Bit of Ivory

Okay, I am completely addicted to this. It’s getting quite
ridiculous, actually. I hope they make a dowloadable version soon. I
may even pay the registration fee on this one (I still haven’t for
Bejeweled, not from a want of thinking about it, rather, from a lack of
money).
It’s especially bad because on the higher levels, it involves almost
constant mouse-clicking, and it’s kind of noisy for the library.

Now, I know that I just told everyone to go read all the Perry Mason
books, but I also need to put in a plug for David Eddings. Good stuff,
man. For all you fantasy fans out there who are dying until Harry
Potter 5 comes out, I heartily recommend David Eddings to help fill the
insaitiable need. The reason I like Eddings so much is that he’s FUNNY.
F-U-N-N-Y. Most of the High Fantasy, the Sword and Sorcery type, is dry
as dust. I mean, Tolkein is great, but his sense of humor leaves much
to be desired. That’s one reason I like Harry Potter so much– J.K.
Rowling has a great sense of humor:
“So, after that disgusting bit of cheating. . .”
“Jordan!”
“I mean, after that open and revolting foul . . .”
“Jordan, I’m warning you!”
“All right, all right. Flint nearly kills the Gryffindor Seeker, which
could happen to anyone I’m sure. . .”
–Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Eddings has a similar sense of the ridiculous:
(Silk has just thrown Brill off the edge of a cliff.) “What was
that?” Belgarath asked, coming back around the corner. “Brill,” Silk
replied blandly, pulling his Murgo robe back on. “Again?”
Belgarath demanded with exasperation. “What was he doing this time?”
“Trying to fly, last time I saw him.” Silk smirked. The old man looked
puzzled. “He wasn’t doing it very well,” Silk added. Belgarath
shrugged. “Maybe it’ll come to him in time.” “He doesn’t really have
all that much time.” Silk glanced out over the edge. From far
below–terribly far below–there came a faint, muffled crash; then,
after several seconds, another. “Does bouncing count?” Silk asked.
Belgarath made a wry face. “Not really.” “Then I’d say he didn’t learn
in time,” Silk said blithely.
–Magician’s Gambit
The cycles I’ve read so far all deal with the same characters and
world, but he’s written others which I’ll be reading soon. Start out
with the 5-book Belgariad: Pawn of Prophecy, Queen of
Sorcery, Magician’s Gambit, Castle of Wizardry, and Enchanter’s
End Game, in that order. Next comes the 5-book Mallorean: Guardians
of the West, King of the Murgos, Demon Lord of Karanda, Sorceress of
Darshiva, and The Seeress of Kell. There are also two
sequels disguized as prequels: Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara
the Sorceress. Don’t make the mistake of reading those two before
the others, because they contain A LOT of spoilers. You also need to
read Belgarath before Polgara.
Really, and truly, read these books. They move kind of slowly, I’ll
grant you, but after all, Tolkien does too. If you like Tolkien and
Harry Potter, these books are a nice in-between. They’ve got all the
history (more than 7,000 years), mythology(seven Gods, two opposing
prophecies, fate of the universe in the hands of a single young man)
and depth of Tolkien, with the light-heartedness and true-to-life
characters of Rowling. And the best thing is, the series is FINISHED,
so you don’t have to wait for the next book to come out. That’s always
a happy thing.

I need to get me one of these.
Or maybe the sticky-note pad.

Friday night, I had another wedding reception, this time for one of my
good friends from high school. Robert was also one of my brother’s good
friends, so we went together. It was. . . interesting. Not that the
decorations weren’t nice or the cake wasn’t pretty or anything, but
there was one slight problem that put a damper (literally) on the whole
thing: it was outside, and it was raining. Now, I realize that it
doesn’t tend to rain all that much in Utah in July, but if I was
planning an outdoor reception, I’d have some sort of contigency plan.
Weather is very unpredictable more that a few days in advance, and
since you usually schedule a wedding a few months in advance, you’ll
never know what the conditions will be. My mom and dad got married in
early March, and they had a blizzard that day. The wedding itself
usually isn’t a problem in LDS culture, since all you have to do is
book a time at the temple and show up. The ceremony usually goes pretty
smoothly. It’s the receptions that have the most interesting surprises
for us Mormons. If I had been Jessica, I would have booked the local
church just in case– it’s free, she was borrowing her tables and
chairs from there anyway, and the little backdrop for the line to stand
at and the one behind the cake would have transferred nicely to the
cultural hall at the ward building. Instead, they gave the little kids
who were helping with presents umbrellas. We didn’t get to use one,
because we were on the groom’s side rather than the bride’s. So my
brother ran back to the car to get ours, while I got soaked. In my
brand-new outfit. With a WHITE BLOUSE. Luckily my mascara was
waterproof.
About the time we actually made it to the bride and groom, they had
cleared away enough room in the house (the reception was in the bride’s
parents’ back yard) for the line to move in there, and the result was
utter chaos. The line became a large group with absolutely no order to
it, and the house just wasn’t big enough to accomodate all the guests
waiting to greet the bride and groom and all the ones eating the
refreshments. I left rather early.

