This Side of Lost

I have definitely fallen out of the habit of posting to this thing. I can blame it partially on the fact that I have a full-time job, which generally leaves me with less free time. But I can also blame it on good old fashioned laziness. Besides, one of my new librarian friends keeps a blog and I daresay keeps it better than I do mine. So in the spirit of friendly competition, I'm going to try to kick it up a notch. Starting... now:

Some of you may recall a classic bit of True Internet Weirdness™ entitled Badger Badger Badger. (If you were not aware of this, feel free to click above. Make sure your speakers are on.) Well, in the great cyclical nature of the interwebs, everything comes back again. So check out this mashup of the badger and a recently popular movie, as well as a small collection of amateur video interpretations. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? Oh, and did I use that term "mashup" correctly? It's so hard to stay on top of the vernacular these days...

Other things we have done of late:
* Visited the beautiful burg of Pasadena several weekends ago, in the marvelous company of Andy and Lauren, our fellow Minnesotan transplants. We toured the gardens and exhibitions at the Huntington (a locale so venerated that no further descriptors are required beyond its name), walked around Old Town, sampled the local cuisine and smoked cigars in a local dive. Good times were had by all.
* Ventured to Universal City, which as far as I can gather is not really a city, but rather an entertainment destination. We went under the guise of attemping a viewing of a 3-D film and found the theater amongst overpriced restaurants, stores and the entrance to a theme park. I guess being a movie studio is a big thing in this town, huh?
* Netflixed recently: The Island (terrible, proving that a movie can have Scarlett Johanssen in it and still be nearly unwatchable), The Tick Vs. Season 1, Disc 2 (yup, still hilarious) and Cool Hand Luke (very good, if a little depressing).
* I made cookies to bring to choir last night. They were Splenda cookies -- a recipe on the back of the bag of Splenda Brown Sugar Blend. They turned out well -- light and fluffy. Making cookies without an electric blender means lots of stirring, though.
* The best Halloween costumes I saw: a Tetris piece (from the waist up he/she was one of the L-shaped ones) and The King of All Cosmos from Katamari Damacy.

Adios! See you again soon -- really!

In honor of my blog transforming into its new look, here's a couple Transformers related videos: what happens when you mistreat your copy machine, and someone giving a short clip of an old Transformers cartoon the ghetto overdub treatment (careful, this one contains swears).

So yeah, Steve upgraded the blog to a new version of Movable Type, so things look a little different. What do you think? It's going to take a little while until I get all the bugs worked out, so drop me a line if something isn't working and we'll see what we can do.

In other news, let's see what a bulleted list looks like now:

• Party Girl was our Netflick this week -- a classic in the librarian genre, apparently. It was loads of fun, and I think I have a voice crush on Parker Posey now.
• We also saw The Prestige this weekend, and let me tell you, it's still kind of freaking me out. It's very well done though, and I highly recommend it. (Also, the seventh Scarlett Johanssen film I've seen.)
• The always entertaining Jon Yaeger was in town for the AMS national conference, and we got to have dinner and dessert with him on Saturday night. Hooray for conference visits. Is your conference in LA this year? Give us a call!
• I staffed the reference desk at work on Saturday, which means I get a day off this week. Add that with Veteran's Day on Friday and I have a three day work week! Oh, the strenuous life of a librarian.

Lunch time is over, back to work, you!

I always saw rabbits as inferior pets. They seem to have less personality and require more attention than cats. I have now seen the error of my ways, for I will never get my cat to do this for me.

I'm not doing too hot on the "more updates" claim. *shrug* I will continue to try, but I guess I should quit making promises, huh? Life is pretty normal otherwise. We're getting excited about the first of several upcoming plane trips -- this one to Georgia for Thanksgiving. Strangely enough, we're looking forward to the weather there -- supposedly it will be cooler. It was 85°F here today. I knew it would be different living in California, but this is ridiculous. I haven't even gotten out my winter clothes yet.

It was nice to have a quiet three day weekend with Veteran's Day last Friday. Very quiet. Like, I taught Samantha how to play gin rummy. Samantha doesn't really like card games. She was a good sport though. Cribbage is next. I seem to have misplaced my cribbage board, however... hmm, what? Wishlist? Why, yes, I have one. Why do you ask?

Book review time: I finished PopCo by Scarlett Thomas last week. I saw a review in one of my librarian book review sources that mentioned it being about a young woman who works for a slightly sinister toy company and includes codes, ciphers and other mathematics. Sounded right up my alley. The book is about much more than that, however -- besides the above topics, it riffs on the life of a smart, unusual adolescent girl (a topic that I'm sure some of my readers can identify with), consumerist culture, vegetarianism, and some fairly serious "maths" (as the British call it). I enjoyed it, specifically because of some of these nerdier digressions, which Booklist actually notes as a drawback: "her digressions into esoteric topics (Godel, anyone?) are likely to leave readers more exhausted than amused" -- exactly the opposite with me. But ultimately I felt that the entire work suffered for cohesiveness due to its multifaceted approach. It was fun though -- original and doesn't do what you'd expect. I'd recommend it, especially if you're realizing that you're becoming obsessed with British culture, perhaps with the eventual goal of moving there someday. Like me.

In other news:
* I miss the Trojan Horse. Both of the Greek restaurants we've tried around here are all fancy and expensive. Can't a guy get some tabbouleh and spanikopita without spending twenty bucks?
* Hey, do you live in southern California? No? Shoot. Well, wanna come to our Christmas concert anyway? It's Saturday the 16th in Pasadena. Drop me a line for tickets.
* I finally got my car registered in California earlier this week. Now it blends in with the rest of the cars in the garage, without its Minnesota license plates to distinguish it. On a related note, why is going to the DMV so stressful? I realized as I was driving up to the place that my heart was racing. Zounds, it's just filling out some forms and writing a check.
* We had a tremendous brunch with Jackie, fellow Bloomington transplant on Saturday, at the Griddle Cafe. Here I had thought that I would never again find pancakes to rival the Deli's. Turns out I just needed to wait an hour for a table.
* Big congrats to Johan Santana for winning his second unanimous Cy Young award. Aaahh, I remember the days when he was a nameless firethrowing lefty out of the bullpen...

Hope you're enjoying the fall weather, wherever you are.

Memed from Bill. The most significant SF/F novels from 1953-2006 according to Time (although I have yet to verify this with my librarian skillz). Bold the ones you have read, strikethrough the ones you read and hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put a star next to the ones you love.