librarians are hiding something

the most my brain has worked in a while

there's a buzz about the brooklyn public library considering offering netflix services, for free, for its patrons. it reached consumerist. the long-ass comment from 'dewey decimated' is mine.

mamadramalates

so i'm ready to start exercising again. now that we've moved to the hawthorne area, and the weather has been blissful as of late, i'm doing a lot more walking. but i wanted to do something structured, and something that would help get rid of the post-c-section abdominal pudge. there is a 'mamalates' class for moms and babies at zenana spa, so i thought i'd check it out.

it's taught by wendy foster of divine pilates. i went to her website to get contact information for registration. and that's when i see she has a page about c-section recovery that includes tips on 'getting rid of the toxins and emotional baggage' from having a c-section. and 're-birth your baby with your ideal birth.' and 'talk with your baby about your feelings around your labor and delivery.'

crap like this has got to stop. it's similar to an article in a recent issue of mothering, in which being 'supportive' to a mom who has had a c-section is phrased as 'it's okay, dear, you didn't know any better and next time you can have a VBAC.' it's condescending.

yeah, i want a flatter tummy, but not because it's being pressed down by someone else's idea of how guilty i should feel about having a c-section.

whew

the mac is finally working right again. new MIMO router is making it superhappy.

my son is now 6. my daughter sleeps through the night, at 7 weeks!! (this took the son about 2 years to accomplish.)

my tub doesn't leak, but it doesn't bubble yet. the kitchen sink, on the other hand... sigh.

the library called and asked very gently if i'd like to come back to work, and when. i'll return to my sunday shifts in may. the new branch may or may not be open by then.

house

so today's the third day this week i've been hanging around the house, waiting on a contractor/tech/repair person.

today it's for a ge tech, to see why my dishwasher doesn't work. the builder reinstalled it because it leaked the first time he put it in, causing damage to the wood floor. he seems to have fixed this by preventing water from getting into the dishwasher at all now. ge's warranty doesn't cover installation errors. of course, the builder's assistant swore to me that they ran the machine, so i'm obviously incompetant when it comes to... closing a door and pressing a start button. and hearing the machine run the cycle, and finding a machine full of hot, dry, dirty dishes.

yesterday's wait was for the same assistant. he came by to open the drain for the washing machine. the cap on it had been epoxyed in place, so the sears installer couldn't complete the hookup that i waited for all day on wednesday. mysteriously, the 'it should just pop off, why didn't the sears guy know that' drain cap needed to be drilled open.

last week was fun with qwest, in which we found out that the DSL in our area is painfully slow. also, the phone jacks that the builder put in weren't actually connected to anything. dish network tried to install, but the trees behind our house obscure the signal too much. so, i get to wait on comcast next week. i'm sure we'll find that the cable jacks don't hook up to anything, either.

the builder's assistant will be by on monday, too, to repair the tub. this is a vast improvement from the initial response of 'what's the problem, the shower works, right?'.

so why are we finally getting any help from the builder? because we threatened to go to the contractors' board. and we discovered he's been operating without a license or insurance since october. we know he's working on another house now, and we know we should be reporting him. it makes us ill that someone else will have to deal with the same kinds of issues and nonresponsiveness (until the threat) that we have. but for right now, the threat of reporting him is the only leverage we have to get things fixed.

i'm naming names. the builder is will speakman, his company is reserve construction, and here's a link to his license info:

https://ccbed.ccb.state.or.us/ccb_frames/consumer_info/search_results.asp?regno=167336

and here's how it affects us, although we can say we did not knowingly buy from an unlicensed builder - his real estate agent told us several times he was licensed, bonded and insured.

from the ccb site:

"Check on a Contractor's License

Why check a contractor’s license? The Construction Contractors Board (CCB) believes the best way to a successful home improvement, repair or new home project is to know your contractor. Checking a contractor’s license can tell you:

If the contractor is actively licensed, which means they have a surety bond and liability insurance;
If the contractor carries Workers' Comp Insurance to protect its workers on the project;
Breach of contract complaints filed with the CCB in the past seven years.
CCB disciplinary actions against business in the pasts seven years.

