I can’t stand to look at my face when I don’t know where you are.

You know, I’m not really sure how much I’m going to continue here. I started (damn, Tiff, the auto-correct on this Word is fast. And I like that your name is an autotype)
Sorry.
I started PoBaL when I moved to the last town and hadn’t been at the last job that long. I needed a way to vent. I needed a place to share all my random theories about pop culture, teen librarianing, etc.
And that’s not to say I won’t still need that, but I’m definitely in a different place now, mentally, physically, and professionally. So, you know, don’t be surprised if I’m not as verbose around these parts as I used to be. At least for a while, while I settle into things. I kind of suspected this would happen, actually. It was a big part of the thinking behind doing nablopomo (even if I didn’t finish). I figured, even if I was going out or slowing down, I might as well do it with a bang. Right?
Speaking of my physical place, damn! I got out of shape over the past two years. Everyone remember that this was really my first experience with car-commuting, and living in an environment where everyone drove. Compared to a lot of my other moves, this one wasn’t that bad, but it totally kicked my ass. Luckily, my neighbors here are much less shifty than they had been in the last town, and one was nice enough to help schlep boxes up 3 flights.
A little feminine wiles didn’t hurt, either. But I’ve been getting the impression more and more that this particular Wacky Neighbor* would have helped either way. And that’s the way I was raised: you see someone carrying heavy shit, you offer your services.
I walked around for an hour and a half (at least) today and it felt so nice. Even nicer was that I wasn’t the only person enjoying the late fall/early winter sunniness. And I bought the latest Rogue Wave album. It’s really good. And the hill I live on now isn’t as steep as it seems when you’re driving up it.** This is nice when you’re a girl like me, who grew up on the kind of hill you could pause at the bottom of, to look straight up and think, “damn, why didn’t I wait for the 67F?”

*Melissa has some theories about this particular neighbor that will probably be a part of a future blog post.
**Plus, there’s like an inch thick layer of salt on it—good to know that they overboard when it comes to iciness. Now I just have to convince everyone else on my street to turn their wheels the correct way when they park, so no one’s car comes drifting into mine. Which actually happened to my dad.

Gold teeth and a curse for this town.

Who wants to see moving pics? Or, well, pics of cats in boxes and such.

***
So, you may have noticed I'm back. Thanks to Tiff, whose laptop I'm borrowing (and typing horribly on) until I can manage to get one of my own.

I cleaned out my toaster:At Melissa's, the boys taunted poor Miss Mabel:

This one has nothing to do with moving. I conned my mom into buying me the Playmobile advent calendar awhile ago. The first few days are a leafless tree, a black bird with its wings stretched, and an owl. So, you know, fucking creepiest Christmas ever.
My new kitchen:
Legs in my old kitchen's cabinets:
Facing a potential box shortage, I packed some things in my microwave. Not, however, including my microwave plate. In other words, I'm a moron. Legs investigates:
Moving with cats=cats in boxes. A lot.

Replace the flesh (which is weak) with steel (which is strong).

Why do I always wind up forgetting and putting my 3 heaviest books in the same box?
As I was slogging stuff up into my new apartment yesterday, I did that thing you always do when you move: fantasize about throwing it all away.
It's especially an attractive option if, like me, all of your most prized posessions and favorite things were cheap and are a pain to move.
Take those 3 heavy books, for instance. One of them was a gift, so it's price isn't of my concern. It's the nice big Yoko Ono retrospective catalog from a few years ago. Fucker weighs like 4 times the weight of your average big fancy art book.
Book #2 is a yearbook from a big famous military school (whose name is escaping me now--Naval Academy? something...) I found in the trash outside a giant Squirrel Hill house one day. It's from the early 70s and is pretty damn sweet.
And the third book is a world atlas/encyclopedia from the early 1960s. I love this book. I think it was a dollar.
So, what I need all of you to do is remind me. Everytime I gripe about how much junk I have, and how heavy it all is, remind me of how much I love all my stupid books and records and Jimmy's Robot World coffee mug and plush things that shouldn't be plush.
***
Then, this afternoon, Mom and I went to Kawaii and I bought more stuff I'll have to move (plus a present for Tiff). In my defense, though, I did need a 2007 planner and weird Japanese school/office supplies for my new job.

Vase of carnations from central Ohio.

