First fan letter circa 1996. Evolution of a nickname: Seducer -> MstrssDth -> Simunye -> Lisha -> Modgirl -> Academichussy -> PnkRckLibrarian/Biblyotheke

In the spring of 2008, upon breakup with TheEx, I moved back home with my ‘rents¹ for the first time since my early 20s. This was to be a temporary arrangement, a stop gap until I moved to Detroit in January of 2009 to finish library school. All of my belongings, consisting mainly of books/journals but excluding furniture which I had given away, were boxed up in the bottom of their basement. Somewhere to the tune of 40 boxes, almost 2/3rds of which were stuffed with paper goods (re: books/journals).

For those of you who can recall, the winter of 2008/09 was one of the worst in recent memory. Upon packing for my move to Royal Oak in January, 2009, I discovered that 18-20 boxes, mainly said paper goods, were destroyed in some fashion whether by being waterlogged, dampened or mildewed. The boxes were all stacked along the north wall in the basement with almost all of the bottom boxes and several second and third row boxes damaged. Because it was not a case of pipes bursting or water heater exploding or an Act of God², insurance would not cover the damage either on my policy or my brother’s.

What had happened was that due to all the rain in the fall and blizzards and snowstorms nearer to winter, the snow/rain seeped ground and eventually into the “waterproof” basement, along that northern wall in which my entire life sat.

I lost A LOT of books.*

But this is not about the loss of dear friends, but rather, about the finding of old ones. My brother recently dropped off the remaining boxes that were still sitting in his basement, 18 months after I moved. What remained were stuffed animals and storage boxes crammed with treasures³ I had not seen in a very long time. These items were affected, minimally, by the mildew and dampness so I was not in a big hurry to worry about preservation upon their initial discovery. Which is probably why, after being moved to a safer spot in the basement, they stayed there for the last 18 months. Or I was just too goddamned lazy to get them to Royal Oak, you choose.

These boxes have been sitting in our living room for the last month or two, waiting to be organized. We decided that since we are more then likely moving before winter⁴, now would be a good time to get this stuff sorted: keep what I can, recycle what I can and toss out what is neither keepable or recyclable. We know that there are a large number of items⁵ not making the trek with us to our new home, no matter where that home may be. Instead of, as before, waiting to the last minute to pack and sort, my idea is to gradually do it over time so when we figure out WHERE we are moving to, the big move will be a lot less cluttered and a lot less of a pain in the ass.

Also, I’m unemployed thus I like to give myself projects.

Many of the items in the boxes were beyond repair or preservation of some sort and those got sadly tossed into the garbage. What I could save, I did and re-boxed those items up. In one of the boxes was a decorative storage box containing letters and paper items I’ve kept since high school like MY PROM ANNOUNCEMENT FROM 1988⁶ that remained unscathed from water damage. Other papery examples included love letters from old boyfriends (back when writing on paper was still the thing to do), post cards from friends all over the world and a series a post-marked letters from “Bob Smith,” of which one of them I conveniently scanned for you at the beginning of this post.

The back story to this letter, more then likely, is that from 1995-2000s I ran a mailing list of friends and acquaintances that I met on IRC/BBSes/mailing lists that I consolidated into one general list. I think the idea I had at the time was that so many of us were cc’ing the same people, why not create a mailing list to keep it simple.

I am going to assume, by the date, I may have mentioned my birthday (June 12) was upcoming and I’m also going to assume that many people asked for my home address. Another possibility is that I owned a domain at that time and he WHOIS my domain information to get my home address.

I don’t think I ever found out WHO “Bob Smith” is/was but I did receive a number of letter from him for quite some time (which are now re-boxed up) as I found a few of them while flipping through the decorative boxes content.

That decorative box contains a lot of memories of high school and my early 20s, much of which I haven’t thought about probably since that time but that I swore to NEVER FORGET!!!!!⁷ Flipping through some of the material last night broke my heart in some places – there were people, times and events that for reasons I seemingly can only understand, should never be forgotten but unfortunately were.

So who is Bob Smith? I don’t think I ever found out and if I did, I don’t remember who he was or what happened after the letters stopped. But now, 14 years later, I do have to wonder: Did he end up becoming a 34 year old douchebag or did he grow a pair and become a flaming liberal?

I remarked to a few people recently that the digital divide is not so much about digital literacy but in reality about those who have moved their lives almost entirely online versus those who have not. These days we’re doing so much checking in, status updating, tweeting and so-called communicating we’ve STOPPED relating. Hypocrite that I am, I can be just as bad if not worse as the aforementioned, but it’s becoming painful to go out with people now to spend the entire event watching the back of their smart phone. If I had wanted to have have conversations with you via Twitter/Facebook/IM/Texting, I would have stayed home in my jammies and done so instead of slapping on war paint and dragging my ass out of the house. We’ve stopped personalizing our experiences with each other unless it includes a badge, RT, pin, sticker or a like. This bothers and depresses me at the same time.

