Double Lucky

Stories Of Ink

I've got a couple tattoos.  3 to be exact.  I count one as double though because I had it re-done about 4 years ago...so maybe we could call it 4...I've been wanting to get another tattoo for a while now but I'm still figuring out what it should be and where.  I've got a couple ideas....

My biggest requirement is that my tattoos need to mean something to me.  I don't ever want to look at one and wonder why the hell I got it permanently marked on my body.  My first tattoo happened on my 18th birthday and is the Chinese symbol for the year I was born.  There's a lot of sentimentality in that tattoo-- to me it not only speaks about the year of my birth, it speaks about the slow steps an 18 year old me took to becoming an adult who could do something without permission.  It's not the most adventurous or creative tattoo but it was my first "real" adult move. An 18 year old figuring out adulthood...

Anyway, while working on my ordering for the library today, I happened to see a book coming this fall called "Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them" by Isaac Fitzgerald and Wendy MacNaughton.  It's based on a Tumblr of the same name that I just spent a nice chunk of time reading...

If you are even remotely as interested in the stories behind tattoos as I am, I think you'll enjoy this...and I'm looking forward to the release of this book in the fall

Happy Pride Month!

Holy Wedding Hangover

I'm married!!!  I'm no longer me anymore! I'm a new person!

I have a lot of things to say about this whole wedding shebang and I'm going to get to it soon....

But in the meantime, I give you the Ron Swanson version of my new husband at our wedding



It.was.awesome

My Face Should Be Fancier

I had my wedding makeup trial done last week and it. was. awesome.

I know I will never be one of those girls that puts on a full face of makeup every single day. I'm also positive that I won't be one of those girls that knows how to highlight, contour, and do 100 layers of eyeshadow....

But I am pretty sure that I really want to have more makeup than I currently have and in more shades that are not brown....or at least more interesting shades of brown?








I'm seriously itchin to buy some lip glosses...

EPIC Prank

This might be the most epic prank I've ever heard of-- players from the San Diego Padre's AAA team, the El Paso Chihuahua's (best team name EVER btw) managed to convince Jeff Francoeur that another teammate was deaf...they kept this story up for a long time...the resulting video explaining the prank is hilarious and worth the 7 minutes or so it will take you to watch

El Paso Chihuahuas 

Dig The Vibe

I heard this song for the first time today and I just like the way it hits me today...

Coulda Woulda Shoulda

I shoulda been wearing this for the last year....



Note- I have no idea who this chick is but this came up on Pinterest and I'm pretty jealous of her sweatshirt...

My Pal Dave

"OH! Thanks a trillion jillion!"
"Wow! That's a lot of thanks, Dave!"
"Well, you're a lot of gal!"

"It's almost Easter! Scramble your eggs!"

Dave, in case you haven't heard me talk about him before, is a well known library patron.  He's about 87 now, I think.  Dave looks a bit like Mr. Magoo and used to come to the library a couple times a week to read various articles we had printed up for him and try to research his burning questions. Dave is also well known for the phone calls he makes to the library reference desk as he calls numerous times a day on an almost daily basis.  At some point in the past, he was given the rule of being allowed to ask 4 questions per day.  Sometimes he draws these out throughout the day, sometimes he has asked them all in 1 phone call by 9:07 a.m.  If we didn't impose this limit, he'd call with 100 questions a day.  Anyway, a little over a year ago Dave fell, hurt his neck, and has been living in a senior citizens home ever since.  So he doesn't make it into the library anymore (which is really a shame as I know he'd be THRILLED to see the new building) but we're still the lucky recipients of a bevy of phone calls.  He's become very hard of hearing, regularly breaks his hearing aids or just forgets to wear them, can be fairly looped up on drugs, and fails to wear his teeth frequently.  This being said, while he can be EXTREMELY difficult to communicate with, Dave asks some of the most intelligent and interesting questions that span the most diverse topics anyone could imagine.

