Household Opera

Mapping and transportation hacks, #253

I've been trying to figure out the bus system for my soon-to-be neck of the woods, and have thus far found the regional transit agency's website a tad challenging to navigate. So I made up my own transit map instead, with the bus routes marked on it, plus grocery stores and coffee shops and sundry other necessities of life. Which I'm linking to, just for fun:

View Larger Map

Just in case any of you happen to be in New London and want to get around without a car. (I'm still resisting the prospect of car ownership, because, well, $5-a-gallon gas, anyone? At least the current oil crisis means non-car-owning people like me aren't total freaks anymore. Though I'm studiously trying not to think too hard about the implications of peak oil, because it scares the living daylights out of me.)

Speaking of transit agency web sites: I'm perennially surprised by how many of them don't bother to furnish, say, a map of where all the routes go. SEPTA, for instance, has a clickable map of its regional rail and subway lines, but not of its bus lines, of which there are lots and lots. You're apparently just supposed to guess which routes might go near your destination and then look at the maps for each one separately, which is a right pain. And in the age of readily available free mapping tools, where anyone can whip up a map gizmo like the one I just made, why on earth aren't public transit agencies doing something similar?

Which is not to say that I won't miss many things about SEPTA, like having transit options on Sundays. I'm thinking about re-learning to ride a bike, a skill I haven't worked on in more than twenty years. But the nice thing about New London is that it's compact enough to bike everywhere.

Wardrobe advice bleg

[Warning: I'm going to talk about clothes for this entire post. If you're looking for serious intellectual content, you may want to look elsewhere.]

I just won a small academic award from the iSchool. The prospect of a minor financial windfall, combined with the prospect of an "economic stimulus check" from the feds, has gotten me thinking about upgrading my wardrobe. Of course, one of the nice things about being a librarian is that one generally gets to work in places that don't hew to a strict dress code; all the same, though, one does want to defy the cardigan-wearing, ultra-dowdy, bun-haired librarian stereotypes. Or at least I do. And if all goes well with this job search (touching wood as I type, which is a bit awkward), I'll be starting at a new workplace in the fall, and that seems as good an occasion as any to reassess my clothes closet.

Trouble is, I suffer from Don't Like What Anybody Sells Syndrome. A lot of women's clothes in my usual price range seem chintzy and badly made, and even when I contemplate laying out extra money, I never seem to have any luck. Whenever I go out looking for a specific thing, it always turns out that Madison Avenue has decreed that what I want is out of style. (Example: last year, when I wanted just a plain white button-down shirt, I couldn't find anything that didn't have ruffles all over it. Or pleats. Or puffs. Or bows.) And don't even get me started on shoes.

So, Reader: where does one go to find professional-looking but not stuffy women's attire, without breaking the bank on bespoke tailoring or designer labels? I like black (goes with everything!), with the occasional colorful shirt, and I like my clothes to look reasonably fitted. I prefer pants to skirts, and I think there ought to be a law against pants without pockets. Ann Taylor is all right, up to a point, but their clothes often strike me as a bit boring and more corporate-looking than I'd like. Any advice, people of the internets?

In which I finally get to breathe a bit

Over the past couple of weeks, I've had two campus-visit job interviews and one phone interview in the space of eight or nine days. I don't know exactly when the Great Job Search of '08 will end, but I should know more next month. Most of it is unbloggable at this point, but I've been a bit surprised to discover how much easier it's gotten for me to be "on" all day when I'm being interviewed. I still want to collapse and sleep for twelve hours afterward, but being interviewed isn't the big intimidating energy-drain it was the first time I tried it.

Other things I've learned: interviewers' questions are much easier to answer with several years of relevant experience plus most of an MLS under my belt; I've lost all vestiges of the fear of public speaking, if indeed I was ever afraid of public speaking; and ironing my interview-day shirt in the hotel room the night before the interview is a surprisingly calming thing to do. Polishing my shoes has the same effect.

Last weekend was for interview-prepping. This weekend is for decompressing, getting my suits dry-cleaned, doing a bit of knitting (a clever collapsible baby hat for a friend who's having a baby this summer), catching up on homework, watching bits of Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica, and seeing the final Met HD broadcast of the season (Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment). Also, on the recommendation of Kristine from Serendipities, I'm reading Scarlett Thomas's The End of Mr. Y, which is kind of like Robert W. Chambers's The King in Yellow meets Being John Malkovich (a cursed book that supposedly kills its readers, a plot that involves portals into other people's heads), only more British and with a lot of quantum physics thrown in.

Catch you all later. I may even have time to blog a bit more in the next few weeks.

Not dead. Just resting.

I'm glancing back in during my job-search-madness-month hiatus to say: Hello, blogosphere, I've missed you! I'm still busy, still neck-deep in readings and assignments, and prepping a couple of job talks while getting ready for another phone interview. But I'll try to post intermittently while the rush is on.