In the words of the lovely Stacey, I am so punished right now.
Let me explain.
I was supposed to leave work at 3:30 yesterday afternoon. I wound up finishing work at 3:45. I wound up leaving the library at 4.
Then I drove around town for 2 hours looking for 2 large bottles of reisling. Does reisling even come in a large bottle? At one place, the proprietor started to get on me about the disparate types of wine I was attempting to buy (also a bottle of cabernet sauvignon). With my last ounce of class, I managed to not precede my explanation of the different people drinking different wines with "Listen, Bub..."
Then I went out to dinner with Stacey, Melissa, and Ashleigh, and that was pretty fabulous. As was the strawberry margarita.
Then I went home and proceded to pack my car full of as many boxes, crates, etc., of books, records, cds, fabric scraps, legos, etc., as I could. Pausing for a lengthy and repetitive conversation with my one remaining sketchy neighbor about our crap landlord.
This morning, I was up at 6:30 and on the road around 9. First I had to drop my apartment key with Melissa, who has once again agreed to look in on the jerks from time to time while I'm gone. What can I say? I think she's a saint, actually.
I spent a good part of the first leg of the drive taking my life in my hands and texting while driving.
Oh, did I mention I woke up with the beginnings of a cold this morning?
I hit Thanksgiving, accident traffic, and rush hour in 3 of the 4 large cities I pass through to get to my parents' house.
And all those boxes of heavy, heavy books and records and things? They all went up 3 flights of narrow stairs into my next apartment. By me.
I'm going to go fall over now.
On the plus side, though, I did hear "Do They Know It's Christmas" for the first time this year around Washington, PA.

Ah, ah ah ah, Table Five! Table Five.*

Whenever I move, I weed and discard stuff I don't really want anymore. I'd sell it in a yard sale--or, more accurately, an abandoned-lot-down-the-block sale--but to be able to sell my stuff, there would have to be more than a handful of people here interested in ironic coffee mugs and pretentious film theory.
Actually, what I usually do is get a big box and label it "FREE STUFF" since I can't be bothered to have a sale or get it to a Goodwill. I'm also usually discarding stuff up to the point of departure, and why take up precious movie space with crap I don't want?
Plus, I know I always enjoy pawing through crap people have left on the sidewalk. My friend Nate in Philadelphia found Marquee Moon on vinyl that way. I was terribly jealous.
Here's a list of the kind of stuff I'm getting rid of. If anything catches anyone's eye, let me know. We may be able to work something out. Otherwise, everyone in my call list will continue to get text messages saying things like, "Remember that black Hilfiger bag I have? Do you want it?"

• The DVD of Gosford Park I got for free when I opened my bank account here.
• a Care Bears mug. I'm keeping the Care Bear Cousins one.
• a black belt with glittery silver skulls-n-crossbones I got at a Philadelphia clothing swap party
• the Clash on Broadway box, on tape
• a biography of Stanley Kubrick that took so long to come out with an updated volume after he died that we went have a semester without the damn text. Also, the biographer is so far up Kubrick's ass, I'm frankly impressed he was physically able to write. Act fast on this one if you want it: (Former) Wacky Neighbor Billy has also expressed interest.
• More librarian tote bags than you can shake a stick at!
• the Beach Boys double record I bought at the Squirrel Hill Record Exchange that lived in my car (this was Midge) for months
• a bunch of old lady clothes I got conned into accepting through liberal use of the word "vintage". I'm keeping the bright pink and yellow plaid cape, though.
• shoes like the espadrilles I was H&M hypnotized into buying** or the black pumps I used to learn to walk in heels with, stomping around my Lexington apartment. I ordered them from Fredericks of Hollywood, and I'd be willing to bet whomever lives at that address is still getting at least one catalog a week.

And why do I have so many goddam phone books, anyway!?

*-ahem- Disco Stu likes disco music.
**Seem this is why I need to always shop at H&M with a loudmouthed, judgemental sister and/or friend.

The mixture is all of us and we're still mixing.

