Nine Thoughts

1. I have submitted my application to Washington's MLIS program, a week before the due date. Though the thought of being a mild-mannered librarian for the rest of my life still produces happy feelings when it crosses my mind, I have come to think of library school as a definite Plan B after English school's Plan A. Me fail English? That's unpossible.

2. I am beginning the process of selling the majority of my comic book collection on eBay. There are a few reasons for this:
a. They take up space, and we're going to be moving, possibly to an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in seven or eight months.
b. I just spent another $45 on application fees. The thought of pending moving costs terrifies me. As a side note, a trumps b and laziness trumps all, so I'm listing them for dirt cheap.
c. I'm no longer as enamored of them as I once was. Yes, I still look forward to getting new comics to read each month, but I read them once and take hardly another peek, whereas in high school I read my favorites over and over. What's the point of keeping them around if all they're doing is taking up space?
d. I'm transitioning into waiting to buy sturdy, shelvable, collected trade paperback editions, as opposed to the flimsy monthlies. A nice book I can pull off the shelf and flip through is much better than a plastic-sheathed magazine hidden away in a big white box.

3. I am not very good at maintaining a secret identity. I've messed up already.

4. Played Trivial Pursuit with Petra, Tolkien Boy, Melyngoch, and Foxy J the other night. Petra kicked our butts as expected, but let it be known that former college bowl queen Foxy J stayed nose-to-nose with her up to the end. Just like the last time I played Trivial Pursuit, with Lord and Lady Steed, I ended up exposing myself as the faux intellectual I really am. Trivial Pursuit isn't necessary to expose me, though. All you need to do is get me to try to pronounce pithy. Ask Fob. My true friends, I suppose, are the ones who love me even after I've been stripped bare to my fraudulent bones.

5. Thanks to Edgy, eg, and Fob Sr. for the help on the academic conversation thing. And thanks to Melyngoch for the promised but ne'er-delivered loose change. I ended up tracking down the book Edgy and eg so lowly recommended at UVSC's library, only to decide that what I really wanted was Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The American Scholar," which is all over the web. I'm having my students summarize and respond to Part II, in which Emerson speaks of young men in libraries reading the words of other young men in libraries. They seemed to respond well to the essay yesterday in class.

6. On Thursday I was reminded of what it is that I love about libraries: timelessness. To be in a great, silent room, surrounded by books and books and books, and not care about the passage of time, is heaven. Unfortunately, working at a library produces none of this effect.

7. Watched The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) tonight. Marvelous. Cut the crap, Hamlet; my biological clock is ticking, indeed.

8. Thanks to Petra for the props on the 100 Hour Board. By "props," I don't mean that she said, "Gee, isn't Master Fob a great person?" but that she said, "Master Fob has something relevant to say," which I think is much better props than the former.

9. Garth Nix says that nine is a magic number--being holy three times holy three--so whenever possible one should do things in nines.