My "Hello Kitty" jack o'lantern that you can see in an earlier post died. It got one good night all lit up, and then the mold descended. and bugs. It was gross. Then the pumpkin collapsed in on itself; tragedy. All those years carving pumpkins in Utah and I never had this problem--then I moved to the Pacific Northwest. *sigh*
Remember how I hadn't seen any really good, really scary movies this year? Well, I watched The Haunting, and it was freaking terrifying. After watching it by myself after Heidi went to bed, I read a blurb that said "Do not watch this one alone!" So that was helpful; actually it was good that I didn't read it beforehand since it contained spoilers. I can safely say it's the scariest film I've ever seen, and it's a good film in its own right. If you're looking for something to watch this Halloween, there's a suggestion.
For Halloween, I decided to go as a fairy. It seemed a fairly obvious choice. So I went to Display and Costume and ended up buying butterfly wings and a butterfly mask. (At one point there was also a pink tutu.) So I guess I'm going as a butterfly--maybe Heimlich. But it's kinda like a fairy--maybe I'll get some colored hair spray and body glitter.
Anyway, here's the real draw of this post--following in the footsteps of MaryPosa and Neil Gaiman--I'm giving away a book because that's the kind of world I want to live in. Also, what's a better use of the student loans I will spend the rest of my life repaying? So here's how you enter--do one or more of the following:
1. Leave me a comment. 2. Follow this blog. 3. Tell someone else about this post--share the love! 4. Post your reading list on your blog or Facebook (or somewhere) with a picture of you peeking over a book--comme ci--and send me the link. So you can be entered up to four times. I'll randomly select a winner (or two) in a week--Friday, November 5th--and send you a book!
Right now I am writing a vision document (about the SLC public library!) for my management course. In class we discussed whether every vision needs a BHAG--that is a "big hairy ambitious goal" and also one of the worst acronyms ever. I wondered why does the goal need to be hirsute? Why can't it just be a BAG? Like a Birkin--isn't that ambitious enough?
I hate quarters. and assignments. and readings. Blerg. Oh well, back to the grind.
Today we had people over at our apartment to carve pumpkins. I carved a cat's face. It kind of looks like Hello Kitty. We also had pumpkin treats galore--Heidi made pumpkin cookies, pumpkin cake (with pumpkin frosting), pumpkin pizza (in the crust not as a topping), and we had pumpkin beer. Lots of vitamin A! We also just roasted the pumpkin seeds from the jack o'lanterns. We also had apple cider and apples with a caramel dip (it's actually just cream cheese and brown sugar). It was very autumnal. This quarter is stressful. Last fall I took 10 credits, but 2 of those credits were basically a one weekend class. So I had 8 hours of class per week and no job. Now I'm taking 14 credits and have a part-time job. Blerg. I have to manage my time efficiently, and that is not one of my strong suits. Like I should be doing homework right now, but I'm not.
I also just ran through all my scary movies from Netflix, so I had to get some more in my queue. Also, apparently I no longer get scared which is kind of disappointing. Cat People was somewhat suspenseful but not scary, then again it was made in the forties. Alien was also a bit whatever. It wasn't really my kind of movie in the first place, and you know everyone is going to die until only Ripley's left. The alien was creepy, but aside from a few jumpy moments it wasn't scary. What Lies Beneath was actually the scariest movie I watched. It directly invokes Hitchcock and gets a bit ridiculous at the end. It also employs a lot of cliches, but those are cliches for a reason and were terrifying. I thought Rosemary's Baby would scare the bejesus out of me (quite literally), but again, nothing. The novel terrified me as a freshman in college, and the movie is a fine film, but it's more eerie than scary. Scream had it's scary/jumpy moments, but I was over it as soon as the film ended. Even The Silence of the Lambs was not super scary though Anthony Hopkins was quite evil.
I need a really good scary ghost movie that will haunt me long after the film ends. The scariest movies I saw last year were Misery and The Innocents. I also thought The Orphanage (El Orfanato) was really good and scary.The Shining of course is one of the scariest films I've ever seen and a masterpiece of cinema. Anyway, I've added Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? which I don't think will be all that scary, but hopefully dark and disturbing, and The Haunting (the original). Hopefully that will be terrifying. I'm also thinking about having a party and watching the classic 1931 versions of Dracula and Frankenstein. I don't think they'll be scary, but it could be fun to watch these really old monster movies and play games and make caramel apples or whatever. Sadly Netflix does not have Frankenstein to rent--it's only on Instant Watch. Have you seen any good scary movies this year?
