Tag Archives: mom

13.01.12 [Saturday]
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campbell river, whining

today has been better

I always feel like I should do a followup post after a very negative one. Especially since my mom’ll be back from India soon and will read this again. She’ll think the world has ended if I leave something unhappy lying around for too long.

Today I got my car towed to the dealership in Courtenay. They’ll look after it and call me about whatever needs doing to get the car running again. It’s out of my hands now till the bill has to be paid. And I have to get down to Courtenay to get my car back. Whatever.

It’s sunny and I bought Neil Gaiman’s new picturebook about a sneezing panda.

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12.04.25 [Wednesday]
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photography, vancouver

the last paragraph is the informative one

Today I finally changed the tire on my bicycle. You may recall, I got a flat coming home from my last class of the term. I got the bike home on the bus then and haven’t been able to use it to take advantage of Vancouver’s nice weather. So today when it was raining and I’m feeling a little sick, I got that fixed.

Now, I am not a handy man. I haven’t ever changed a tire on a car; I wouldn’t be able to build a fence (I mean I’d be able to build a terrible fence, or a fence from Lego, but a real life “keep the cows where they should be” fence? not gonna happen). But I have changed bike tires before.

Bicycles are the one area where I feel like I can handle the difficulties involved. They’re at a good scale of machinery, and each little bit you do doesn’t have to be replicated again and again. There are only two wheels. My bike only has one brake (and no gears). I can see what everything needs to do and understand the physics involved.
tools
My big problem going into this tire change (the first on my favourite bike I’ve owned) was a lack of tools. I had an allen key multitool thing that had a makeshift wrench for dealing with my brakes (which I’ve used before) but I discovered when I went downstairs, new bike tube in hand, that I had no wrench to get my tire off the frame.

This is the problem of living with other people and being able to scavenge what I need off of them. My roommate does not have a wrench set (and since I don’t have even one wrench I don’t even get the satisfaction of saying “How can you not have wrenches?” like I’m sure many of my friends are thinking right now). I had to go out and find a wrench. When I got to Sears I realized I had no idea what size the nut on my wheel was. I’d just wanted a small adjustable crescent wrench, but those only came in gigantic sets. So I went off to find a bike shop.

At the first bike shop they had a very cool wrench that had a bottle opener on the other side, but $30 was just too much. Eventually I found a double headed wrench that I figured one of the heads would be about the right size…

Oh man. I’m sorry. this is terribly boring. My mom is back from France now, so I feel like I should keep people up to date with the minutiae of my days a bit better.

Anyway. I fixed my bike! And I like my little handful of tools in the picture above. That’s what I’ve got for you today. I’m presenting a paper at a children’s literature conference this weekend and blogged the North Shore Writers Festival last weekend. And I’m checking in on and feeding Jamie’s cat while he’s at Ebertfest. That all would have been much more exciting to write about.

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12.04.06 [Friday]
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school, travel, vancouver

opening week

My mom is off to France, heck, she might even be there soon, and I am done school for the term. Many of my classmates are now done school for good, which is a little weird. Weird that we don’t all finish together, I mean. I don’t have the great cathartic sighs of relief, since I’ve still got two and a third classes over the next four months. Plus doing interviews for a book we’re working on.

The good thing is that remaining a student leaves me able to work in Graduate Research Assistant positions over the next few months. I’ll hopefully be doing a bunch of video production work for one of my profs, and right now I’m doing a whack of content management stuff for SLAIS’ new MA in Children’s Literature website (which isn’t up yet).

The wonderful bit about this kind of work is that I can do it on my own with a baseball game on. The Jays have new uniforms and hey, maybe this is the year they’ll play meaningful September ball. I enjoyed the hell out of their first victory of the season yesterday, but really, I just like watching games.

I was looking at my history of being here in Vancouver and I noticed that this month till the summer classes begin is my first time I’ve really spent in Vancouver without school going on. I ran off to China and Australia at the ends of my previous semesters, so I’m going to have to remember that there isn’t any meeting with people in my classes that will just happen because I’m sitting in a chair near somewhere they are going. If I’m going to see my friends I have to contact them. Which will be difficult but I’ll do my best. It’s a time for hope.

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12.01.24 [Tuesday]
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journalism, library, school, tech, vancouver

a job i am totally applying for

Today, moments after I hung up from Skyping with my mom, I found a job I really want. I mention Skyping with my mom because in that conversation I’d been talking about how when I graduate I’ll be looking for work all over the place, and how one of the upsides of being unattached is being able to be mobile, and all that jazz, but also how I’d only try working in the U.S. if it was a great job. We talked about places I’d be more or less interested in. At no point in this conversation did Alaska come up.

Of course, Alaska is where this job I found is.

