3 things: parental visits, libraries, and haircuts

[edenfalling]

1. My parents arrived around 3:30pm Wednesday, bringing all manner of things to donate to my church's rummage sale. We went to the Finger Lakes Wine Center downtown (it is just past the library on S. Cayuga St., under the big parking garage), where we sampled some wine and picked up a number of tourism brochures. Then we went out to dinner at Crossroads Bar and Grille in Lansing, which has a good albeit limited menu. (I had calamari and a mushroom, bacon, and swiss cheese soup, thus combining an appetizer and a side in place of an entrée. They were both delicious.)

Following dinner we dropped off all the garage sale stuff at my church (including the boxes and luggage and computer stand and mini dorm-room refrigerator they'd left in my apartment for the past couple weeks), returned to my place for dessert, and called it a night. Thursday morning we went to Ithaca Bakery for breakfast, after which they drove me to Tops so I could buy groceries for the week. Then they headed back to NJ and I went to the library.

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2. The trouble with libraries is that I go there to find a specific book, but while looking through the card catalogue (...do we still call them card catalogues now that they're entirely computerized? must remember to ask Mom) I see some other things that look potentially useful and also interesting, and then when I go to the shelf section in question, I see even more things that, while absolutely not useful to my particular needs of the moment, are definitely interesting and might be useful for other projects I have on hold or am vaguely thinking about, or are just nifty in general, and somehow I end up checking out three to five books when I went with the intention of finding one.

Which I should probably get back to reading.

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3. I got my hair cut today. I ought to have done that two weeks ago at least, but I am lazy and disorganized and dislike getting up early to get things done before heading in to the smoke shop, so I left it until this afternoon when I got off work at 4pm. But my hair is now out of my eyes and off the back of my neck, so all is well. :-)

Comments

[monkey5s.livejournal.com]

2. I don't know of anyone who calls their library catalog a card catalog when it no longer lives on actual cards in drawers (I had been the staff person responsible for making sure the newly-added cards were aphabetized correctly in my library. When we began electronic conversion I still kept the card cat up. When the catalog was fully electronic, I told them they had to dump the card cat on a day that I was not working, because I had poured a great deal of my work life into it, and just thinking about killing it made me want to cry).

Mostly we refer to it as the OPAC (online public access catalog).

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

We usually just shorten it to "PAC" amongst staff at our library. We call it "catalog" or "library catalog" to the patrons, though: i.e. "our website has a link to the library catalog on it" or "those computers right there are our catalog computers."

[edenfalling]

I learned about card catalogues quite young -- this is an occupational hazard of having a libarian as a parent -- and while computerized catalogues are a lot more convenient, there was something soothing and ritualistic about pulling out the tiny drawers and flicking through the cards until you found what you were looking for. (Also, the first computerized catalogue my old hometown library had was pretty rough, prone to freezing, and used orange text on a black background, which is not the nicest thing to read for any length of time. :-/ They're much better nowadays, what with hyperlinks, the ability to tell if a book is available, and also the ability to do instant hold requests and interlibrary loan requests.)

[monkey5s.livejournal.com]

p.s.- if you mean the Tompkins County Public Library, their website assures me that they call their catalog PowerPAC. Catchier than OPAC, I have to say.

[edenfalling]

Ha, that does sound familiar. I guess it's one of those things I've seen without actively registering (for years!).

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

1) Am I the only one who sees a certain irony in having your Wine Center right under a parking garage?

2) The catalog is dangerous, but browsing the shelves is even more dangerous - at least what's in the catalog is supposedly at least tangentially related to each other. You go browsing, and you may start off in folklore and wind up with books on mental health, biographies and that new form of fiber arts you were always curious about. LOL

3) Argh. I meant to call the stylist and schedule a haircut today! Oops.

[edenfalling]

1. It's a slightly odd location, that's for sure! I think they picked it because it's so close to the Commons, just like the various wine trail associations picked Ithaca as the town in which to create the center because it's the Finger Lakes town people are most likely to visit for unrelated reasons and possibly get interested in wine while here. (I can never quite bring myself to call Ithaca a city with a straight face, even though it is legally incorporated as a city and has a population of about 30,000. Growing up in the greater NYC metro area really distorts one's notion of average city size. *wry*)

2. Browsing the to-shelve carts is also dangerous that way! Maybe more so, since they have such a sweep of disparate books all jumbled together.

3. In all honesty, the main reason I give up on short hair every few years and grow it out again is mostly because remembering to get a haircut every six weeks is so inconvenient.

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

2. Tell me about it. I've lost count of how many times I've picked up a book that I saw on the shelving cart.

3. My hair's got just enough curl to it that if I let it grow long it goes all flat up top and unmanageable on the ends. Looks like crap unless I put a ton of product in it, and I'm a strictly wash-and-go kind of girl.

[edenfalling]

Shelving carts are an ADVENTURE! :-)

My hair is thick enough and has enough body/gentle wave that it stays reasonable looking until it's at least halfway down my back... provided I wash it every day. If I try to skip a day, it goes flat-weasel-disgusting up top really fast, because I inherited my dad's ridiculously oily scalp. *shakes tiny fist of rage in his general direction*

Wash-and-go is the best way. My hair does a very tidy natural center part (cowlicks for the win?) and I basically just let it get on with that at whatever length. :-)