Some of these topics have included how phone lines work through the Rockies, determining the truth behind his extreme pro-life step-daughters stories (they're never right and often disgustingly provocative), hunting down the lyrics to a song from 1928 that he kinda remembers the tune to (always singing it to you when he asks), demanding the phone numbers for politicians he saw on tv so he can give them a piece of his damn mind!, also demanding the phone numbers for the star of different cable television shows so he can tell them what a fine job they're doing, and the transcript for that one show where he thinks they might have talked about Hilary Clinton but he's not sure and doesn't know if maybe it was on George Stephanopolis or maybe someone else's show but it was probably on on Sunday..., or a million other random things...

Dave can drive you nuts when you're screaming numbers into the phone to him or when he's just talking into the voicemail for 5 minutes because he doesn't realize it isn't a real person but there is not a single person in our department who doesn't become concerned about him if they haven't talked to him in a few days....

I don't know how I became Dave's person but I did.  Everyone enjoys him but he and I have our own little friendship.  Almost every single phone call between us ends with him saying "I love you!" which he usually follows up by immediately saying "oh wait, I shouldn't say that honey!" but I'm pretty sure that before it's too late, I'm going to just once answer "I love you too, Dave"

Heard In The Library...

Child: "It might be scary??"
Mom: "It's a princess movie.  If you can't handle a princess movie, you're in trouble."

Woman describing a movie to me: "It's a comomody.  About divorce.  With that woman who gets things."
Her friend who happens to be hispanic: "And it has that guy who was in that movie about the 3 compadres"
--turns out she was talking about the movie It's Complicated with Meryl Streep and Steve Martin...

I Really Am Serious This Time

Someone mentioned to me on Facebook yesterday that I should have a blog....which, clearly, I do....I will take this as my sign that I really need to get my blog shit together.

So I present to you one of the more bizarre library world stories

Skin books.


 

Pour One Out For My Homies

I Don't Eat Enough Breakfast

Which some people might find odd considering I eat breakfast every day.  But I'm pretty sure that breakfast foods are some of my favorite foods that I just don't get enough of.  For example, let me present to you the following image of breakfast:



It's Pastrami Benedict!!  It looks aaaaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmmmaaaaaaaazzzzziiiiiinnnnnnnnngggggggg and yet, I've never eaten it??  Recipe found HERE btw.

This? I haven't had THIS before? Why?



You better believe I pinned this recipe...

All I know is that there will be some pancakes in my future....and probably some nice runny yolk eggs...

Maybe this is all coming up because it's 2 and I haven't gotten to eat lunch yet...

Books of 2013

I set a goal of reading 60 books in 2013 and I didn't quite make it.  For the 2nd year in a row, I hit 57..whomp whomp...so close, yet so far away....I blame 2 giant books that I spent a long time reading only to give up on halfway through (I'm looking at you "The Twelve" by Justin Cronin and "Inferno" by Dan Brown)...Overall, I feel better about my reading list this year than I have in the past but I still think there is room for improvement.  I'm hoping to be sent better books to review this year but I'm already off on a better foot this year simply because I requested to no longer be on the historical Asian fiction train....thank god...

So here is my list! In chronological order:

Think Twice by Lisa Scottoline

Faith by Jennifer Haigh

Kill You Twice by Chelsea Cain

Tiger Tiger by Margaux Fragoso

Motherland by Amy Sohn

Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

A Woman of Angkor by John Burgess

Head in Beds by Jacob Tomsky

Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

Nightwoods by Charles Frazier

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

Drinking and Tweeting by Brandi Glanville

Wonder by RJ Palacio

Poor Little Bitch Girl by Jackie Collins

Don’t Go by Lisa Scottoline

A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash

The Pillow Book of the Flower Samurai by Barbara Lazar

Post Mortem by Patricia Cornwell

Club Dead by Charlaine Harris

The Outcasts by Kathleen Kent

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Me Before You by JoJo Moyes

Six Years by Harlan Coben

Touch and Go by Lisa Gardner

Fly Away by Kristin Hannah

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg

Let Me Go by Chelsea Cain

The Tao of Martha by Jen Lancaster

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Marbles by Ellen Forney

Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim by Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Serritella

