A list of things you can do at work when you're the only person there

(In the grand tradition of Home Alone and Risky Business)

1) Pick your nose
2) Pee with the stall door open. Probably the whole bathroom door open, too.
3) Moonwalk unrepentantly
4) Dance in your tighty whities to Bob Seeger
5) Ride the video cart down all the ramps
6) Eat lunch in the screening room
7) Watch old movies at your desk
8) Think of 'The Office' style pranks to pull on Monday. Sending faxes to 'Future Tom' is leading, at the moment
9) Fart
10) Try and find the schwag closet.

I've done only two of these so far. I'm not telling which :)

Yes, you have reached a librarian's blog

Yes, it's true. The NYTimes has confirmed that librarians, are, in fact, cool kids. Or at least the young ones like myself are. And, of course, since their article also points out that this is largely due to the fact that the younger among us are also quite tech savvy, the article that reaffirms our awesomeness continues to dominate the coveted 'most e-mailed' spot. See:

So although this isn't a library blog, per se, I obviously had to take this opportunity to point out that the general public now has no choice but to acknowledge that librarians are awesome, and submit to the fact that it's merely a matter of time til we're running the world.

Inspired by Rena

Mingle² - Online Dating

Rena's blog is rated G. Rena taught me all sorts of dirty words on the 4th of July, 1990 (This event obv. looms large in my memory.) Rena's a good teacher, the student remembers everything, she, obvsiouly, does not.

Also hilair:

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

fucking (11x) fuck (7x) penis (4x) suck (3x) queer (2x) torture (1x)

Things about today which are better than yesterday

Having had our last fumigation yesterday, S & I took it upon ourselves to finally put the apartment completely back together. No more sheets for curtains, or stacks of art on the floor instead of the wall, you know, things like that. After looking around at our apartment, we wondered whose it was, as it certainly didn't resemble where we'd been living for the last 6 weeks. Then I passed out at like 10 from exhaustion. Then I woke up this morning. This is where the fun starts. Because even though I've only been awake for like half an hour, I have already had several 'YES!!!!' moments. Here they are:

1. I slept til 8:15 because there's real curtains on (BOTH!) windows and it was dark in here & I could sleep. YES!!!!!
2. I sat on the futon and it was actually comfy because there's a real cover on the mattress & not harsh canvas under my tush. YES!!!!
3. I could walk over to my dresser without wondering who could see my ass because there's a curtain over that window. YES!!!!
4. I haven't walked over to my dresser in 6 weeks because I've been getting my clothes out of black plastic marauder-proof bags. But we put all our clothes back in drawers, so I know where everthing is. I can use my dresser. YES!!!!
5. I can wear my favorite purple skirt to work today because I finally got it back from the dry cleaner because we've fumigated three times and nothing can survive that, barely even us. AND now I have more than just three work-appropriate outfits. YES!!!!

And that was just in the first few minutes. This day is going to rock.

A thought on windows. And their necessariness.

Sometimes, when you have bedbugs, you can't put your air conditioner in your window. Mostly because the thought of bedbugs getting in your air conditioner is gross, but also because your super is scared of your apartment because of the bedbugs and refuses to enter it to fix the window, which has been broken since about October. The thing won't stay open on its own, so you have to go to home depot & smile pretty at a crotchety old man so he will cut some PVC pipe for you so you can prop up the window. And you're pretty sure that the dude that's been using the same fedex box for the last three summers is probably really jealous at your ingenuity, so at least you have that. But then you realize that your curtains have to come down, because they're cloth and need to be dry-cleaned in order to kill any possibly bugs, and they can't really go up again until after the bedbugs are gone, lest you pay to have them drycleaned twice in two weeks, which would mean you're an idiot. So you use this cheapo "painting" as window covers so that at least you're not showing your street and especially your famous neighbor whos apartment would look directly into yours if she ever opened her shades, which she doesn't (which I personally think is creepy) your butt. So your life sort of revolves around stealthily changing your clothes, and not showing your bits to the world. And then you realize that you only have two screens for your windows, but because you have no air conditioner because of the bedbugs, both of your windows need to be open on the bottom and the top, meaning there are fours spots which require screens, and spending the cash on more screens is just dumb because this is the first time in over two years that you've wanted to have more than two screens and it would just be dumb to buy more. So, half your windows are without screens. And then, because it's summer, some bugs fly in. Not alot of bugs, just a couple. And a couple of those are undoubtedly mosquitos. And then you get bitten and wake up at 5:30 am scratching your arm because obviously itchiness early in the morning sets off all kinds of insane alarms to go off in your brain because you go "aw fuck me, not again" but then you realize that it's a mosquito bite, not a bedbug, but by that time you're completely wired and there's no way that you could ever fall back asleep and even if you did try to get back into bed you'd probably get pummeled because you were fidgeting and scratching your new mosquito bite instead of sleeping. So, in conclusion, I am very excited to get fumigated again on Tuesday so I can have my air conditioner back and know that a bedbug is a bedbug and a mosquito is a mosquito and perhaps sleep past 5:30 in the morning on a Friday. Stellar.


