zoey & leroy are best friends

Well, not really. On the last day they did sit on the same couch together. Most of the time, however, it looked more like this

or this

or sometimes this


We had a really good time. We went to delicious greek food then karaoke on Friday, we had a cookout on Saturday and went to the Jazz & Rib Fest on Sunday. I ate pulled pork for the first time in a few years, but I didn't get sick. I was probably more likely to get sick from the gigantic creampuff.

After that, we went to a $3 double feature of The Breakup and X-Men 3:The Next to Last Stand. (I hope I didn't just ruin it for anyone, but I didn't tell you anything you couldn't guess before you go see it.)

Then, today, we scored a couple of cool chairs from the thrift store by the recycling dropoff for $13!!

Woot!

Weekend fun

Last night Johnny's brother, his girlfriend and their friends came to stay over on their way to Ozzfest. I was a little anxious about it, because sometimes I'm not sure how to interact with her brother. Whenever we see them they usually have all their kids around and we are with Johnny's parents, which always makes the interaction different.

It was completely great. We got pizza, sat around with some beers, made a fire and stayed up late talking. I was paying for it this morning, but it was definitely worth it to have a good interaction with them.

Today, however, J. Gordan and company are arriving! They are probably about an hour or so away as I post and I'm SO EXCITED to see Leroy! I think that he and Zoey will fall in love after she barks at him and makes him pee on the floor.

as if i needed something else to do

Does anyone know how to get livejournal posts into an rss feed? I know that livejournal wants you to use their "friends" feature, but i want them to come to me.

I read this post by Meredith Farkas, which I imagine you've already seen if you read any library blogs at all. It's interesting and got me thinking about developing a proposal for teaching a big-picture-librarian-technology-skills course at the alma mater. Do any of you know if any of the courses currently available are covering these topics? Do you know if anything is in the works over there?

what really happened

At the risk of driving away every reader, I will tell you how the bird thing turned out.

I found it and it was real nasty.

We cleaned out the pond, got a new pump, rejuvenated the fountain, eradicated mosquitoes, getting some fish. I'll post some photos.

Moving on.

It sure is hot. We somehow ended up with some free window air conditioners, for which our upcoming house guests will certainly be grateful. If we ever get money to replace our aging furnace, we'll certainly put in central air. The pets like it so much more.

all gone

In response to my recent complaints about dead wildlife in our pool, I feel pretty confident in guessing that one of you snuck into our backyard and secretly removed the bird from the water.

thank you. that was really thoughful, and nice -- whoever you are.

p.s. Happy Birthday Jess!

flight, or lack thereof

The guy next door doesn't really like to do any house maintenance. His yard is always overgrown and last fall he had some people come and basically spraypaint the front part of the house, the part you can see from the street. From our side window it is part blue and part old-white.

He also doesn't like to repair his attic windows when they break, so now there is a full-on colony of pigeons living up there. They coo into our bedroom window in the mornings, and if you know Johnny and her fear of birds, you might have an idea about how that goes over.

So there have been some baby bird sightings in the back yard. Zoey likes to go up to them and bark at them, over and over, to get them to leave, but they are just scared and sit there until she leaves.

Today I found a dead bird in the pond. I wasn't sure whether to bury it and risk Zoey digging it up, or to somehow put it in the trash, which I'm sure is illegal. I was paralyzed by indecision so it is still in there. What should I do?

For Catalogers Who Care

I got this link to the RDA prototype and survey from Catalogablog. I went through the prototype (which is a little boring, unsurprisingly) and filled out the survey at the end.

The question I ended up with is, do The Co-Publishers think people want another cataloging utility? It seems like they are trying, at least in part, to create yet another method for people to create catalog records. Has anyone looked at the prototype? Did you think this? I think they should just skip that altogether and focus on making the rules easier to navigate, but maybe I'm being short-sighted.

the day off

So here's a photo of the backyard before our work:


And here it is, after:


Doesn't it look nice?

Last night, we went to see Al Gore's feature film which really was very good. It had a lot of accessible information about the situation the earth is in, and he was pretty funny in parts, which was nice to see. Johnny thinks he's going to run for president now, and that the impact of the film will be negated. Either way, you should probably go see it just for the information it imparts. It has already come in handy for a conversation with Johnny's mom.

Speaking of Johnny's mom, she came up to visit for the 4th. It was really nice, we went to lunch and did a little shopping, then we had a project.

We have this currant bush in our yard. It had loads of currants on it, and I have been feeling obligated, for weeks, to do something with them.
Here they are:


Aren't they lovely?

I thought I'd try to make wine, but it is a little complex and you have to wait at least a year before you can drink it so I settled for jelly. Johnny's mom brought down her canner and here is the end result:

It wasn't as hard as I thought, but it was pretty hot work because of all the boiling and what-not. And, after about a half hour of cooling, all the jars sealed. I was a little worried about that. All in all, I'd recommend it to anyone who want to try making their own. Now I have a few extra packets of pectin, so I might need to look for some more fruit to transform.

Mulch Mania

Yesterday Johnny and I got a good 7 hours of yard work in.

Our day wasn't planned that way -- we were on our way to Our New Filmmaker Friend's house and there were these nice flat rocks stacked out in the alley by someone's trash. They were placed there quite neatly, with the sides all prettily aligned so I was concerned that they were actually in a holding pattern for a project. Johnny stopped the truck and I looked through the slats onto a very lovely backyard. I ran through a neighboring yard and went to the front door where I was told that we could completely have them. We loaded them up and went to Lowe's for mulch and now we have a trail of stepping stones through the backyard to cover the dirt road that Zoey had worn into the grass. Nine big bags of mulch later, we really have a lot more to do but it looks pretty good so far.

You have to check back tomorrow to see the photo. It was dark by the time we finished and I couldn't get a good shot.