Things that are making life easier right now:

• short-sleeve weather and sunshine
• getting back in touch and/or staying in touch with friends old and new
• the GTD greatness that is Remember the Milk (I can feel myself relax a bit every time I check off a task, and I can text-message it if I remember something urgent while I'm away from my computer, and it allows both tagging and Boolean searching — what's not to love?)
• a few cherry blossom branches in a vase in my living room, which, hopefully, will come all the way into bloom at some point
• Capogiro outdoing itself yet again (latest favorite gelato flavors: chrysanthemum tea and dark chocolate with candied orange peel, and I can't wait to try the green mango with chili)
• having done my taxes early this year, for the first time in, like, ever
• the prospect of a vacation week in early May — granted, I'll still have classes to go to that week, but sleeping late and lazing around the house will be such a relief!
• weeding my book collection and my clothes closet, and getting rid of my backlog of New Yorker issues

In which life gets really, really busy

Spring quarter at Drexel — a.k.a. my very last quarter of library school — started this week. I've got ten more weeks to go, which seems like no time at all. But during those ten weeks, I'm going to be working, taking two reading-intensive courses and a job practicum, continuing my job search, going for a job interview (and hopefully a few more after that), thinking about the logistics of moving to wherever I end up moving to, spending at least one day this month as a prospective juror (and if they select me, who knows how many more), revising my Questioning Authority conference paper... and maybe also finding time to sleep, somewhere in there. Maybe.

So if I don't blog all that often between now and mid-June, I hope you'll all understand. But I'm thinking this will be a good quarter to practice my speed-reading skills and cash in some vacation time.

[Update: Make that two job interviews. This is going to take some schedule-juggling, but it's exciting.]

Unsent letters, #481

Dear tourists,

I'm glad you've decided to come to Philadelphia. Really. I think it's cool that you're here instead of some of the more obviously touristy cities. And kudos to you for leaving the precincts of Independence Mall and the Liberty Bell to explore Reading Terminal Market; I'm quite fond of it, so I'm glad you decided to visit. And if I were you, I'd no doubt have a camera too.

However. You might want to bear in mind two things: one, that Reading Terminal Market, especially on a Saturday afternoon, is usually jammed with locals looking for dinner ingredients or a bite to eat; and, two, that smack in the middle of a crowded aisle is really not the best place for a photo op. Nor is it the best place to come to a dead stop and just stand there gazing about, oblivious to the less-enthralled people trying to squeeze past you. (Oh, and the same applies, with only slightly less urgency, to busy sidewalks.)

Thank you, enjoy your visit, and have a nice day.

[All right, I feel better now. In other news, I plan on ringing in the new year by making a favorite recipe (chicken braised in a pot with root vegetables and lots and lots of garlic), assuming I can fight my way through the crowds at the market — and by watching the Mummers' Parade, assuming I can drag my lazy self down to Center City before 9 in the morning. If not, I might be watching it on TV while cleaning the apartment instead.

Happy New Year, everyone!]

The end of the term, at long last

Final project status: Four down, none to go. Fall quarter at Drexel is officially done. Yay!

A weekend of hosting, cooking, shopping for relatives, and general decompression awaits. Catch you all later.

Crickets chirping

Boy, it's quiet around here. (...Too quiet, as they always say in the movies right before something dramatic and loud happens.) Is everyone else in the midst of end-of-term/pre-holiday madness too?

My head is so crammed with final projects — current status: two down, two (both underway) to go — that I can't even think of anything entertaining to say. How about yourselves?

Things to be thankful for

It's November, it's cold (the kind of cold you don't notice at first but that gets into your bones nonetheless), it's rainy, SEPTA's regional rail trains are all running late because it's rainy and there are leaves on the tracks, there's way too much to do before the end of this term at Drexel, and some of the finer mysteries of faceted thesaurus construction are  still eluding me.

However:

I don't have to spend Thanksgiving weekend grading papers. I will never again have to spend Thanksgiving weekend grading papers. This, alone, makes up most if not all of the above.

Also, I just got a maddeningly sticky bit of CSS to work out, and with any luck, I'll be pointing to my final project for the web design class before too long. So, yes: there are definitely things to be thankful for, even in a month of crappy weather and looming deadlines.

Random feline bullets of fall

It seems like the universe has been strewing my path with kittens lately. To wit:

• The barbershop a few blocks from where I live has adopted a marmalade-striped kitten, which is already starting to grow up into a marmalade tabby cat. Often when I pass by, I'll see the kitten napping in the store window, or sometimes sitting outside with a leash on its collar attached to a chair.
• Yesterday on the train home from work I sat next to a young woman who was smuggling another marmalade kitten out of her dorm room in a big suitcase. She had one end of the suitcase partly unzipped so she could entertain the kitten by dangling a bit of string through the opening. I was taken aback by her use of the suitcase as a cat carrier, but the kitten seemed to be taking the whole thing quite calmly.

I think the universe wants me to get a cat.

In other miscellaneous good news, this week's oppressive un-fall-like heat has been decisively lifted by a series of heavy rains, the air is now properly crisp and cool, my latest BPAL order arrived unexpectedly early, today is the start of a three-day weekend, and I'm going to see the Opera Company of Philadelphia's production of Rigoletto tonight. Life, in short, is good.