All of this, of course, is made better by the fact that I am now a full time staff member at my um, ahem, prestigious job (one day I'll write my thoughts on that, but not while I want to still have that job and have health insurance and have them pay for half of grad school. Mmmkay?). But, that said, WOOOOOOOOOO!

Things which are good about having bedbugs (A complimentary list)

1. The opportunity to clean our apartment, which is full of nooks and crannies (snooks and crannies?) which are normally unreachable on a day to day basis. Of course, being able to access them now is a direct result of the exterminator ripping the apartment apart, but we are old hats at this by now and used it as an opportunity to destroy the dust bunnies that apparently were gaining momentum in preparation for a hostile takeover of the apartment.

2. A new mini vacuum cleaner (calling it a dustbuster would really be an insult, and it would seem that the literature refers to it as a 'handheld vacuum'). Either way, the awesomeness of seeing the aforementioned dustbunnies huddled in a mass in this contraption's dust chamber really can't be understated. Observe, our new cleaning companion (We named him Tommy):


3. The retail therapy I considered on Friday yeilded a really cute yellow hooded t-shirt. My love of the Anthropologie sale rack really can't be understated. And I still made it to work that morning with time to spare.

4. I found an earring under the couch that I only got to wear once before the apartment ate it. But now it's mine again. You better believe I will be building whatever outfit I wear to work today around them. It's a joyous reunion.

5. Creating all new outfits with the limited clothes I have in the apartment-the last time we had marauders I created all sorts of new outfits that quickly became favorites. I look foward to repeating this.

6. Sleeping with the windows open to make sure that we don't die of poison inhalation ensures lots of cuddling in order to conserve body heat.

7. Going out for breakfast with Sean after the exterminator, Benny (we're on a first name basis), got to our apartment yesterday morning.

Now, time to go fashion my first new and awesome Revolutionary Costume For Today (did I mention that we saw Grey Gardens this weekend with Grandma? We did. I loved it. Although considering my love for the movie, it was probably a no brainer that I would be obsessed with this. Either way, considering it was the first time I'd been to broadway in years, I was just a happy kid. And it can't be said enough; I love Little Edie)

This Week in Marauders.

This will be a vain attempt to make bedbugs funny. Not because there are so many readers of this blog, nor because there is anything inherently funny about the little fuckers (there isn't) but because I am tired of dealing with them and need to find a way to find humour in the bloodsucking cocksuckers.

I currently have 7 (very very very) itchy bites on my body. Two on my back (so convenient!), four on my arms, and one that I just woke up with on the back of my calf. If someone can explain to me why none of these little motherfuckers decided to bite me on my scars so I wouldn't feel the itch, I would be super grateful. I have the prescription-strength cream from the last time it happened, but it's not helping. So I am sitting on my couch (which has been stripped of its covering - it's off to the fires with it like the Velveteen Rabbit) scratching and looking over my shoulder to see if I can see any of the little motherfuckers to crush with my bare hands.