In 1996, Bob Smith’s letters probably elicited simultaneous freaking out and giggles and now, I would probably still dismiss it as nothing. I think that right in and of itself says a lot on how drastically our culture has changed within the last 14 years and me along with it.

So Bob Smith, here’s to you and wherever you may be and thanks for the memories.

1. ‘Rents comprised of my brother and Mumsy, as they live together. Explanation warranted since my father has been dead for a decade, thus saying “‘rents” might confuse people.
2. Seriously?
*. I have a list of books that I lost of which one day I’ll eventually publish as many people were too kind to tell me they would help me replace them.
3. Read: crap.
4. More foreshadowing that was started here.
5. Justin moved in with me with only a carload of stuff and much of my furniture has been shuffled from apartment to apartment over the last 10 or so years and needs to be replaced. A number of electronics, like our TV, is on the verge of dying so those items will be given or recycled upon move day.
6. I was 15 going on 16. Sadly, the hair has not changed much in the last 22 years.
7. Just imagine a drunken Lisa swaying to “Never Tear Us Apart” by INXS, with a lighter in my hand trying to light a cigarette but in reality, singeing my hair.

Hire me./QR code shirt I made for ALA's annual conference this year. Yes, the QR code DOES work.

Since I’ve got a number of entries in draft format that are more or less about the same topic (various statuses/commentary of The Great Job Hunt, 2010 ™), I thought it would be easier to write one entry in bullet form then pontificate endlessly on. This is how I roll.

• As I mentioned before, my “So, You Want To Be A Librarian/Archivist?” series is fairly popular. To make it easier to keep track of posts that fall under that heading, there is now a tab at the top of the header bar, SYWTBAL?, that will take you directly to a page with posts in that categorythat is automatically updated. For everything else relating to the library and archives world, there is a second category, Library*.*, that includes not only all posts on SYWTBAL? but everything else written on the topic.
• I’ve been asked by a couple of people to share my spreadsheet for The Great Job Hunt, 2010™. Here it is. [JobTracker.xls] Most of the fields are obvious, however, here are the ones that may need a bit of explaining:
  • Job Ad: Location of where I found the job (LibGig, JobList, whatever). 80%+ of places require this information for the web based applications. Also handy to have when writing letters of interest.
  • End Date: Last day to apply for the position. If no date listed, I put in “Until Filled.”
  • Resume Type: How did I apply for the position? Via email/fax/snail or web? If by web, I also include confirmation number. Not all places email receipt that application was received.
• This next serves more as a PSA: DO NOT EVER APPLY TO A JOB VIA JOBFOX.COM. In an effort to expand my job search, I started using general job search engines to look for jobs outside of the dozen or so specialized websites and mailing lists that I currently pillage. A job for a part-time reference librarian at a small state school on the East Coast popped up via one of those sites and when I clicked to apply, it took me to the Job Fox website. In another tab, I went to the school itself looking for information on the job and even an HR department and found nothing. This is not, necessarily, unusual: A lot of places outsource their application process via a 3rd party software site or post jobs ONLY on HigerEd or other professional websites, not necessarily on their website. In short: I thought nothing was terribly unusual about the job application procedure. I created an account and jumped through their hoops. Upon account completion and notification that my application had been sent to the school, that’s when the funny began:
  • Based upon my answers to their fairly lengthy “questionnaire,” Job Fox claimed to “match me” with other jobs based on my resume and near my zip code. All I received were sales and retail jobs, many from the same hiring company. The interesting part was that there was only 1 job in my last 10 years of work history that had anything remotely to do with retail and that was at $corporate_bookstore. No information professional, librarian, archivist or some mix were even in the listings.
  • Several days after I opened my account, I received an email from one of their “Resume Experts” that gave me a detailed laundry list of why my resume suckss. In fact, it was a word for word analysis IDENTICAL to this one. Swap out “Laura” for “Lisa” and “Mechanical Engineer” for “Librarian” and it was word perfect. As you can see at the bottom, after bashing you in and attempting to make you feel like a worthless human being, Job Fox will, for the low low price of $399 USD, make your resume stand out and shine! Laura, from Word Cynic, wrote a fanfuckingtastic response to her resume wrangler.
  • Having already had my resume poked at vigorously by professional editors and librarians and archivists in a variety of different fields AND based upon the fact that I’ve gotten more interviews then others I know who just got out of school, I KNOW my resume is da bomb shiz. Since I was getting that funny feeling when their bullshit emails started coming through, I started doing research on Job Fox and the results were highly interesting. It turns out Job Fox supposedly acts as an aggregator from other job sites, attempting to make it a one stop shop for job applications. Sounds good in theory, but in reality – it IS a scam. I read, horrified, of what people were saying about their awful experiences with Job Fox and their promises of getting you the job were falling really short and to the point that people were demanding their money back and in some cases, threatening legal action.
  • Further research also indicated that Job Fox is not current enough in that while it supposedly aggregates other job sites, it is NOT removing jobs that are long filled or past their application deadline. Many of the comments I read from other job hunters also discussed that a good portion of the companies and institutions do NOT accept resumes/CVs via job aggregation sites like Job Fox as they treat those application as recruiter applications. Additionally, it was also commented that Job Fox was asked by companies and institutions to remove job listings from their site since they do not accept 3rd party applications and it apparently took legal threats to get it done.
  • Several other jobs I found via one of the aggregate sites also took me to Job Fox. I went directly to the institution and applied through the institution itself. It is also interesting to note that each one of those institutions have wording that specifically states that they do NOT accept recruiter or 3rd party submission/application sites.