IMPORTANT: Homeowners lose the ability to recover damages through the bond and insurance as well as the CCB Dispute Resolution Service (DRS) if they use an unlicensed contractor."



diagnosis?






"Errmm.... you're screwed."

oookay....

so it appears that the mac/google problem has something to do with airport. this was determined by hooking a cable up to the router, instead of using the wireless connection. boom - instant google, gmail, and blogger. but how the heck do i fix the problem? ran a software update, and it says all my mac software is current....

dammit dammit

this was one of those 'start stupidly, get progressively worse' kinds of days.

for starters.... since yesterday, i've been unable to access any google services from my mac. no searching, no gmail, and while i can look at blogspot sites, i can't get into blogger to edit my own (i am on a windows laptop right now). no freaking idea why. i have rebooted the mac, the modem and the router. i have cleared the cache, erased cookies and reset safari. i downloaded firefox and still no go. WTF?

i went over to boo's new school for next year and went on the introductory tour. thankfully there were other parents of first-graders there (the tour is usually for kindergarteners' parents) because i could let them ask the questions and just listen. i was too tired to engage my brain enough to formulate my own questions.

then, over to the new house. we're having all the furniture moved over on thursday, but we've been bringing in bits and pieces each day - and last night, my muscles were not happy with me. still sore today. so, over to the new house to try out the lovely jetted tub in the master bedroom.

hmmm, i push the button but the jets don't work. so it's just a normal bath. there's also a handheld shower thingy that isn't working. annoying, and since it's a feature that helped sell us on the house, i decide to at least report it in to the builder. after getting dressed, i head downstairs to grab the cell phone and ask husband for the builder's cell phone number so i can let him know about this. and that's when i find water dripping from the ceiling onto the kitchen floor. when i head back up, i open the access panel and see the floor under the tub is wet, and the carpet in the bedroom is soaked. husband didn't have the number, i call my real estate agent and get the builder's number. as contracts are all done and signed, there isn't much she can do now besides friendly advice.

i call the builder, he returns the call. and it turns out HE KNEW THAT THE PLUMBERS WHO INSTALLED THE TUB NEEDED TO REPLACE A PART and that without the replacement, the jets wouldn't work and this leak would happen. he neither followed up to make sure it was done nor notified us that there was a problem. he was going to come to the house this afternoon.... but didn't. last time i talked to him, he couldn't get in touch with the plumbers.

so, i've emailed this to my real estate agent, and asked for a referral to a lawyer. because if this isn't repaired tomorrow, yeah we're gonna need one.

about the only thing that went smoothly today was walking around my new neighborhood, hitting a record shop (why do i still think in this term when they sell very little vinyl?), and quickly finding the cd's i hoped to give boodad for valentine's day. and not getting any snark from the guys behind the counter.

btw - tones - we went with the 32". upon measuring the larger tv, we found we had a 27" so this will still feel like enough of an upgrade. however, upon bringing the small tv there i found that rabbit ears do no good in our house, so we will wind up with dish or cable of some type. oh well.

i'm gonna go self-medicate with chocolate now.

bwaa haa, horoscope

"If you are contemplating a session of retail therapy today, think again. Buying things to make yourself feel better may provide temporary relief. But in a couple of day's time, whatever has been bothering you will still be bothering you. Any impulse buys you make today could drain your bank account of much-needed funds. Save your money for another day and don't take any financial risks -- especially with new technical gadgets that you have not researched."

kinda busy

yep. i'm in those days when taking a shower and doing two loads of laundry counts as being highly productive.

despite this, we are moving to the new house next week. mainly because it's driving us crazy that we're paying for two houses and we're not living in the nicer one.

dumb question for my reader(s): we're contemplating a new tv. we have a 13" that we do most of our viewing on, since it's in the master bedroom. the 32" is downstairs, and doesn't get decent reception as a result (we're on rabbit ears, no cable). the 32" no longer has its remote, and the universal remote we got for it needs reprogramming for time to time - a gigantic pain in the pitoot - and it is so heavy that it's making the cabinet we store it on hard to open. we're looking at the pretty LCDs that my husband's employer makes, which gives us the benefit of not paying retail price, as well as new furniture.