And now, a list:

Things which are true but really too ridiculous for me to process at 8:30 on a Friday morning:

1. There are 15 (Not an exaggeration) garbage bags piled 4 feet high filled with me & Sean's clothing sitting in our apartment, which is barely big enough for anything, let alone a mountain of clothes. I would really like to stage dive into it, but I think our apartment it too small for that and I would crack my head open. Then all my perfectly clean clothes which irregardless have to be washed again would be bloody, and therefore actually warrant the washing. Perhaps this isn't such a bad idea after all...

Observe, Mount Marauder:



It's simply too big to fit in the frame.

2. I packed all my clothes away in aforementioned bags, except for one white t-shirt and one pair of not-quite work appropriate pants. I'll be wearing them to work anyway, because they're all I've got. Although the thought of doing a little retail therapy before I go to work at noon is sounding increasingly good.

3. That instead of going to Northampton this weekend and playing with all my friends and seeing all my tiny baby 07s graduate, I will be doing laundry at Sean's house. Now, while this means I will be able to take frequent trips down North Avenue to get horchata (and you'd best believe they'll be frequent), this simply does not live up to partying and seeing Gloria Steinem. This, out of all the shit which is pissing me off about this, is what makes me most pissed.

4. That in addition to all of this bed buggy ridiculousness, I got a phone call from Sean while I was walking home from the subway last night asking me if I had experienced any lock-related wierdness this morning. I realized I had, and asked why. I was informed that our lock was broken. To make a long story short, we spent an hour in our stairwell with a semi-hunky Israeli drilling the shit out of our door. He broke two drill bits and decimated our lock cylinder. Observe:




$250 later, neither Sean nor I really find this humourous. And we both spent the entire hour with our tushes going numb on the staircase wondering just why in the hell we decided to stay in this apartment. We know, logically that we would have had to deal with the bedbugs either way, but at least after this go-round it all would have been folded and essentially packed and ready for moving. Sean actually went so far as to speak ill of my amazing negotiating skillz, which have gotten us so much free shit in the past. I feel as though this woujldn't be the case had I been able to negotiate down semi-hunky Israeli locksmith. I got the feeling that he was unnegotiable, unless you spoke Hebrew. C'est la vie, I suppose. But you better believe that if someone told me they had an apartment willing and ready for us to move into it, we would be there in a heartbeat. It was also good to note that he was powerdrilling through steel for an hour, making an unholy hellacious racket and NOBODY came out to see what was up. Robbers, note: people are still callous in this city and mind their own damned business at all costs.

5. Someone, who shall remain nameless, but whose name definitely rhymes with Bobert, so generously decided to pay for half of all furniture replacement costs. Furniture that I can't afford buy half of since mostly all of it was given to me in the first place, and let's be real, I'm not willing replace. If two high-level chemical bombs can't kill these fuckers, then I suppose it's time to admit their dominance over my life:

Oh, Giant Cockroach We Killed this Summer, grant me the serenity
to accept the bedbugs which feast on my bod;
the courage to not scratch their bites until they bleed;
and wisdom to know they're boss.

(An addendum to this post: Sean would like me to add that while the Marauders are boss, they are not the boss man, nor the boss lady. That's us.)


6. Sean just woke up and told me that my idea to find some praying mantises and keep them as pets was not brilliant. I disagree.

7. After stumbling out of bed and scaling Mount Marauder, Sean just killed a "freshly fed" mosquito. Fuck me. He didn't save it like I saved the Marauder I killed on Monday. I was hoping to perhaps make a collage of all the dead bugs in the apartment.


I hope that everyone enjoyed this multi-media presentation on the Marauder Insurgency, and I hope I'll never have to talk about it again.

Fuck me.

I just killed a bedbug.

Running sneakers fill me with self-loathing

Lest we forget why I named this blog what I did, I went to the ankle doctor today. With the news that the second round of non-vicodin pain killers he put me on did nothing, he grabbed a doctor who happened to be in the office to consult me on my, ahem, issue. She proceeded to analyze my feet in new and fun ways.

