canterbury tales

Today a student came to the reference desk asking for a copy of The Canterbury Tales.
And in an instant, I was taken back to Mr. Rainey's 12th grade English class, when we had to memorize the first stanza of the prologue in middle English. I then began reciting for this poor student the first few lines, which are all that I can remember. She seemed embarrassed for me. Grownups are so weird.

For your reading pleasure:

WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth	5
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open ye,	10
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages:
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmers for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende	15
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.

Fire, Fire Everywhere

As if the air quality in Southern California wasn't bad enough, we are having wildfires all over LA and Orange Counties. I've been sitting in my interior office at work, and kept thinking I was having olfactory hallucinations or something (there was a man I helped earlier who had really bad body odor, and it seemed like maybe the smell attached itself to my clothes), but then I walked outside and realized that the smell is from the fires. Although the fires are more than 30 miles away, the winds are blowing the smoke this way. It's really awful.

sigh

I just finished writing a blog post and it got lost! I'm using the new Blogger gadget on iGoogle and it apparently refreshed all by itself and lost my entry in the process. Grrr.

Speaking of iGoogle, have you seen the new iGoogle format? I'm still getting used to it. Not sure I like it. The artist themes are kind of cool, but some of them are so busy, that it's too distracting and overstimulating.

On Friday I broke my pinky toe after walking into a shelf. Over a third of my left foot is all kinds of purple. Gorgeous! My only hope is that it is more comfortable to walk on by Friday when my sister Anne comes to visit. Yay Anne!

A day of annoyances

It started when I got to work this morning and the zipper on my skirt broke and could not be repaired. Annoying. It is only the second time I've worn it, but I've had it too long to return it. Annoying. Grrr. I taped it back together with book tape, but that wasn't holding very well, so I ended up stapling it - which meant that i was getting poked by staples all day long. Annoying.

Then I had a meeting with the benefits rep from the County so that could get signed up for insurance. It all went well until I found out that because I got signed up in October, my benefits won't start until DECEMBER. Annoying. And the reason I didn't get signed up until October is because THEY never contacted me...not through any fault of mine. I started Sept 8 and today is a full month from my start day. Ridiculous! And annoying! (And yes, I intend to talk to my supervisor about contacting the county to address the issue.)

And finally, I went to IKEA tonight to return a couple of things and to pick up some little shelf pegs for the bookcase I bought because 5 of them were missing from the box (annoying). The return went just fine, but then they told me they didn't have any of the little pegs available. BUT, if I had my receipt, they could do a return on my item and open a new box to give me the pegs out of there. WTF???? Are you serious? You have about 500 little bins with parts from your various furniture and you don't have any of these pegs available? I didn't have my receipt with me from that item, so I couldn't get the damn pegs. Annoying. So now I have to go back to get them...although I'm definitely going to a different IKEA.

...SIGH...

Cute Toby

I haven't really taken many pictures since I moved here, but I do have a few new ones of Miss Toby laying around (and looking cute) in various places in the apartment.

Can't believe it's been a month

I moved down here on Sept 4...that was a month ago yesterday. Crazy. It's still in the 70s most days here, and sometimes even warmer. It's just not right. It's October! And I think since I've been here there have only been 2 overcast days. WTF?

So I just had my first week at my library. It was alright. It's pretty slow in terms of getting some responsibility handed over to me, but I'm pushing for it as much as I can. Everyone there has been very welcoming and helpful, which is great. I share an office with the Teen/Children's Librarian. Eventually there will be a third librarian sharing with us.

Thursday night I ventured up to Pasadena to go dancing at Lindy Groove. Kristin Buxton, who moved here from Seattle last year, was celebrating her birthday, so I figured I'd go see what it was all about. And since I didn't have to work on Friday, I didn't mind being out late (although I still was home by 11pm...what a wuss). I danced a bit, and folks were pretty nice. But mostly I just felt old and tired. :(

Toby's limp is much improved and we play Q-tip fetch a little bit every day.

I miss Seattle and everyone I know there.

Anyone for a game of Q-tip fetch?

Imagine my joy when Toby came running up to me tonight and dropped a Qtip stick at my feet. Fetch Toby, fetch! While she is still limping, it is apparently not bothering her much.

First day at library #2 was good. The librarians there are great, and I got to do reference for much of the day. Tomorrow, I'm in a training meeting meeting all morning, then I'm at a very small library for the afternoon.

When my mom was here helping me unpack, she unearthed my Godfrey doll. I couldn't begin to explain to her why I have a clown doll. For those familiar with Godfrey, you get it. For those who aren't I don't think I can explain it, but you can check him out here: Godfrey Daniels. I heart Godfrey!