Diana redux

Last names have been removed to protect the innocent, but otherwise this is verbatim from my diary when I was 12:
"Yo went on this inglesa-retreat thing from viernes to hoy (domingo). At el retreat, Yo no se why, Yo stopped gusta-ing Antonio y started gustar Julio. Last noche y this morning, miro up y Julio would be mira-ing at me."
No idea why I was writing in both (very bad) Spanish and English, or why I called these guys by made-up Spanish names. Sadly, nothing ever came of my liking of either of them. Except that reading about it now is funny, of course.

Dear Diana...

My diaries (written as letters to a fictitious confidante, Diana - I'd been reading Anne Frank's diary to 'Kitty') from junior high and the first part of high school are falling apart. They're stained (soda? chocolate?), written in fading pencil on cheap notebook paper. So I'm typing them up, and it's painful to see how I was. I was an idiot, a little narcissist who thought everything was about me. Essentially, all the faults that bother me most, and that I feel I have worked hard to overcome, are on full display here. And yeah, I was twelve and a half, and that's what girls are like. But still.
One bright spot, as I was writing about a would-be suitor: "Then he said, 'You see, I want to know more about your life, however boring it may be.' I nearly died."

bon mot du jour

The SO and I are watching the season finale of ANTM, set in Amsterdam. When Mr. Jay [Manuel] came out, the SO said, "Prince of Orange". Hee! He also pointed out that the runway looks like something from Unbeatable Bansuke.

two bronze medals

I could post about things that are relevant - my trip to the Midwest (where I am at present), or the talk I co-presented less than an hour ago - but those aren't interesting to me at the moment. I'm too busy imagining the frantic recreation of Evan Lysacek's programs for this season, given that he just got his second bronze in two weeks. I wasn't surprised that he finished behind Johnny Weir last week, but - Ryan Bradley? Wow.

when you grow old, your heart dies...

...and when you grow old and are overly tired, you throw off such waves of cynicism that innocent bystanders could surf in them. Or drown.

Song of Bernadette

Twentieth-Century Fox worried that The Song of Bernadette, the movie about a girl in 19th-century France who saw visions of Mary, would be controversial. So they put this at the beginning: "To those who believe in God, no explanation is necessary. To those who do not believe in God, no explanation is possible."

"to gain or lose it all"

Favorite Olympic moment so far these games: Marian Dragulescu's second vault in the event finals. He got a 16.8 on his first vault, higher than anyone else's average score. He could have been pretty conservative on his second vault, but he went for a huge, difficult second vault. And then he fell, and wound up in fourth. He could have played it safe, and wound up somewhere in the medals, but he wanted to be better. He's one of my favorites anyway, but that's not why this was my favorite moment.

movie idea, for free!

Seriously - how is it possible that The Grounding of Group 6 was never made into a movie?

synchro platform finals

Keeping tabs on the men's synchro finals. The US men are in 5th - but only out of second by about 8 points, with one dive left.
Damn, the Aussies had a great first dive. I don't think Finchum and Boudia could beat that - but bronze?
Cuba and Great Britain come before the US; they're behind, and will stay there (barring disaster).
See, this is why blogging can be a handy outlet - otherwise, I'd be keeping the SO up with this.
Oh, Germans, please stay about seven behind the US. No - a 96 on the last dive. That'll knock out the US, I'm afraid. Sorry, David and Thomas!
Yeah, their last dive was a 93, but with the Russians and Chinese still to go, it would take a miracle.
No, China just dove, and they were fine. So no medal. Drat.
Yes, fifth, in the end. They missed the podium by fewer than five points (out of 400-odd). Sigh. Poor guys.

hurray!