Here is a list of things I know about my ankle now that I didn't know before:

1. Nerve damage. Major.
2. That clicking when I walk? Bad.
3. Chuck Taylor? The devil.
4. My new shoe of choice? Running shoes and loafers. Say goodbye fashion, hello frumpiness. See those amazing orange shoes? I bought them a week and a half ago. I can't wear them any more. I am heartbroken. I have wanted a pair of fluevog's for 3 years. I finally get a pair and now they become clost decorations.
5. I have the equivalent of carpel tunnel in my ankles.
6. Further surgery is probably inevitable.

At #6, I completely lost it and stopped listening. Burst into tears in front of this woman I've never seen before and now thinks I'm completely batshit insane. As I write this, I'm teetering again. All new (UGLY) shoes is shitty enough, cutting me open again is the epitome of not okay. Six scars on my feet is enough, thank you.

Good thing I'm going to play with my lovers in Boston, if anyone can relieve this (and make shopping for frumpy shoes fun), it's them.

Librarian overload?

How I know that I'm really turning into a librarian:

1. I type in IMs like I'm logging tape with slashes and spaces so that it's easier to reference them in the future (my backspace key is getting a workout)

2. Whenever I am looking for information on the internet I use the search format we use here and get VERY upset when they don't work and get angry at google's inferior searchability.

3. I get REALLY excited about anything with the word "archive" in it.

1945

For most of my life, I have liked the number 1945. It's always connoted the end of World War Two, in my history-major mind. I'm pretty sure you'd have to be insane not to like that.

Yesterday, my appreciation of the number diminished somewhat. It's less appealing when your lease renewal shows up and that it the number on it, represententing an increase of several several hundreds of dollars.

Expect Manhattan real estate angst to be forthcoming.

But, I'm ready. Let's go.

You know, now that i think about it, perhaps the World War Two analogy isn't all wrong. Consider me the allies, and every apartment in this city the Nazi hordes. See that photo up there? That's gonna be me, on June 1st, hoisting a new pride flag on my fire escape, in victory over the millions of people vying for the oh so many apartments in this city, and saying nana nana poo poo to the idiot who lives in this apartment for $2400 when I lived in it for 14.

Yes, let's go.

Shameless self-promotion

I just did a guest stint on A Well Travelled Pup, everyone check it out!

Things which piss me off when I ride the subway (A list a lifetime in the making)

1. People clipping their nails. Onto the floor. On the platform, on the train itself, anywhere, it is revolting and makes me want to projectile vomit all over them. Then they will be 1/10 as revolted by me as I am by them. (Full disclosure: the sound of nail clippers ranks NUMBER ONE on my least favorite things on the entire planet)

2. That dude who spat onto the floor of the Q train. Like, seriously? Swallowing is too difficult? He totally deserved to be mercilessly glared at for the next ten minutes.

3. That dude who flashed me. For the rest of my life I will wonder how his zipper against his totally disgusting flaccid penis wasn't uncomfortable. And then I will hope that he zips he totally disgusting flaccid penis into that zipper, causing irreperable damage.

4. I know this is repetitive, but people who take up 4 seats. I mean, it's impressive, and hats off to the skinny bastards who do it, but god damn it my ankles hurt and your pearl paint bag does not deserve priority.

5. Unthoughtful stroller drivers of both sexes. You live in the city, you were probably single in the city at some point (who the hell else would attempt to raise a kid here?), were you not pissed off by unthoughtful stroller drivers such as yourselves at some point? I assure you, you were.

6. That bitch who literally threatened to fucking kill me after I didn't get out of her brats' way fast enough. She was probably all talk and I won the fight with the closing words "good fucking role model you are." Thank god the conductor had seen enough at that point and decided to close the doors and ride away, because I'm pretty sure I'd be dead right now otherwise. PS-Bitch, if I ever see you again, it is ON.

7. The epically smelly dude that made a ride to Brooklyn one fateful spring night truly a night to remember, in that it was just as horrific as the night the Titanic sank. At least if you were my nose, which was telling my brain that it had just entered into a shit-filled crypt.