so - do we get a 32" flat tv, or pay almost twice the amount for 42"?

we've been saying we're "not tv people", but i'm not 100% sure if this is a chicken and egg thing -are we not tv people because we have 6 channels, or do we only have 6 channels because we're not tv people? a good chunk of the reason we don't have more is because of our loathing of comcast - which we did give one chance to show up for an installation appointment, and comcast failed - and reluctance to put a dish on a nearly 100-yr-old house. we'd go with dish for the new place.

if we get the 32", will we regret it down the road? and how would we get justify buying a bigger one later?

ugh. technology.

curls!

we're not sure where this comes from on the family tree, but bea's hair forms tight ringlet curls when she has a bath. and this morning, one was right in the middle of her forehead....

awwww 2.0

big brother and sister chat

thanks, worth1000!

'apple's new product' contest generated a high percentage of iPoo toilets, but also this gem....

so she's here

sunday night, we had gone in with regular contractions. they kept us overnight to see how we'd progress, and at some point during the night we had to decide if we were going to keep the c-sec appointment for monday morning or not. it really looked like labor was finally going to progress, so we let the appointment go.... and at about the same time we would have been in the operating room, contractions petered out. we went home, but rescheduled for a c-sec tuesday morning.

about 3 am tuesday, i started being rocked by waves of hard contractions. but i was so tired of how these never went anywhere, and decided to do nothing and keep the c-sec appointment. we went in at 8 am for a 10 am operation. as the spinal was being placed i was still in contractions. at 10:43 am, Beatrice RuthJoy Jesudason was born.... weighing an amazing 10 lbs 4 oz. (the midwives have since opined that the no-progress labor i kept experiencing was likely due to her size, and that the c-sec was the better way to go.)

we're home now, after four days in the hospital recovery rooms. things there went relatively smoothly. boo is doing pretty well as a new big brother, and had made 'welcome home mommy and beatrice' signs for today.

beatrice has a sense of humor

i'm scheduled to go into the hospital in 8 hours for a c-section, and NOW i'm in real labor. going in!!

E for Effort

No, no baby yet. It's as if she tried her darndest on Wednesday night, but has barely bothered since.

Here's a list of what I've tried to convince her to come out:

-acupuncture
-baths
-dong quai tea
-echinachea
-foot massage
-full moon
-pineapple
-spicy food
-walking
-whoopee
-yoga

oh, and begging and pleading and cajoling. oh well.

favorite advice: when i called wednesday night because the contractions were 5 minutes apart for about 2 hours, i was told to call back when i couldn't talk through the contractions. which would have sounded like, "errrrrghhh!" "okay, go to the hospital now" "errrrghhh?" "uh-huh." etc. but it didn't get to that point. i suspect i've trained myself to talk/concentrate through anything, since it's a needed skill when one has a curious little boy at one's side most of the time.

it's a race

so i'm scheduled for a c-sec, 8 am monday. unless beatrice shows up first, or i chicken out.

beatrice, you owe me 15 cents.

OVERDUE!

washpost article on fairfax's weeding policy

i'm cutting and pasting this from the washington post. my former library system is fairfax's neighbor and we had pretty much adopted the same policies, much to the consternation of many librarians. i've been wondering what the reaction has been to this article:

Hello, Grisham -- So Long, Hemingway?
With Shelf Space Prized, Fairfax Libraries Cull Collections
By Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 2, 2007; Page A01


You can't find "Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings" at the Pohick Regional Library anymore. Or "The Education of Henry Adams" at Sherwood Regional. Want Emily Dickinson's "Final Harvest"? Don't look to the Kingstowne branch.

It's not that the books are checked out. They're just gone. No one was reading them, so librarians took them off the shelves and dumped them.

Along with those classics, thousands of novels and nonfiction works have been eliminated from the Fairfax County collection after a new computer software program showed that no one had checked them out in at least 24 months.

Public libraries have always weeded out old or unpopular books to make way for newer titles. But the region's largest library system is taking turnover to a new level.

Like Borders and Barnes & Noble, Fairfax is responding aggressively to market preferences, calculating the system's return on its investment by each foot of space on the library shelves -- and figuring out which products will generate the biggest buzz. So books that people actually want are easy to find, but many books that no one is reading are gone -- even if they are classics.

