Yule Tide Greetings to ye all. Happy Holidays and required well wishing :) I hope you've all spent the Christmas evening and day and Christmas Day Evening (yes steve, I did type that) with loved ones. I am very lucky that I've got so many people I count in that "loved ones" category, so yay to you all.

On a more well, grounded note...I had a relaxing Christmas Eve after some rather interesting experiences in the holiday book selling retail world. I'd just like to say thank you to everyone visiting Barnes and Noble for not asking me where the non-fiction section is, and I hope I was able to help you find satisfactory gifts for your friends/sisters/fathers and grandparents who play Scrabble.

I've watched alot of movies, I've eaten alot of food, I've spent some time with friends and family, all in all, it's been a good break so far, and I'm looking forward to the rest of it!

Which means New Year's Eve in Chicago with Erik, Misa, Pete and one of Erik's friends who is home for the holiday. :):) SOOOO excited!!! Will update again soon, and eventually I'll figure out how to put up some pics on this thing...HTML has failed me thus far in that effort...

Because Storyhill played in CR this past Spring, to my surprise and enjoyment, I was at B & N in CR to find some cd's...because the IC store doesn't, and I get my employee discount on cd's at B & N, I discovered the "regional artists" section, and peppermint records has a few artists getting some local promotion. So hooray for that, I got Dovetail for cheap :)
Saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Sunday night with Adam and Cassi (after watching the new episode of Family Guy AND pimp my ride) - we've decided that Pimp My Ride should totally do an episode where they pimp a cambus....all of you IC ppl that read this - or U of I students should start a write in campaign for this...
To my dismay, while the movie was really great, and very much the Tim Burton style I've come to expect, and love, and a great performance by Johnny Dep, and not so frightening Umpa Lumpas, my co-worker still kept calling the movie "Willy Wonka's House of Chocolate"
I went and found the orig. book on the shelves that very evening, and produced it, for him to notice, and yet, still, I was unsuccessful in my attempt to make the point. The movie, while very different from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (ala Gene Wilder - also a great film) was still very enjoyable. ;) so it gets a thumb's up.
The Changing Book conference was this weekend, also was fun, though somewhat disorganized as far as my volunteer position was concerned. Suburban driving anyone? I can totally tell I will not fit the soccer mom role any time soon....quite scary that I can drive that big ass attempt at a school bus in training.
okay, that's the update.
peace.

Happy After 4th to all of you! I hope you all got to take in some really good fireworks and had a special day. Coralville's 4th fest was as good as usual (which is better than IC. yes, i said it. that's right Coralville Townie Pride!) Not too much else to report. Life here in the land of corn is just about par for the course as summers in iowa go. Working at B & N and the art library. SOOO excited cause I just bought some new dvds to support my 10 dollar or less dvd habbit. I had to stop myself when I was compelled to buy one simply b.c it was only 5 bucks, and it was a really really horrible movie. Normally I'm much more selective in my tastes. American Pie and Nat'l Lampoons Animal House will now grace my dvd shelves..and yes, in proper librarian form they are all org. alpha. and I've dropped leading words like, the, a, and. :)
I'm kinda excited for the Harry Potter party at b & n too, cause I get to be a runner - which means I don't actually have to ring sales, and instead I get to run to the back and grab more boxes of the book to bring to the front....I now have the ISBN memorized though - for the # of pre-orders we've gotten at the Info desk and cashwraps that i've done. I've also had fun discovering other "If You like Harry Potter" materials that we've got on sale for the summer while ppl are anticapating HP they can read these others - so inquire if you dare. :) I also will be getting a harry potter prize of some sort to reward me for being able to work from 7:30pm until 4am (that's closing time so actually after straighting shelves and cleaning up leftover wizzard tattoos will be more like 4:30 or 5 I'm sure)
all right, well I'm out. that's a wrap.

we're into june now people. are you all enjoying your summer and noticing how fast it is flying by? i'm enjoying mine. the internship is fun, and hanging out with friends is fun, and i'm tackling a giant project of organizing a scrapbook of pictures from my undergrad days, and have realized i've taken an awful lot of pictures over 5 years!!! especially with the advent of the digital camera. so ya, oh and barnes and noble will have orrientation tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes, but i'm gald they've hired me, and i might be able to transfer to the b-town store after the move back there. okay, that's all from me folks! night