I went to the new city this weekend to look at apartments. Because I'm a huge fucking stereotype, I rock the NPR in any city. In fact, I've actually figured out vaguely what time I should drive through the middle of Ohio when I go home for holidays, so I can listen to This American Life and Le Show.
And yet, I always forget about Louisville's 2 goddam hours of What Do You Know., which Cara and I like to call "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me for people without a sense of humor".
There's also this show I hadn't heard of yet, called Weekend America. It annoyed me. A lot.
For starters, it's the weekend before a ginormous election (that I'm not going to be voting in, but that's a story for another day), so of course that's all anyone's talking about. They had a "blue stater, red stater, and a purpler stater" divvy up things, like an argument about whether the Hubble telescope is more blue or red state.
I hate that red/blue state crap. I mean, I live in a--wait, red, right? It's confusing when you think of yourself as a red diaper baby, but red means the opposite thing now, I guess? I don't fucking know--
In any event, I hate the idea that everyone in the state thinks that way. It's like all this "Hoosier values" bullshit. Technically, I'm a Hoosier. I also think 2 girls should be able to marry each other if they want. Is that a Hoosier value now?
So anyway, I'm driving, and it occurs to me--how much of this red/blue crap is a function of the electoral college?* If it was a popular vote, maybe we could stop pretending that everyone in New York City is in love with Hilary Clinton, and everyone in Indiana thinks she's the devil.
***
And it's not enough to offend the good little liberal in me; after this mess, Weekend America pulls out some new cds from the past week, including the produced-by-Ryan-Adams Willie Nelson album. The "Amazing Grace" cover was pretty interesting, but kind of reminded me of how after Jerry Garcia died all the hippies acted like Bob Dylan was their new messiah. But with Johnny Cash instead of Jerry Garcia. The worst, though (oh, I should probably also mention I'm not much of a Ryan Adams fan...), was the song that started with just Willie and a guitar, and I'm down, and it's good, and then the chorus starts and Ryan has all this "rockin'" start and he didn't adjust Willie's voice and it just gets smushed out.
Yuck.
***
Oh, and I did find a place.

*Yes, I'm perfectly aware that I'm the last blogger in the universe to bitch about the electoral college, and that it's totally 2000 to do so.

She's got tofu the size of Texas.

The thing about looking for a new place to live is, you open yourself up to meeting and talking with all sorts of strange people. I think I might have told you guys about the time I was accompanying a friend while she looked at apartments, including one whose tenants had clearly not been told about the visit, as they were in the middle of getting it on when we all trooped into the bedroom.
Like a lot of the weird occurences and people that flock to me when I'm least appreciative of them, there was more than a bit of the faux and/or washed-up hippie about those two crazy kids. I've also lived above washed-up hippie homeschoolers and been drawn into extremely revealing (for her) phone conversations with rabid Dave Matthews fans, for example.
Now, this isn't to say that I haven't had some hippie-ish friends that I've loved. In fact, until I moved here, I've pretty much always had a hippie girl buddy. Like my super-awesome junior year dorm floor-mate Liz, who was always a good person to visit if you wanted to make a huge dinner (we had a teeny little kitchen on our floor. In fact, most of my friends from that year were girls I hung out with in the kitchen while we waited for pasta water to boil or Jiffy corn muffins to bake.), bitch about a women's studies class, or concoct some insane reason to take two buses to Michael's. I've also had good luck with friends of the so-punk-they're-hippie variety, with the added bonus that so-punk-they're-hippies are usually too surly to have any of the above problems I've had with hippie-types.
But, of course, I was still surprised at the level of flakiness I got when I called a woman about an apartment last night. Granted, she wasn't as bad as the gentleman I spoke with before her, who felt that it was necessary to have the tv on at TOP volume while speaking with a potential tenant*. However, it doesn't really bode that well when the best thing someone can say about an apartment is how cute the windows are, over and over.
She was also surprised at my gas/electric stove question, and then kept saying how sure she was that it was gas. That's when she shifted gears and began to tell me how small the kitchen was. But cute.
Then she asked me if the jerks were declawed. Which, hell no. But I mentioned that they don't tend to scratch much, which isn't really a lie if you've completely forgotten about that old mattress, which I had. Then she starts describing the floors of the apartment, and trying to remember if there were "Berber rugs". At least I think that's what she said. I should also maybe mention here that everything I know about Berbers comes from an episode of Tony Bourdain's A Cook's Tour. They make tasty-looking bread, those Berbers. And roast sheep (or was it a goat?) in pits in the ground. Tasty-looking sheep.
I didn't remember any mention of rugs or cats from the episode, so I basically did the phone equivalent of nodding noncommitally while thinking, Get on with it, lady. But I'm really wondering, if she so didn't want her cute, tiny apartment scratched, why not just say no pets? I'm a librarian; I know how to limit searches to get the most valid results for my query. Had she, like another listing I found, said something like "one tiny quiet declawed cat which isn't a cat at all, but is actually a kitty robot like that creepy thing Cara has," I never would have called.
Some of the notes I made while on the phone with Berber rug lady:
"only declawed cats!? or not"
"kinda flaky?"
"deck"
"too flaky!"

Stepping down off my platform shoes.

