like singing in the shower, but shushier

So I ended up working at the library last Sunday, which I kind of hate doing, but that's another story. I was helping someone in the children's fiction section when I heard this indistinct but vaguely tonal sound filling my area. I thought maybe some kid was singing in the bathroom, but they'd have to really be belting it out since the bathroom wasn't close. As I walked back to my desk, I realized that the sound was coming from a young girl in the glass study room. She didn't look like she was singing, just sitting there with her head down, reading some manga, but it had to be her. Kids often make the mistake of thinking that room is soundproof, instead of the echo chamber that it is. Kind of like a big shower stall, without the water. Or the privacy.

I needed to cut this little jam session short- it is a library, after all- but the shape of her tuneless tune felt a little familiar, and the music history major, listening test-taking student in me felt compelled to identify it first. Thank you, Alice Hanson!

Then it struck me: she was singing the Hallelujah Chorus. Only the first four bars, and in a made-for-TV, based-on-an-actual-song kind of way, but there it was. Unexpected, but okay, I'll buy it. After all, it was Sunday afternoon.

This has been another Random Public Library Moment (TM).

Mr. Ed's Choice Award

I think I found the stickiest peanut butter in the world. It's Trader Joe's Organic Creamy Peanut Butter. If my camera worked, I'd show you (grrr....). For a brief, exhilarating, terrifying moment, I truly feared for the future of my mouth as a functional, multi-part mechanism capable of chewing, rather than a gooey mass of connected tissue. I feel I can safely make this a world-wide distinction. I don't do a lot of flag-waving, but anyone who's tried to find peanut butter abroad knows that what the rest of the world knows about making pb could fit in one tiny jar, a jar filled with a grainy, strangely mis-flavored mockery of the real thing.

What makes this particular brand so sticky? I don't know! It only has the usual natural peanut butter ingredients of peanuts and salt. They do make a big deal about using Valencia peanuts. Is that region of California known for its adhesive qualities?

Anyone can make an animal talk on screen; if you want it to talk in slow motion, look no further. If there are other kinds that belong in the Sticky Hall of Fame, speak up! Inquiring pb lovers want to know.

one third of my allotted time

This is getting to be old news now, but once again I've been hobbled by lack of visuals. Last Tuesday my library system and my local NBC affiliate were brave/foolhardy enough to put me on live daytime TV for 5 minutes to talk about Teen Read Month and show off a handful of books. It was on Showcase Minnesota, the local show you end up watching if you don't bother changing the channel for the hour between the Today Show and Today Show: Hour 4 (sounds like a hostage situation to me). Here's the blurb on their website; don't skim, you'll miss it.

Besides taking an amount of time and energy to prepare which seems out of balance with the shortness of the actual airtime, I had a lot of fun. Got to see the studio, experience the behind-the-scenes world of local (but big market) TV, and schmoozed with the stars. Okay, I sat in the green room with a slightly cantankerous salon entrepreneur named Rocco, but that's enough Tuesday morning excitement for me.

Until I manage to get a YouTube-compatible file in my hands, here's a link to the clip that a friend kindly recorded for me. Thanks, Winston!

Showcase Minnesota- 9 October 2007- Teen Read Month segment

So does that make me a pretty big nerd, or a really big nerd?

My latest behind-the-times show fixation is Heroes, season 1. When George Takei showed up as a guest star, the first thing I noticed was that the plates on his car matched the registry number of the U.S.S. Enterprise: NCC-1701. Cute touch on their part? Definitely. Sad that I noticed? Maybe, but I wasn't alone.
Exhibit One: how easy it was to find a screen capture of said trivia detail online:

I don't know, which one's frencher?

Last night I had a lovely evening of Minnesota Orchestra and dinner with my friend Peter and his parents. We went to Vincent's, a French restaurant in downtown Minneapolis. First of all, the meal brought to mind such overused food and wine critic words as "exquisite" and "sublime"; "delicious" didn't quite cover it. Wowza.

A friend of mine used to gauge whether a restaurant was really as upscale as the decorating implied by whether or not they had cloth napkins. Well Nick, if you're out there, here's a new level entirely; see what you make of it. White cloth napkins were artfully folded at each place setting. As we sat down, our waiter asked each of Peter's parents if they would prefer a black napkin. What?? This is not an option I have ever encountered before. Does anybody know what that's all about? I completely forgot to ask the waiter before we left.

The Universal Language of Muzak

If you've ever called a Hennepin County Library and been put on hold, you're familiar with our hold music. More accurately, our hold song. We only have one. No matter what time of day or what library you call, the hold song is always exactly the same: about 1 minute long on a continuous loop, sounding like the bastard love child of two timeless classics: "Guy at Bloomingdale's Playing Piano Under the Escalator at Christmas" and "The Song That Never Ends." I see-saw between hating it and loving it deeply and ironically. For all the time and money we invest in being on the cutting edge of technology in our field- Library 2.0 is the latest buzz term- couldn't we at least offer our customers, I don't know, *two* hold songs? Add a little excitement and unpredicability to the phone call? It's just a thought. But for now, we just have the one hold song, and I had started to think of it as all ours; after all, I'd never heard it anywhere else.

Until today.

I've spent quite a bit of time the past few days on the phone with the nice tech support folks in New Delhi. (I just went wireless. Where am I blogging from right now? My living room? My kitchen? The bedroom closet? Only I know! How's that for excitement and unpredictability?) They put me on hold, and over thousands of miles of wireless aether, I heard a familiar strain. It was a remix of the HCL hold song! I couldn't believe it. Instead of solo piano, it was sort of a Light (make that Lite) Rock version with an even slower tempo, but the banal melody, the barely distinguishable A and B sections, the short loop- it was all there.

Is this Cisco's theme song, to be found universally in all their phone systems? I wonder how many other versions are out there? Is there sheet music available? If/when I get a piano, I am going to teach myself this song. It'll only ever be useful as a one-hit joke at library staff parties where there's a piano available, but someday, someday that scenario will come true, and I'll be ready.

big crush and broken heart, all in one weekend

Hello, gentle reader. Have I been busy lately, or just a lazy blogger? The world may never know.

Sometime in September, a Netflix DVD arrived in the mail: Ballykissangel, disc 1.


I wasn't sure how it got in my queue; probably a Netflix recommendation based on my enduring love for the BBC. A week or so later I got around to watching it. And kept watching it. And then watched it some more. The first two series (seasons) were short and went down quick. If you haven't seen it, think Northern Exposure in Ireland. If you haven't seen Northern Exposure, for shame. Rural town full of quirky characters; enter new guy. In this case, Father Peter Clifford, an outsider in the form of an English priest. And of course, enter Assumpta, the feisty, clergy-hating love interest, which for Father Clifford adds an extra-crunchy layer of complication. As a good Lutheran girl I've never had a crush on a priest before, but if it's got to happen, he may as well be fictitious.

I couldn't wait the interminable two-day turnaround time for Netflix to send me series 3, so I did something I never do: I sought out spoilers on the internet to find out what happened. And I'm glad I did. It gave me time to recover from the shock and then grieve before I saw the episodes for real. They ended the Peter/Assumpta era of the show in such a shocking, unexpected way, I actually felt like something tragic had happened in my life. I'm still not ready to move on to the last 3 series they made. I suppose it's a sign of good acting and good writing that I got so enamored with the characters so quickly, but I still feel a bit betrayed by the creators.

It may be possible that these TV series binges are not good for my mental health (confession time: last winter I watched all 5 seasons of Alias in less than a month). But hey, it's better than crack. That's a valid rationalization, right?