and suddenly, she’s gone

Phoebe Cat

We woke up yesterday morning to find that Phoebe had not. She died sometime during the night. She seemed well enough the day before, but something happened while we were doing other things, looking the other way, and now she’s gone. We went to bed without saying goodnight to her.

A string of “what ifs” and a million different versions of “it’s our fault” have been running through our heads. Even if we couldn’t have saved her, at least she wouldn’t have died alone. I hope she wasn’t scared. I hope she didn’t suffer. The vet said she had intestinal hemorrhaging, but did not know the cause. Best guess is that she ingested some sort of poison, or caught a poisoned mouse or something. But we know nothing for certain.

All we know is that she was our friend, and we will miss her dearly.

We will miss the way she played with the plastic pull string things from the frozen orange juice containers. We will miss that really long winded meow that never seemed to have an end when she was ready for dinner. We will miss the way she would sleep only on things that were on top of things. Acres of couch to sleep on? She’d sleep only on the notebook you left on the couch.

We’ll miss how she often wanted attention, but didn’t want you to pick her up or pet her. We’ll miss how we used to just pick her up anyway, and how she’d give in and purr. We’ll miss how she used to glare at us when we’d try to nibble her ears. We’ll miss how she’d run away from us when we played our music too loudly. We’ll miss how she hated the accordion, but if I took a break from practicing, I’d come back to find her sleeping in the open case.

We’ll miss how she would always take a really long time to try to jump off of things, and never succeeded in performing anything but a graceless flop onto the floor. And then walking away with her head in the air, daring us to make fun of her. Which we did. We’ll miss how she stood up on her back legs for treats, and would only drink her water from the far side of the bowl. We’ll miss her exceptionally loud purr.

We’ll miss how we didn’t have to refer to her in the past tense. We didn’t know her for the first three years of her life, but we hope she enjoyed the last four living with us.

Goodbye, Phoebe. We miss you. We love you.

I should be working, but…

I keep forgetting to post this when I’m at home, but here it is:

Harvard Square proclaims The Best Harry Potter Party Ever! I hesitated reserving my copy of the seventh book for when I knew where Harry and the Potters were playing, and which bookstore would be doing the Potter Party thing, etc. So, now I know, and I tell you.

Where will you be on 20 – 21 July? I’ll be in Hogwarts Square. (Yes, that’s what they’re calling it. It’s a bit much, eh?) The first 500 people to reserve their book through the Harvard Coop get a wicked awesome gift bag.

This is going to be fun.

But first, more gnomes

I have much (much, much) to say about the class I’m taking out at Mt. Holyoke on the History of the Book. It’s really fun.

But first, I have to post this. I never knew about this! How could a knitting gnome swap have happened without my knowledge? Answer: the world is a big, big, place, and even us librarians miss out on some awesomeness once and a while.
I must have completely zoned out when this first started (April?), and so missed out. I’m happy to see that other people have embraced the idea of a knitting gnome, even if we were operating independently. And even if my gnomes are crocheted. But still. Wicked awesome.

Right. Back to work.

The Shiny New Job

Thursday, 31 May, was my first day at the shiny new job. I’ve decided that my title is Archives Consultant. It sounds better than the whole “temporary-part-time” thing. It was just a made-up title, anyway, so I might as well make up a new, improved one, right? The MSPCA has funds set aside to pay for a consultant to help them develop a plan to organize and preserve their archival materials, and to survey the contents of the collection. This information will then be used to seek further funding in order to develop an archives program for the institution. I am the first step in that process. Ten years ago, someone started to organize things, but not much of it is accessible at the moment.

It’s my job to help the grant writer convince the funding agencies that the materials in the collection are important and need to be saved. They document not only the history of the MSPCA, but also Boston and the U.S., especially the social movements of the late 19^th and early 20^th Centuries. Preservation isn’t cheap, but it doesn’t have to be prohibitively expensive, either. I will come up with a plan that includes short-term and long-term actions for preservation, starting with stabilizing the environment. I mentioned that the first step is to get some air conditioning up here (top most floor, next to the elevator machine room), not just for my comfort, but for the collection’s sake. When I came in yesterday morning, they were being installed, though I still have to turn them off when I’m not there.

Despite being distracted by the whole car situation, I managed to have a wonderful first day on Thursday. This is the first job I’ve ever had where I wasn’t ill and anxious on the first day. I actually have confidence, am able to speak intelligently about things I know about. I may be green in this profession, but it’s amazing to finally be able to demonstrate some sort of expertise. I don’t know everything that I’ll need to know to make every decision, but I know who to talk to help me find out what I need to know.

All of those internships and experiences are paying off. I know just enough to start putting things into practice, and to start crafting a career. It’s a great feeling. I’ll stop there, because I’m sure to start gushing and to get all Rah-Rah Cheerleader about archives. As my career continues, I’m sure I’ll stumble through difficult spots, but right now, things are pretty great: the end of my formal education is within sight, and I’m taking the first steps into my chosen profession.

Speaking of school, the first of my last three courses begins this Saturday. It’s a very short course: 5 meetings to occur over a span of 15 days.

Sugar, yarn, and cars

gnome and dishcloths

So, you know how I make awesome cupcakes, right? Well, I’m constantly outdone (and inspired by) the folks in the Vegan Cupcakes Flickr pool, but nothing there prepared me for this. It’s knitting and cupcakes combined, people! That’s crazy delicious!