  Moral of the story: If you find an interesting job and the link for the application is via Job Fox, check the institution directly and apply through it. You’ll have a much better chance of your resume going to the right people instead into the bit bin.

To say I’m bitter is putting it mildly.

The Throbbing's version of granola.

I had not realized finding a granola recipe that we liked would be that difficult – it’s oats, nuts, dried fruits and whatever else is thrown in the mix. How fucking hard can finding a decent recipe be? Apparently, damned difficult: Finding a recipe that doesn’t depend on granulated sugars, preservatives or some form of artificial sweetening (even from the supposed “all natural” recipes) to sweeten it up proved to be a tricky task. Also, the timing for baking it was also odd as many recipes had super high temps for long periods, instead of a more moderate temp. The super high suggestions nearly ended up near scorching the oats and nuts.

The following is the cobbled mixture with the base nod to Alton Brown’s Granola recipe plus experimentation.

We totally love this version and it’s become a staple over these last few weeks. We hope you enjoy it too.

1. Throbbings is our last name nom de plume, as discussed here.

iPod, iTardis, iPhone

Roughly about 18 months ago, Lindsay sent me a link to an Etsy page of a seller showcasing their knitted Tardis iPod/iPhone cozy. Lindsay, in her infinite cuteness, said, ” Make me this!”

The design and concept of the Etsy version was pretty poor: The person essentially knitted (with acrylic yarn no less) a tube, unseamed, and then cross-stitched Xs in for the white/shadow on the doors. I was more appalled that the seller wanted $20 for the thing, even though essentially it was wrist cuff, just slightly longer. I knew I could do a lot better version that would also be much cheaper.

When Lindsay came to visit a few weeks later, I had constructed the pattern (more or less) and all we just needed to get needles and yarn. I also guessed, based upon my knitting speed, it shouldn’t take more than a few hours to turn out. Since Lindsay was going to be in town for a few days, I figured we could leisurely get this going and have it done at a later time.

Little did I know that it would be fits/starts spanning 18 fucking months, not a few hours as intended. The design, implementation,needles, yarn weight and colors: Everything was frogged and ignored by me for months only to beredone and then frogged again!

With all that being said, here is the iTardis (FINALLY), HUGE thanks to Krazy Kate, this really only took me a few hours from start to finish as I had predicted all those months ago. Krazy Kate showed me the path of how to streamline and design the cozy, and yet there are improvements to the design and construction to already be made and thus, this is a prototype. Lindsay was so excited about this being finished before she left today, that she left with the prototype on her iPod. This version fits my iPhone (seen above) better than the classic iPod above (it’s slightly longer).

If someone can give me measurements to their iPad, I would adore that as I want to knit up a prototype for it. Whomever helps me out with the iPad version, will get the prototype for free when I’m done (shipping will also be on me).

Leave contact information via comments or the usual locations.

Pattern for all versions, with tweaks, coming soon-ish. Image above, however, will take you to the Flickr set showing the entire thing in-progress.

[Cross-posted to GoodReads and LibraryThing. The entry chronicling my #everythingausten list, has also been updated.]

Several years ago, while working at $corporate_bookstore, I came across Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler which promised a fresh perspective in the Jane Austen paraliterature canon. I had been burned before by authors who use Austenmania as the foundation for their work, usually bogging themselves down by trying too hard to emulate Austen instead of just using her or her work as inspiration. What I really adored about Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict was that it didn’t seem to fall into the same tangles and missteps as other Austen inspired novels: the writing was contemporary and not fake-Georgian/Regency era, story was well paced, background was well researched, the comedic errors were indeed funny and above all else, I really liked the heroine Courtney Stone.

Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict

I could relate, which is hugely important when writing chick-lit, to the heroine’s experiences and I could also identify with her. This is really where Rigler excelled: she wrote chick-lit without making the heroine vacuous or implausible and she stayed (more or less) true to Austenesque style, which is where 90% of Austen regenerators fail.

