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It was eleven years ago, around this time of year, that I exchanged the first letter with my friend Joseph as part of a long-distance writing group. Didn’t take us long to figure out that we’d stumbled into something worth hanging onto. Hundreds of letters (not to mention emails) later, we’re still hanging on and I’m grateful every day to have such a friend in my life.
Many happy returns of the day, J. Hope your spring garden is blooming enthusiastically and that you and Jason are throwing a big party in your new house. May there be lots of cake.
17 Sunday May 2009
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11 Monday May 2009
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I’ve been falling down on the job lately, providing my far-flung friends and family with photos of the places around Boston in which I spend my time. So when Hanna’s parents came down from Maine to visit today, and we spent a glorious spring day wandering around Boston and Cambridge, I made sure my camera was in my backpack. Here are a few photos. Happy viewing!
(As always, for larger images, go directly to picasa).
01 Friday May 2009
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My grandma back in Holland (Mich.) is adopting a puppy this summer, and the litter was born earlier this week. My dad forwarded me a picture of the mama dog with her brood.
Somewhere in there is a sweet little female who will someday be named Addy!
30 Monday Mar 2009
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Sliding in just under the wire in the Cook family “birthday month” of March, I’m celebrating my 28th today. My mother noted on the phone when we spoke this weekend that I’ve been with her nearly half her life now. I find that a humbling thought.
In honor of the day, I take it upon myself to post something that brings together my childhood self and my present-day self: Raffi’s “Bananaphone” song, remixed with images from Dr. Who and Torchwood. I find it hilarious and disturbing in equal measure; Hanna declares it deeply, deeply wrong.
Thanks to Diana for disseminating this video via twitter.
And thanks to my family for, serendipitously, discussing Raffi and this song just days before Diana found said video, so it was fresh in my mind.
Now it’s off to open presents!
08 Sunday Mar 2009
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My brother Brian turns 25 today. Happy Birthday Bro! Hope you’re making time between prepping for your art students and designing threadless t-shirts to eat some cake and ice cream. Just think: if you worked at Dunder-Mifflin, Michael Scott would be throwing you a party!
02 Monday Feb 2009
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I was putting on a warmer sweatshirt just now (I’m airing out the apartment on this warmish sort of day and it’s cold at the computer!) and I noticed upon hanging up the t-shirt I’d been wearing on the door to my closet that virtually every item of clothing hanging there was some shade of purple. I guess I have a color theme going without even trying!
26 Monday Jan 2009
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While I was in Michigan for the Christmas holidays, I received several gift certificates to the local knitting shop, Friends of Wool, which enabled me to stock up on some lovely knitting supplies before returning to Boston. Thanks to leisure time during the winter break, and the (coughcough) responsibility of making my way through seasons of Torchwood, Dr. Who, and Primeval. One of those projects was this balaclava, which I finished last week.
Hanna says it makes me look like a mentholated cherry cough drop. The only response I can make in my own defense is that it does keep my ears warm out on Comm Ave while I’m waiting for the T!
10 Saturday Jan 2009
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via Hanna.
When my maternal grandparents retired to Bend, Oregon in the early 1980s, my grandmother, Marilyn, became a volunteer at the Deschutes Public Library. The library has a program to circulate books through the mail to house-bound and far-flung rural patrons, and for years Grandma was responsible for corresponding with, and selecting books for her own particular group of patrons.
Well, the library’s just made news with rising circulation and patronage numbers, according to the Bend Bulletin:
People are flocking to Deschutes County libraries, and officials say the slumping economy may be bringing them business. From July through November, patrons checked out about 10 percent more books and other items compared with the same period last year.
. . . State Librarian Jim Scheppke said circulation increased by 2.5 percent between the budget cycle that ended in June and the previous budget cycle, and the state set a circulation record of 51.7 million items. Scheppke was impressed by the circulation growth described in Deschutes County.
“The Deschutes numbers sound pretty amazing,” Scheppke said. “It is something we’re hearing in all the public libraries right now. We’ve known ever since the Great Depression in the 1930s that library use pretty much tracks the economy. In bad times, library use has always gone up.”
Of course, there are a lot of obviously negative implications of a recession, but I can’t think of any scenario where increase use of libraries is a bad thing!
the feminist librarian 