I'm very excited about this year's Olympic diving team. It seemed unlikely that Thomas Finchum wouldn't make it, but I've been worrying about it for the last 10 days or so. Hurray!

a bit about Brad

It disturbs me that I know so much about Brad. I mean, we've known each other for less than a month. And while I spend time with him every day, I think I spend too much time thinking about his life. It's fascinating, though: even though I wasn't there, I can picture his high school girlfriend, Teri, with her big dark hair and her formal dress (they went to a dance together, and her bangs were curled and pouffy).
I wasn't there for any of his meets - not sure whether he was a runner or a swimmer, but it was one of those solitary sports. I mean, of course I wasn't there - we've only known each other for a few weeks, and certainly both of us are well past high school age. He still works out a lot, of course, which comes as a nice surprise to the guys he meets out at the clubs.
Yes, I've outed Brad. I think he's okay with that, though; aside from that adolescent confusion, he's comfortable with who he is.

This wouldn't be so disturbing, all that I know about Brad, if Brad were real. But he's not a real person - he's my trainer on Wii Fit.

beginning to obsess about Olympics

I've been keeping an eye on Olympic coverage lately.
A high-school wrestler qualified for the Olympics!
Two, maybe three women's basketball players will be playing for other countries, and there's drama about that (no one cares about the potential Tall Ferns, but if you play for Russia you're a traitor. Isn't the Cold War over? Shut up, Anne Donovan; Hammon wasn't even on the 2007-2008 National Team, so why shouldn't she play for Russia, where she plays half the time?).
So - will Chelsie Memmell (I think I'm spelling that right) break into the top 2 at Olympic trials? Will Paul Hamm's hand heal? Will Morgan Hamm make the team? Will Bela Karolyi stay off the TV screen?
I love Olympics. I think I like winter Olympics better; for every event (cross-country skiing) I skip in the winter, there are at least three (long-distance running, equestrian, shot put and hurdles) I won't make time for in the summer. But there will be plenty to keep my attention this August! I even like the opening ceremonies, the condescending profiles of athletes with sob stories, and Bob Costas. Good times!

mad apologies

I haven't posted for a while, and I can't now because I'm at work, but - I will, really.

Meme: Passion Quilt?

OK, this is the dumbest meme ever, so I have to try it.
3 Simple Meme Rules:
1. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about...and give your picture a short title.
2. Title your blog post "Meme: Passion Quilt" and link back to this blog entry.
3. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

So here goes. #1 is below:

You can never go back home. Even if you try, it's not the same.

(If I could have found a picture for "When you grow old, your heart dies" I would've. I had to think of a caption for my limited flickr options, because I never remember to upload).

#2. Yeah, you could link to the original, but why not check out the infinitely more amusing take on this from the Annoyed Librarian instead?

#3. I don't Twitter or Pownce, thankfully. If you're reading this, consider yourself tagged - if you want to be. By the way, a special virtual wave goes to anyone who knows where this house is, and has been there, and knows what's different about this house now compared to when I lived there.

Misplaced Childhood

This morning I woke up with Marillion's Misplaced Childhood CD running through my head. I've had this CD since 1990 - it's the first I ever owned. I bought it from a guy in my dorm in college, because he didn't want it. And no wonder, because it's melodramatic, OTT tripe.
So of course I can sing half of it by heart. When I wrote that it was running through my head, I meant it: "huddled in the safety of a pseudo silk kimono wearing bracelets of smoke", through "Kayleigh" and "j'entends ton coeur" and all the rest. I almost called my friend Amy, who was my roommate in 1990 and had to suffer through far more secondhand Marillion than anyone should, but I blogged this instead.

at the ballot

My title for today is a pun, har-dee-har, on the "at the ballet" song from Chorus Line. I just finished filling in my ballot for the national professional organization of which I am a member, and boy are my arms tired. Hee hee.
Here's the thing: these are professionals, asking other professionals in a professional organization to vote for them. But yet, some of them seem blithely unaware of that, so their personal statements contain elementary mistakes like these:
- failing to mention any knowledge of finance while running for treasurer
- using bad grammar and punctuation while running for secretary
- overusing exclamation points!!
- using this as a reason to get elected.
- mentioning their blog as evidence that they're up on technology*
Ugh. I tended to vote for people who were sensible.