I’ve hit bottom from my sugar high yesterday, I think. I’m more than
unusually tired. Of course, it’s probably my ongoing battle with the
CPAP machine. The other night I woke up at 3am, having ripped the mask
off and hung it on my bedpost without realizing it. The air was still
on, and it was blowing pretty loudly. I figure, if I take off the thing
WHILE I’M ASLEEP, there’s just no hope. I haven’t ever been able to
keep it on for more than 2 hours, because I usually have somewhere to
go early in the morning (umm, like WORK), and don’t have the luxury of
sleeping in to make up for all the lost sleep I get from wresting with
the darn machine.
In any case, I’m exhausted. And the library is completely dead today.
I’ve answered a total of 3 questions since I got here at 9– and two of
them were on the phone. Yeah, it’s going to be a long day.
On a happy note, I’m going to go buy some sandals during my lunch
break. I need some cute ones to go with my new outfit. I love sandals
anyway, and it gives me a good excuse to buy more. I only have
something like 13 pairs. More! More! *evil grin*

I’m really hyper from the donuts we had this morning at training.
Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. MMMMM. Everyone says the Kripsy
Kreme donuts are the best, but I disagree. Give me a chocolate
chocolate donut from Salt Lake Donut every time. Anyway, none of us
felt like working all day long, so we’ve sat at the desk and gossiped.
It’s been a pretty good day.

Today we had a fire drill at the library. It was kind of nice, because
they pay us for the time we spend standing outside. It didn’t take too
long, and on the way back in I decided to take the elevator up to my
floor (I work on the 5th floor, which is actually only two floors up
from the main floor, because BYU numbers their buildings weird and the
main floor of the library is level 3. I usually take the stairs, but I
was feeling lazy, so there). When I got in, there was the strangest
sight– a large ball of yarn was sitting on the floor. And I mean a
LARGE ball of yarn. It was like someone took the entire skein and felt
the need to ball it up. I mean, what’s the point? The skein works just
as well. Anyway, when we got to the fifth floor, this old lady asked if
there was a ball of yarn in the elevator, and we told her there was.
Weird.
I bought a new outfit yesterday– a really pretty skirt and a blouse.
It’s the shortest skirt I’ve owned in a very long time– probably 8
years or more. Not that it’s all that short– it’s about 3 inches past
my knees. It’s just that I don’t usually like dresses that don’t hit my
ankles. It’s a personal preference, nothing more. But lately there have
been all these pretty chiffon skirts with ruffly bottoms that are just
slightly shorter than mid-calf, and I kind of like them. I know they’ve
been in for like 3 years, but I’m only just now getting into style. I’m
slow, I know, but I have such a prejudice against shorter skirts that
it took me a while to like them. I had the same problem with capri
pants. I thought they were really ugly when they first came out. Now I
hope they stay in style for a very long time. The garments (underwear)
that we wear in our church after we’ve gone through the temple go to
our knees, and women’s shorts are MUCH shorter than that. So usually,
we just wear pants, or sometimes we try to buy men’s shorts that are
long enough. But with Capris, we never have to worry.
Anyway, I like my new skirt, even if it is short(er). But have you
noticed that the weird wrinkly-crepe peasant style is back in? I
thought that went out in the early ’90s. Maybe I should have kept my
black wrinkle skirt.

I just realized I’ve never explained my other pine-tree fetish: that of the Pinion Pine. Since I’m too tired to think of anything else to blog, I might as well, because who knows? Enquiring minds might just WANT to know. Although I doubt it.

Pinion Pines are the best smelling pine trees in the world. No, they don’t smell like butterscotch, they smell like pine. To me, they smell like Christmas. We’ve had Pinion Christmas trees for as long as I can remember. They’re not very pretty– they’re a kind of lighter green than you’d expect, their branches are thick and point up rather than out, and their needles are really sharp– but they smell SOO good. We love coming home from Church and getting that first wiff of Pinion pine as you walk in the door. We also love vacuuming up the dead needles, because then the vacuum smells good for a couple of weeks.

The only problem is, Pinons are disappearing. Not that they’re going extinct, but Christmas Tree lots don’t carry them anymore. We haven’t been able to find a Pinion for the past two years. To us, the whole purpose in having a live tree is because it smells good, and Douglas Firs, etc., don’t smell good. So we bought an artificial tree. It’s only temporary though– my dad’s been so busy with this project he’s been working on for the last 4 years that we’re lucky we had a tree at all. But the project is almost finished (it has to be ready for October General Conference– that’s a Mormon thing, for you non-Mormons), so this year, we can finally get a Pinion again. How, you say? We’re going to buy a tree permit. In Utah you can buy a permit for about $10 and cut your own tree. I’ve been researching, and most of the areas that allow harvesting have Pinions in the area. So we can trek up to the mountains and cut ourselves a Pinion Pine.

Now I’m all excited for Christmas, and it’s only July. Phooey.

Alright, I just made a major breakthrough, and I just had to share it.