8. That time I saw a human turd in the West 4th Street stop. Although this raises the interesting point of what hobo was slick enough to drop that off in such a perfect coil and not get caught? Bravo.

9. People who went to NRHS whose faces look so fucking familiar but whose names are completely (and justifiably) gone from my head, if they were ever there to begin with. This sucks doubly if they call me out by name and start a conversation.

10. The Upper East Side.



AND

Things which make me happy when I ride the subway!

1. Those two person seats that no reasonable human would ever try to sit next to you on, but make for fantastic snuggling when you're with your boyf.

2. Those dudes with the pan pipes. I have an unnending and passionate love for these artists.

3. Seeing people who you forgot exist but whose faces genuinely make you happy.

4. Being the only person in an entire car and singing at the top of my lungs, just because I can. This only happened once, at mid-day, on a W train. It was fan-flippin-tastic.

5. Midwestern tourists that look like they've just seen Jesus. (Although I will say you fucking SUCK when you're walking 5-abreast down Christopher street. Then I want to shove you into the nearest bondage shop and hope you die of a massive coronary. Seriously.)



On another note, I watched the last ever episode of the OC this morning and have been unreasonably emotional about it all day. I just needed to get that off my chest.

Ok, just one more thing about Bleecker Street

Ok, the last post I wrote about Bleecker Street had one glaring omission, because I thought I was dreaming things and it was too cold to go out and search for evidence. I felt like I had seen signs somewhere in the vicinity of my apartment where the C was missing. And now Gothamist has totally proved me right! Observe, this was linked to the site yesterday:



Do you see that? NO FREAKING C! Even the city can't get it's act together! Apparently this is happening all over the Village and it would seem that DoT has just as much trouble outside of the grid pattern as your average 300 pound Kansas Tourist Housewife.

Insomnia does wonders for this blog

things people have searched for in google in order to reach my blog:

Transvestites
Male Genital Desensitizer

This blog's traffic would be nill if it weren't for the ridiculousness I see on my street.



In other news, I really would rather be asleep. it seems insomnia has decided to once again rear its ugly head. As has all my ankle pain. And I was starting to feel like maybe I wasn't living up to this blog's name, what with the lack of ankle talk. I'm going to go drink a whole fucking lot of water and see if maybe being fully hydrated will make me sleepy. It can't hurt, right? Good hydration is never a bad thing.

Anyone have any fail-proof insomnia killers? My age-old counting backwards from 1000 seems to have lost its effectiveness.

Wait, Where Do I Live?

So a great Village anomaly has come to my attention. While dealing with the Great Gas Nastiness earlier this week, there was much discussion of Bleecker Street, which is about 30 feet from my front door. Observe, this was taken from our fire escape:

It has always been my opinion that the C in the word Bleecker is completely extraneous, perhaps a remnant of our Dutch past that could be gotten rid of, unlike the extra A that used to be present in Haarlem and I feel really adds a little oomph. Anyway, people's discussions of the gas leak on Bleecker made me realize that I am in no way alone. In many places, the C was nowhere to be seen. To the extent that I actually began to question whether the C was there all and I had imagined its presence on my corner. So, here's what I did. I googled the words "Bleeker Street." Google did not give me one of those Did you mean Bleecker Street? lines at the top of my results. Instead, it would seem that the results are split exactly 50/50 on whether or not the C exists.

GoNYC? It's got the C if you want to take a gourmet walking tour of this fine street (GO TO MURRAY'S!). None other than Simon and Garfunkel seem to have left the C out of hte title of their song "Bleeker Street." Now, I trust these guys, for christ's sake, my parents almost named me Cecelia, I have to give these boys some respect, they actually make a putrid name sound desirable. That's no mean feat. I'd like to see someone pull that off with Agnes or Minerva or Gladys.

Google's map has the C, but the various establishments listed along the side seem to be out on whether or not it should be there. Bleeker Street Pizza? It's got it. Bleeker Street locksmith? Lacking.