One of the advantages of working in a bookstore is that you usually have your finger on what is going in the world of books and publishing much sooner then the general public, which was fantastic for me since I could keep atop on my Austen paraliterature better than the Austen blogging world. Having not worked at $corporate_bookstore since January of 2009, I’ve not been as diligent at finding new authors and books. Thus when finding out Rigler had written a parallel novel, Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict, to tell Jane Fairfax’s side of the story, I was intrigued and hopeful. If Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict was fabulous, how much more awesome would be Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict?

The answer is: Not so much.

If you haven’t read Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, here is a quick recap: Courtney Stone, 21st century Angeleno, finds out her fiance is cheating on her and breaks up with him. Stone’s passion is everything Austen (natch) and after days of obsessive reading/watching/listening, she smacks her head while drunk in a pool and wakes up in Georgian era England (Austen’s period) in the body of Jane Fairfax. Courtney has her own personality/memories, she also must contend with the memories of Jane Fairfax. Hilarity, anachronisms, misunderstandings and love ensues (obvs). While Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict concentrated on 21st Courtney’s story, Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict would tell of 19th century Jane Fairfax in the wilds of L.A. The premise then, is that while Courtney fixes Jane’s “life,” Jane too must fix Courtney’s “life.”

Supposed hilarity, anachronisms, missteps and love ensues. Everyone goes home happy.

While I liked the idea and the concept, the execution was not as well done as Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. Rigler tries too hard to bridge the misunderstandings of a 19th century girl in a 21st century world, but the whole thing fell apart for me.

I thought Rigler could have had a lot of fun with this, but the situations and problems she throws Jane in seem to be too conceptualized and trite. (Jane stumbling about as she learns about modern living for EVERYTHING LITTLE THING was stifling at best.) What I wanted, and what the premise of the book foreshadowed, was a young woman who had been oppressed for years, finds her own voice and freedom. Instead, she falls into the same trap as every other damn heroine in chick-lit. In the end, SHE MARRIES THE FUCKING MAN! What would have worked is having Jane/Courtney come into her own, find her own footing, become a 21st century woman, make her passion (drawing) into a career. She doesn’t. Instead, she flounders for a few weeks, has everything taken care of for her by a man (just as in her past “life”) and learns nothing about freedom or independence. Wasn’t the point for Jane to fix Courtney’s life, thus by ensuring “Courtney’s” ability to stand on her own two feet and becoming her own person?

I was also confused as to what moral message Rigler was attempting to give here, surely if she is attempting to project that Jane/Courtney understands that things are different in the 21st century (as such Courtney/Jane discovers about 19th century in the first book), so are the mores of women. However, Rigler doesn’t do that, instead she just throws in some proto-feminist crap, makes weak argument about the sexual life of today’s woman and then drops it. What the hell?

I adored Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict because of all the reasons I stated at the beginning of this review, but the Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict was nothing more than a huge mess. Rigler could have a had a lot of fun with this book by using Jane/Courtney to give a fresh perspective of 21st century life via a 19th century set of eyes. Instead, the text is a muddled piece of vacuousness with unbelievable and creepy characters¹. Also, the leading man? Wes? Man has no balls or spine but he DOES come from money, so obviously this fixes everything.

If you want fun, read Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict and forget that the second book exists. I think Rigler has a lot of talent, I’m hoping Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict is not indicative of her future works. If so, well, she needs to find another shtick because this 21st century girl won’t be buying.

1. Deepa creeped me out — I didn’t find her to be “helpful” or “guiding” Jane towards the answers, for surely, that is what she was supposed to have been doing. Again, another character whose life was made simpler by a divorce from a man with money – how fitting. Rigler seems to be saying here, then, that the only way to true happiness is to marry a man with money. Because obviously, our sister suffragettes struggle for over 200 years means shit.

Roma tomato, fresh moz on spelt farl.

Last night I was busy making farls and finishing up a hat I was knitting, all while whilst wearing an apron. The prior night, it was me prancing around the kitchen making homemade granola and hummus. While wearing an apron. And nearly every night it has been the same image: Me in the kitchen brewing up some witchy potion while wearing an apron.

I’ll let that image settle for a bit because if you know me and the above image seems fucking ridiculous to you because Lisa without coffee, cigarettes and some processed food living in the fridge, you would typically be correct. I’ve run into the bathroom numerous times in the last few days to make sure my ears didn’t suddenly sprout pearl earrings and my tattoos were still in place. My hair was still twisted up in Lisa-poofs and my piercings were all present.

I am slowly turning into Martha Stewart’s bastard punk rock daughter.
But to be fair, this isn’t a new development – it’s been going on for quite some time.

Granola made with oats, apricots, banana chips, almond slivers, raisins, cashews and dates.

In the fall of 2006, I was having problems with digesting food – meaning that regardless of what I was eating, hardly anything was coming back out (to put it politely). For example, I was physically ill in the sense that eating pizza really heavy on the sauce meant I was up later in the night throwing up or having rot gut. If the pizza was light sauce, I had terrible heart burn. I used to have a cast iron stomach! Why was this happening?

