Let’s start this post out with a fact. I’m rarely late. I’m one of those people who leaves way early to get to things and ends up reading a book for 30 minutes waiting for everyone else to show up. If I have a flight @ 8pm, I’m happiest when I get to the airport by 5 or 5:30 so I’ll have all sorts of time to meander through security and get situated at my gate with time to spare.

That said, I’ve had two mornings in a row of ridiculous lateness. I think job stress and all of the new stuff learning has taken its toll.

Yesterday I dallied all morning: made a big breakfast, took a long shower, sat with the kitties and did some petting, etc. When I had about 45 minutes until my shift started, I began to gather my things – I was going to walk to work for the first time and I wanted to give myself PLENTY OF TIME! As I looked at the clock I was struck with an awful, awful feeling – it was 10:55, and I was supposed to be at work at 11am. I’ve started my “late” days – days I work until 8pm, at 11:30 for so many years that although I knew my new hours were 11-8, I just plum forgot that as I went through my lazy morning routine. Woops. So I drove to work and arrived 15 minutes late and had to pay astronomical sums to get my car out of the garage at the end of the day.

Whew. Never going to do that again, right?

So this morning I’m having the weirdest dream wherein I keep meaning to leave for my job, but get sucked in watching a documentary with my mom, then eating a piece of cake with my sister, and then stopping in a store. In the dream I know I’m supposed to be at my mystery job by 5pm, and it’s about 6:30pm, but I just keep doing other things. Somehow my conscious thrusts me out of my dream and I’m panicked. I grab my phone and see that it’s 8:30am – the alarm wasn’t even on, ever. My bus to work left at 8:22. Since my lateness yesterday threw my day into a spiral of spacey/stressed/forgetful reactions, I tried to take it calmly. I drove again. This means two days in a row of ridiculously large garage payments. Maybe I needed to learn the lesson extra hard?

Tomorrow I have the day off, and Friday I’ll set 3 alarms. And possibly sleep in my work clothes.

scarf man
Originally uploaded by Charlie…Redding…

Dear raver girl wearing really large pants that belong in 1998 who is listening to hip hop really loud on her enormous headphones and looking confused as she drinks an extra large Subway soda,

I don’t know why you are so surprised that Scarf Man (aka Scarf Guy) has begun dancing along to your music and has in fact moved across the aisle to sit closer to you. That’s what loud music can do, it can bring people together. Go ahead, take his business card; he’s right: you’ve got flair.

Love,
Jen

So much has been stuffed into my brain the last 48 hours that I can’t think of much other than “sleep” but I can’t sleep right now because my brain feels too stuffed. Right? Right.* Instead I’m going to spend a few minutes writing about movies and then go try to join the spooning that my cats are doing right now on the rug. Sometimes they let me.

Desk Set : watched last Friday w/ Katie & Sky
This movie wasn’t half as fun as I thought it would be. I love me some Katherine Hepburn, or at least I thought I did, but I spent much of this movie confused because she was laughing her crazy head-thrown-back New England laugh and I didn’t understand what what so godamned funny about the plot. Maybe you had to be there. The clothes were great and I took some small pride in the fact that the librarians were better than a machine (even if they were rattling off complex, memorized answers just like robots most of the time). Anyway, this is one of those LIBRARIAN movies that you’re supposed to watch and so I watched it and I think Party Girl should be our group movie if we get to vote on it.

Divorce Italian Style (Divorzio all’italiana if you’re being fancy): watched last night w/ Sky
This movie was hilarious and I really enjoyed that they made a totally hot lady (Fefe’s wife) look “ugly” by giving her a unibrow and a mustache. Those hips were out of this world. Also the weird dubbing was pretty great and I loved all of the clothes and I’d like to live in a castle now.

Visual Acoustics: watched tonight w/ Sky
This film has been selling out @ Northwest Film Forum – so much so that they were showing it in both theaters tonight. It’s a documentary about Julius Shulman, a world famous photographer who is best known for capturing modern architecture in Southern California: Case Study Houses, Palm Springs, etc. He was a swell guy and the documentary had a lot of great footage of him visiting with all sorts of people: previous owners of houses, new owners, and architects. Shulman was a pleasure to watch, and his photographs were amazing. That’s about all that was good about this documentary, though. There were all sorts of woozy special effects, random Jib Jab style animations, a not very cohesive story line and weird edits throughout. It seemed more like a really long Power Point presentation (with some video thrown in) than a film. A few times they didn’t give names of people who were talking until they’d been on screen for a minute or so – super frustrating.

It wasn’t an awful documentary, but it wasn’t a good one, either. I’m a connoisseur of the documentary film, and it makes me cranky when I see half of Seattle lining up to see a mediocre one when there are so many AMAZING ones slipping under the radar every day. I also take issue with people who assume documentary making is easy, or easier than making a fiction film.

* Brain is stuffed due to entirely new job in entirely new place which I don’t really want to talk about because I’m still trying to reconcile myself with the fact that I have an entirely new job in an entirely new place

Pretty much once a week I have a patron rush up to me and whisper “ooooHH! I saw a missed connection about you!” and pretty much once a week someone from our branch consults craigslist or The Stranger and finds that indeed, someone at Capitol Hill was being admired. But rarely is it a librarian. Usually it’s a young, dewy shelver. Or a smiling, also young clerk. It’s never me, because I work with a lot of hot, young people.

Imagine my suprise, however, when a neighborhood type person rushed up to me and said “ooooHH! I saw an ‘I Saw U’ ad about you! It was definitely you because of the tattoos!” I verified the information, being a thorough librarian, and learned that alas, my moment had finally come. I missed the edition of The Stranger this was printed in, so I can’t clip it for posterity as as Pop Culture Librarian suggested. Instead I will post it to my blog so I can visit it on days when I’m feeling frumpy and demonic.

Angelic librarian @Cap Hill branch
You: gorgeous brunette woman with tattoo on inside of left wrist. You helped me find A Twist of the Wrist (motorcycling not cooking) on 1/23. I finally got my wits and came back, but your shift was over. Let’s meet for a drink and conversation.

P.S. Even if I were single I wouldn’t contact the guy: he was cute, but when I asked him if he wanted the book about cooking or the one about motorcycles he made a face and said “motorcycling” in a super macho way. Doesn’t he know women like men who can make them waffles?

I sat down a few times to write about what I saw but honestly I can’t do it justice. I laughed, I cried, I wished I was living in New York City in 1969.

There’s a short summary of the show posted on Line Out. The writeup gives an accurate blow-by-blow but doesn’t do much to explain what it felt like.

At the end of the evening Patti performed an staggeringly awesome and heartfelt a capella version of “Because the Night” wherein she asked us to help her sing the refrain. There’s a video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHiHq6VoHrQ (she begins singing a few minutes in)

I love that she narrated the guitar solo, Literal Video style!