On the resolutions of conflict...

I am extremely tired as I write this, as I've had a couple of really long days lately. We've had this mandatory conflict resolution training at work, so I've had to go to that in the mornings and still go to work later on. On top of that, the training was at the main campus quite a ways from our cozy little satellite campus, so it's been a commute and a half. (Only to endure a two hour staff meeting, but thankfully we keep it pretty informal...I love those people) I found that it was mostly common sense stuff that we all know, but of course in the heat of the moment under pressure it all goes out the window. So I suppose it's good to review that stuff. We also got some really nice official-looking diploma certificates for "graduating", so that's always a plus. That, and I can always de-escalate anxious behaviour with my supportive, nonjudgmental stance, among other things. Just another weapon in the arsenal, baby...

Day seven, somewhere in the jungle

Day seven (I think)...food and water running low...I can hear them out there, closing in...I can still hear Bobby's screams in the night...ok, I'm really just sitting in one of Longwood Gardens' greenhouses amongst some exotic flora, but the jungle story sounded more compelling.

The Hershiest place on earth

On the way back from Pennsylvania, we ran out of money and were forced to take entry level jobs on the Hershey product line to earn our keep home. Actually, not really, but this is an interesting part of the Hershey factory tour. The entire town of Hershey lives, breathes, and (I would imagine) eats chocolate. There's even a Hershey theme park, where this little section of the Hershey's Kisses assembly line is. It's actually kind of hard to pack those Kisses with any degree of accuracy and efficiency, so I can't imagine how you'd do this on a daily basis. The Kisses just keep coming, and you've got to be on your toes to keep up. But you do get to keep what you pack, so that's always a plus.

Remembering the fallen

Civil wars are one of the worst kinds of war (not that any degree of war is good per se) but when brother turns against brother families, homes, entire states can be torn right down the middle. Those kinds of scars can takes years, even decades, to heal if at all. You can see this kind of representation all over the grounds of Gettysburg National Military Park. Each state involved has erected various memorials to their respective fallen sons, although there are also plenty of collective monuments as well. This particular one is courtesy of Ohio, I believe.

Pomp and circumstance

Sadly, this is the one of the better photos that survive my grad. The rest are all muddled crowd shots with far too many people in them or blurry, indistinct images. At any rate, my time at this fine institution took me through some of the best and the worst times of my life. I am rightfully proud of the many achievements I accomplished while there, even if many of them were in fields not directly related to what I am actually doing now. I am also glad that I met so many wonderful people while I was there, even if we do not keep in touch so much now. This is something that I should rectify. The circles in which we travel are not so large as one might think, and life's roads can lead to strange convergence.

Four score and seven years ago...

This photo doesn't have the best composition, but what's important is the sign and the information it conveys, not me. I know that history lies all around us and so much of it lies forgotten when no one is left who cares to remember, but there is definitely an air of gravitas around the places that we do choose to remember. There is a palpable aura of memory around these places, and I felt it at Gettysburg. I've also felt it in Europe, and I don't usually sense it so much in North America. I did feel it here on this day.

One last hurrah

I stayed home my last semester at university because I was just putting some finishing touches on the last few courses, but I did go back to march for convocation. It was definitely a bittersweet return for a variety of reasons, since I spent a sizable chunk of my life at this place. I have a lot of memories here, not all of which are pleasant. Well, some of the most pleasant ones used to be and aren't anymore, more's the pity. At any rate, I like this photo. I think it sums up all the melancholy and introspection of moments wasted, of roads not taken, and bittersweet regrets all in one neat little pictorial package.

March towards the thunder of the guns

The inner historian in me has a particular passion for military history, although I pay homage to all facets of history in general. In that vein, I like to visit famous battlefields when I can. I'm slowly checking off a "greatest hits list", if you will. While I was down in Pennsylvania, I finally managed to cross Gettysburg off of my list. Joseph Stalin once referred to artillery as the god of war, and he wasn't wrong. No other arm of service can deliver the sheer amount of firepower to a given location in as short a period of time as artillery can. Granted, we've come a long way since the earliest black powder bombards and crude arquebuses, and here I'm standing by a few prime Civil War-era examples. I want to say 12-pounder Napoleons, but I could be wrong. Anyway, this is a pretty typical battery (there's a few more guns behind us). They're positioned around the battlefield as they were on the days of the battle.