But I think I’d be a pretty excellent New Media Producer for the Juneau NPR affiliate. Here’s a snippet of the job description:

… an individual with experience and skills in journalism and online content management, including writing and editing for the web, graphic design and site management.

I could completely do that. And do that really well. And it would actually integrate my journalism side with my digital librarianish side (you know, content management kinds of things).

Anyway, I’m putting together an application for them. It’s probably a bit of a long shot (I am a foreigner and all), and it’d mean I’d have to finish my MLIS with a couple of web-delivered courses (which wouldn’t be a big deal), but it could be neat.

Sorry this didn’t happen an hour before you called, Mom. I might have been more excitable.

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11.06.13 [Monday]
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australia, food, travel

in the line of duty

On Friday I demonstrated how I am my mother’s son and managed to trip over nothing as I was crossing a street. The traffic was stopped at the light so everyone had a good view of me standing and then hitting the ground.

Unlike when my mom does these sorts of things I came out of it with only one injury, a knee that does not enjoy bending or being knelt on. It’s winter here so I was wearing my protective leathers, otherwise my elbows, shoulder and a good chunk of my back would be scraped all to hell through my dramatic rolling technique I perfected in grade 6 telling violent stories to kindergarteners.

The long-weekend here’s been pretty rainy and bleah, so I didn’t feel the need to go out putting stress on my tender knee until this morning when I went to wrok and discovered it is a long-weekend. I hung out, had coffee and wrote a book review at the office while I waited for it to stop raining.

I appreciate the fact that we have an espresso machine at work with company coffee so I don’t have to spend my own money on caffeination. When Holly arrives (in less than 3 weeks!) she might be bringing her fancy tea ceremony paraphernalia she’s been learning about. Which will be pretty cool, but we’ll still probably have to start buying coffee.

Possibly next week or the week after I might be sent out to the wilds of Victoria to teach some librarians about using Koha. I’ve never been on a business trip before, and I get to take the train! We were pricing it out on Friday and it’s all “First-Class sleeper” this and “hotel and food money” that, which is much more fun than the ordeal we went through getting Holly flights to Sydney and Vancouver.

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11.05.31 [Tuesday]
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australia, travel, 中国

when you find a stranger in the alps

My mother is complaining I haven’t been blogging enough. This is because she doesn’t read Librarianaut. Six posts in the last week. That she doesn’t care about my topics over there is a completely separate issue. (Hi Mom!)

Recently the exciting secrets I’ve been keeping from the blog include how I went to get backup keys to my apartment copied, and the place in the mall told me I had to go to a certified locksmith. I suspect that’s because these keys have “Do Not Copy” stamped on them.

The other day Javier was playing guitar in the common area. It turns out he knows something like three songs and can spend hours trying to play them correctly.

Friday was the last day at work for one of my coworkers. We went to the fish market for lunch. At the fish market there are very few vegetarian options, which wasn’t a problem for me, since I could have a greek salad. But my boss felt bad so he ordered me two salads and potato wedges. It was an amount of salad designed to be ridiculed.

My boss was so happy today when he learned I know a bit about Photoshop. At quarter to five he got me to install it on my computer so I can begin graphics tasks tomorrow.

The last couple of days have been very rainy. I told Holly she should bring a Chinese umbrella since throwing one away there and buying a replacement here that costs ten times as much would be annoying. I think I’m also going to forgo trimming my beard till she can bring along ultracheap clippers. So far that’s the main thing I forgot to bring from Canada that I kind of need. It’s one thing to have a massive hobo beard when I’m off travelling but another when I’m going to work every day.

I do love the small office vibe we’ve got where I don’t have to feel underdressed in jeans and a half-buttoned shirt (over a tshirt – I don’t expose my Hemsworthian pecs to the office just yet). It’s possible I’m being ruined for corporate work, but that’s all right with me.

Okay Mom, there you go, a pile of boring minutiae. This is what happens.

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11.03.28 [Monday]
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religion, winnipeg

no arguing theology at a funeral

A week and a half ago my grandma died. She was the last of my grandparents. So I flew back to Winnipeg for the funeral over the weekend. As far as funerals go, it seemed fine. There was coffee and food at the viewing (not in the exact same space as the viewing; in a separate room so as not to get any crumbs on grandma) and the minister read her obituary and mangled everyone’s names. He did better at the funeral proper.

I hadn’t seen a lot of grandma in the past year or so. Even when I lived in Winnipeg I didn’t go over to hang out without my mom or anything. Last time I’d seen her was June or maybe July, when she’d just moved out to Niverville. Even then she’d lost a lot of weight, so I wasn’t too astonished at how little she looked like my stocky good-for-plow grandma in the casket. Wax and bone and un-permed hair is what was left for us to bury.

