Posts Tagged ‘archivery’

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That One Time Aragorn and I Fought Orcs

December 20th, 2012 by pladd

As promised, I found some proof of my insane high school LOTR obsession for you:

Turns out Aragorn is shorter than you expect

I don’t really know what the story behind these pictures is. Why do I have a series of them and how did they came to be taken? I can only assume that my house was under siege and Aragorn popped by to help out with that. The look on my face says that now is the time for him to give a stirring motivational speech because we are so outnumbered right now.

I can’t even describe to you how cool I was. This picture pretty much says it all

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Posted in Let Me Tell You About My Life |

November Apology

November 16th, 2012 by pladd

It’s time again for my annual November Apology for being bad at updating. I like to blame NaNoWriMo for this, but recent evidence suggests the problem goes further back. For instance, of the 14 years I’ve kept a journal, November is easily my least prolific month. May, the month during which I’ve written the most entries, has twice as many.

Of course I made a chart, do you even know me?

In fact, of the seven days on which I have never written a journal entry, 3 (or 43%) are in November:

Also a bunch of them are on the 6th for some reason.

So clearly this problem dates back to 1998, way before I ever heard of NaNoWriMo. Incidentally, since I know you’re curious, the date I’ve written the most journal entries (7) on, is a tie between February 6th and October 17th:

Anyway, this year is my 5th doing NaNoWriMo, so it’s a little less exciting. I write a lot, so I’m pretty good at churning out the required word limit every day. I decided to try to spice things up by writing a Pick Your Own Adventure novel, complete with so many grisly death scenes. This is more complicated and confusing, but actually makes it easier to write a lot of words. I’m already three days ahead.

The green bar is James

He was ahead of me, until the third day, and then never regained his lead. YOU CAN DO IT JAMES JUST GOTTA BELIEVE IN YOURSELF! In case you don’t remember why this is important:

Come on, James, if you can learn the Hoedown Throwdown, you can do this

Anyway, in the meantime, I managed to make a peach slump:

Peach and berry!

Slumps are kind of weird. I like that they don’t require an oven, and therefore seem like less work, but the way the biscuit topping is steamed in the pot on top of the fruit instead of baked gives it a weird consistency that Steven hated and I was just kind of meh about. Probably will not be slumping it again!

Also, this is the tree outside my window right now!!!

Fall!!! I love you!!!

So, yeah, I have stuff going on. Expect reports on how I am still MASTER OF MY OWN THANKSGIVING soon!

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Posted in Food, Let Me Tell You About My Life |

Regressing: First Grade Journal Game!

September 11th, 2012 by pladd

Okay, I lied when I said we were done going through the archive of my life. Because I just found my first grade journal! It’s really short, and mostly pictures.

Once again, awesome cover design provided by Fairfax County Public Schools

I guess because writing is super hard in 1st grade, the format of this journal is: blank space for a picture on top, giant lines for words on the bottom. Each entry is clearly written from a one word prompt, probably written on the board, judging by my strange ability to spell it correctly, unlike every other word. Since I numbered my sentences and occasionally broke up the accompanying picture page so as to illustrate each one, I’m pretty sure we had a minimum requirement of five or eight or something (it seems to change randomly).

Anyway, I’m glad there are pictures, because my spelling is so much worse than last time. Not that the pictures are always obvious. See if you can guess the topic of the following. And *bonus points* if you can guess the one I drew this morning just to fool you! Click the pictures if you want a bigger image, and answers after the cut.

#1

I like how the sun’s expression changes.

#2

#3

#4

At least I tried to give you a hint by labeling that one (badly)

#5

This one is the only entry without a sticker on, which I assume means I failed:

#6

And here’s the hardest to guess, probably because the subject is a little more abstract:

#7

Ready for the answers?: Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Let Me Tell You About My Life |

Second Grade Journal: Cracking the Code

July 31st, 2012 by pladd

I was going to give you the July Spam Report today, but then I found something even more amazing and misspelled! That’s right, Spambots, you still have roughly 2 hours of July left to wow me before I write Friday’s post!

