Summer is Singing in My Ears

This will be another exciting week here at Rancho Librario. I had one meeting this morning and spent a lot of time on the desk with multiple computer issues. I got to do some patron wrangling when somebody was attempting to utilize another family member's card. That one got off with a stern warning. Another gentleman was using a temporary pass and a 15 minute computer to print out boarding passes. That, folks, is called cutting it close (I am just full of cliches today...). We were busy busy busy! I called a potential volunteer today as well to see if he was interested in helping out with programs this summer and gathered materials for a school visit tomorrow.

Yup, it's already that time of year again. Tomorrow is a middle school so I found some age appropriate books to pitch and gathered a bunch of fliers, including Summer Reading Program, our own, very cool, U.N.N. Rivaled Gaming Tournament fliers, reading lists and homework help information. They still have 2 weeks left and I am sure a few of them are struggling with one of their classes. I will also be visiting a High School this week, so I will need different books for that, but I will worry about that tomorrow.

I visited Spokane over the weekend, both to see family and to see Dr. T, who is doing a rotation there--I am sure I mentioned that. He was a good fellow and came with me to hang at my brother's place and to my Step-Dads for a group birthday bbq. He even went shopping with us twice. That would be pushing my patience for sure.

We also walked along the Spokane River Falls which are a foot above flood level right now. The spray was impressive. Here is a cell phone picture:

And here is The Boy with aunt, uncle and new cousin, watching the carousel go around:

There are more, better pictures, but I need to find time to load them to my flickr account. I have been bad about that lately.

Schwinny, where are you?

This is going to be my new ride. I got a really good deal at Bike Nashbar.com. They are having a 15% off sale. So now I just have to wait for it to get here...I hate waiting for shipping, don't you? We have this great system of instant gratification with the whole point and click thing, but then it totally lets you down with the follow-through.

I had a gaming event yesterday and it was a lot of fun. I had my only regular teen attend and we spent the 2 hours figuring out Dance Dance Revolution. Of course, I am still terrible at it, but I had fun jumping around doing the lessons. For some reason when my set of arrows are next to another set of steps, I get totally confused. We had a great time and laughed a lot. A couple of younger kids joined us a bit later and helped mix things up a bit.

I have used the word totally twice (3 times...) in this post. That doesn't bode well.

I really miss Dr. T right now. He is about 300 miles away and I haven't seen him in over a week. The Boy and I are heading that way this weekend to visit him and the family. Sis and her man are going to be there too, along with (gasp!) my mother and grandmother. We are doing a big birthday shin-dig bbq since about half of us are born in the month of May. August must be a slow month for us. We will also hang out a bit with Dr. T's family while we are there and they will meet The Boy. I met them when we were there for xmas. Wow, that was 5 months ago.

Lots of shake ups around libraryland. Somebody is interviewing for a different position, my manager is going to manage other people for a while, and, well, I guess that's it, but really that is plenty. Change is the spice of life...I think my stew has too much pepper right now.

Byersebooks

At the same time as my sister has been having trouble ordering online, I have gotten my first fraudulent charge. Well, actually my second, but I forgot about the first one.

As you know, I am a librarian. I buy a lot of books, both for myself and for others. Many of these purchases are made at Amazon online. I also buy locally, but when I am pressed for time or need to ship them anyway, I go for Amazon.

No, Amazon did not fraud me (that I know of). I am just painting a bit of background here. I buy a lot of books, and sometimes I buy them online, so when a charge showed up months ago for a Byers ebooks, I wondered briefly, but then forgot about it. It was only a couple of dollars and I thought--well, it doesn't make sense now--but I thought it could have been a service charge or something.

Another one showed up on 5/1, this time for 4.95. It puzzled me, but I almost forgot about it again! Bad me. Anyhow, I happened to be looking at my account again today and I decided to call the bank. They gave me the phone number listed and I called a recorded voice in New Jersey and left a message saying if they didn't call me back I would be disputing the charge. I felt a little suspicious at this point, so I googled the company name and found two posting boards with people complaining about this company making fraudulent charges to their debit and credit cards. These are only the people that figured it out--plenty of others probably got larger charges later because they didn't do anything about it. Anyhow, I called the bank back and reported it. They found that it was done using an old debit card number that I thought had been canceled. Evidently it was the same card that I had on record at iTunes, so she wanted to make sure I had made those purchases too. That was The Boy being sneaky and ordering music--I think. I am going to have to ask him about that again.

So, happy ending. I am getting my $4.95 back and probably not getting my account wiped out by some crook in New Jersey. And, since that card number is canceled, The Boy can't make any more purchases from iTunes! Yay! Two birds and all that.