In the late summer of 2006, after numerous days of no bowel movement, I took myself over to the ER to find out what the hell was going on. They couldn’t find anything wrong with me, gave me a extra strong laxative and recommended a local nutritionist who, using blood test, diagnosed that I had some sensitivity to nearly 100 different types of food.

In the last four years, I’ve alternated between being really good and being really bad with my food. That whole discussion is worthy of several blog posts in themselves, but it’s been awful for the last few months after we came back from our honeymoon. Not only have I been randomly sick (again) but the weight is not coming off, rather, it’s packing back on. Justin was also gaining weight and feeling overall of crap. Deserts from Pronto! and Astoria tastes FANTASTIC going down, but later? Not so much. In fact, most restaurant/processed food gives me issues in some form or another, not always immediate it eventually does happen.

Based upon Justin’s prior experience when he was training for half-marathons and my food issues, we decided to implement the following as of last week:

• No sugar (including raw, brown, white, and fake sugars). Honey/Stevia/Agave/etc are allowed.
• As little gluten as possible.
• No foods listing HFC as an ingredient.
• No pasta, no store bought bread.
• Little to no meat.
• Heavy on fruits, nuts, whole grains, veggies, cheeses.
• If I want to eat something, I have to find a lisa-happy version. Bread, for instance, has been replaced with Spelt farls which I can tolerate amazingly well.

I’ve been taking photos all week of the food we’ve been eating and uploading them to Flickr. And nearly every single thing we’ve had to eat this week has been made from scratch, with fresh goods (organic if available) with my own little hands. While what we’re eating is pretty simple, it’s amazing how much of our appetites have dropped since we’re not eating (as much) crap as we used to. We’ve also started doing mat Pilates every morning for 30 minutes into our daily routine.

While we don’t think of this as weight loss or diet gimmick, but as a 180 lifestyle change, we’re still keeping track of our weight, making adjustments as needed. The first week weigh-in, I lost 7.5lbs while Justin lost nearly 3. Where as it was pretty common for me to have some kind of “issue,” ranging in varying degrees of bloating/nausea/heartburn, this is the first week in a long time I haven’t had that. And I’m not terribly concerned about the huge weight loss either, because it’ll adjust itself in the next week or two.

It’s not so awful to be Martha Stewart’s punk rock daughter – as long as the only pearl necklaces are the ones given to me by my husband¹, I’ll think I’ll be just fine.

1. I don’t have to explain this one to you, do I?

When I started keeping an online journal in 1998, the main reason I started chronicling my entire life online was for me to remember it. I have no memory of my childhood and most of my tween years up until the age of 13 and there are even spots of time in my 20s that are vacant ¹. If personal recollections, photographs, handwritten letters and other realia were so incredibly fragile, were my words digitally constructed that much stronger? Could I not access them at anytime and any point with no fear of deprecation?² Wasn’t this the whole point of the internets?

Justin and I bicker about this topic quite a bit because while he understands as to WHY I’m so obsessed with keeping my digital life in order, he still thinks it’s an invasion of privacy. But for someone, himself, who can easily recall his life at any stage with minute detail, I can see his point. But for me, I don’t have that option. I became obsessed with chronicling my life because I wanted my imprint to last forever. And this is why my online journal was called, “The Lisa Chronicles.”

I kept the name for nearly a decade, regardless of which domain it was hosted on, but in 2006 (in several more entries to come, you’ll see how 2006 proved to be a pretty pivotal year), I registered a new domain with a different idea: shesgotplans.net. I wanted to go beyond just writing chronicles of my life/snarky commentary, I wanted to have an all-in-one place place to showcase everything I was/will be into: Books, movies, music, food, opinion, pop culture, photography, librarianship and archives (and everything in between). I had gone from having my own domain for keeping my online journal, to LiveJournal and was feeling the pull of having my own site again where I could do the above. The name of the domain was culled from an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy,”³ when Meridith exclaims about Finn, her mens of the moment, “And Finn! He’s got plans!”

I wanted shesgotplans.net to not only be entertaining, but also to keep track of anything new or fun or interesting that I was obsessing about at the moment. Food? I would want millions of pictures of food and recipes. Photography? Here’s what I learned and why I liked these tips. Writing? Here is a new short story/poem/ I wrote and you can have it for free. Music? Here is the latest CD I’ve been digging and why you should dig it or why it fucking sucks.

That was the general idea.

My writing, when I started in 1998, went from dozens of posts of month to one or two (if that) and then to nothing for months at a time by 2006-07. I started and stopped writing. A lot. When I started my MLIS in the fall of 2008, I saw it as a perfect way to reboot my writing while I worked on this degree. I wrote a lot of posts about librarianship, archives and anything remotely related. And while in the last several months, since graduation, I’ve been writing more personal then professional, the number one reason why people come here is for the “So, You Want To Be A Librarian/Archivist?” series.