Underneath the baobab tree

One summer my inner humanitarian led me to help my parents cook at a health camp in Pennsylvania (in the vicinity of Philadelphia) for a couple of weeks. It was an interesting road trip, and I got to visit some places that I'd been meaning to for a while (I promised the inner historian in me, you see). They took day trips with the campers on the weekends, and one of them was to Longwood Gardens,one of the premier botanical gardens in the United States. The grounds were absolutely beautiful, with all sorts of exotic and interesting plants both indoors in these great neoclassical buildings and outside, such as this one. This funny little tree's canopy is so thick it's like night inside, although it's high noon outside. It also took some doing to get in here, let me tell you. I didn't quite catch the species on the sign, but until someone tells me otherwise I'm calling it a baobab tree. It's just my prerogative.

Snowcave

Most of my pastimes are solitary ones like reading, and most of them are sedentary at best, not athletic ones by any stretch of the imagination. But every once in a while I do get out. One winter at university I helped dig a snowcave with a couple of college buddies whose business is actually to do things like this. This thing took days to build, but it was cool. It had a large central chamber with several radial wings extending in various directions. And it was surprisingly warm in there, to tell the truth. I believe that's me on the left.

Ronald

This is Ronald, a close personal friend of mine. It's such a small world that we bumped into each other halfway around the world in the Philippines. Oh, Ronald, we have history. I don't know how much of your strangely addictive mutant chicken I've consumed over the years, but it's a lot. Just one thing, though: bring back those old greasy McNuggets! Probably not as good for you, but you gotta live a little...hmm, now I have the strongest craving for In-N-Out burgers.

Riviera

This is the French Riviera; I believe that is part of Monaco in the distance. You can just feel the joie de vivre in the air, that certain je ne sais quoi. Monaco was pretty in a postcard kind of way, especially the famous casino where any number of James Bonds have gone all in for the highest stakes in the free world. I went in there just to say that I'd peed in their bathroom. Hmm, urinal tour of Europe, wonder if that'd catch on...

Goat wrangler

I used to be something of a dilettante, and I've dabbled in any number of professions and hobbies; you name it, I've tried my hand at it. When I wandered the earth like Kwai Chang Caine, I tried my hand at goat ranching, among other things. I had a small flock in Baguio, Philippines that wound up turning a nice profit but goats being goats, well they needed herding. So here is me keeping an ever vigilant eye out for varmints on my goat ranch in Baguio.

Juno Beach

Here's me in that bunker again, although I think it's technically a pillbox. It's a beach fortification of some sort on Juno Beach in Normandy, at any rate. It's all quiet on the western front, though...for now. Come to think of it, I don't think we were even allowed to be inside this thing.

Mont-Saint-Michel

This is me in Mont-Saint-Michel. I just like the composition and the contrast in this one. This one feels all brooding and pensive, like Batman. I believe there may be a permanent bridge out to this monastery now, but when I was there the causeway was underwater at high tide. If you weren't back on the mainland in time, you were staying. That kind of natural security is exactly why this place never fell to an enemy while it was defended. Hey, I worked Batman and Mont-Saint-Michel into the same paragraph. I rock.

Montmartre

Ah, this one is one of my favourites. I actually think I look kind of good in this one. This was taken a lifetime ago in happier days on the Montmartre in Paris. The Moulin Rouge is somewhere close by in this same neighbourhood, but as you can see it's very hilly, hence the name. "Mont" means "mount", and your calves will certainly confirm that after any time spent in this area. This area used to be a separate little village on the outskirts of Paris proper, and it was very bohemian to say the least. Rich fancypants types would come down to slum with the immigrants and poor people, and to a certain extent some of that hasn't really changed. They're still pretty edgy up on that butte, but I can't really show you those pictures. Heh. A butte is an isolated hill with steep sides and a small flat top, smaller than mesas and plateaus. Butte, as in Butte County. How ironic.

Louvre

This is the Pyramid entrance to the Louvre in Paris, designed by I.M. Pei. It has always been somewhat controversial; you either love it or you hate it. You may have seen it in the Da Vinci Code. I checked underneath, and there's nothing there, sorry. Or is there?

Such a happy bee...

