is It Bigger Than A ... ?

We always had a breadbox in the kitchen when I was a kid, but I've never had one in my own home, probably because of the precious space it takes up. But I have one now. Why, you ask? Let me tell you. What do you suppose happens in your average 60 year old little house in the months after your cats die?

Oh, yes. And not of the cute, red-shorts wearing Mickey variety, either.

Oy. Yes, I had a random encounter with one over the summer, but they seem to be living happily in the attic, which means K has to get her room in sufficient order for a mice professional to come and set traps and seal up holes and stuff. (I don't want them dead, I just want to send them on permanent vacation anywhere but in my house.) In the meantime, kitchen protection is the order of the day. A stainless steel breadbox -- Shirl's was white enamel, but I couldn't find one of those anywhere -- and any number of protective plastic containers from ... um .. The Container Store, of course.

Hey, everybody needs a project.

But not for me tonight, apparently, because the trains are for some reason not running again -- where's a fascist dictator when you need one -- so I'm picking the kid up at the train at 6:12 and taking her home. But right home, no dinner out tonight. I still have last night's leftovers, and I want to be home well in time to see Mr. Obama on TV.

My workshop today was excellent, as was my time spent with the middle school librarian, whom I have known for nearly ever. (She was two years ahead of me in high school.) The content was good, we had a nice pizza lunch, and got home by 1:30 (thereby enabling my shopping run.) Tomorrow we are having some sort of emergency drill at school, which means we will be out in the football field stands for an hour or so. I'm thinking someone could have thought of this a month ago, before it got weirdly cold. I mean, the cold is weird, but not unheard of. Snow this time of year, yes, virtually unheard of, but wind, not so much. Anyway, I'm bundling up.

Okay, time to put a load of laundry in the dryer and head over to the train --


WATCHING WIFE SWAP :: ENTRY #1893
READING: How to Rig an Election by Allen Raymond

A Million O'Clock

It's been a long day. Not a bad day, necessarily, but a long one. But tomorrow I get to sleep in, all the way until 6:30, assuming I don't wake myself up before that.

A nice busy day at school, a class that actually took notes when I told them to (a shocker), positively vile weather, and then, Surprise! There was a transformer fire someplace, which means there were no trains for R to take except here to B-Town, so that meant picking her up and getting some dinner, and then driving her home. I only just now finished all my little tasks and stuff, and here I am.

Where was I again?

I'm glad I'm not driving to this workshop tomorrow, only to the other librarian's house -- maybe fifteen minutes away -- and then she's driving. The last time I went to a workshop in this place, the weather was like today: windy, rainy, cold. That was a two-day workshop and I went alone. This is a two-hour workshop, then we'll have a nice lunch and come home. I'm not so big on long drives anymore, so this is fine.

As for the weather, the place we're going to probably had snow today, as did the northern edges and western parts of New Jersey, as well as, of course, parts north of us. In October. This is just a wee bit early for us here. At lunch today, the Other Chai said this was "lake effect snow." ??? "What lake?" I asked her. She said we were on the edges of a system off the Great Lakes, which really, I find hard to believe, but maybe it's true. Her son went to college in Syracuse, so he pretty much lived lake effect style for seven years. (He went to law school there, too.) All I know is that it was cold and nasty today, and there was thunder in the middle of the day. Don't like that. Hate wind.

And now I'm going to tuck my cold toes under two comforters and see if that helps.

WATCHING RACHEL MADDOW :: ENTRY #1892
READING: How to Rig an Election by Allen Raymond

SIX! But I'm Not There.

So it's about 9:15, and I'm sitting in this training room over in Hackensack waiting for the big workshop to start. It's got 15 minutes to go. I've already checked my email (sadly, the Colleague had to have her dog put to sleep last night; he was elderly and very ill for some time), and gone through my Reader updates. I thought I'd share with you all throughout the day, if I get the chance.

First, I'm working at a desktop PC running Internet Explorer, so I'm out of my comfort zone. Not out of my familiarity zone, by any means, because actually that's my set-up at school (although I use Firefox there too, when I can), but this is a monitor sitting on top of the actual PC, so I'm kind of looking up, if you know what I mean, so I can read the screen through the lower part of my progressive bifocals. Not looking forward to this all day, and neither is my neck. And the toolbar is configured differently, so I assume I must be at a Vista machine, although I didn't notice anything different before I fired up the Internet. It's a nice looking screen, very clear, good font here, and keyboard has a nice feel to it, but it's just a little not-the-same, you know?

Up on the whiteboard, there's a listing of 10 class participants, only two of whom are here. (Ten minutes to go. Needless to say, I got here very early; the other woman already here was here before I was.) It looks like we're going to be creating our blogs at Yahoo, since the instructor has listed usernames and passwords for us. For today, I am officially "blogstudent2." I don't know that I've ever done a Yahoo blog, unless I know it as something else. Certainly, I've tried out many different systems over the years just to see what they're like.

I brought a snack with me, but I'm thinking I may just have it for lunch and not go to McDonald's, which is pretty close, but not close enough to walk, and I don't want to lose the rare parking space I was lucky to get by arriving here at the ass-crack of the day. It also looks like it's going to rain most of the day, but if it doesn't, I can walk to the Target while I'm munching my apple and granola bar. I don't know what I need there, or if I need anything, but I can certainly kill a half hour in Target any day of the week.

Okay, more people are filtering in now and everybody knows everyone else except me. These ladies -- all ladies, judging by the names on the board -- are greeting each other like long-lost pals. It's a little weird.

First break.

We had a little power point thingy with background on blogging, nothing I didn't know, really, but some theory and history. She gave us a couple of links to sites about the legal issues involved (such as safely blogging about your job), so I guess I ought to look that over at some point. We'll start up our little blogs after the break. Turns out we'll be using blogger after all; she just set up email addresses for us at Yahoo to use to set up at blogger so we don't have to use our real ones, for lesson purposes.

I think the thing that drew me to this class was that the title said something about Learn about Web 2.0! and I wanted to know what that is. Turns out it means the "live" Internet, the constant exchange of live blog information and RSS feeds and updating by the minute and participation by a wide group of people, as opposed to the static Internet where websites are created and managed by IT people and techs and website developers and the sites are relatively static. Okay, now I know. Can I go to Target? (I can see it from the window I'm sitting next to!)

Home. It was a long day in a cold room.

It wasn't a nice day to walk, and it turned out that once I got out on the street, I couldn't get my bearings and figure out how to get to Target! The streets around there are very wacko. I went back, got my car, killed some time over at T and still got back for the afternoon session with 15 minutes to spare.

I learned some RSS stuff that I didn't know, but nothing particularly useful to me (or you.) But it was not the worst way to spend a day. The instructor was the same one I had for the Dreamweaver workshop last year, and she's good. The aggravating thing about the day was getting email from the Colleague telling me that my library non-secretary is stirring up trouble again. Honestly, what is her problem? Yesterday, I worked out a whole procedure with the vice principal and than explained it all to this chicky-poo, no problem, and today she's running to the v.p.. explaining that it can't be done because of a, b, and c, all of which I've already taken care of and are no longer issues. I wasn't even there today and it was still annoying.

Now I am very, very tired and we are having pizza for dinner. I will have at least two slices. I may have three.


watching Reba :: entry #1495