That depresses the fuck out of me as I feel I’m much more than a snappy piece about going to library school, at least I used to be. No one reads me anymore because I’m provocative or interesting and that bothers the hell out of me.

I feel I have grown way too conservative and soft in my old age. Gone were the days of owning domains like pronstar.org and bitchasshoes.org⁴, writing about sex, drugs and rock and roll. I’ve become so hypervigilant about what I was posting on what network⁵, with what content that saying the word “fuck” made me cringe. Me. Cringe at saying the word fuck!? What in Nigel’s name has happened to me? Don’t answer that.

With all that is being said, I don’t want this to become some boring ass librarian page of dick tugging and circle jerking.⁶ But that is what is happening. The top keywords that drive traffic here is “So, you want to be a librarian?” and “Jobs that require MLIS.”

I’ve taken back ownership of “The Lisa Chronicles” for the journal title, content will be be more what I envisioned and lots more updates are planned.

It feels good to be back.

1. I blame the memory loss to conscious forgetting and loads of alcohol. I married my husband because he remembers more of my 20s than I do.
2. Digital archivists will bicker on this point, but for the sake of the piece, it makes sense.
3. Don’t judge. This is where she goes back to McDreamy. Again.
4. .Exhbit A: pronstar.org and Exhibit B: bitchasshoe.org.
5. Numerous (okay, 2) people have emailed/FB’d/etc me to warn me to watch I say on Twitter/blog as possibly be detrimental to me obtaining a job. I understand and get that, I’m not incredibly stupid.
6. There is enough of clique in the library world that it drives me INSANE that this behavior is so easily accepted and even, in some cases, applauded.

Beer flight at Bastone, Royal Oak.

But I think the depression is not so much about the looking for the job but rather how much my life will change once said job is obtained. It is not so much about what I’ll be doing as it will be where I’ll be doing it and how much coin will be slipped across my hand for my performance. Justin and I ran the figures on what I needed to stay solvent, independently, to fend off the U.S. student loan sharks¹ and save a buck or two for retirement. ² And then there is the probability if we want to have kids, buy a second home or even a new car. It feels like everything I want takes money and I will never catch up.³

And if I’m not stressing about money, I stress a lot about time. I never seem to have it and when I do, I never seem to manage it properly. Which is odd since I managed it quite well juggling everything I did while in school. All the silly projects I had set up for the summer, I have not even touched. It feels when I have two seconds to myself, I’m prepping/heading off to go somewhere else or do something else. I always wonder how people can accomplish so much when they have the exact amount of time that I do.

Time is not flexible

This is the first summer since I was a bonafied kid that I’ve had “off” – no work or school to contend with. But my time has been packed and while I can easily account for it all – job applications, job interviews, volunteer work, trips to professional conferences and such, it still doesn’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything this summer. Well, I haven’t accomplished I had set out to do: learning new programming languages, research projects, writing projects, knitting projects. Job applications are a two day process and when I have an interview or two a week lined up, even by phone, those interviews require prep work, which means more time set aside when I could have it allotted for something else. I’m not resentful I have to do these things, I’m more resentful that I’ve let so much spare time slip through my fingers.

This will also be the first fall in nearly a decade in which I will not be heading off to some institution of higher learning. Books will not be bought, notebooks will not be scribbled in and notes will not be taken. I will not be graded on my achievements, not in the usual way of a letter grade, but there is something sad about not having grades made instantly available at the end of the term. Now all is the piling of rejection notices and “We’ve not quite made a decision yet” emails.

Summer, when I was a kid and had no real responsibilities to contend with, meant cookouts, overnight pajama parties with friends, long bike rides to hidden areas where I would pack a lunch and read for the day. Trips to the exotic lands of Canada or to a cabin up in the Thumb area⁴ with family. There were many, many days of going to the beach and getting brown like a raisin.

The seasons always have a certain smell to them, each one is completely distinctive from the others. Summer always smelled of fresh cut grass, meat roasting on the grill and the smell of coconut from the tanning lotions. My skin and hair always smelled of the lake we lived by, and while I did not go swimming every day during the summer, I did so enough that the smell lingered for weeks. I always felt that my best moments, my adventures and my memories, are all romanticized from those days.

Even in the summers when I was working or in class, there was still a sense of excitment about them even if they were not close duplicates to my childhood. Then it was more about the sense of getting time off to do some of these things, the freedom and de-stressing form work/school whereas this summer, it’s about the additional stress and in some cases, the derailing of freedom. We’ve made many plans this summer, only to have them curtailed by sudden changes in my schedule, whether that meant I was leaving for job interviews or by Justin’s schedule, with him being on call or there was a strike or two happening within his company. We’ve tightened our belts, financially, since I have no income coming in. We’re not struggling, no, we’re fine but mini-breaks, cabin overnights or day long picnics all must be accounted for somehow.