Also, I need some suggestions for a costume this year. So far the only suggestions have been Mrs. White--the maid from Clue--or my professor Nancy Pearl based on her action figure. But if you have other ideas, especially ones that don't involve cross-dressing, I'd love to hear them!
Here's a lovely autumnal poem for your delight. Enjoy!
To "Drunk in the Shadow of Flowering Trees"
Pale fog, then dense clouds— gloomy all day long; in the animal-shaped censer incense burns away. Once again it is that autumn holiday: to my jade pillow behind the gauze screen at midnight the cold first comes.
By the eastern hedge I took wine in hand after twilight fell. A fragrance filled my sleeves unseen. Don't tell me this does not break your heart— the west wind blowing up the curtains and the person, as gaunt as the chrysanthemums.
Today is National Coming Out Day, and while I've never been a very good activist (for anything) in the wake of the recent slew of suicides and the furor over the last LDS General Conference, I can no longer remain silent.
I don't have much to say about everything, other than that Ms. Tori Amos was the best gal-pal this gay boy could have. So I wanted to post this video of "Merman." Tori originally wrote this song for her husband, but she was on tour when she heard Matthew Shepard was killed, so she started playing and dedicating this song to him, and it took on a life of its own. Like a lullaby, this song is simple yet so comforting.
Who could ever say you're not simply wonderful? Who could ever harm you?
I quit. I've only had two days of classes, but I already want to quit. Here's a brief recap:
On Thursday morning, I had 580--Management of Information Systems. It's our required management core class, and I was not excited to take it. However, it may actually be one of the better courses I take at the iSchool (it's hard to tell after one class though). Our professor, Nancy G., is great, and she actually has real-world management experience (half our professors have never worked in a library or have real-world experience) and she's structuring the class to be a more practical course (rather than the iSchool's penchant for theoretical ones) and there's almost no group work (something else the iSchool LOVES). So it sounds pretty good, right? Well, Code Name "She" is in the class. And She sat right next to me! I won't go into all the details about She because it would take too long and would frankly be too mean. Suffice it to say that She is universally disliked by my entire cohort. Now I think Nancy had been warned and she was able to manage She pretty well. In the future, I just have to make sure that She doesn't sit next to me, or there may be a bloodbath.
Well, I didn't have another class for five hours, so I caught up with some people, bought my textbook, and did the reading for my class that night--Information Retrieval Systems. The reading was something about Boolean searching and inverted files and only about half of it made sense. So then I went to this class, which counts as a required technology core, which also happens to be three hours long, from 4:30 to 7:20 every Thursday night. Half the class was made up of MLIS students, but the other half came from our sister MSIM program--the master's of science in information management. Oh, and one student who is a computational linguistics major. Early on we were promised no calculus and no programming, and then we quickly started talking about logarithms and programming. I'm pretty sure I have never ever learned about logarithms, and if I did then I have repressed all such knowledge. At the end of the three hours, the LIS students were traumatized, and the SIM students were all like, "but of course." I kind of thought this would be the easiest of the tech cores (foolish me!), but maybe I should have taken the XML class instead.
On Friday, I had another three-hour class, this one is Collection Development and Management. I think the material will be really important to learn and useful in the future, but I haven't made up my mind about the class yet or our professor. What I do know is there will be a helluva lot of work. She seems to believe in the principle that since this is a three-hour course, we will do nine hours of work outside of class. There are lots and lots of readings, online lectures, mandatory online discussion posts, and while there are only three assignments they are very involved projects. Oh, and She is in this class too. Fortunately, She is not in my group. And the class does end at 4:20 which means it's happy hour time.
I still haven't had Nancy Pearl's class which is six hours every other Saturday. But everyone loves Nancy Pearl and her classes, but there's still a lot of work to do. Okay, well it's time to hit the books. Oh, and Heidi and I built my bed--a lot of blood, sweat, and tears (literally) went into it, but I have bed now. So that's something.