"We're being very ruthless," said Sam Clay, director of the 21-branch system since 1982. "A book is not forever. If you have 40 feet of shelf space taken up by books on tulips and you find that only one is checked out, that's a cost."

That is the new reality for the Fairfax system and the future for other libraries. As books on tape, DVDs, computers and other electronic equipment crowd into branches, there is less room for plain old books.

So librarians are making hard decisions and struggling with a new issue: whether the data-driven library of the future should cater to popular tastes or set a cultural standard, even as the demand for the classics wanes.

Library officials say they will always stock Shakespeare's plays, "The Great Gatsby" and other venerable titles. And many of the books pulled from one Fairfax library can be found at another branch and delivered to a patron within a week.

But in the effort to stay relevant in an age in which reference materials and novels can be found on the Internet and Oprah's Book Club helps set standards of popularity, libraries are not the cultural repositories they once were.

"I think the days of libraries saying, 'We must have that, because it's good for people,' are beyond us," said Leslie Burger, president of the American Library Association and director of Princeton Public Library. "There is a sense in many public libraries that popular materials are what most of our communities desire. Everybody's got a favorite book they're trying to promote."

That leaves some books endangered. In Fairfax, thousands of titles have been pulled from the shelves and become eligible for book sales.

Weeding books used to be sporadic. Now it's strategic. Clay and his employees established the two-year threshold 18 months ago, driven, they say, by a $2 million cut to the budget for books and materials and the demand for space. More computers and growing demand in branches for meeting space, story hours and other gatherings have left less room for books.

And nowadays, library patrons don't like to sit at big tables with strangers as they read or study. They want to be alone, creating a need for individual carrels that take up even more space. And the popularity of audiovisual materials that must be housed in 50-year-old branches built for smaller collections only adds to the crunch.

To do more with less, Fairfax library officials have started running like businesses. Clay bought state-of-the art software that spits out data on each of the 3.1 million books in the county system -- including age, number of times checked out and when. There are also statistics on the percentages of shelf space taken up by mysteries, biographies and kids' books.

Every branch gets a printout of the data each month, including every title that hasn't circulated in the previous 24 months. It's up to librarians to decide whether a book stays. The librarians have discretion, but they also have targets, collection manager Julie Pringle said. "What comes in is based on what goes out," she said.

Classics such as Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" are among the titles that haven't been checked out in two years and could be eliminated. Librarians so far have decided to keep them.

As libraries clear out titles, they sweep in new ones as fast as they can. A two-month-old program called "Hot Picks" is boosting copies of bestsellers by tracking the number of holds requested by patrons. This month, every Fairfax branch will display new books more prominently, leaving even less space for older ones.

"We don't want to keep what people don't use much of," Clay said. Circulation, a sign of prestige and a potential bargaining chip for new funding, is on pace to hit 11.6 million in the Fairfax system this year, part of a steady climb over the past three years.

No other system in the Washington area is tracking circulation as quickly -- or weeding so methodically. Montgomery County, a similar-size suburban system, has not emphasized weeding in several years, said Kay Ecelbarger, who retired last month as chief of collection management.

In the District, library director Ginnie Cooper said she has not tackled weeding and turnover policy in the system, which is struggling to increase circulation. She hopes to address those concerns with a recent infusion of cash from the D.C. Council.

There are no national standards on weeding public library collections.

As Fairfax bets its future on a retail model, some librarians say that the public library may be straying too far from its traditional role as an archive of literature and history.

Arlington County's library director, Diane Kresh, said she's "paying a lot of attention to what our customers want." But if they aren't checking out Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," she's not only keeping it, she's promoting it through a new program that gives forgotten classics prominent display.

"Part of my philosophy is that you collect for the ages," Kresh said. "The library has a responsibility to provide a core collection for the cultural education of its community." She comes to this view from a career at the Library of Congress, where she was chief of public service collections for 30 years.