We’ve been trying to set something up before I get whisked away by a library system and I’m working fulltime, but until the strikes end, when we can call our time our own again, those plans will not be happening. Last summer we planned on driving up around the eastern coast of Michigan, going up as far north as Mackinac before heading diagonally home on I-75. We wanted to sleep in cabins, splash around in the beach and go walking in the woods. Hunt through sleepy little towns, lounge about in hammocks, reading all day and eat fruit so fresh, our faces are bathed in their juices. We never went because we could never sort out my work/school schedule for the summer and then fall came, and everything went to hell.

In the wilds of Illinois, I would give anything right now for that weekend to happen. Just one more last summer hurrah before adulthood, and reality, sets in.

1. My car will finally be paid off soon, so student loan debt will be all that I have. Before you get all jealous, that debt is nearly $100K.
2. Solvent in that I should be supporting myself, in case Justin leaves me for an (even) older woman or young hussy, or dies by Pug strangulation or something. Since I’m seven years older than him, I should have money in the bank for retirement and since I do not, I have to be aggressive with the savings.
3.. You know, The Jones’.
4. Michigan is shaped like a mitten, so the “Thumb” is the thumb shaped area that is directly north of Detroit.

[Cross-posted to GoodReads and LibraryThing.]

You’re going to read this book and know at least one thing: That the end won’t end happily or tied up in a big pink bow and that tissues will be needed.

This is David Nicholls we are talking about here, where his endings are never simple nor do they tie together at the end to make the reader happy. No, the book is about the author and the challenge to the reader to believe – whether or not a story of a friendship between man/woman over 20 years can make it without sounding like a rip off of “When Harry Met Sally” or some other derivative, trite plot line.

The story is gorgeous and IT IS believable. You can feel Emma’s frustration in her letter writing, the pooling of the grease on her nose and Dexter’s legendary trim backside and feel the heat of his hand on your ass. Nicholls knows how to capture that fine line of realism without being overtly descriptive and to not use the description as mere filler for the novel. The plot, the snapshot one day every year into the lives of these two people, is also incredibly clever. Watching Dex and Em (Em and Dex, together forever), grow up, fall in love and struggle with that idea of love over the course of 20 years is painful, hilarious and heartbreaking all at the same time.

Nicholls has a way with prose that you cannot put the damned book done – it’s like they injected heroine or crack into the binding of the book. I was so desperate to finish the book that I stayed in a black car in 95F heat while my aged mother was shopping because being 2 hours away from the book was painful. The night before, I was up to 4am because I couldn’t imagine falling asleep while there was more Dex + Em to get through. I finished the book in less than two days, reading at diners, coffee shops, parking lots and until my eyes were bleeding from lack of sleep.

The reviewers who said this was chick-lit are wrong, it’s not even lad-lit. There is no happy ending and no moral or tale or lesson to take from it. The guy does not, for the sake of argument, get the girl. It’s, simply the snapshot of the lives of two very ordinary people and their extraordinary relationship. And it is also one of the better written books in the last few years.

THIS, that feeling of having to finish the book before anything else was to take place is the feeling that all writers should aspire their readers to want to feel whilst reading their book. Writing in the last few decades has become almost unbearable dreck with a few jewels thrown in – particular in American writing. If you’re not writing some fake existentialistic-esque material with a vaguely catchy title, then you won’t be read. And that’s a shame because Nicholls, being a Brit, will be mostly ignored by the American audience who will attempt to liken him to Nick Hornby which is like comparing Jane Austen to a Bronte: There are similarities, yes, but they are vastly different.

And if you don’t love it, then you are simply Un-American.

[Cross-posted to GoodReads, LibraryThing and Opinions of a Wolf. The entry chronicling my #everythingausten list, has also been updated.]

One of my, um, “hobbies” is that I’ll occasionally google authors/books/characters/worlds whatever and see if there is fan fiction for a particular pairing, no matter how bizarre or unlikely that pairing may be. Then I get obsessed for hours reading the wretched details of say Lizzy Bennett (from Pride and Prejudice) is having sex with Captain Jack Harkness from (Doctor Who/Torchwood), moments after she’s already, supposedly, banged Darcy.¹

Paraliterature, which is to say materials derived from their original works but reworked/reedited/completed with additional new elements, is a twin sister to fan fiction, but in a much more structured and in some cases, academic way. Where as one can write about Draco Malfoy having sex with Hermione’s nose² and publish it on their blog or fan fiction website, paraliterature usually requires vetting in the form of research, editors and physical publication. Another way to look at it is that paraliterature is usually in a physical book format, typically novel length while fan fiction tends to languish on the internets. And another confusing aspect of this? Paraliterature is fan fiction, but not all fan fiction is paraliterature. Right now, this is how I understand it and my definition is pretty fluid. For the rest of this piece, I’ll use “paraliterature” in the context of the above definition.

Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor: Being the First Jane Austen Mystery

I discovered Stephanie Barron and her “Jane Austen Mystery” series when I was working at $corporate_bookstore a few years ago. The books were never HUGELY popular⁴, but they did occasionally sell and the concept, I thought, was clever: Friends of Barron “discover” via happenstance letters/materials, secreted away in the family’s cellar in the Colonies (America), apparently having been written by Austen herself. And lo’ and behold! Austen is a sleuth! The family demurs to Barron, gentle reader, as the editor and keeper of the volumes instead of donating the material to Oxbridge or anyone of note. Each JA Mystery, then, is a portion of Austen’s “diaries” that Barron has “edited” and published for public consumption. Like I said, clever idea.

While the series has spawned 10 books, with the 10th one (Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron) coming out in September, I realise the first few books would be a little rough and that it would take a few books for Barron to get her writing chops in order. But there are some picayune points that kind of drove me nuts that I wanted to address:

• Barron claims that she wrote Scargave Manor before any of the J.A. books were made into films – for someone who has an incredibly impressive resume and worked as a CIA intelligence analyst, apparently she forwent her research skills – JA material has been on the silver screen since 1938. There has not been a decade since when something of Austen’s was not made in some capacity, so while yes, Barron’s publication of her first book was timed well with the release of BBC adaption of Pride and Prejudice, she was not the first person to write paraliterature nor did she start the fires for Austenmania.
• Verbal anachronisms: Barron has the fictional Austen saying “fiddlesticks” a lot, which is more reminiscent of Scarlett O’Hara than of Austen (or of any Austen characters). Fiddlesticks, as an exclamation (according to the OED), made an appearance once in 1600 and was not seen again until the 1840s, decades after Austen dies. In addition to “fiddlesticks,” Austen is doing a lot of “espying,” which also according to the OED, has been long obsolete before Austen’s time, this is not something she would have said. There were also a few others, but these stuck out in particular.
• Repetitiveness of phases: In the book, Austen (or a minor character) cannot possibly have X issue because it cannot “be born.” Fictional Austen is also running around doing a lot of “espying” (see above) on people (typically as “espied,” so always in the past tense).
• The servant’s speech, regardless of where the servant is from, is ALWAYS Cockney. I hope Barron learns later that not all servants come from East London.
• Barron uses a variation “It’s a truth universally acknowledged” in some format, which drives me NUTS in paraliterature, particularly in materials that are spin-offs rather than rewrites or completions.
• The killer is announced in the first paragraph, in the last chapter which to me signals a classic rookie mistake. You never announce who the killer is in the last few paragraphs because you’re essentially telling the reader: “Hey, don’t read my stuff! Don’t use a few braincells to figure out WHODUNIT! Let me feed you the answer and save you the trouble!”
• Unnecessary minor characters with similar names. This is nothing but filler, right thar.

Barron suffers, at least with this book, from the delusion that more flowery the language is, the closer it must be to Austen’s time. I also hope in future tales she calms down a bit on this aspect of the story. Many (not just Barron), it seems, think that JA’s time is distant enough that Modern English was still in its infancy when in actuality, they are confusing Modern English with Contemporary English⁵. ME has been around since the time of Shakespeare (Elizabethan – Late 1400s) but CE has only been around since the Industrial Revolution (1850s)⁶. The distinction is not so much how English is used but growth of vocabulary, verbal usage and structure. The older English gets, it seems, the more erudite it becomes.

Okay, I’ll stop pontificating.

Overall: a decent read. Not fantastic, but not awful either. The story flowed, mostly, and despite my above criticisms, I did not feel bored or impatient with the book. I did, however, felt that the overlap between drawing JA out as a fictional character and Barron’s attempt to emulate Austen prose kept swapping the driver’s seat. I wasn’t quite sure what voice Barron was attempting to write in and that did get confusing. The plot seemed to dip in and out of consciousness, some of the characters seemed weakly drawn while others were extremely vibrant. Barron DOES have tremendous skill at writing and what parts she was lacking in with creativity she more than made up for in talent. Would recommend with a caveat that it is the first book in a series and might be a little rough. Am extremely hopeful that book two will be much more fleshed out.

1. Yes, this pairing does exist. If you google it, it will come.
2. This also exists. See, what I do for my readers?
3. For a wonderful list of JA paraliterature, The Republic of Pemberley has wonderful list, sorted by book as well as searchable, complete with reviews.
4. Clearly Jane Austen is not as fetching as a sleuth as Stephanie Plum or as a Cat.
5. Technically, CE is not an “official” term since the CE period referred to is known academically as Late Modern English, but most people’s eyes glaze over so I just define it as Modern English and Contemporary English.
6. For the sake of argument, I’m referring to what is known as the second industrial revolution but is more commonly known as THE industrial revolution.