My cousin represented the grandchildren in the funeral service, and she told stories about food and games, all the normal grandmother kinds of things. She also told a story about how grandma’d been praying to die since she was 10. I didn’t remember that story. I remembered Grandma being ready to die for years though. Mom hated when she talked like that. But in the last couple of years it started to make sense. (To me. None of this is me speaking for my mother here. If you find this disrespectful, it’s all me.)

The minister who did the service wasn’t too bad. Grandma picked him beforehand, saying “he may not look like much but he gives a good sermon.” And though he talked about a lot of crap I find ridiculous, it was the kind of crap that grandma believed so I’d be a bit of an asshole for debating it or shaking my head in too superior a fashion. But at the gravesite in among the rest of the going home kind of talk, he said “Trudie’s now in a better place than she was in the last years of her life.” I appreciated that. It acknowledged that she’d wanted to die for a long time, felt she was done, but also recognized that she’d had better years in this vale of tears, times that were better than some notional afterlife.

But snicker as I might at notions of afterlife, I still do love old-timey gospel songs about dying. Much better than hymns. If you ever ask me to arrange a funeral that’s all it’s going to be. Fair warning.

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10.12.01 [Wednesday]
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library, school

value of the mlis degree

Crossposted from Librarianaut because it’s in the process of being marked for an assignment so I’m trying not to clutter up its front-page with unrelated writing. This’ll show up there once the project has been marked.

We’ve talked in class about the image of the librarian, which well, whatever. I don’t really care about professionalism and all that bullshit. It reeks of snobbery and hiding behind dehumanizing rules. I do believe in providing the best possible service I can, but on my terms. Whatever. So the question comes up about whether you need the degree to be a librarian. And conversely whether the people with degrees should be on the reference desk or helping fix the printers.

So it’s possible to address this situation and sound a little privileged and snotty about it. The thing I dislike about that Agnostic Maybe article is that somehow helping people damages the professional image of a librarian, since it’s the kind of thing people without an advanced degree could do. Fuck that.

Happily, that post spawned responses, which caused Agnostic Maybe to clarify and sound a bit less like a jerk. But I don’t like the Officers/Enlisted analogy he employs, because nobody likes the officers. The officers are the planning mucky mucks who make the enlisted people’s lives terrible. Why the fuck would I want to be that? The Shelf Check response to that response was also a bit more moderate.

And then I read a bunch of posts about where the value of an MLIS degree is.

So yeah, I pretty much feel like I am a damned fine librarian, with or without this degree I’m buying. I know I need the paper to show that I’m the kind of person who goes to library school, which helps winnow out people who can’t afford library school, keeping the profession middle-class, which is bullshit. My mom doesn’t want to hear me say that I’d be fine with being a library school dropout, but really, I would be. Library school is teaching me that I am a librarian already, regardless of the paper I can tuck in a box somewhere. This also make the whole getting marked on assignments part of school really insignificant, which I like.

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10.06.14 [Monday]
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travel

mini-trip

Mom and I took a trip out to Niverville on Sunday. My grandma’s moving into not-exactly-a-nursing home out there on Tuesday. We were bringing a truck-load of her smaller things, dishes clothes knicknacks and such. Grandma’s going to be on a floor where there’s a bit of security so that the inhabitants who don’t know exactly where or who they are can’t go wandering out and down the street. We had a good time playing “spot the person with dementia” which is very simple by Mom’s rules; anyone who doesn’t respond to her friendly hello with an immediate chummy conversation is obviously demented.

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10.05.10 [Monday]
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food, sports

cook flesh with fire

Getting the chance to barbecue is something I missed living in the condo. Reyn has a barbecue on the back deck though, so I’m getting back into practice.

Yesterday I was at my mom’s and I barbecued steaks and portobello mushrooms. The steaks had marinated in tequila and garlic for two days, and I grilled the mushrooms up with a raspberry vinaigrette and fresh rosemary. Both turned out pretty good. I always worry when cooking meat, since if I fuck it up it’s not me who has to suffer the eating of it.

While eating, my mom explained to Sri’s son that the steaks were marinated in booze because it was Mother’s Day and that’s how she wanted it. (He wasn’t a fan.) This led me off on a reminiscence about canoe trip steaks with Ernie and Dave’s uncles. I can’t remember if those steaks were actually soaking in whisky for four days of hiking or if they were just aging to perfection. Still the best damned pieces of meat ever.

The earlier part of Mother’s Day was spent watching the Jays win in style while Mom napped. Oh, and dressing the dog up to celebrate surviving cancer for a year. She got the shirt specially made since, surprisingly, it is hard to find a shirt for a dog (or infant, which is what she ended up buying because it was cheaper) that has “Cancer Survivor” preprinted onto it.

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