KJ

And yet devestatingly adorable. It's pop-up kitty!

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Covering desk. Very bored. (It's not like I don't have stuff to do, but I can't really work on any of it at the desk.) Distract me?

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One more session to go, conference-wise. But before I forget, I want to note a talk I saw earlier, by a librarian-artist who considers blogging a integral componant of her artistic practice, and it struck me how much I feel the same way about my LiveJournaling and how it relates to my writing. Feedback, community, keeping notes on progress and process: it's all there. I don't have time to get in-depth on it now, but I'm throwing it out anyway, in part as a reminder to myself that I want to come back and say more.

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Did LJ just acquire ONTD?

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Does anyone else find the concept of foursquare a little creepy? Hey kids, look! It's another way for us to track your every movement!

Edited to note that the irony of posting from my phone, using an app that notifies everyone that I have done so, is not lost on me...

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Just two more hours.

Too bad I am spending them at work. :P

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"Is that a kiwi?"

"No, it's a lime."

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So we have survived today's big family to-do. The mood was upbeat, almost uniformly so. T made the roast, a task that had been long associated with his dad, but he put his own spin on it, which I think helps. T's family is big and noisy and friendly, much like my own, so I always feel at home with them, especially now that I've known them all for ten years. This time we ended up playing games, mostly a Scrabble-like word game called Bananagrams, which I enjoyed so much that I've already downloaded the iPhone app. Now I am tired from prep and the food coma, so we're kicking back in the guest room with our respective phones, resting up for a drive to LA tomorrow where we're going to meet an aunt and some cousins for a day at the racetrack, something I've never done before. Even though one year my summer job was selling tickets for the grandstand at the Sonoma County Fair. So that should be interesting.

Yesterday, Christmas Day itself, was much more low key. T's sister and her boyfriend got in on Christmas Eve night, and we spent the day tidying the house, putting out decorations -- the lack of advance decoration by T's mom was the only obvious outward sign that anything has changed since last year -- doing cooking prep, and interestingly, also playing games: a couple rounds of Scrabble and a game of Hearts. Games are common fare at the large family get-together, because T's cousins all have kids (age 7 to 19 or so), and keeping them occupied is always high priority, especially at my in-laws house since it's not super kid-friendly. But it's been rare for our small group to do games, and I wonder if my SiL was looking for a distraction. If so, it worked, because the day was good, if quiet. Also I was pleased to learn that the month or so I spent obessesed with Scrabulous paid off in terms on improving my Scrabble game, so much that I might even consider playing one-on-one with T again...

Overall, a succesful holiday visit so far. I hope you all had or are having a great holiday if you celebrate, and/or a lovely weeked!

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My work project for the last couple of days has been going through the magazine back files: putting them in order, rescuing mis-shelves, pulling really old issues that we need to get rid of to make more space. It's the kind of mindless busywork in the stacks that I like doing from time to time, both to share the load with the student workers, and because I find it oddly relaxing to put things in order like that -- creating order out of chaos. But this time, I'm finding it somewhat depressing, too, because I keep coming across magazines that have been shut down. Magazines start and fold all the time, and keeping track has always been part of the job, but it's been epidemic in recent months, and some really venerable titles, too: Gourmet and I.D. (a very cool design magazine) both come to mind. It seems like almost once a week, lately, that I head or a title shutting down or moving to online-only. Also, we had to cancel a bunch of titles for a lack of student readership lately, which is sad for different reasons. Although, it occurs to me, possibly related ones.

The death of publishing? Only time will tell.

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I am sitting on a park bench outside a restaurant in Berkeley, waiting for friends to arrive, enjoying a pleasant fall evening. It's a restaurant I've wanted to try, so I'm looking forward to it.

And I was early, so I went to a comic book store. With cats. And bought the new Alison Bechdel collection, which I've been meaning to do forever.

So, for now at least, life is pretty much good.

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