This is the mascot for Jollibee, some local Filipino fast food franchise. On a local or even national level, I'd say they manage to hold their own against McDonald's and their ilk, and a large part of that has got to be this snazzy mascot. I mean, he just looks so happy to be giving you food, plus he's just presenting the wealth of options available with a little flourish. Real classy, that bee is. On that note, did I mention that I once spent a good part of one summer helping keep bees in northern California? Yep, the biblical patriarch Jacob herded livestock (camels, sheep and such); I kept bees. That worked out a little better for him than it did for me though, unfortunately. That's a sly allusion there, isn't it?

The motherland

During the course of my wanderings over the past few years, I went halfway across the world trying to forget someone and wound up in the motherland. It didn't work (I didn't forget that is), and it seems the motherland is as foreign to me as India, Europe, or Africa are. For what it's worth, I suppose that I would be Canadian to my mind, whatever that means in this day and age. Notwithstanding, the Philippines does have its charms, like this pharmacy. No, I have not altered this image in any way and yes, it says "Holy House of Drugs".

Geneva

This is me in Geneva, Switzerland. Not much to say about this one, I'm just passing the time by myself. Actually, I guess that's not entirely true since someone else is obviously taking the picture. For the life of me, I can't remember who it was.

Dieppe

This is me in Dieppe, France. This place has (or should have) special meaning for you if you happen to be Canadian. Operation Jubilee was an Allied raid on Dieppe on August 19, 1942. In hindsight, it was something of a rehearsal for D-Day in 1944, a dry run if you will. Unfortunately, it wound up teaching them what not to do in an amphibious invasion. More unfortunately, the majority of the troops taking part were Commonwealth soldiers, specifically Canadian. And most unfortunately, many of them died or were captured for little gain on the Allied side. That day was one of the worst disasters in the Allied conduct of the war. My words can pay but poor tribute to the valour of those men.

Paris

Ah yes, Paris. City of Lights and worth all the hyperbole that has been heaped upon it over the years. This is an old college buddy of mine and I having a manly man moment on the Champ de Mars near the Eiffel Tower, fitting since Mars (or Ares) is the god of war. This field once housed fortifications for the defense of the city, hence the name. These days, it sees less martial pursuits, although I believe it is still a drill and parade ground for military cadets.

Normandy

I once did a little stint in the Wehrmacht, and I was assigned to a nice bunker on the Atlantic Wall, keeping a watchful eye on the English Channel for that inevitable Allied assault. Okay, no I didn't, but this is me in Normandy, Juno Beach to be exact, and I am rushing hell for leather out of a German pillbox to stem the Allied tide on the beach.

Bordeaux

This was supposed to be artsy, but upon further reflection it does skirt the tenuous edge of fruity. I don't think it really crosses that line, but it's definitely dancing on the edge. Anyway, this is me in Bordeaux. It's very early in the morning, we're coming off of a very boring two day layover in this sleepy provincial town, and thus you have this. I rise majestically from the foaming waters of the Gironde like Neptune himself. Or not.

Avignon

All of these foreign travel pictures are a little older, but I still like them. They remind me of happier days when it seemed as if the whole world was at my feet and the much lighter heart I had then would cause me to do goofy stuff like this. For example, this goof is me in Avignon, France. Before you ask: yes, that bridge from the children's song is there. "Sur le pont d'Avignon, l'on y danse" indeed. It's actually the pont St-Bénezet if you want to be accurate, but I guess that didn't rhyme anywhere near as well.

More images

As you can see, we also have the awesome responsibility to rotate through the tedious but necessary job of circulation. At its heart, circulation is all about charging and discharging; making sure we know who has what books, where those books are at any given moment, and more importantly when they should be back. It's a fast-paced, dynamic environment where split-second decisions can mean the difference between life and death.
Okay, so it's not quite as glamourous as all that, but it is one of those things that needs to get done on a daily basis. Thankfully, I don't do too much of this, as this is by far where the lion's share of complaints come from. Everyone needs to remember that you CANNOT GRADUATE with outstanding fees and/or fines. So if you owe me, you ain't marching anywhere except straight to the nearest unemployment office. IN OTHER WORDS, I am the final arbiter of your academic future (and thus by extension of your future in general). So be nice to me, okay? I don't bite.

