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I am writing this post from work during my lunch break because, well, I really don’t think I will have any interest in logging into my computer for most of the night. Marco and Roger are currently in the air (from Miami). I snagged this screengrab from flightaware.com:

Flight path for Marco and Roger

Of course, even after their plane lands they still need to wait around Newark Airport a bit, as the train schedule doesn’t run to my town as often as one would like. They will eventually set foot in it around 5PM.

…Tell me how I am supposed to pay attention to the rest of my work shift?

It’s under 48 hours until Marco and Roger arrive…

Two more days of work to go, though if it’s anything like today it should go by quick. Today we had a vending machine delivered to the lower level of the library – a healthy vending machine! It’s full of things like veggie straws, veggie chips, V8 drinks, lots of water, and more. I think we only went a whole 20 minutes before someone purchased a drink, so hopefully it finds some use.

And then I got to use my creative skills in Photoshop and make a sign mentioning the new vending machine, since it will be sort of out of the way as it’s not on the main level. I used a background from stock.xchng, my favorite website to get pictures.

I also had a professor ask me to come in on April 14, a Saturday, to teach the graduate students about the library and its resources. I had to decline, however, because my house guests will still be around then. Though I will put up some information on the course management system (Blackboard, if you have any familiarity with those) and devise an online quiz on the information presented.

Lastly, after work was a dentist appointment — another clean bill of health! — and then finishing up the cleaning by vacuuming.

Bring on Wednesday. Not the least of which because I only have one day of work while they are here – Tuesday of next week. That’s it!

One of the more… unique things I did at work yesterday was help hang up artwork in the lower level of the library, because the professor in charge asked nicely and he had a class to run off to so he didn’t have much time. This was student artwork – digital photography to be exact.

The facilities crew had installed the track that runs along the ceiling earlier in the semester. We just had to hang up the wires from that track with hooks, and screw the frame hooks onto the wire at an appropriate height to hold the pictures. (So, 1 set of hooks for the top of the wire and another adjustable set for further down the wire where the picture was to go.)

Things I learned:

1) Perhaps one should check a package right after it arrives. The package of wires and hooks has been sitting in the room’s cabinet for about two months. We opened it and realized that there was only 8 hooks (to be placed up at the top in the track itself) even though there were 10 wires. And the package did say that there should be 10 hooks.

Somehow this worked out, as we only had twenty feet of track and with eight pictures it was already pretty full.

2) Looping the wire so it hides behind the frame and is not visible to the general public is hard work. The picture itself was pretty high up– higher than my head. Between keeping your hands above your head trying to loop it and trying to tape it with your free hand so that it STAYED in a loop, it was interesting work. At least my right arm was willing to become an informal tape dispenser, so I always had tape in reach.

Somehow this also worked out, but mainly because the professor re-did my work on most of them. Oh well, that’s what you get for free labor…

Now every time I see the photographs I can’t help to think about the coil of wire hiding behind each, all globbed together with tape. Chaos behind beauty.

One of the benefits of the campus I work at is the flower and tree eye candy — especially for a few precious weeks during the Spring. This year it seems everything has bloomed early, so I went out on Friday before and after work and took some pictures.

Click a thumbnail to see a larger size.

It was bit of a shock today when I stepped outside — back to the colder not-yet-Springish temperatures. The rain mostly held off, however, with the ground damp but not soaked through. Originally I figured that I was going to stay inside all day and get a lot done with my various projects, but the overarching theme lately is EWF-ASP (engaged white female, always seeking productivity).

My destination: the public library, somewhere I have not been in a while oddly. (One of the consequences of working in a library is the realization that you don’t need to buy a book to read a good book. My wallet thanks me.)

My goal: a guidebook for New York City and a guidebook for Philadelphia. Marco and Roger will be visiting in about a week and a half (yay!) and one of the places we want to visit is Philly. Just a quick trip – 1 night stay perhaps. Nothing is set in stone yet, mind you.

For the guidebook for New York City, it’s mainly to see if I can dig up anything unexpected that we haven’t visited yet. It seems highly likely that we will take a visit to the Bronx Zoo and Chinatown this time around, so that is what I will focus on.

I did find success: I snagged a 2010 book for Philadelphia and a 2011 book for New York City. I had to laugh at the latter since it is already out of date – it still mentions Border’s, which we miss a lot. Mainly because there was one right by Madison Square Garden so it was a great place to hang out while waiting for the MSG gates to open for our Rangers game.