The weight of the new choices falls on the local librarian. That's especially hard at the Woodrow Wilson branch in Falls Church, one of the smallest in the Fairfax system. It's a vibrant place popular with Latino and Middle Eastern immigrants, the elderly and young professionals. Branch manager Linda Schlekau, who has 20 years of experience, says she discards about 700 books a month.

"Nine Plays by Eugene O'Neill" sat on the top shelf of a cart in the back room one day in late December, wedged between Voltaire's "Candide" and "Broke Heart Blues" by Joyce Carol Oates. The cart brimmed with books that someone on Schlekau's staff had pulled from the shelves. Sometimes she has time to give them another look before wheeling them to the book-sale pile. Sometimes she doesn't.

The Oates would return to the shelf, "because she's a real popular author at Woodrow Wilson," even if "Broke Heart Blues" isn't, Schlekau said. The Voltaire would go. An obscure Edgar Allan Poe volume called "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" might be transferred to another branch.

Schlekau hesitated over the volume of O'Neill plays, which was in good condition but had been checked out only nine times in its lifespan at the library, falling short of the system's new goal of 20. She sighed. "The only time things like this are going out is if they're [performing the plays] at the Kennedy Center."

But, she said, she's disinclined to throw O'Neill into the discard pile: "That's the English major in me."

Books on the Chopping Block in Fairfax
The following books have been weeded from the shelves of various branches of the Fairfax County Public Library system or haven't been checked out in 24 months and could be discarded. In parentheses are the branches where the books are endangered. The same title might be available at another branch.
The Works of Aristotle Aristotle (Centreville)
Sexual Politics Kate Millett (Centreville)
The Great Philosophers Karl Jaspers (Centreville)
Carry Me Home Diane McWhorter (Centreville)
The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner (George Mason Regional)
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Thomas Hardy (George Mason Regional)
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway (George Mason Regional)
Desolation Angels
Jack Kerouac (George Mason Regional)
Doctor Zhivago
Boris Pasternak (George Mason Regional)
Remembrance of Things Past
Marcel Proust (George Mason Regional)
Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well
Maya Angelou (Chantilly Regional)
The Glass Menagerie
Tennessee Williams (Chantilly Regional)
Writings Gertrude Stein (Chantilly Regional)
Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte (Chantilly Regional)
Doctor Faustus
Christopher Marlowe (Chantilly Regional)
Great Issues in American History
Richard Hofstadter (Chantilly Regional)
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Gertrude Stein (Chantilly Regional)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Pohick Regional)
Babylon Revisited: And other stories
F. Scott Fitzgerald (Reston Regional)
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee (Reston Regional)
The Aeneid Virgil (Sherwood Regional)
The Mill on the Floss
George Eliot (Fairfax City Regional)

it's the due date, and my horoscope sucks

Scorpio:

All your forward momentum is starting to wane a bit, which is both a positive and a negative thing. On the one hand, this time out will finally give you a chance to take in the interesting view you've been missing out on for so long. But on the other hand, this pause means that you are going to have wait even longer for the changes you've been hoping for. Conserve your energy and be more patient. Be confident that you will experience what you deserve soon enough.


Argh!!

The walking yesterday did little to help - in fact, fewer contractions than usual last night. I can't even get in to the midwives' today, my appointment is tomorrow. I'll have my progress checked and if there's been any dilation, fine, I'll give her til Monday to come naturally. If no progress since last week, I will have a c-sec on Friday.

Another gripe:

While out yesterday, I did a little shopping at one of my favorite pampering places. In fact, it was the only shopping I did, so I realized later at the grocery store that my bank card had been left there. It took several tries to get through the busy signal to confirm that yes, my card was there. "Do you want me to hold onto your card?," the salesperson asked. "Um, as opposed to handing it out to a stranger, yes..." I replied. Went back to get card. Somehow wound up in a position where I'm thanking the store for holding my card - that the salesperson had neglected to return to me in the first place. Isn't that supposed to merit an apology for inconveniencing me?

nope

so.... more than 4 hours of contractions without hitting the magic 5 minutes apart, although there was about 1/2 an hour between 3:30 - 4 am of that. and then petering off again. kinda back on this morning, let's see if it makes a pattern. kid is at school; pretty soon i'm going to go walking around the mall or something to try to get 'em back on track.