Images in the sand

You know, the other day I realized with a start that I do not have any recent pictures of myself. I could drop off of the face of the earth tomorrow and my loved ones would be hard pressed to find a recent image for the search parties and scent dogs to use. Well, I guess the scent dogs wouldn't really find a picture all that useful after all, but you know what I mean. I was trying to find some nice ones to post on my various blogs and found a large void running through about 2003 where it's as if I don't exist anymore, at least in a pictorial form. That's understandable as it's a safe bet that I wasn't alone in most of those pictures and for various reasons they contained memories best left buried and forgotten. Quite literally, as I'm fairly sure they're Michigan landfill by now.
Anyway, here's me recently on a typical day at work, making the world a better place for reference. You see, that's what I am, the night reference technician. I answer all sorts of compelling questions running the gamut from simple directional (bathroom's down the hall on your right, or left depending on your personal plumbing) to high-order, third-tier reference that require a LOT of deep analysis and interpretation. "I need books." Oookay. Where to proceed from here? By the way, that's a serious question I get almost every day. I say it like I'm kidding, but there are a lot of people who just don't have the first clue where to begin with the resources available to them. The effective reference interview is as much art as it is science, because digging what they REALLY want (vs. what they told you) out of their skull is like pulling teeth sometimes. I have a whole lot more patience for this than some of my colleagues, but I suppose I haven't been doing this long enough. It does get tedious sometimes, especially with people that don't really want to do the work and would rather have you spoonfeed them and hold their hand the whole way. But so far I'm still naive enough to believe that's it worth it.

Matters of housekeeping...bookend one

I, like many millions of others, keep a MySpace profile kicking around for farts and giggles, among other reasons. I was keeping a blog there as well, so in the interests of continuity and ensuring that my very potent vitriol reaches as wide an audience as possible, to say nothing of my scintillating wit and powerful intellect (yeah right), I am going to repost that archive here as well. The dates may not make any sense, and the content may confound, but I hope there's some palatable bits in this verbal fruit salad I'm about to serve up. That would be everything prior to "A grand experiment", for those interested in such minutiae.

A grand experiment

Recently, the library in which I work has decided to take advantage of my fresh, young, eager junior status to pile on the special projects deep and thick, hopefully before I get all jaded and indifferent like the old-timers. I can't say that I really mind, as: a) it does keep me busy on quiet evenings and b) it helps to pad out my semi-monthly activity reports so that it looks like I'm useful, nay, indispensable come salary negotiation time (ahem). In that vein, I am currently under standing orders to examine the fine art of blogging in all its many wondrous facets. They are thinking of publishing a campus wide organ of the state through which to disseminate that which needs to be disseminated, chastise that which needs to be chastised, kudos where kudos is due, etc. Their schemes and visions are indeed wondrous to behold, no?

As part of this initiative, I have decided to start one of my own as merely one of many phases in the grand experiment of my life. For various reasons which should become clear, I have spent the last few years as a shell of a person. I have existed, in that life has gone on and I have gone through its motions, but I have not lived in the true sense of the word. The human mind has some funny (and merciful, I guess) ways of coping with extreme trauma, and oddly enough I think I've blacked out most of the year 2004. I tell you all this honestly so that you, gentle reader (and I hope there are some of you out there), might understand where I am coming from in order to understand where I am and, hopefully, where I am going. I've found it somewhat therapeutic to write all this sort of thing down lately, to leave this baggage here on the printed (virtual) page rather than harbour it in my soul. At any rate, there's no names or salient details to incriminate anyone so no harm done, although I suppose you could piece it all together if you knew me and knew what I was talking about. And that's fine with me; those who know, know, and those who don't can still learn a thing or two. And the kings and shadows continue to wheel in the night sky...

6, 576, 358, 816 and counting.

6, 576, 358, 816 and counting. That was the current estimated world population as of today. That's quite a lot of people, and over a given lifetime I suppose you would interact with a mere handful of those in the grand scheme of things. Of those, each one would be a unique and distinct individual, and for better or worse your life would be changed (to varying degrees) for having met them. So out of all those six and half billion or so people, why does only one of them exert such power over me? Why does that one person haunt me so? What poisonous compulsion is this that causes me to dwell upon equal parts melancholy and bittersweet, of times that seemed happy but are now so far away? I can feel the first twinges of self-pity tugging at the back of my heart and mind, threatening to pull me back into the murk I wallowed in for so many years, and I don't want to go there. I can hear the dark shadows and grim angels of my baser nature whispering of the sweet oblivion of despair, and I try to shut them out for the waste of time that they are. Think on brighter and better things, then. All this will pass, and tomorrow is another day.