When they came to help me move, my parents brought a bunch of stuff of mine that was still hanging around their house, including a box of my old journals. Since I’d already transcribed these, I didn’t bother looking at them very closely, although I was pleased to be able to read about how “LISA IS A BUTT!” in the original gel pen. However!! Today I noticed one hiding amongst them that I definitely didn’t remember transcribing:

I was wondering about my terrible taste in cover art when I noticed the “Fairfax County Public Schools” logo in the bottom right

That’s right, team, this is my second grade journal!! Careful detective work has led me to believe that keeping one was a school assignment, because some of the entries are obviously written from prompts. There are 33 of them, mostly less than a page, between September 8th, 1994 and January 11th, 1995. January 12th, I discovered from reading the last entry, was the day I left school to move to Florida and immediately stopped writing since it was no longer required.

The most striking thing about these entries is how difficult they are to decipher:

Handwriting and spelling combine into a perfect storm of illegibility

So I thought it would be a fun game to give you badly spelled excerpts from my journal and see if you can figure out what I’m talking about. Ready?

Sept. 19, 1994. We went to a prak. The prak had a maz and a salid and sam tiers and sam swe’s and makey brs.

At first I thought I might be talking about a kind of salad. This next one kind of borders on the philosophical/emo in a weird way:

Sept. 21, 1994. I like my class room. thaee is a fox he is mie favirt. He is string at me like sad but happy at the sama time. He make’s me tinek of all the times I was happy.

Clearly I anticipated the ermahgerd meme by a number of years. Here’s a challenge:

Oct. 3, 1994. Yestr day I went to chr. I had kamiyin with my friad.

Also, super elementary school drama!!!!

Nov. 28, 1994. Today Gady is rejndoutid from my friend list!!!! Vaneli is now my 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 frined. Not that I evr had a 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 frined’s anyway. and reading this is none of your beeswaks Gady

I think I mean “Gabby”. Still, tense stuff. But nothing compared to December, 5th, 1994. The worst day of my lief.

Dec. 5, 1994. Today is the worst day of my lief. Frist we were going to the Daskaverwe Zone but it was in’t open. Second I found a very petty rock and I call’d Vaneli and on the phone I said I found a crystal so she came down and said it was stupid. Third my mom got mad when my new shert got full of mud and I did’t know why it was there. fourth I got lock’d in thomas toyboxs for a long time and I got hot. fifth here I am doing my homewrok when I don’t want to.

I stand by this assessment. Discovery Zone is closed, no one appreciates my cool rock, I’m hot and muddy AND doing homework? Def the worst day of my life so far. Good call on that, 7-year-old Patricia.

My journal ends thusly:

Jan. 11, 1995. Tomrrw is my last day of school… My mom mand me serll for breakfst. She was sapost to put suger in it but she put salt in it.

Except not quite. Turn a few blank pages and you find, in carefully practiced cursive:

Feb. 9, 1997. I have lived in Florida for two years. Sarah is my best friend here. I’m in fourth grade. I’m an all A student!

Thanks for the update, 9-year-old Patricia.I bet my Second Grade Journal was really wondering how you’ve been.

Answers (that I can figure out) to this exciting activity after the cut: Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Let Me Tell You About My Life |

Moving!

July 10th, 2012 by pladd

Steven and I are moving again! Pictures and a bullet-point breakdown of the pros and cons of our new place later! Right now I am too busy boxing up all of our stuff and eating weird meals that use up the food we have. Like this strange soup thing Steven made on Sunday:

He called it chili but I don’t think so

It was like… chicken, potatoes, hominy, black-eyed peas, green chilies, onion… I don’t know, it was pretty good, but also sort of strange.

Anyway, while packing up all my files, I found some exciting pieces of paper that I have, for some reason, been saving:

Oh, Professor Derrick, how are you real?

This is a paper I wrote for English 300, which was one of the few classes required by my major. It involved interviewing Rob for his juicy season-spanning knowledge and then watching a lot of clips of America’s Next Top Model on youtube. Here’s probably my favorite part:

For this reason, each season “the bitchy girl” always seems to avoid being eliminated for longer than one would have thought possible, just to maintain the level of stress and drama between the contestants. Much of this, obviously, is the editing job done after the show has been taped. For instance, in the current cycle… Monique was surprisingly quickly voted off, but, as one experienced viewer described the situation, “a bitch-vacuum was created and a new bitch was forced to emerge tot take her place, and that bitch was Melrose.”13

And, if you even have to ask, that footnote says:

13 Rob McAuliffe, American’s Next Top Model expert and avid reality television viewer

I’m sure Rob was only too excited to be featured in my bibliography. Needless to say, I got an A on this paper. And wrote Professor Derrick the most eloquent course evaluation ever.