Oodles of Google Doodles

You should go vote on the Doodle 4 Google drawings. Make sure to read the accompanying statement, it can make all the difference. I am very impressed with the artistic ability of our nation's children. Thanks to Joanna for the link.

The next couple of weeks are going to be downright crazy. My only day off is next Sunday and I am hoping to hit the University District Street Fair. Next week I have the last writing workshop, then gaming on Tuesday--send me your teens! We are going to play Mario Kart! It will be loads of fun! Then I don't have any more programs until July. May is going to be super busy with school visits and June I have the ALA conference and vacation in Seal Beach--all plane tickets and accomodations booked, yay! All I have left to do is reserve a car for the first half. I have put it off a bit, because I can't decide how to end it. I am taking The Boy to the airport on 7/26, so I could drop it off then, but then how am I getting back to my friends house and to the hotel the next day? But if I keep it till the next day, how will I drop the car off? Maybe a taxi is the answer to my dilema. Or a bus. Decisions decisions.

Ok, break over. Have a wonderful day! (bad rain!)

Comic Movie Geekiness

I had a mother and son come in last week wanting to see if "The Iron Giant" was in the catalog yet. The mother didn't think it would be, since it had just gotten in the theater...

Yes, the Iron Giant came out in 1999. Iron Man is in the theaters now. When I looked up the Iron Giant in the catalog, I found the cartoon movie. I only saw the listing briefly, but noticed that the description said that it was based on The Iron Man by Ted Hughes. I relayed this to my sister last night, and since I hadn't seen the movie or read the comic by by Stan Lee, I didn't know there were two story lines with the same title, one a children's book, the other a comic. The Iron Giant cartoon movie was based on Ted Hughes' story, who was married to Sylvia Plath when she committed suicide in 1963. He wrote it to comfort his children after their mother's death. I did know, however, that the Iron Giant and Iron Man were two very different movies, and I told the mother so. I recommended the Iron Giant and she put that on hold. I doubt she will regret it.

I saw Iron Man today and can happily say that I don't regret it, either. Robert Downey Jr. really surprised me with his acting ability (and his physique :) He must have kicked the habit finally, yay! I loved the entire movie and no one can change my mind. :P

The boy had his birthday yesterday. We bbqed with my dad's side and friends that day and today we had dinner with mom's side, and celebrated Mother's day, of course. Dr. T left today for clinic rotation in Spokane for a month and a half. He gets back just in time for me to leave for California. Luckily I will be visiting twice later in May, so I won't have to be completely boyfriend free for all that time. I miss him already though :'(

Kiss and Tell

I now have 3 out of 4 plane tickets purchased for my trip to California this summer. Yay! I still feel like something is sneaking up on me...

Those of you missing my book reviews, you should join goodreads and be my friend. Then you will get way more booky goodness than you ever wanted. Same username as here.

I thought I would try writing about something a little different than my usual life updates, so the rest of this blog entry is dedicated to My First Kiss.

When I was in middle school, I was what you would call a dork. Not a nerd, or a geek. I was not super smart (not stupid either) or specialized in my loserness. Everything about me was wrong: bad clothes, bad hair, bad makeup. You can be nice and say that everyone was like that, but really at my school it was just me and maybe a couple of other kids. I think everyone else got lessons and better shopping options. I only had one friend at school, lets call her Cindy. There were a couple of other girls in our group, but it didn't take much for them to join the teasing hoards of kids that made my life miserable.

I was also left alone after school every day with my younger siblings. At first this was so my mom could sleep, so she was actually in the house. Later, I became The Babysitter (from Hell if you ask my sister and brother), when my mom went back to work for my grandfather. I came home first, then the sibs trailed in an hour or so later when their bus dropped them off from elementry. Cindy would often come home with me because her dad worked later and she liked the snacks at my house better.

One of the days when Cindy came over, she let me know that her boyfriend was coming over, too. I don't think she and this boy Steve had even been going out the day before, but suddenly he was her boyfriend. I knew my parents would freak if they knew a boy was in the house, but I didn't want her to get mad at me, so I said ok. Then she dropped the bomb, he was bringing a friend for me. Greg thought I was cute. What?! I didn't even know who Greg was!

Steve and Greg showed up on their bikes about 10 minutes after we got to my house. Greg was a short, skinny boy with braces, sandy brown hair and lots of freckles. He was cute in a dorky sort of way, and since I was a dork, and shy and he was nice to me, I decided I liked him, too.

