Neighborhood BBQ

It's 2am. I'm up and blogging because it's quiet. You know, in comparison to the last 25 minutes, during which time the all-building fire alarm was screaming at the top of its lungs.
Loudly.

But I learned that having some idiot pull the fire alarm at 1am is a REALLY good way to get to know your neighbors. No shigt, there we were. All of us. From the whole building. Standing around in our coats and sweat pants, laughing because we each determined that it wasn't OUR room that was on fire, and therefore tried to dismantle the ceiling alarm in our respective rooms... before we realized that this was not an alarm we could dismantle. No. In fact, someone came up from a different floor to apologize to those of us standing around outside, and explain that he'd left his friends alone in his apartment for a few minutes, and that someone had gone and pulled the fire alarm. Which can only be turned off by the fire department, it turns out. Thank god someone thought to call them.

We also laughed about what each of us thought to bring out of our apartments when we thought the building might be burning down. I brought my cat, my purse, and my book of passwords. I even remembered to put on pants and a coat, and get my car keys before I opened the door to my neighbors and went to stand in the cold for however long it took. The girl below me who thought to call the fire department took a moment to clean up her dirty clothes pile, and then grabbed her purse and her recycling so the place would be clean when the firemen arrived. She even had her make up on. A guy from down the way grabbed ear plugs and his leather coat. The guy below me grabbed his guitar.

Funny what matters most when you can't take everything. Funny that we all checked out our own places and assumed it was our own false alarm (because this happens a lot individually for us all-- any combination of cooking and oil will do it)... and that it took probably 5 or 10 minutes for us all to get out of our apartments. If it had been a real fire, would we have made it out?

I put my cat in the car, and then stood with everyone else on the sidewalk while people who'd been through this before told us how it happens, and how it gets turned off. And the guy with the do-it-yourself tattoos and the idiot friend (and the just-starting party) apologized. And finally the fire truck came. And they turned off the alarm. And we all wished each other a good night, and went back to our respective 2am activities. If my cat catches pneumonia, I know where to send the bill, that's for sure!

I've definitely decided to sleep in. Don't call me, k? And... I'm glad to say that most of my neighbors are pretty darn nice. Even at 2am.

Just Awesome

So today, I went straight from work to the Crazy Aunt Purl "Drunk Divorced and Covered in Cat Hair" book signing. It totally rocked. I was asked to notice if she's really as cute in person as she is in her blog photos-- the answer is yes. She also talks with a really sweet accent and a killer sense of humor, and she does get calmer as the event gets going. She's one of those people that it is IMPOSSIBLE not to love.

Oh, and did I mention that I did in fact show up divorced, and covered in cat hair? And baby goo... but not exactly what you'd call DRUNK. I don't drink and drive. Although after work, sometimes I wish I could...

I think we also all got our endorphin fix from laughing at all the awesome stories and funny moments Laurie shared with us. And we all recognized in meeting her (as her blog has helped us see so many times before) that we really are not alone, and that we are definitely NOT the only person to go through what we've gone through. Be it divorce, knitting frenzies, awkward social situations, talking to cute guys after too much wine has been drunk, or failing to ever use our oven as an oven. Like for cooking, as opposed to storing other kitchen things. Which reminds me that I should probably make sure I did get all the hidden stuff emptied out of it last week...

After I get some much-needed food and sleep, I will upload my photos and post them-- It'll be my official 100'th post. Very appropriate, I believe. Oh, and even more cool-- she totally talks the exact same way she blogs. And she was HUMAN!!! I've never met an author who was human before. Her biggest piece of advice about writing your first book? Write Fiction! Understandably, touring the country and answering all sorts of personal questions about her life has been a bit uncomfortable at times. Apparently, she always thought her first book would be a steamy romance (fiction) anyway... And the second book we all want to read when it gets written has an awesome fried chicken recipe in it already.

Oh, and Firefox is her browser of choice. GO FIREFOX, we love you!

Dinner....

By the way-- did I mention that she promised to take a picture of her still-insane zucchini plants just for one of the people in the audience who asked about them? I'm looking forward to that. Rogue Zucchini Runs Amok!!

Moment of the Day

No shigt, there I was. (That's how all good Army stories start. Makes you want to hear what's going to happen next, doesn't it?) Sitting behind the Reference Desk at the Unnamed Public Library, observing Reference Services in action.