Also squirreled away with some old Threshers reviewing my one acts badly were the original course information sheets from my student taught course, WIESS 101: Zombies in Fiction and Film. Rice has been referencing this on its latest give-us-money mailers, which is sad because it’s been five years, and you’d think in all that time another student taught course would manage to be at least as exciting, but whatever. That’s not what we’re talking about right now:

Of course that last one is Josh Langsfeld. You probably already guessed.

Here are some other highlights:

What is your past experience with zombies?
2 words: zombie. babies.–James Fox
One time I attacked Patricia pretending to be a zombie–Rachel

Why did you sign up for this course?
I feel the defensive techniques may be applicable to Baker 13–Roque
Distribution credit–Rob

How useful would you be in case of a zombie attack?
I keep a fully loaded shotgun on my person at all times. If that’s not useful I don’t know what is.–Joe Dwyer
On a scale of 1 to 10, about a 9. However, I would need to be convinced I was actually fighting zombies. Once that happened, I would be a merciless killer.–Josh Langsfeld

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Library of Congress Archiving Tweets?!?

April 14th, 2010 by pladd

For real real!! There is a CNN article about it and everything. Apparently they will have every public tweet ever tweeted since Twitter’s creation in 2006! They cite the need to save important tweets as well as uses for the data to study human interactions in an increasingly digital world.

More importantly, it means that I have to add a new job to my Possible Job Ideas list:
Twitter Librarian of Congress

How awesome would that be? I will be watching for that job posting and will apply by tweet to seem authentic.

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Posted in Library Tales |

Goodbye Rice email address

November 20th, 2009 by pladd

Supposedly today is the day Rice finally deletes my old email address, although I have gotten three things from the TFW list serv today so this may be a lie. Still, in preparation for the impending severing of my last link with Rice University (besides my ongoing frenemy relationship with World’s Most Powerful Cyborg, William Marsh Rice [more on that later]), I went through and saved any old emails I thought would be pertinent to archive for posterity. Because I’m just that much of a librarian. Here are the best bits from the last year (I got bored after July 2008). I arranged them in such a way that, I think, they tell a kind of story about my time at Rice:

July 2008
“If I can’t fuel my car with them, what am I supposed to do with all these cans of creamed corn?”

September 2008
Dear James Fox,
The narrative force behind my dream last night was rescuing you from the Amish. I’m not sure why they wanted you in the first place, but it would explain your fear of modern things like shaving and haircuts. If you are actually being held hostage by the Amish, I will of course rush to your aid. Although I suppose I would hear about it by carrier pigeon or through the Amish Underground Railroad, not email. It will be just like my dream except Rob will not be there complaining the whole time and I may actually do something useful instead of running away from haunted trees. Apparently Amish country is full of them. In conclusion, sorry I didn’t rescue you from the Amish. I promise to try harder next time/in real life.
Patricia”

October 2008
“Rachel says you are only allowed to cheat on your boyfriend if you are in another country (where it doesn’t count), with a foreign exchange student (like being in another country), or with someone who has the same name as your boyfriend (comes with the good excuse: “Well… he said his name was Steven… I thought it was you”. Understandable mistake.)”

December 2008
“I am not saving you from zombies. You took the class; you fend for yourself. That’s the deal. Besides I’ll have other stuff to worry about, like looting and making sure I’m the second hottest person in my Zombie Fighting Team (one hot person always dies so that you know it’s serious). Just fyi. It’s good to be ready for any eventuality”
Read the rest of this entry »

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Happy Emo Friday!

September 4th, 2009 by pladd

While archiving my old journals, I have come across two stellar premiers that have heretofore gone strangely unnoticed by the artistic and literary communities.

The first: my invention of emo comics in 2006, after a coworker at the library invited me to join the “Spinster Librarian Club”. Here was the comic response I drew in my journal of myself exiting the “Interstate de vie” (“writen in French b/c it’s classier”) onto Rural Route Spinster Librarian on the way to Scenic Alonesville. You can see my two library coworkers already ahead of me on the road:
Read the rest of this entry »

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