the pod bay door

:: My head seems to be in the clouds somewhere. I’ve had a quiet day, except for the morning (see below). Earlier this week, my neighbour, while I was at work, planted a bur oak tree in my front yard.

Growing up in Winnipeg in the late 50s/early 60s, we were surrounded by oak trees, and planting this little tree reminds me of that time, and gives me a good feeling. In my backyard, a Manitoba maple is growing, having seeded itself four years ago. I noticed its little trunk poking up through the large wood chips in the area where my Juniper pines are housed. I was amazed that this could happen – how could a seed make its way into the soil through those wood chips? In any event, I’ve let it grow, and it’s now well over six feet tall.

:: I always feel a bit odd this time of year. It’s the literal calm before the storm. Today is May 31st, already one-quarter of the summer months is over. Next week at this time I’ll be in NYC, and the next few days will move at light speed until I leave.

Part of me wishes I could escape and find peace and calm waters. My house is a complete, disastrous mess, and needs to be industrially vacuumed! The left side of my neck is almost 100% locked up, despite having seen the chiropractor on Thursday and Friday. I am never sure why my mood is subdued at this time of the year. I wonder if it is because the next few weeks will fly by, and it will suddenly be July and we will be preparing for the fall. It’s as if the May-Aug time period, when the sun is warm and the days are long, are too compressed. Regardless, I am feeling melancholy and nostalgic, and I know there are other reasons contributing to this.

NYC will be exciting, exhilarating, overwhelming, draining. It is not the usual NYC trip I take – as I’ve mentioned, I’ll be attending a conference for the first five days. I will see many people I like a lot, and meet new ones, and have the pleasure of introducing Geoff to SLA and NYC concurrently.

:: This morning I had my hair cut, and afterwards, having contemplated it for years, had my hair streaked the colour of copper red. Yes, you read that correctly. Call it a momentary lapse of mental coordination, or the least damaging thing I can do to my body in honour of my impending half-century birthday.

(The other options include a body piercing and a tattoo.) Now I will face the public, and gauge others’ reactions. Will my friends and colleagues be truthful? Really, what does it matter? I did it, I like it, that’s all that matters. And I’ll fit right in when I get to NYC.

:: It’s crunch time. Also the time when the weeks start to appear to me as if they are moving faster than normal. Next week (June 7), Geoff and I fly to NYC for SLA. Before that, we’re attending (and are helping organize) the EBL conference. I’m making minor revisions to my presentation on engineering libraries for the SLA conference. I haven’t begun to consider other events in NYC, like theatre, movies, music, etc. I’ll be there for seven days after the conference to do whatever, whenever – this means visiting good friends as well, and showing Geoff some of the town (and some of my friends, too.) I return home on June 19th, leaving me a few days to ruminate about being alive for half a century.

Summer just seems to happen too fast.

:: I bought another pair of shoes today. That’s twice in one week. By popular demand, view the first and second pair. Comments welcome. Both pairs are very comfortable, and will make the trip to NYC.

Really, can life get any better?

I watched The Matrix on video tonight, in prep for Matrix Reloaded. I saw the first film in 1999, and it was good to see it again. Maybe I’ll understand the second one a bit better. This site discusses the first film, providing an in-depth analysis. The official site also has a page devoted to the philosophy of the matrix.

:: I bought a pair of new shoes tonight.

:: The weekend is coming to a close, and it’s been a good one, my head and throat notwithstanding. On Friday night, I hung with some cool colleagues after work, at Martini’s on 109th, followed by some tunes at G&K’s pad. On Saturday I was lazy, did little other than see two films: The Lizzie McGuire Movie (don’t shoot me for that, I took a little one who wanted to see it and she had a great time), and Identity (which has a cool web site, check it out). Identity is a thriller with a great cast of character actors, including my man John Cusack, Clea DuVall, Amanda Peet, John C McGinley, Ray Liotta, Jake Busey, Alfred Molina and Pruitt Taylor Vince. The film wasn’t as edgy as I hoped, but was still a good watch.

I wrote a short review of TLMM for BlogCritics. BlogCritics, btw, now has links to groups of reviews of CDs, DVDs, and books.

Today I had dim sum, and then jammed with Deb. But I’m not feeling 100% – last night I went to bed with a sore throat, and today I feel like I’m on the edge of a cold. I hope it doesn’t get any worse. The good news is it’s warmed up in Edmonton considerably from five days ago, when we had snow-covered ground, and the temperature was hovering around OºC.

:: Steely Dan will be heading out on their next tour, beginning in July, in support of the new album, Everything Must Go. Three years earlier, Chris and I drove to The Gorge to see Steely Dan perform, in June 2000. This year they are playing The Gorge again on August 2nd, which is the long weekend in Alberta. So I went online and bought two tickets. I’ll worry about the details of the trip later in the summer.

:: Finally, mention of a column by Al Franken, one of my favorite comedians and political pundits. Franken writes about a conversation he had with Minnesota senator Norm Coleman, who replaced Senator Paul Wellstone after he was killed in a plane crash in 2002. The conversation happened after Coleman made some controversial remarks about him being a 99.9% improvement over Wellstone, who was much loved by his constituents and well-respected in the US Senate. (Thanks, Derryl.)

:: I’ve watched this blog unfold and grow since July 2002 (when it was a Blogger site), never really knowing what my next entry will be. I’ve waffled back and forth between posting library-related entries, and everything-else-besides-libraries entries. Recently I started another blog, The (sci-tech) Library Question, which may soon take on a collaborative life of its own, and is a place for me to post library-related items of interest to colleagues working in science, engineering, math, life sciences, agriculture libraries, and the like. Geoff and many others are doing a stellar job of covering an increasingly widening array of library issues on a daily basis.

All of that said, I may choose to concentrate on the rest of my interests here, at the risk of boring my six or seven regular readers. For example, I’m fifteen minutes away from leaving to see The Good Thief. At work today, I neared completion of my talk on guerrila marketing of engineering libraries, to be presented as part of a panel at SLA in NYC on June 10th. Is anyone else watching 24 and cursing when each episode ends? How weird is this? Scientists have discovered a bizarre jellyfish in deep California coastal water.

Snow is still on the ground, the sky is still dark and grey, and I am all over the place.