Definitely Odd
I got a message from the head of reference the other day. She thanked me for my patience and said she hoped to be able to schedule interviews soon for the inter-library loan job.
But now here's the odd part. She added that I'm a strong candidate, but that there was another strong candidate who had experience with inter-library loan.
So why did she tell me that? Setting me up to be let down?
Like I said, I thought that was odd.
* * * * * * *
I've had so much going on I don't think I've ever mentioned on here that I've been reading The Name of the Rose. I finished it today, and this quote struck a chord:
"Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them."
That certainly reminds me of someone else I know of.

First Class o'the Semester
I had my first class this semester last night. It's called "Selection and Use of Information Sources," and I thought it was going to be on collection development.
The class turned out not to be collection development, but reference. And not just reference, but old-timey reference. We're only supposed to use the internet as a last resort. I'm okay with that, I spent enough time with print resources when I was younger that I doubt I'll have problems with it. The instructor may be a different story. Her defining quote came when she was speaking about working at a reference desk and having a professional demeanour. She said that patrons had told her they thought she was hostile. "They were reading my body language, but they were reading it wrong."
Uh-huh.
And there is a big fat middle-aged lawyer woman in there. I don't understand how this creature passed the bar, much less law school. She came in late. She wasn't on the roll. She'd been dropped because she hadn't paid tuition by the deadline (which was Saturday). She said she'd tried to pay it Saturday but the cashier's office had closed at one and she'd been in class until three. She said they would discover she was a lawyer (ooh, scary). Then after about twenty minutes she said she had to go move her car. She was gone for quite a while. She got back, she said she'd tried to go buy a parking permit, but the campus police station doesn't sell those after five. And she'd had to go find a parking spot on a residential street off campus. She vented her spleen to the entire class on all these topics.
And then later, the instructor took us into the library school library to show us where some things were we would use later, and on the way back to the classroom, the lawyer woman pulled the instructor aside, and I heard her saying, "She's a very quiet, very well-behaved child." And I thought, "Oh, God, she wants to bring her kid to class."
I'll be interested to see if she's still there next week. I think this class may be like my weeknight class last semster, where about six people disappeared a couple weeks into the semester.
Another thing that happened last night - I happened to end up sitting right up front because the room was really too small for the number of people there. When the teacher said she wanted our assignments submitted through the "digital drop box" in Blackboard, several people in the room (including, and most loudly, the gushy lawyer lady) exclaimed they had no idea how to use that. The instructor asked how many people were familiar with using Blackboard. I and a few others raised our hands. Because I was closest, she asked me to explain to the class how to use the dropbox. I said I couldn't remember off the top of my head, I'd have to look at it again. She said, "Guess what. There's a computer lab right next door." So she sent me over there to look at Blackboard, and I came back and stood up front and explained how to use the damn thing. I better get an "A" for class participation for last night.

Crazy in DC
I should really share this story.
Friday night in DC Rob and I went over to Wisconsin Avenue to eat at a place named Sushi-Ko. It was a bit of a pain in the ass to get there because it's in - oh, I don't know the name of the neighborhood, like the edge between Adams-Morgan and Georgetown. The Metro doesn't go there. So we had to take a bus after getting off the Metro. It was worth it. I think that was the best darn sushi (and the miso - gracious) I've ever had.
So, after dinner, we decide to stock up on supplies and catch a taxi back to the hotel. I got beer, and Rob likes bourbon mixed with milk. We found a liquor store on Wisconsin and it was already closed at 8:50 pm Friday night. Rob asked the clerk in the store where I got beer if there was another liquor store nearby, and that guy told him there were new laws in DC about liquor sales, and there were none after 8:45 pm.
I asked people who live up there, even this guy, to try and find out if this is true, or if that clerk was crazy. No one can tell me. However, in support of the theory something was going on, every restaurant I saw which served liquor had a notice posted in the window stating they had reapplied for their liquor license. Every single one.
Rob hailed a taxi and asked the driver how far was it to Maryland, did he know of a liquor store up there, and how much would it cost to get there and back to our hotel. The driver, who was of indeterminate ethnic origin, said ten or fifteen minutes, yes, and $25.
It took more like twenty or thirty minutes, and that was the damnest scariest liquor store I ever saw.
And of course, when we got back to the hotel, the driver said he had meant it would be $25 each way. Rob was pissed. That was one expensive bottle of bourbon.

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained
:0*g<@l 64<*LThat's supposed to be the same thing in Greek. Call Technical Support.
I decided to apply for the inter-library loan job. What the hey.

My Weekend
I went to Washington, D.C., for the weekend, for a friend's wedding. I met this guy in 1987 or 1988, and he was the bass player in a punk rock band. In the mid-nineties we lived in the same city for a while, and at that point he was a sculptor/welder and art student. He moved to a different town to finish school and I lost track of him. I heard through the grapevine that when he finished school he moved to Washington and took a job designing and building sets for some theatre troupe.
And then a year ago he got back in touch with me, because he knew I was still doing library work, and he ws thinking about getting an MLS. It was freaky. Well, he has now finished his MLS (he was able to go full-time so it only took a year) and he works at some foundation or institute that's involved with digitasation.
When Rob and I went to D.C. to fetch the Victrola in February, that was the first time I'd seen him since 1997 0r 1998. He had a girlfriend, a very pretty young woman.
And they got married. The ceremony was to be in the gardens of a Franciscan Monastery, but it rained, so the ceremony was held in the same hall on the monastery grounds they'd hired to have the reception in. And I met a woman who works at the Folger. That's the sort of place I hope to end up working some day.
Before we left town, though, we also saw The National Building Museum. That place has the largest Corinthian columns in the world.