If I Stay by Gayle Forman

Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan

Always Watching by Chevy Stevens

Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead

Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen

The Lost Girls of Rome by Donato Carrisi

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill

Time Flies by Claire Cook

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

Brooklyn Zoo by Darcy Lockman

Birdman by Mo Hayder

We Are Water by Wally Lamb

Goodnight Mind by Colleen Carney

Wonderkid by Wesley Stace

Here I Go Again by Jen Lancaster

E is for Evidence by Sue Grafton

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison

Here's the tally for how everything broke down:
Fiction: 47
NonFiction: 10
Audio: 3
Library Journal: 6
YA/Teen: 5
Library Book Discussion: 4 (although that seems really low so I'm wondering if I missed one that I read in previous years)

Top 5 Most Enjoyed Books: (in no particular order)
1) Light Between Oceans
2) A Land More Kind Than Home
3) Beautiful Ruins
4) Crazy Rich Asians
5) The Silent Wife
*Mockingjay is pretty much tied with The Silent Wife as I'll be damned if I didn't shed a tear or two on that series ending...
Also, I'm not saying they were the best books ever written, but they are the ones I find myself passing on to people over and over..

Top 5 Least Enjoyed Books: (in no particular order)
1) Woman of Angkor (SNORE)
2) Fault in Our Stars (this might be the first book for me where I think the movie might be better)
3) The Husband's Secret (Why does ANYONE like this book?? It's terrible!)
4) Brooklyn Zoo (Someone should have suggested that the author needs to decide if this is a textbook, a memoir, or just a whining diary)
5) Goodnight Mind (oh hey, if you're in bed and you're not tired, get out of bed. If you're not tired and you're not in bed, don't get in bed.  There. I've summed the book up for you.  Hope that was helpful.)

I've set my goal for 2014 at 60 books again.  I'm going to get it this year if it means that I need to call in sick to work for the last week of the year to power through books.  I also feel like this is the year where I might just read more for my own guilty pleaures...I really just want to read fun books right now...thrillers mainly...maybe it's because wedding planning is stressing me out and all I want to do is totally zone out into a book?  who knows...either way, don't hold your breath to see Ulysses or Moby Dick on my list this next year...

Anyone read anything great that I missed??  Anyone ready to slap me for hating The Fault in Our Stars?

Happy Valentine's Day Luvas

Well Hello There

I've been feeling uninspired lately.  Which is why I haven't blogged about anything in quite a while.  Everything semi interesting I see, I figure everyone in the world has probably already seen it too...So there's not really anything that has struck me as new and great.  Until today.

To give credit, Andy just sent this to me at work and it's just too fantastic not to pass along.  I realized I had to blog about it when I started thinking about the other people I knew who would really enjoy seeing Ali and his killer personality.

What Ali Wore is not something that I know enough about to really explain...all I know is that it's set in Berlin (I think) and Ali is awesome.  I'm so glad someone thought to capture these moments...Trust me, you need to check it out.

What Ali Wore

Like Brass Knuckles Covered In Diamonds

I have a soft spot for super feminine things that have a tough girl twist.
Like giant floral tattoos
Dainty teacups that say "hussy" on them
Things like that....

These purses fall right in my wheelhouse...
Comes With Baggage
This one in particular...

This one should be my wedding purse...

Compared To A Platoon Of Monkeys

What Would Be YOUR Space Jam??

If your dream is stupid, get a new dream...

3 Of My Favorite Things Combined

BBQ

Donut

Boat

Where the hell have you been all my life???????????




I very well might sell all of my worldly possessions for this contraption.

Buy it for me HERE