At first we just hung around together, watching tv and eating snacks. Eventually he held my hand, which was pretty ballsy of a seventh grade boy. Then I heard the pounding of feet on the floor upstairs, my brother and sister were home! I had totally forgotten about them, which led to a dilema. I knew they would tell mom that I had a boy in the house and I would get in huge trouble. If I had been prepared when they got home, I could have distracted them, kept them upstairs, then rejoined my friends in the basement after the kids eyes were glazed with the reflections of cartoons. Because I wasn't waiting for them up there, they were already looking for me and probably on their way to the basement. I jumped up and ran up the stairs, looking slightly guilty as I sprang out of the basement door and tried to persuade them to go back into the kitchen. They instantly knew that something was up and tried to go past me into the basement. Finally I had to strong arm them away from the door.

After that it was hard to get away, but finally I made it back downstairs. Cindy and Steve were groping on the couch. Greg grabbed my hand and drew me into the guest bedroom. I was totally flustered and nervous. I had never kissed a boy before but I did know you were supposed to open your mouth and stick your tongue in theirs. I wondered what the braces would feel like, if they would be weird. Then he pulled me close and kissed me. His braces did feel weird, like having silverware in your mouth, cold and smooth. He darted his tongue in and I felt better, because I could tell that he didn't really know what he was doing either. We did this a couple more times, but then it was time for the boys to leave. We took them around the back of my house to the front yard and they rode away.

At some point my brother and sister must have seen them because later my mom knew there had been a boy over and I got grounded. I think we "went out" for a couple weeks at school, holding hands and pecking each other on the cheek until we broke up. I don't remember what over, but I was grounded the whole time, so maybe he was just tired of a girlfriend he could only hang out with at school.

Spring Time Update

Writing workshop number three got a whopping 1 teen in attendance. He really seemed to like it though. When I asked him how it went he got a big grin on his face and said "great!" The instructor told me that he found out about it from a flyer sent home by the school, so it looks like I didn't waste my time there.

I have started a little indoor greenhouse, thanks to my Mom's early birthday gift. I have 10 lettuce, 5 yellow tomatoes, 5 red tomatoes and 5 basil plants started, plus a jalapeno plant, some spearmint and sage to add to my herb planter. I dropped by the pea patch the other day and chatted with the gentleman that helps run the place. He put me on a list to receive emails about work parties etc, so that I can be involved before I get my plot (which may be some time after I move away at this point). I have already been on the waiting list for a year... Right now all of my "garden" is in planters. When the seedlings are ready, I will have to buy more and give some plants away.

I finally bought half of my plane tickets to Cali for the ALA conference. The Boy and I are going to stay with a friend in Long Beach for a few days before he heads home and I go into anaheim. I am going to rent a car for a journey to Disneyland one day and the ride to and from the airport. We are going to spend most of the time at Seal Beach and get a surf lesson one day. I finaly used those stupid American Airlines vouchers. I swear they are the hardest company to work with, and they have the worst policies and highest prices. I doubt I will ever book with them again. And luckily our flight is actually on Alaska, whom I don't mind so much. So, one down, many tasks to go.

A Big Fat D

Many of you know that my son, The Boy, has type 1 diabetes. My mother also has type 2. She "got" it after giving birth to her last child and had had gestational diabetes with each of her children before that. Well, I got some disturbing news yesterday. My sister, the one that I take vacations with, spent thanksgiving with, that I miss so much since she has moved to Nevada, has diabetes as well. We don't know yet whether it is type 1 or 2 yet, only time will tell. She is fine at the moment and is ready to do the right thing--follow a diet, test her blood sugar regularly and take her medicine, which at the moment is insulin pills. At least she will be a good role model for The Boy, where his grandmother is not.

And I made an appointment for a regular check up in June, but I told them I wanted to see another doctor. The one I saw last time, Dr. Rosen, was brusque and pushy. I told the receptionist that I didn't feel that he listened to me, and she said it shouldn't be a problem to switch. I am going to tell the new doctor about my family history and ask for a blood test, although when I checked my blood sugar levels at the diabetes walk last fall, I was within the normal range.


The next walk is October 11th, which reminds me to sign up and make a team. I feel bad that I haven't gotten to pledge on my friend's efforts to raise money for other charities this year. I have been making a concerted effort to pay off bills and this leaves me somewhat short right after I get a paycheck. I need a bigger budget! Anyhow, the Step Out for Diabetes walk will be at Seward Park. The Boy, Miranda and I did it last year and although the day was cool, it didn't rain and the views were beautiful!