Speaking of cupcakes, I never did take photos of my coconut lime cupcakes for M‘s shower, nor the brownie cupcakes (made with whiskey! Cupcakes of my people?) I made for the Spinstah‘s Memorial Day shindig. I didn’t even snag a photo of the pink and lime cupcakes I made for R‘s graduation party. She, however, takes many photos, and I’ll see if I can grab a copy of the evidence of their glory. I still have a couple of spoonfuls of lime frosting left. Mmm, delicious. Oh, and I made her a gnome, too. She named her Wendy. (That’s her in the photo above, pictured with dishcloths made for M’s bridal shower. Dishcloth pattern from Mason-Dixon Knitting.)

Speaking of gnomes, The Yarn Harlot put up the post about the Webstravaganza last Wednesday. Dude. That’s a lot of knitters. Seriously, there were 600 of us. And, yes, the knitting gnome made the blog! I’m glad it got on there with all the other weird things she’s encountered lately. That makes me smile, indeed! Also, if you scroll down to the picture of the hats, the one I donated is near the middle, all the way to the right hand side of the photo. It is black, grey, and yellow. I called it the “mellow bee” hat, but I forgot to photograph it before I left. I was in a hurry, and was busy trying to decide which yarn to bring with me. It was a big decision and took much of my concentration, apparently.

Hey, remember the giant glove? Well it was at Webs, too. I can’t believe I missed out on the chance to get a photo in the gloved chair. I also missed many opportunities to take photos of (or even exchange names with) the people I met there, especially while waiting in line. Aimie (who I chatted with in line) got some great photos from the front row at the Calvin. I (well, my shoulder and “Peanuts” bag) am inadvertently in one of her photos taken while standing in the long line in the warehouse. Oh, and Peta was there with a gaggle of knitters aboard the Yarn Safaris magic bus. It was great to chat with her for a bit, too.

The car’s back in its rightful place in the driveway, which is nice. It’s going to take me a little while to get used to how the new transmission feels. It’s as if the car has had a spine transplant. I’m happy to have it back. It was rather embarrassing to have it in the shop knowing that it was filthy inside. Trash and what not everywhere. You know how your mum always said to wear clean underpants because you never know what’s going to happen? Well, you should always have a clean car for the same reason. I’m sure they’re not giving it another thought (I’m sure they’re quite happy with our money), but I can’t help but feel weird that strangers out there know that we keep a filthy car. I think I’ll got tidy it up before dinner.

Comment spam

I’m still trying to figure out how to manage my comment spam. I have some software/plug-in thingie that I’m using, but it only seems to work in fits and starts. I had comments shut off for a while, just to see what would happen, but I could only change the comment settings for new posts, and not for old ones. So, the hundreds of posts prior to my having changed the comment settings were still getting a ton of comment spam. I decided it wasn’t worth having comments turned off. So, they’re back on, and I’ll just sift through the moderation queue to find the genuine comments.

The settings allow previously approved commenters to comment without having to be moderated, but any new commenters must be approved by me before the comment appears on the site. I, however, forgot that I turned comments back on the other day, and have since been deleting all comments in the moderation queue, thinking they were spam (without actually taking a look at their contents).

I hope I haven’t inadvertantly deleted real comments. Oops. If you notice a comment you’ve left that I have deleted, please post it again.

Woe is our car

Wednesday night, driving back from Northampton, I managed to hit some debris in the road. It kicked up and damaged something related to the transmission fluid lines. Not the line itself, but the recirculation/collection pan thing. So, unbeknownst to me, the car was leaking transmission fluid for the rest of the drive home (about 45 minutes or so). Due to my exhausted state when I got home, and the 4 hours of sleep between passing out and waking to take JeT to the train station the next morning, I had forgotten all about the debris incident. When it happened, there was no indication that something was amiss. No weird sounds were made, no odd feelings, all seemed well. Until the next morning, that is.

We borrowed his Dad’s van so I could get to the train station for my first day of my shiny new job (which went well, by the way; more on that another time), and JeT took the day off to deal with the situation, which is thus:

Due to my having driven the car with diminishing transmission fluid, said transmission will have to be rebuilt. To the tune of $1600, which we will have to put on our already overburdened credit cards. (I should mention that I hate having credit cards as much as I hate having a car. Someday, we’ll live without either, but there’s no time for daydreaming now.) The work will be done by Monday, so I’ll still be able to drive out to Holyoke for my summer class, which is a relief.

Before we got the final quote for the transmission work, we were also considering the possibility of trading in the car for a new one. But since we are able to afford the work (with fake money, but still), we didn’t want to just treat the car as some disposable thing. And it’s really annoying when you want to talk to an appraiser, and all you get are salespeople on the phone trying to convince you that your car isn’t worth much, and that you’d be better off just getting a new one. Our car is going to be paid off by November, and I’m going to have to start paying back student loans soon after, so I really didn’t fancy having another car loan for another five years.

Argh. Ok, enough whinging about cars and money. I’ve got cupcakes to bake! That’s right, I’m distracting myself with sugar. Oh, and I think there’s still some New Castle in the fridge. Yeah! Beer! Cupcakes! Right, that cheered me up.