Saturday, October 27, 2007

About Town

On the way to a work function in the East End, we took 20 minutes to pop into the newly-restored Henrico Theater. It's a very sympathetic transformation of the 1938 deco movie house into a 21st century live-production stage. Click here for one article and a good slide show.

Tomorrow afternoon, Capital City Parks and Rec will hold an open house at the Pump House. Awesome.

The theme for tonight's Halloween Party is "Club Havana." The invitation featured this picture, we're dressing more as the middle-America tourist couple. . . .

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Reading

Good interview of Ursula LeGuin (Guardian online).

Elements of Style, Wendy Wasserstein.

True Richmond Stories: Historic Tales from Virginia's Capital, by Harry Kollatz, Jr. (We saw him read from at a week ago at the big box bookstore. He's an amusing fellow.)

Friday, October 19, 2007

Random

Because I am still waiting for a City inspector (and wondering if I used the automated system correctly to request an inspection date), I am wandering the internets finding interesting things to share. Such as:

- One librarian reflects on search engines and patrons and makes excellent point that "... the goal of the search tool is to show ads..."

- Here's the website of an artist whose work is at Davis & Main, now. I like photorealism. As I explained to Teen, "I think that's what that style is called, but some artists take the word as an insult," the bartender quietly slipped us the artist's business card. Mr. Pritchett embraces the term.
I recently saw typical Fan Eatery Davis & Main blurbed somewhere as a respectable local spot for -- what phrase was it? For grown ups. Settled people. It's not a bar, as the old joke with some camp friends goes. It's not a place for 20-somethings to Meet and impress each other -- though of course the massive c.1900 bar (genuine? repro? I don't know) makes its presence felt. Being a non-bar makes it feel appropriate to bring the Teen; but I am not saying it's a Family Restaurant, because, you know, there's no Kids' Menu.
P.S., re.: Chairs

I forgot until I read VL (writing about possibly misdirected cake) one bump in the trail of the work week: Office Furniture Box Store called to say the four nice chairs I accepted for delivery about a month ago were not meant for us!! Eeek! I think the boss made some slick deal like we'd give them up without a fight if they would give us something good in return. (How does she do that? I would have been [I am] all kinds of guilty and apologetic. I couldn't have thought so fast.)
Back at Work

While I hit the ground running on Monday ("none of us did a schedule this week, after all: why don't you go ahead and do it"), it's been a good week for slipping back into a routine. The first patron I helped needed to use our online system to reserve a meeting room; he was all kinds of extra-grateful to me for helping him navigate it. Sometime I forget we have so many very nice folks at our place.

Monday night I lead book club. Everyone liked The Hungry Tide and the discussion sorta led itself. Tuesday night -- often a busy one for meeting rooms and homework and tutors -- was very peaceful, which was lucky since the other librarian on duty ran a program all night. It's no fun to fly solo when we're busy, as, sadly, she was reminded the very next night. Wednesday I had a committee meeting, and you could tell how relaxed the honeymoon made me because I actually said "I'm ambivalent about this [proposed addition to the online catalog]." I always have an opinion! Yesterday I did several projects at once, but most were fun like shifting books (okay, that's actually pretty physical, but like cleaning, very satisfying) and changing the way our graphic novels appear in the catalog.

Today, I am waiting for someone from the City to inspect the recently-installed water heater. Normal Friday-off chores like cleaning and bill-paying have been joined by thank-you note writing, so it's easy to stick around to wait for the inspector. I don't mind any of those chores, but the 90-something percent humidity, 70-degree temps, and and gray skies make me sluggish. We'll see how much really gets done. . . .

Wednesday, October 03, 2007