On one side, young guy, quiet voice, girlfriend hiding around the corner:
"Do you guys have the Kamga Sugtra?"
On the other side, mature mother with 8-year-old daughter peering anxiously around Mom's elbow:
"Where do you keep the Frog and Toad stories?"
The juxtaposition of those two requests (and the stages in life of the people making them) was priceless.

I just love the Reference Desk. I really do. Today, among our other requests, we also had one for the history of bread making, one for books about Thunder and Lightning for toddlers (somebody got scared), and a woman who hadn't used her library card in over five years, but really really wanted to check out Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. We also discovered that we have NO books about spiders in stock, and only one children's fact book on mosquitos. It was a sad day for somebody. Also, I discovered that ALL the copies of The Princess Diaries, vol. 1, are checked out until doom's day, or the day after. I have to read it before our next Teen Council meeting, by popular choice, no less. That's going to be fun. Oh, and apparently the third book in some Violent Fantasy series for pre-teens is due out soon, and nobody quite knows when. Solution?
Ask Reference.

And lets not for get that the crazy man wanted to have a staring contest (which we've all been warned NOT TO DO with this particular crazy. Seriously. As soon as they saw him coming, the closest librarian turned to me and said, "Don't make eye contact with this one. He's bad-crazy.") so he made kissy noises at all the women behind the desk until our WONDERFUL security officer of the day came back inside, and crazy man left. Apparently, the crazy man is still smart and sane enough not to cause trouble in front of a cop. Who, by the way, had just finished dealing with another crazy person (female this time) who'd been harassing patrons on their way into the library.
Wednesday is crazy people day.

So yeah. Just another day at the office.
How was yours?

....You know... In retrospect, it occurs to me that some smart producer will eventually realize that libraries are NOT boring, and all the insane stories we librarians have amassed over the years and years and years we've been working with THE PUBLIC (all of it) will finally have an OUTLET. Can you imagine how FUNNY and yet Reality TV Bazarre a sitcom could be if it were based around all the stuff that happens around the Reference Desk at a busy library? I mean-- we've got rebellious teens trying to shock us by asking for info about occult magic (Yes, that section is HERE, and we've got some great websites to suggest as well. Have you read anything by Scott Cunningham yet?); and we've got elderly ladies learning to use computers so they can do online dating; and we've got the little angelic boy who keeps finding new and inventive ways to jam the printer... There is even a whole genre of librarian humor devoted to different terms and best locations for "doing it" in the stacks, you know. And we've found the dirty condgoms to prove it, thank you very much.

That's not even MENTIONING all the drama and hilarity of filming the librarians themselves. How about the 5foot tall ex-rugby player with her dog's footprint tattooed on her back? And the old-school reference lady who turns off her hearing aid when she doesn't feel like helping people? And the ex-Secret Service guy who left Government work and went into on-call reference services at the public library, but likes to act tough and tell war stories from Desert Storm (he wasn't ever officially there, you know) around the few male librarians we've managed to hire...

What about old what's-her-name who accidentally left behind forty-one pairs of black pumps when she retired? (We're still not sure what she wore home from work on those particular days.) Or Henry, who up until a year or two ago, was both head of a well-known Academic Library, and one of the best-loved down hill ski coaches (not to mention his hobby of white-water rafting!) ever. Oh, and that hot children's librarian from Europe, with the cute little accent and the cute little buns... Too bad he's married... And I don't think you could pay me enough to wear those two 8-foot tall cat costumes that require someone else to lead you around because you can't really see out of them... But yet those two cats are seen at every ALA conference, bumbling around after cute library geeks whenever they find one...

I tell you, a sitcom based on library world would strike PAY DIRT. Nobody could make up some of the stories we've got to tell! And believe it or not, I have personally met every one of those librarians previously mentioned. And most of the patrons, too. I have yet to find a condgom, but I know people who have, and I did once find a squatter in the library at closing time. He'd set up his tent back in the Government Documents section, correctly assuming that nobody goes there if they can help it, and was preparing a wiener dog over a propane burner for his dinner when I passed by. I still can't believe the fire alarm didn't go off.
But then... you know my opinion of fire alarms.