I figure starting this whole blog-every-day-in-November rigmarole with my big announcement is a good idea.
You know how I'm always talking about moving? Well, I am. Moving, that is.
I've accepted a job elsewhere. At the end of November, me, my boxes of other people's prom glasses, library discards, records, and thrift store mugs, and the jerks, will be getting the hell out of town.
I've taken a job as the teen librarian at a brand new branch in a multi-branch system where there are other teen librarians, in the suburbs up against a large city with other teen librarians.
I've moved a lot. I'm not particularly looking forward to the actual moving part, especially since the last time I moved more than 3 blocks away* with cats, my grandparents took my sister and I to McDonalds to keep us out from under everyone's feet. There was a train to play on at the McDonalds. I had just turned four, and I swear I remember watching my older cousins walk up my new, big-ass hill with Callie and Melina in their arms.
I'm also kind of dreading the apartment hunting, which I think I may be starting this weekend. For all its issues, I really like my current place. When the heat is working, that is. It gets a crazy-ton of light, has hardwood floors, a big balcony, and a gas stove. That only half the burners work on, but still--not electric = I can cook on it.
I don't necessarily need a place the size of this apartment. Granted, my kitchen is kind of huge, but there's no counter space to speak of. And a lot of the size comes from the long-hallway-with-rooms-coming-off layout. And that extra room, while nice for crafty storage type behaviors, is mostly a mess catch-all that I'm really dreading having to organize/trash half of/pack. So if I could find a one bedroom with hardwood floors and/or dark-colored carpeting, decent water pressure, a gas range, and a decent-sized living room, I'll be happy. Extra points for balconies, bathrooms without windows, double sinks and/or dishwashers, and a separate water heater from the rest of the building.
Apartment listings just add to the confusion. When I moved here, I was shown several "one bedrooms" that were actually, to my mind, more like studios. And some of the "one bedrooms" I've found on my current search also list a "den/dining room". Maybe it's because I tend to live in student ghettos/kinda sketchy areas, but where I come from, that's a damn 2 bedroom.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the place I lived in the summer after my sophomore year of college, and how much potential that place had. You know, if it hadn't been smack in the heart of College Student Central and stuffy as hell, with decades-old beige carpeting and a frat sticker (not put there by me or any of my roommates) on the toilet. Oh, or the David Hasselhoff picture opposite the toilet, but that's what I get for living with goofy boys.
The front door opened to a longish hallway, with the afore mentioned bathroom at the end. Two decent-sized bedrooms were off to the left. The right side was one big, long room. There was a fireplace with a weird kind of storage area behind it (the tv was in the fireplace, of course. Did I mention the goofy boys and the fact that I was 19?). At the other end of the big room was a kitchen area with a bar, but it was angled so that there was a distinct living room/kitchen/other roomish area set-up. Oh, and there was this kick-ass 1970s chandelier in that other space, hanging dangerously low given the height of at least one of the boys that lived there.**
Also, there was an excellent cleaning products still life that Conor thrifted at the Red White and Blue before it got a big head and starting overpricing the hell out of everything.
So if I could find a set-up kind of like that, without all the roommates, the grubtastic couch (that we once built a fort out of when we were all bored), the broken air conditioning, or the shitty carpeting, that'd be great.
The goofy boys are welcome to visit, of course.

*Ah, the Tiff/Jessy/Jenny move, literally down the street.
**Jason and I once had the following conversation:
Jason: "You aren't that short. You're not that far from my height."
Me: "um..."

Nobody writes them like they used to, so it may as well be me.

I've been workin' on my resume
All the live long day
I've been workin on my resume
'cause if I don't get out of this town I'm going to become even more bitter and hateful and disgust the only friend I've got here...uh, day.
Can't you hear the people shouting
Rise up so early in the morn
('cause I didn't go out last night because what's there to do, who's there to do it with & I've got no money)
***
It's no Anime Club theme sung (sorta) to the tune of "Animal Shapes" or "Din-ner for Legs and John-ny" ("Springtime for Hitler") but what do you think?
You know, all the miserable songwriters I listen to, you'd think I'd be better at this.
Where's Paul Westerberg when I need him?

The list I keep talking about. A work in progress.

Yeah, you might not want to read this if we live in the same city. Heads up.
Also, this is a messy diatribe. Really, maybe it's best if we all ignore it. Except for those of you who only know me through the blog.