However, the best example of the mysterious C in my opinion goes to the famous (and in my opinion overrated) John's Pizza? It's perhaps the most confused of all-it's got no C on the sign in front or on the web page, but you better believe the URL is www.johnsofbleeckerstreet.com . So what the fuck is that about? John's is considered a Village institution, and I guess if they are straddling the fence on this one, we're all supposed to go along. But I will not stand by this! John's, your pizza is mediocre and so is your stance-I don't care what you think-you look like a fool in your own home, and it's your own damned fault! And in solidarity with Harlem's lost A, I am standing by the C, as annoying as it can be sometimes to remember to put it in there.

I feel better now that that's off my chest.

Oh god, already a post-script and I haven't even hit publish yet! I just spell-checked this beast and EVERY instance of the words Bleeker AND Bleecker was flagged as being wrong. Blogger adds another vote to the undecided column!

The gas smell reverbs.

I mean, really. I understand that the mysterious gas leak's only known origin was right here on Bleecker Street, but really, jackhammering at 8am? It doesn't smell like gas any more, and there were all sorts of new holes in my street when I got home yesterday. Those weren't enough? You had to start again? I'm not really sure what you think you're going to find. And if you hit a gas main and either a) blow up or b) make me lose gas I am going to have to come out there and kill you myself (if you're not dead already, of course). And honestly, I will admit that yesterday's nastiness woke me up out of a very lovely sleep (as opposed to this morning's which involved various random NRHS faces-I think I need to get off all those social networking sites) and I would like for that to never happen again, so I encourage you to fix it, but if you could do it at a normal hour, that would be superb.

Really? THIS is why I've been up for an hour?

I woke up at 6:30 this morning, out of a dream that made me SO excited that I simply could not stay asleep any longer.

What was it, you ask?

Obviously is was that my landlord told me that there was a Christopher Street-side one bedroom available that Sean & I could take---and here's where the excitement kicks in---we would be paying the same rent we are now. Why am I dreaming about this NOW? My lease isn't up for another 6 months! Jesus!!!

Thanks, Manhattan Real Estate Insanity, for taking over my day time & my dreams.



Not my apartment.

YEAH!

New glasses day is my most favorite day of the year!

It's better than the good old days, which weren't so great to begin with.

It's 9pm on a Wednesday, and I'm still at work. So I figure it's as good a time as any to catch up on life.

This coming Friday marks my last day as an employee of Turner. Starting Monday, I get several weeks of severance pay (which is totally fucking sweet, since...) I will still technically be an employee of the company, in a semi-new and wonderful capacity-an archivist at everyone's favorite newsmedia organization. Which is, of course, why I am still in this hellacious building. The news never stops, does it? And even though the last lowly PA has left for the evening, I have another hour to sit here and wait just in case someone calls needing footage of Gerald Ford falling down those damned steps, or needs footage of people doing dirty things at work fed down to another bureau. But, I will say that this is the first time I have been honestly bored here since I started working here in August. Which is a wonderful change from my previous place of employment and leaves me filled with happiness and exhaustion at the end of every day. I am learning lots, and this has even inspired me to apply to grad school which is the other fun thing in my life. Now if my lovely professors would just mail me my reccomendations I could mail in the damned application and I would get in and my life would be superb.


Fun things in my life which aren't work related but I am not in the mood to discuss in depth:
Boyfie (such things should not be taken for granted)
new glasses (in colors not listed there, because they are new new new and I am shiek shiek shiek) (And if you actually thought I would repeat the leopard print LaFont thing you are MISTAKEN!)
Anthropologie gift certificates (if my wallet were stolen this is what I would miss the most, as they are irreplaceable, as opposed to my ugly license)
Walking home from work and not limping by 50th street
Rena coming home in less than two weeks
Fun eye makeup
Male genital desensitizer boxes on Christopher Street
Andrea making me laugh at work late at night

Things which should die a painful death:
The holiday lights display in the Time Warner Center which insists on going off obnoxiously every night
The line in whole foods when I went to buy dinner there tonight
Jackhammers on Christopher street at both 11pm and 8 am
The aeron chair I'm sitting in
My futon mattress which makes my ass numb.