It's great to have friends

Sorry, you didn't realize I was pausing, because this is print. But I have been sitting here looking into my mirror at the Today show (how to type and watch tv simultaneously, when your tv is on the other side of the room). When I was in grad school (library school!) the Winter Olympics were also occuring. So this is how I survived, because I love the Winter Olympics.

Okay, so this post is not about the Today show or the Winter Olympics, but about friends. Gosh they're great. For instance, as a friend, I emailed my last post (the one on ALA) to Jessamyn West, who came to our library for our in-service day. She is a librarian extrodinaire, and I just think she's cool. Actually, she is cool, whether, I think so or not. She put my post at the top of her list of blogs that wrote about ALA. And I didn't even have notes to a committee meeting! I mean, the only intellectual thing you could learn from my post was from the links! Hey, don't knock the links...well, I'm just so honored that Jessamyn thought my post was link-worthy.

Also, I have great friends in Pittsburgh, which I knew, but it became more apparent when my car was not ready when I hit the ground terra firma at Pittsburgh. I'm in the plane and we can't disembark because of lightning, so I call my friend who is working on my car. No, it won't be ready tonight. Okay, so I call my friend who has a sofa. Well, my husband is on call this week...so I think, throw caution to the wind, this will work out. So we're on the moving trains between the gates and the baggage claim and I mention this to my traveling companion, who offers me her guest room (thank you!!!!). So instead of going home, I "traveled" one more night. Then my friend from work (the one with the sofa) drove me to get lunch, drove me home that night. Then I had to get a ride to a my therapist appointment and then to work on Thursday. So I called the guy who drove me to the airport. Welll, his car was being lent out to another friend. So that friend called me, and picked me up, then waited while I was at the therapist, drove through Wendy's, we had lunch on the go, and he dropped me at work! I so thought that I would have to take a bus--then, my car was ready while I was at work, so my friend with the sofa drove me to the grocery store, then to where my car was. And when the friend who fixed my car said, gosh, sorry it took so long, I said, you know what, I had people who love me driving me all over Pittsburgh.

And then today (pretend it's still Friday, since that's when I started this post) one of my librarian friends took me and her son for ice cream at Baskin Robbins!! So let's hear it for friends. Break into song: (you choose: Lean on me, or That's what Friends are for or the theme song to the show Friends.)

If I'm lucky, my brother will get tired or hungry right around Pittsburgh (on his way to a wedding in Ann Arbor--when did my brother get old enough to go to weddings of his own friends?). My parents and sister will be here tomorrow...which means I should be vacuuming instead of blogging...thankfully, my apartment is too small for them to stay in, so as long as my dad can sit at my computer and read the New York Times online, we'll be copasetic.

News of the day:

Brooke Shields sets Tom Cruise right:"I was hoping it wouldn't come to this, but after Tom Cruise's interview with Matt Lauer on the NBC show "Today" last week, I feel compelled to speak not just for myself but also for the hundreds of thousands of women who have suffered from postpartum depression. While Mr. Cruise says that Mr. Lauer and I do not "understand the history of psychiatry," I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression. "

She then goes on to talk about her experience and from what I read (book reviews) of her book, she got more personal here than she did in her book--you go girl! As a woman (this is me, now) who has many friends who are mothers, for years I had only friends with high risk pregnancies and/or ppd. Now, gratefully, there are some more healthy moms and kids in the mix--but the point being, drugs, therapy, and love are the key--not the "history of pyschiatry" as Mr. Cruise thinks proves his point. Let's all say a prayer for Katie Holmes, what is she getting into? (She's 26, marrying a 42 year old on his third marriage...)

Brooke ends her op-ed with this beautiful line/zinger: "So, there you have it. It's not the history of psychiatry, but it is my history, personal and real."



Harry Potter: online or on line?:

This article reminds me of an article I read when HP came out a few years ago; they had reporters follow the UPS men who couldn't leave before 7 am to start delivering the sacred texts. Librarian that I am, I offer a third alternative to this online vs. on line: call your local library! As an audio book user, I think the list is a short one, and I'm almost guarenteed to be the first one on the list...in this article, a mother is describing her daughter's study of all the former HP's to prepare for the most recent tome.

"Among the questions they hope to answer this month: Is Sirius Black really dead? What will become of Dumbledore? And will I drive them to a local Barnes & Noble as the clock strikes midnight on July 16 to stand in line with other devotees to get the new book?

We won't have all the answers until the publisher, Scholastic Inc., releases the book. But there's one thing I do know. My bedtime is 10 p.m. So my challenge, as my daughters were dusting off their stopwatch, was to persuade them to preorder the book online."

So she called Scholastic, Amazon.com, and bn.com, to find out what their delivery schedules were like.

"I said: 'My kids are trying to get me to stand in line at midnight at one of your stores to get the book instead. Can you give me some ammunition to head that off?'

Sensing that I'm a person who needs her sleep, Mr. Frain said, 'My daughter has already told me she needs to have it too. I pretty much have her conditioned that we can get it online, so that's what we'll do.' Suddenly I felt very jealous of Mr. Frain. I tried to picture myself saying firmly to Zoe and Ella, 'We can get it online, so that's what we'll do.'"

She finally decided on a vendor (read the article, I can't remember...but basically they said, you should get it when you get your Saturday mail.)

Her last line reads thusly:
"The next day I looked out the window and saw Ella lying in wait for the mailman. She had a few questions. I felt sorry for him."

Th-th-at's all for now...