My ideal city contains:

• useful public transportation (as in, I can use it to get to work)
  
• an Indian buffet
  
• food trucks
  
• a bar with a decent jukebox, played at a volume so I can actually hang out with and talk to the people I'm there with
  
• a used book store
  
• a comic book store that won't habitually screw up my orders/fuck over my library (and their own customers) on Free Comic Book Day*
  
• a record store where I don't have to special order, during the week that their 3rd album comes out, the second album by a big buzzy band
  
• I'd also like it if, if I do have to special order from said record store, if they would actually call and tell me when my order comes in.
  
• Local bands that sound like what I'm listening to now, not what I was listening to several years ago.
  
• (not to say they suck, or that I don't enjoy select local bands, but sometimes you want to hear newer, you know?)
  
• a hole-in-the-wall with cheap falafel
  
• a Stitch'n'Bitch that people actually attend
  
• It would be nice if that bar I mentioned above had booths, too.
  
• pizza by the slice
  
• a familiarity with newcomers. I'm not expecting the Beat Happening song about the new girl in the town, but I definitely don't want the Echo and the Bunnymen song about people being strange.
  
• an understanding that a cute girl can have a good, completely platonic friendship with boys
  
• an alternative freenewsweekly that carries the Jonesin crossword
  
• a nonhippie, nonchain, nonstripmall-located coffee shop, with actual cups, that's open late and on Sundays
  
• Ex-locals that, when hearing you're moving to their town, hook you up with their friends info, so you'll know a few people when you get there.
  
• People who do creative work (artists, writers, musicians, what have you) actually doing that work in the city on a regular basis.
  
• a farmers market
  
• the ability to walk places
  
• people that walk places
  
• a bar with quizzo would be nice
  
• single-and-comfortable-with-it hipsters over 22
  
• people having parties
  
• The knowledge that 3-5 friends on a porch with beer isn't a bad way to spend a summer evening.
  
• Yeah, I'm sure that happens here, but no one ever a)tells me or b)comes when I try to invite them.
  
• When I move to this other town, if I don't know anyone there yet, I'd like for my "Hey I'm new" advances to be met like this:
  
• "Well, some friends and I are going to be at ___ and we'll welcome you into our crew, none of whom knew each other 10 years ago and none of whom are moving away in the next 2 months."
  
• NOT "Well, ___ is a good restaurant/my band is playing tonight, that's something you could do/you should leave."--all said with kind of an assumption that you already have a crew to do those things with.
  
• OR "I'm inviting you to hang out with my friends, but what I'm REALLY doing is showing off to all them this hot girl who made a sexy sexy advance on me."
  
• OR "You think we're hanging out in a group, but my friends think we're a couple."
  
• OR "You think my friends are kind of welcoming you, but really it's just in the ___'s lady friend capacity."
  
• More than one person I trust. (Hey, Melissa--you still there, or do you hate me now?)
  
• an H&M
  
• an art house theater
  
• rents low enough that I can have my own, not-too-shitty apartment
  
• non-chain, reasonably priced stores and restaurants
  
• graduate schools
  
• a hipster-dance-club-type night that's just as much about the hipster peacocking and the spazzing around as it is going home with someone and the slutty girl from your high school's drama
  
• single, childless people my age whose lives are not one big ball of drama
  
• a cheap movie theater
  
• a library who needs a YA-only librarian, and who wants me ('cause, otherwise, why would I leave my library?)

*Why LocalComicStore is dead to me Part B: Did you get a little Wolverine guy on Free Comic Book Day? Not if you lived around here; LocalComicStore saved them to use as a movie theater X3 promotion.

by way of explanation...

This should clear up a few questions. You know, like when Wacky Neighbor looked at me and asked, "Do you date?"

I do so love the blockquote:

There is a skill that most of us city mice have. I call it the Urban Eye Slide. This is the ability to scope out one's surroundings quickly but without actually seeming to look at anything at all. This allows you to find the open seat on a crowded train, to move to the other side of the sidewalk well in advance of people handing out flyers or crappy free newspapers, or to sort of let your eyes skip over the spare-changing homeless guy on the corner, while pasting what you hope is a small wistful sympathetic smile on your face, and three steps past him you will have pangs of conscience about this but sometimes you are just not in the mood. There are downsides to the Urban Eye Slide as well. I have stood on El platforms right next to people I actually know and not seen them.

This is from Mimi Smartypants. I read it in The World According to Mimi Smartypants, which I couldn't really get through (sorry, Tiff), but the accuracy of this bit caught my eye.
If you're my friend and I've ever walked right damn past you, the above quote is why. Sorry.

I give up

It's official. sucks. As much as I hate doing this, the job search is open again. If anyone (particularly in the Louisville or Pittsburgh areas) wants to help me out, they can try and get a librarian fired for me, to open up a position.