There’s nothing quite like taking a macro photo of your skin to make you feel like you need to slather on a gallon of moisturizer.
Sympathetic Magic
The maintenance guys came by at about 2pm yesterday. They shouldn’t have needed to get into my apartment, since the leak was in the upstairs shower, and since there was no damage to the ceiling. What did they need to come in for? To caulk my tub. That’s right. The upstairs shower was leaking, so they caulked my tub.
Jeenyous!
I’m hoping they also caulked the upstairs tub, and that they only did mine, too, as a form of sympathetic magic.
Oh, and it took two guys to do the caulking. One–the younger–did the actual work, while the other–a wizened old dude–sat on the closed toilet and supervised. And by supervised, I mean complained about his bad back and made fun of the younger guy’s caulking abilities.
Ice Cream
I know, dogs shouldn’t have chocolate. But there wasn’t actually much chocolate in it, and I rinsed it out before giving it to her. This is what’s known as cheap entertainment–for her and for me. I wish the photos of her with her head in the container had turned out, because they were hilarious. Maybe next time.
Today’s Cataloging Puzzle
I’m currently cataloging a set of books on the economy of Argentina. Easy peasy, right? Except, when looking for a call number, I noticed that “economic history and conditions, Argentina” is not just broken up by general time periods, but specifically into “early” and “later,” with “early” including “Medieval.” WTF?
Yes, there were people in Argentina during what most folks would recognize as the Medieval period, but Medieval in this sense refers to a European cultural construct. Meaning, there really wasn’t any such thing as a Medieval period in Argentina. And, anyway, colonization of Argentina by Europeans roughly coincided with the end of the European Medieval period, so why include Medieval in the “early” time range. Wouldn’t Precolumbian make more sense?
Experience Bliss
I’ve wasted the entire weekend (where on earth did it go?!) working on Esther’s family tree. I was able to make some progress with one line. I also found a bunch of census and land purchase records for some of the Munros. In all the research I did this weekend, I came across a few really wonderful names:
Experience Bliss
Nataniel Toogood
Content Wales
Pelatiah Mason
They’re all good, but the first one is my favorite. She was born in 1649, in Rehoboth, Massachusetts. Those wacky Puritans sure knew how to conjure up an awesome name.
[Addendum: And yes, this means that I got Cumberland Family Tree up and running with 64-bit Windoze. Yay!]
Decisions, Decisions…
Friday night (it always happens on a weekend night), I was on the computer and heard splishy-splashy noises coming from a room that had no business making splishy-splashy noises. Hmmm. I went to investigate, and there was water dripping from the overhead light in the bathroom. Water + electricity? Fun! So I went upstairs to tell my wonderful neighbors that it seems like their shower is leaking. Again. They apologized, as if it were their fault Mr. Fix It didn’t actually fix it the last two times he was here.
They called the emergency repair number, and were told someone would be out Saturday ayem, and that I would need to be around as well, so that they could get into my apartment. What for, I can’t imagine. There’s not actually anything broken here, and as soon as the leak is for real fixed, the light should be fine. I mean, it’s not like they’re going to replace the light or wiring. They are too brimful of slackertude for that.
I got up early Saturday morning, just in case. At about 3:00, there was a knock on my door from one of the upstairs guys. Maintenance had called and weren’t going to come out until Monday, because they’d decided that water + electricity was not, in fact, an emergency. Huh.
So apparently, I got up early on Saturday and wasted half the day waiting around, for bupkis. And now, I have to decide whether I’m going to stay home tomorrow, go in to work and leave early, or just go to work as normal and let the maintenance guys figure out how to navigate the dog. I know that if I go to work for the whole day, they’ll show up, and if I stay home, they won’t.
Decisions, decisions…
Staff Meeting Doodle
gel ink in steno pad
7 1/2 x 6 inches
This was a week of meetings and training sessions. Today’s horror was a 3 hour long workshop on using Outlook’s calendar. Three. Whole. Hours. The less said about it, the better, I think. Even though it was hands-on, I had plenty of time to doodle, and thank goodness for that, or I may have had to poke someone with sharp, pointy objects. It was only slightly less traumatic than Wednesday’s hour-long presentation on libraries in Second Life.
Clothes Pins
One of my coworkers periodically brings me things she finds while cleaning out her mother’s house. Last week’s treasure was a small pile of old clothes pins.
Hello, Mr. Sunshine
Did you forget to rise and shine this morning? I think you must have, because from my window, I can tell that it’s not yet daylight. At 11:15am. Please remedy this oversight ASAP.
Thankyew!
Sweet Success
You can file this under D for Duh.
I figured out the problem with Firefox and Ancestry.com’s image viewer. It was the stupid Norton toolbar that automagically installed itself with FF. I really don’t appreciate that Norton did that, without any instigation from me. I uninstalled its sorry ass, and now all is well in vital document viewing land. w00t! This means no more Internet Explorer BS, which makes the baby Shelly very, very happy.
Now, if the databases I exported from the earlier copy of CFT on the old machine will load properly with the new copy of CFT on this machine, all will be well. The first one is taking its sweet fancy time, and I am not the princess of patience.
red paper boat 