*It's 2008, and you're an information professional. Don't pat yourself on the back because you've got a Livejournal account! I checked out a few blogs, and eliminated a few possibles because of how lame or egregiously twopointopian they were. I'll never use my blog as a selling point when I run for office, because it's just not that impressive to have a blog anymore.

Television Without Pity - without pity

There's not much point to building up a respected pop-culture website, if you're going to have it go horribly awry. I don't know whether the problems are because three of the site's creators and one of its more well-known recappers have all left in the last month, or whether they left because they saw where things were going, and couldn't stem the tide (possibly because of TWoP's decision to ally with Bravo?).
But yeah, I'm cranky that my favorite website is changing for the worse. The new layout (new as of yesterday, I think) is unnecessarily busy. And there are parts that don't go anywhere - don't advertise a wiki that doesn't exist yet. What's the difference between a wiki and the forums anyway? (I know the difference, btw, but for users there's no substantive difference, is all).
And for heaven's sake, I was reading a recap this morning by the increasingly unreadable Jacob, whose anger and blind prejudices aren't "without pity", but "without wit" and "without reason". Shut up, Jacob. And I took a poll on page 5, and was diverted back to page 1. Thanks, TWoP! Also - if a website tells someone they need a newer version of Flash, it's helpful (and by "helpful", I here mean "basic netiquette") to provide a link to an update.

E! and laundry

Today I had to fold laundry, and I found myself watching an E! True Hollywood Story while I did it. I didn't think I could be a bigger cliche - watching E! while folding laundry? Heavens.
In my defense (a weak one, I'll admit), I'd been flipping between The American President and Love and Basketball at first, but then those ended. So yeah - now I have neat piles of folded laundry put away, and I know a bunch of trivia about America's Next Top Model (the topic of the E! THS).

no memory for voices

It's crazy - while I was blogging just now, I listened to a podcast from someone I used to know, and his voice wasn't familiar at all. No echoes of anything I ever knew. I mean, I talked to him almost every school day for months. Honestly, thank heavens for the introduction, or else I would never have known this was the person. Weird.
It's about computers, and seriously, I barely understand it. Yeah, I wasn't a computer science major, but I do have a degree in information science. You'd think that would help a bit.

Being a nerd in high school. Or not.

I don't remember how I stumbled on this blog post the other day, but I was thinking about it tonight as I looked at an old friend's blog. If one asked him about high school, he'd have stories galore about how much of an outcast he was. But he wasn't, actually, which is why I was reminded of the blog post.
FWIW, I really did like high school. Yeah, my journals from the time have a certain amount of angst, but overall it was pretty fun.

hee hee

I'm watching American Idol as I type. It's fun to watch David Archuleta (sp?) forget the words to "We can work it out"!

Dialog

I've been sick for a few days, so I had dozens of e-mails to read this afternoon, the first time since Tuesday when I've felt well enough to tackle work. One of the e-mails in my inbox included a link to this article about Dialog, which I thought was interesting.
I'm a bit surprised that other librarians don't see the point in Dialog, because to me it's so absolutely useful as a means for teaching one how to search properly. I took a course in databases in library school which was one of the most useful I could have taken; not only did we learn how to search a wide variety of databases, we learned how to evaluate them. It's one of the points on which I'm most smug as a librarian: knowing that my understanding of databases and searching is better than that of many of my peers.
(Wow, that was smug! Sorry.)

Elsie's the Sunday monkey!

You know how the Sunday monkey won't play piano song*? The SO and I were talking tonight, and he posited that the Sunday monkey won't play because he can't - a tragic lack of education. But then I realized that it was the Sunday monkey, which was a clear reference to Elsie Dinsmore, who famously (well, famously if you've read Elsie Dinsmore and its sequels) refused to play the piano for her father on a Sunday, because it was in clear violation of Sabbath rules.
So then the mysterious identity of the Sunday monkey was clear!
* and yes, I know the line is sont des mots qui vont tres bien ensemble, tres bien ensemble. But the SO taught me the "Sunday monkey won't play piano song" line, which always amuses me.