Today's library adventure
Today the New York Times did a photo shoot with me at the library. My cheapness, bred and nurtured in me by my parents, is finally receiving its due. What happened was, a writer was doing a story on the high price of textbooks and how students are dealing, so I volunteered my many techniques, which included: Buying used copies on Amazon, getting Colliculus to hunt them down at his university, getting Colliculus to seek them out at another American college through interlibrary loan, and, as the program progressed, not buying books at all on the grounds that I would never read them. And, the point of the photo shoot, getting them at the public library -- as soon as humanly possible so that my classmates couldn't beat me to it. Although it always turned out my eagerness was completely unnecessary -- nobody was ever like, "I tried to find this at the public library but some asshole had it checked out!"
In the interest of journalistic truthfulness, I had to find an actual book from an actual course. I couldn't remember which ones I'd gotten out of the library, so I just pulled a name from memory and found an early edition of it on the stacks. The photographer took all kinds of shots from all kinds of angles. The oddest thing about it was that no one looked at us oddly. That, and there was a can of Copenhagen on one of the shelves that we had to move. Yes, in the marketing section.
Tis the season of moving
Everyone's moving this weekend. The Monsignor's Florida-motel-style dwelling is being demolished and he's moving to a brighter, happier, demolition-free apartment a couple blocks away. Across the street from his new place, Pangaea is moving to Takoma Park. I went to her going-away party and was heartbroken, once again, that the vagaries of academic life introduce me to so many awesome people who are destined to leave within a year or two. Queen of the Maye is moving to Pangaea's place. The Coxies are moving to Taylor Street and Buffalo, respectively. T-Bent is moving to Indiana, but that's not quite as bad. (I mean bad for me, not her.) Her 2-bedroom apartment with parking and a pool is something like $500 a month! I won't even get into the East Coast shakeup going down these days.
Last but most significant in my life, Darling Angel is moving in here, to Appliance Lane. She bought a condo but construction isn't done yet and she needs a place to crash for a month or two. When I was a child, having my sister live with me would have been my worst nightmare. I may even have had plans to move to an opposite coast. Now, though, we get along just fine. Yesterday I moved a bunch of stuff around in the guest room and discovered half a closet that's free, with proper use of under-the-bed space. Half a closet! Plus she's a really really good baker and a good cook in general. G the cat loves her, even though it's only because she's allergic to him, so the four of us should have some happy (if crowded) times ahead.
Note to prospective visitors: We'd still love to have you visit this fall, but you won't get your own room until sometime in October. We do still have a comfy, unoccupied couch. We may even have to reclaim our second shower from closet to usable bathing site.
It has been such a long time since I posted! Work has been crazy, crazy, crazy. I go in early, I get home around 8, I work some more at home. Plus last week I went on three trips. Over the first weekend I went to Minneapolis to hang out with dermatologists. Then I went to Seattle to interview a rheumatologist. Then I went to Atlanta to visit my friend from forever ago, whom I will call Hard-Core.
This week I didn't have to go anywhere except Skokie, to interview a dermatologist. His wife is a gastroenterologist, so he identified with my office debate about whose job is grosser. His wife always wins.
I won't tell about all of them right now. But I will tell about Seattle.
In addition to the rheumatologist, we had to interview a woman who had a horrible rheumatic disease. Her job was to talk about how awful her disease was, followed by how my client's drug had changed her life. That's the actual quote we look for: "ZEROVAX changed my life." That holds true regardless of what drug we're talking about -- unless it's an antibiotic or a cancer drug, in which case what we really want is, "VAROZEX saved my life." I don't know why drug names have to be in all caps, but they do.
The place we interviewed her, Washington Park Arboretum, is like something out of a movie -- lush and green and full of exotic trees, with lots of water and birds. And Seattle in August couldn't be nicer.
Our heroine, A, gave us one shot where she had to walk up from the pond wearing a heavy backpack. As she walked up the bank, I noticed that the ducks swimming around looked . . . disappointed. They kind of followed her, and when they got to dry land they retreated and swarmed about irritably.
Later, when we were waiting for the camera guys to set up, we all sat on the grass. Bad move. Next thing we knew, the ducks had stormed the beach and invaded the lawn. They circled us, pecking at bags and equipment and generally looking pissed off that we had dared to show up without food.
Nor did our video interview slow them down. The shot was close-up, so you couldn't see them milling around A's feet, but they were there, milling around A's feet and the tripod and everywhere, for 45 straight minutes. Every so often, during some poignant part of A's story, you'd hear them loudly insisting that we throw down the grub. The sound guy had to stop us a couple of times and say, "Y'know, we got a 'quack' in there," and we'd debate whether it could pass for ordinary ambient noise, like you would get in any outdoor shot, or if we needed to redo that part of the interview.
Since I wasn't actually doing the shoot, just overseeing it, and since I wasn't the client, my job was to scare the hell out of the ducks. But they were unflappable (heh heh), and some kayakers advised me not to scare them too bad or I'd risk a fine.
Needless to say I'm looking forward to reading the transcript.
Oh, and then we went to the doctor's office and found that in the previous hour and a half, he had developed a hopeless case of laryngitis. He obviously felt really bad about it, and no amount of sound adjustments or lozenges helped. So the video producer is going out there again today to re-shoot.
Luckily my client didn't insist on my being there a second time, because this weekend Little Guest is coming to visit! I bought some fine-looking hot-smoked Copper River Salmon when I was out West, so he's in for a treat.
