Monthly Archives: December 2007

So, I’ve been sucked in. Shane Bee lent me his Nintendo DS, along with his impressive collection of games. I’ve become enamored with Pokemon Pearl, and I’m in the middle of catching them all.

I could go on and on about how I like playing Pokemon because it’s non-violent (the creatures battle, but faint rather than die) and collect-y.

Really, what I wanted to point out is that this is a phenomenon that first took hold in the 1990’s, where a whole generation of children got kind of obsessed with imaginary animals. Then the whole fad started to fade into the annals of popular culture.

So I was as surprised as the next librarian when I discovered that Pokemon is again popular. It seems that the younger siblings of the original generation have picked up their brothers’ and sisters’ cards and games, and have revived this pocket monster of a game.

I wrote a whole article for the local paper on how the categorization and organization of Pokemon is good for kids’ brains, if the merchandising doesn’t get to them.

Why am I posting so much, like a monsoon after a drought?

It’s a combination of suggestions (write about the Kindle!), guilt-laden comments (you never post anymore), and finally, learning that a friend has started using Google Reader + Outside Cat + his Blackberry, which = instant, constant updates.

This alone is enough to inspire me to write more.

I also got into a conversation with a young patron who was talking about how she doesn’t want to be a blogger, and I asked if she journaled, and she said she thinks it’s hard to write about herself because it’s boring and self-related all the time. I told her I felt the same way until my college roommate (Stephanie) gave me a Harry Potter journal. I made myself start writing in it every day, and it truly was boring and self-related (a lot of ‘omg, i have nothing to write’), but it became a habit, and I continued to journal. Then when I got a Diaryland account, it became something I could access during the day (rather than my just-before-bed habit). THEN, I discovered Livejournal, which many of my friends used. THEN, I discovered Jason, who showed me the ways of servers and domain names, and I migrated all my Livejournal writings over to the now-current (and really-ready-for-a-new-design) Outside Cat.

After I told her all this, I realized that I’ve lost the habit of writing, and I decided it was time to get back to it. Much like flossing, I’m not waiting till the new year to make this resolution.

Baking sugar cookies

Cross-country skiing through the woods to a log cabin, to eat cheese and drink tea.

And then loosen sore muscles in the hot tub

Then immediately jump into the snow (or, on top of the ice-covered snow), then back into the hot tub for that Noxema-tingle.

The only thing left to do is play Settlers of Catan in front of the wood stove (and the wood floor pile).

(These are all available in larger form from Jason’s Flickr.

I’ve been mulling over the idea of storebought.

Background:
This is my first Christmas working as a librarian in a public library. I’m learning that part of being the public library here is getting Christmas presents from patrons. We have about 10 boxes and tins of treats in the back, that we’ve slowly been working our way through since Thanksgiving. The first Whitman’s sampler was gone in a few hours. After that, as the boxes and tins started rolling in, I began to realize that I needed to be very careful. If I didn’t pay attention, I’d ingest a few thousand extra calories each day.

As I looked over our selection, I realized that what I wanted to spend my caloric pennies on was homemade snacks. Food with no preservatives, with taste in mind rather than presentation.

Back-background:
I read all the Laura Ingalls Wilder series, which took place in midwest frontier America. During Laura’s life, there were several scenes of experiencing the difference between homemade and storebought. In this context, ‘storebought’ meant hard candy, calico print fabric, and other items simply unattainable from the prairie, but magically available through Sears and Roebuck. I could imagine how nice it would be to give up wearing wool underwear for some nice, soft cotton.

At what point did homemade become the new storebought?

Here is Adam,
obviously enamored with the most awesome baglet ever. This came,
along with various tiny delicious cookies, from my good friend E.

Wooo wooo wooo (says the whale).

Helen got it for me in Oslo.

I recently discovered that one of my friends shares the same favorite movie as myself. I never really knew exactly what tung oil was,
until I spotted this bottle of it.