Well, I have been back in Iowa for almost two full weeks now. It has been a very good experience to readjust to life over here. I am loving my internship so far, Rijn is awesome and I am learning some really cool things, and I just got a call to interview at Barnes and Noble on Wed. so everyone wish me luck with that! (how totally awesome would it be to work with books and get paid? haha, oh wait...that's what my REAL career is going to be anyways! hehe, perhaps that's why I'm worthy of an interview. Hopefully they won't care that i"m only going to be around in the summer, and only want part time...well keep your fingers crossed anyways okay?). Let's see...other things....readjustment...well it has been really nice to see the Iowa friends again. There is something quite wonderful in the simple pleasure I take in hanging out with certain people that i have great chemistry with, so that we can spend an entire evening hanging out and in a very Seinfeldian sort of way, conduct a "show about nothing." Seriously, I hadn't laughed sooo hard in ages, as I did last week at perkins. It felt so good to just gel with them again. :) I miss my b-town girls and boys already too, because they are awesome as well, but there is something to be said for hanging out with people that, for all practical purposes have all sorts of "ammo" against you from previous knowledge to make fun of you with. Ah, the joys of being able to laugh at yourself. Particularly, from the bowling alley, the first night of my return, when I was dead tired and dragged my butt over because it was MY idea to go bowling earlier in the day, for when I got back to town, but soo tired I barely knew what was going on. Needless to say my comment of "I left the deathstars in the other duffelbag" is now living in infamy. Not to mention "what happens when you step on a dead cow?" (from the perkins evening) to which I replied "It stays dead?"
Not all of this homeward venture has been rosy though, as I've realized a few more things about myself that i need to work on. Like jealousy. I've always thought it such a stupid emotion, but I am beginning to understand the complexities and different types of jealousy that exist, and hopefully will discover how to better deal with them from an internal standpoint. But for the most part, life is fairly coposetic..(and I STILL can't spell for anything) So that's the newest update. peace!

Listening to: Beatles ONE
Okay, so yesterday I went to Barnes and Noble and was dismayed to discover that they do not carry David Sedaris' early work on AudioCD. I was looking forward to purchasing Barrel Fever or Naked on AudioCD to pass the time on my drive home to Iowa City over Thanksgiving Break. Mostly this is in anticipation of his visit to IU in April. I will have read everything by then, I hope. So, after browsing the Essay section, I settled upon the print copy of Holidays on Ice, and later, got the promise from a friend to borrow Barrel Fever from her in exchange for Dress Your Family. I will turn to Amazon.com for the AudioCD of Naked though. And also for Sedaris' play that he cowrote with his sister Amy. But, back to the story at hand. So, while I'm at Barnes and Noble, because, well, let's face it, I LOVE books, I can't help but scan the other stacks looking for new works and authors to read. I did stumble on a new little gem so far. It's titled How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theater. The guy, Marc Acito, has a quality and style similar to Sedaris actually. It's a very funny novel, and I've already found myself laughing outloud and I'm only 100 pages in. So I recommend it based on the first 100 pages, and will give you my full report. Until then, I will have to close this journal, cause I'm going out to hit the town for some karaoke action! woo hoo!

Tom Forsythe and Me

Listening to - Leroy - New World - Ten Things I Hate About You Soundtrack
Watching - Home Improvement with the sound 0ff - very counterintuitive I know...

So, the thursday trend of sleeping in continues. I didn't get up until 11:30 today. woo hoo. I was a VERY good girl though. *Remember When I Told ya'll I had that HALO?* hehe. I got all of my reading done for tomorrow morning's class, even caught up on the reading for it last week (which I'd skipped). I got all the immunization things taken care of, so I can register. I worked on the 524 lab. I squared away the contact information for my internship for the summer. I went running, did abs, AND even lifted a bit. I also finally finished putting up some new decorations around the room (no halloween ones yet, I'll put something on my door soon though) but, I bought that whacky sticky tacky stuff this weekend (because I have NO masking tape around here), so my walls won't seem so bare. There's a hilarious artist that I discovered in Art News a few weeks back when Traci and I were high on caffeine and doing our 401 at B&N. He was being sued by Mattel for his "representations of Barbie dolls." Well, having taken Art, Law and Ethics last sem at Iowa and finding copyright law fascinating, my curiosity was piqued. I "googled" for his website (and man, do I LOVE google).
http://creativefreedomdefense.org/index2.htm is Tom Forsythe's homepage...read and look and laugh and enjoy.
How this pertains to me: well, I've put up a few thumbnail images above the computer. I'm particularly fond of "fondue a la Barbie" and "Oster Dive" as well as "Missionary Barbie". As the disclaimer says, "it's derivative work" so it's freedom of expression. I often think, if I wasn't going to be a librarian, a professional writer, professonial photographer, or museum professional, I'd add lawyer to the mix and defend artists. :)
Now I am going to be a further good girl and work on some other assignments, because tomorrow night I'm going to the opera with Christa - yay! I'll get to hear people that actually know how to sing! and it's Tchaikovsky, and IU so should be fabulous! So exciting!