Ah, memories. Here’s to new ones!

I was very amused when I logged into the work blog that I maintain at the library. One of the spam comments I received was the following:

Spam comment on a WordPress blog

I can’t decide if I am more amused by the unnecessary choices that the writer/program could choose from or by the Colin Powell quote at the end. I wonder if they would have classified that post as good or great? But it’s a spam comment that is found everywhere it seems.

On a similar “Okay…?” topic, one of the odder stories that I read about today was a woman in Bucharest, Romania who had a wedding train made that was almost 2 miles long (3,000m). The previously holder of the record was a woman in the Netherlands, though it is reported that that dress was not even a mile long. Apparently the making of the wedding dress was somewhat politically motivated, as the Netherlands had tried to keep Romania out of the EU visa-free travel zone.

The imported material which made the train cost about $7,300, not counting labor. Is it bad that it mostly makes me flinch because 1.99 miles of it is touching the ground? Dirty, dirty! However, the balloon ride with the train trailing behind looked kind of neat.

No, Marco. Don’t worry. I am not getting any ideas. ;p

Today was the local St. Patrick’s Day parade, which I went to this afternoon. Unfortunately I forgot the sunblock. Oh well 😉 Same thing happened last year!

Lunch was decidedly un-Irish, with 2 hot dogs and a can of pop from the local deli.

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Sorry about the speed of the slideshow. Apparently there are not many editing options with them. 🙂 If you hover your mouse over the lower part of the picture you should see options to stop the slideshow and move the images manually, if you wish.

Here we are again– another post which mentions with glee that today is Friday. Though this week has been one of the more harsher ones, with my teaching 6 library classes and 2 workshops over 4 days (the professor brings the class in and I talk about some good library resources to use for their assignment). Thankfully today was the down day, a bit quieter.

So I am definitely looking forward to waking up after the sun rises tomorrow, rather than before. Still undecided if I will donate blood on Tuesday on campus. Last time I did my already low blood pressure plummeted and they kept me for an extra 45 minutes. (It’s more a question of whether I can get away from the library than whether or not I want to. I do.)

The biggest plans for this weekend includes a St. Patrick’s Day parade. It is held in a small New York town which is expecting up to 100,000 viewers thanks to the nice weather this area will be having. According to this article, that is 7 times the size of the town itself! Since it is the 50th anniversary they are expecting an even bigger crowd than normal. The parade is the 2nd largest in the state, only dwarfed by the annual NYC parade which is held tomorrow. If I can, I will try and take some pictures.

I can also feel that I am slowly starting to pay more attention to the March Madness basketball tournaments, partially because it is preempting the shows that I do want to watch. I am definitely a fan of the underdog teams. Unfortunately my Alma Mater (Valpo) did not make it in, as they inexplicably lost to Detroit.

Amusing 2011 parade memory: I first made a stop at the town’s gas station to pick up some Combos snacks for Marco, who was (and is again) arriving in a few weeks. 19 days to be exact…. Of course his latest American snack addiction is a hot-wing flavored pretzel.

It should be an interesting weekend, though my biggest goal is to try and sleep in a bit tomorrow. ;p

Tonight was one of those nights where I had to teach a late night workshop — which ended around 7PM. This of course means a commute home in the darkness. While I most definitely still live within discernible civilization, it is a bit spooky. One benefit is the recent time change was meant that I was able to watch the sun go down while waiting at the bus stop.

Unfortunately I realized that my music player was completely uncharged, so I didn’t have music distract me — however I quickly realized I was too tired to care. I guess that’s a good thing 😉 The walk home wasn’t too bad considering street lamps seem to only be a requirement about once every fourth a mile – until I heard a rustling in the bush. Hopefully it was just a squirrel. . .

"bloemen" (flowers) in Madurodam

One of the things that WordPress has added is a breakdown of your views based on the visitor’s country. This is only on the new stats page, not the Dashboard page – which makes sense since the Dashboard page is going to go the way of the dodo bird very soon.

Needless to say, I was pretty excited by this change. It’s good to see that my blog is being visited first and foremost by Dutchies – it warms my heart to see this even though I am not even yet a fledgling expat. In the fall I told Marco that since I was moving there that I would start a blog. I joked that he should get me a domain name redirect for Christmas so that the site wasn’t just lifeinthehague.wordpress.com. At the time it was just to hold the name and I would start the blog later. Except that’s not quite what happened…

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