V for V-Day

Well, it's just about that time of year again: V-Day. It's one of the hardest days to get through for me, not that any of the others have been particularly easy, but sometimes it's tough. I know far worse things are happening on a far greater scale all around the world and that I do not have a monopoly on anguish and despair by any means, but it's tough to watch all the shiny, happy people float around in their supposed conjugal bliss with whatever form of relationship they happen to be in at the moment. It's tough because I used to count myself among their ranks at one time, flying along on a blind high not really caring about what was next, content in the fact that someone once repeatedly told me she loved me and convinced me that she meant it (even if, retroactively, apparently she never did at all). Maybe it wouldn't be so tough if I didn't know any better, if I didn't know what I was potentially missing; as whoever said it's better to have loved and lost...was very wrong. In this case, ignorance might indeed have been bliss. The ease with which some of us can conveniently edit out inconvenient parts of our history as a fleeting annoyance or minor irritant is a little surprising, although I suppose it's not that hard if said experience never meant anything to you at all in the first place. But no matter what kind of retroactive spin she might choose to put on it now, it did mean something to me, and I have to hope that there was some part that was good, any kind of positive aspect at all to that time in our lives, the tiniest little bit of redeeming value to what we had. I'd hate to think I was totally wasting all that time. I know previous entries in my blog have said "moving on", and I know happiness is a choice I have to make. It's not like the whole tortured poet-samurai of self-pity deal has been doing a whole lot for me lately. But it's something I think I'll always struggle with, especially on the sort of day the world at large chooses to focus on that sort of thing. So yeah, it's tough. Being this lonely isn't all that fun. V-Day...not really a fan.

Quality glasses in about one hou...um, ten days...fine, two weeks

Some time ago I ordered new glasses from that magical purveyor of "quality glasses...in about an hour." Apparently, that guarantee doesn't apply to the legally blind and the coke bottle kids amongst us, as my prescription proved to be a bit much to handle. Now, more than two weeks later, they finally came in from whatever classified top secret optics lab they were forged in. Don't get me wrong, they're perfectly wonderful glasses. They do exactly what they were designed to do; that is, enhance my vision. So in that regard, a remarkably bravura performance all around, and I commend them for it. It's just a little amusing that they took so long. I could have just as easily cloned a new set of vat grown eyes from my private stock of stem cells in the same amount of time. I just have to wonder what they were doing. I mean, they're perfectly competent spectacles, but it's not as if the lenses are carved out of pure Swarovski crystal with a twenty four karat gold-filigreed frame of refined mithril, after all. They don't even have any special powers or extra features. I can't see in any other bands of the visible spectrum, and alas...I cannot peer through the well of time. I can simply see, and that's good enough for me.

Um, you're going to stick that in which end now?

So, amusing work anecdote time. It's been very busy of late, what with some major assignments coming due for these people. Unfortunately, some of them don't really want to do the work required and would like nothing better than for you to do it all for them. I, of course, am wise to their wiles and try to avoid this trap whenever possible. So one person (who thankfully for their sake shall remain unidentified) is sitting there trying to do some research for a nursing project, which mainly consisted of chatting on their cell phone and holding loud conversations across the library. But I digress.
They did look genuinely lost, and I dutifully fulfilled my mandate to provide service in such event. To set the scene, there's two bright, glowing hyperlinks on the screen to the effect of Elimination(Bowels) and Elimination(Bladder). Aren't these nursing projects fun? So this person says they're at a loss here, don't know where to go, they need some material on the urinary tract. Now, admittedly, I'm just a layman in this subject area, but I say well, the urinary tract just maybe might have something to do with the bladder, yes? The light dawned in their face like this was the greatest revelation, you'd think I'd just deciphered the Da Vinci Code for them. Well, I never knew that, says someone whose ambitions are to possibly nurse me when I'm old. So where were you planning on sticking that now? Bladder? Bowels? IT'S A VERY IMPORTANT DISTINCTION!!! Chilling, I know...

Snap, it's cold...

Now, I know it is part of the cold (no pun intended) reality of life that we face here every winter in Canada, but it is BLOODY COLD!!! The mucus in your nose is not supposed to freeze solid once you step outside. The other day, I forgot my gloves and as I was driving home, I could feel my body panicking and drawing back all my blood from my extremities like it was saying "Screw this! You limbs are on your own, the torso takes priority!" It was actually physically painful on several different levels just to be outside. It almost makes you want to hibernate, or move somewhere warmer. Almost. I've done those warmer climes, and while they have their charms, such pretty poison can lurk beneath a warm exterior...