Okay, so maybe it’s minor in terms of things that are actually important, but I feel quite proud about it. Anyone who bothers to scroll all the way down and notice what I’m reading right now (I think I want to change the location on that. No one scrolls down that far EDIT: I changed it. ) will notice that I’ve embarked on Perry Mason books by Erle Stanley Gardner. Actually, I’ve been reading Perry Mason for about 8 years now, but I still haven’t read all of the books. Not surprising, considering he wrote 84 of them. I’ve read all the ones that are available in my local libraries, so I’ve been stuck for quite a while now. But since I’ve started working in the BYU library, I’ve discovered that they have a whole bunch of them that I’ve never read. It’s extremely exciting .Anyway, I decided to print out a list of all the Perry Mason books and check them off as I read them, so that I can say I’ve read them all. BYU still doesn’t have all the ones I need, but there’s this wonderful thing called Interlibrary Loan where I can borrow books from other libraries. It’s great. So I found a list, and it had a book on it that I’d never heard of before–The Case of the Murderous Bride. This particular list was by a guy name Len, and it was HIS list of which Perry Masons he’s read. He’d read all but that one, because he said he couldn’t find it.

Well, that intrigued me, so I started searching. My first stop was RLIN, which catalogs books from all the libraries in a particular consortia. There wasn’t a record of it. So I went to WorldCat (another consortia website). Nothing there, either. So I went to the Library of Congress. No dice. That REALLY surprised me. If a book has been printed in the United States, the Library of Congress has a record of it. I was beginning to think it didn’t actually exist. As a last-ditch effort, I typed in “Erle Stanley Gardner” as an author, and started browsing through his books. There, after The Case of the Lucky Legs, was a book– The Case of the Murderer’s Bride and Other Stories. No WONDER that guy couldn’t find it. He had the wrong title!

I went back to RLIN, and found 9 libraries that had a 1977 edition, and 6 that had a 1969 edition. I’ve ordered it through Interlibrary Loan. I also emailed that guy with the list and told him what the real title is. I don’t know if he’ll be all that interested, but hey, I’m a librarian. I like to give people accurate information.

Can I put in a plug for the Perry Mason books, while I’m at it? If you’ve ever seen the TV series and thought it was boring– well, it kind of is. I still enjoy it, but the books far outstrip the series. The early ones were all made from the novels, and they had to cut SO MUCH out of them in order to make them fit into 45 minutes. The books have so many twists and turns that you’re never really sure where it’s going to end up– not to mention the fact that Perry doesn’t always follow all the rules. He tampers with witnesses, plants false evidence (once he went out to the road where a car chase/shootout/murder happened and shot a bullet into a guide-rail post, hoping that the police would find that one instead of the actual bullet), and just basically gets himself into deep holes. One of his favorite tricks is mailing incriminating evidence against his client to himself, therefore putting it out of his possession while at the same time keeping it out of the hands of the police (because even they can’t tamper with the mail). He never does anything really illegal–well, I take that back, he has committed a few breaking-and-entering crimes– but some of his escapades aren’t entirely ethical. And the courtroom scenes are always spectacular.

Believe it or not, Erle Stanley Gardner is the best-selling mystery author of all time– He beats Agatha Christie cold. In the mid-sixties, his books were selling at an average of 26,000 copies per day! And yet nobody reads him anymore. It’s very sad, really.

Read Perry Mason!

I was able to keep the CPAP on for 2 hours last night. That’s quite an improvement, actually. On Saturday, it didn’t even last half an hour. I’ve turned off the heat on my humidifier, so the air coming through the CPAP only gets the smallest amount of moisture. And I’ve moved the machines themselves up from off the floor (they’re now sitting on two empty giant tin cans), so the air I’m getting is slightly more fresh.

I’ve also tried the delay buttons– it seems to help. Breathing in with a CPAP is not a problem–it’s breathing out that’s difficult, since you’re breathing against the pressure. Turning the pressure down made it easier to fall asleep. But my biggest problem last night was keeping the seal on my mask. I’m a pretty restless sleeper– I move around a lot, especially when it’s really warm. Well, it was 103 yesterday, and I was sweating last night. Every time I moved my head, the mask would slip, and I’d start getting air leakage. It’s quite difficult to sleep when you have air blowing in your eyes.

On a happier note, I had a lovely food weekend. On Saturday, my sister and I went to Litza’s Pizza. This place has the best pizza on the planet. When they opened, the family actually traveled throughout the West, trying different kinds of pizza. When they found a crust they liked, they’d ask for the recipe– same with the sauce, the pepperoni, and so on. The result was Litza’s Pizza in Salt Lake City. They also have excellent garlic bread, and they’re owned by the same people as Hires’ Drive-in, so they have Hires Root Beer as well. I’ve been craving Litza’s for weeks, and I finally gave in. I’ve got two pieces of their deluxe combo (onions, peppers, mushrooms, olives, and 3 kinds of meat– I chose Canadian Bacon, Italian Sausage, and Pepperoni) and a slice of garlic bread with me for lunch today. MMMM.

Last night we barbequed steaks. They were delicious. We also grilled some pineapple. Have you ever done that before? It’s wonderful. The pineapple gets all warm and sugary, and it just melts in your mouth. We used a charcoal grill, of course. Propane grills are an abomination.

And lookie! I’ve made 1000 hits! I feel loved.