Head Tale

Music Monday – “I want you, I need you/But there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you/Now don’t be sad/’Cause two out of three ain’t bad”

If I post a single song from Meatloaf’s “Bat Out of Hell” album, I feel like I should post every song from the album since they’re all so interconnected.

But instead, I’ll just post a few of the album’s biggest tracks instead of a single song I usually do for “Music Monday”.

(And as a side note, this album makes me think that if I made a list of my favourite albums from high school, this one would be Top 5 – such a great encapsulation of the way young people feel such a mixture of love and lust, all mixed up in a ball of confusion.)

“Bat Out of Hell” – Meatloaf

¶ Posted 13 May 2019 § MemoryLane § MusicMonday § PopCulture § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: language, youtube

A Few Highlights/Lowlights as the 2019 Camping Season Begins

We spent the weekend in Weyburn getting our seasonal site ready which is why I didn’t post for the past few days.

Here’s a few memorable moments from the weekend…

Highlight: Sasha blurts out “This is the best day of my life!” as I push her on the swings. Then, the next day, she says the same thing again.
Lowlight: Sasha’s claims the top bunk from her brother (who usually sleeps in a tent anyhow though we didn’t get it set-up this cool weekend) but manages to fall out of the top bunk, land on the ground unharmed *and* still remain sleeping when Shea rushes to her side! (And she still doesn’t hold the family record as Pace has managed to fall out of bunk beds in campers twice in his life – once in Shea’s parent’s motorhome and once in our rPod as well!)

Highlight: Pace ends up climbing every tree he can find.
Lowlight: He tries to swing down from where he’s climbed but grabs a dead branch that promptly goes “snap”. As with Sasha’s tumble, he luckily walks away unharmed.

Highlight: Shea’s dad brings out a new outdoor cupboard he made us to fit on top of the other one he already had with shelves, electrical outlets and a built-in fridge. This new unit is possibly even cooler with places to hold your Dixie Cups, shelves that slide out, a paper towel holder and more.
Lowlight: After nearly killing myself on the ramp he built last year, I wouldn’t be surprised if I find a way to injure myself on his latest project! 😉

Highlight: Get to have Mother’s Day Brunch with Shea and her mom in Weyburn then Mother’s Day Supper with Shea and my mom in Indian Head.
Lowlight: The road between Weyburn and Indian Head is like going on a free fair ride, taking vehicles up and down and sideways!

Highlight: Beautiful weather for most of today!
Lowlight: It’s rainy and cold on Friday night (in fact, we just manage to get our camper into our site before it starts coming down) and Saturday is cool and windy.

Highlight: We picked our camper up from a compound in Weyburn where it spent the winter and I was nervous it might have mice in it. Luckily, none!
Lowlight: We did get some mice into our shed at the campsite though the only damage they caused was gnawing into a couple Dollar Store Canada Flags I hadn’t been able to fit into a sealed tub.

Highlight: Asking the compound owner if we got a half-price deal since our camper is half the size of every other camper in his lot.
Lowlight: His quick-witted response that we could have a discount if he could stack our camper on top of another one! 🙂

Highlight: Shea and I run into Weyburn for a few errands on Saturday afternoon.
Lowlight: As we’re starting up our bar for the summer from scratch, our booze bill is higher than our grocery bill!

So we’re off to a good start and as long as I manage to keep all my limbs intact this year, it should be a great summer!

¶ Posted 12 May 2019 § Family § Humour § List § MemoryLane § Saskatchewan § Travel ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: camping, holiday, parents, saskatchewan, weather

Throwback Thursday – #tbt – Honu in Kauai (January 2012)

We were invited to a 50th Anniversary of my Hawaiian aunt and uncle (I know, right?) but unfortunately, Hawaiians don’t think of things like “winter” so they scheduled the anniversary for June 2019 instead of January 2019. So that’s one of the main reasons we won’t be attending though we’ll be there in spirit.

That invite got me thinking of our last trip to Hawaii in 2012 which was our first visit to Kauai (I’d only previously been to Oahu) which became possibly my favourite place I’ve ever visited on earth.

¶ Posted 09 May 2019 § Family § Humour § MemoryLane § Photo § Travel § United States ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: holiday, travel, unitedstates

Craft Beer’s Connection to Libraries

A colleague’s family member is involved with Alley Kat Brewery in Edmonton and brought me this beer after a visit. I did *not* drink it at work!

One of my favourite librarian colleagues, Tanya, recently appeared on the podcast of one of my favourite local craft breweries.

Considering I used to organize a monthly librarian’s gathering called “Books to Beers”, I think this is the perfect combination!

Tanya’s been my co-conspirator for a couple great beer and library-related adventures.

When she first started at RPL, I was still doing new staff orientations and got invited by her manager to lunch. Since we were going to a place called Beer Bros, I couldn’t help myself and ordered a beer. Tanya saw me do this and was like “Can’t let you drink alone!” and ordered a beer for herself! (After that, I joked that this was a test that I’d administer to all future librarian hires – order a beer and see if they followed suit to get a sense of their personality and comfort with doing something like that, especially on what is basically their first day at work!) After that lunch, the manager later commented, “Jason, I think I didn’t just hire you a colleague, I think I hired you a friend” which was very true.

The other one was when Tanya and I were on a committee reviewing various aspects of the annual SLA conference. We had a meeting at the SLA office and after it ended, I suggested going to a nearby coffee shop (honest!) to chat more. One other non-RPL librarian in our group of three said he’d heard the coffee shop was closed and suggested we go to a nearby brewpub instead. We went to the brewpub and again, I couldn’t help myself (er, I may have a problem) and ordered a beer as did Tanya as did our non-public library colleague.

The next week, a different manager called me into their office and gave me a bit of a talking to for drinking during work hours (basically, “Uhm, don’t do that!”) I bumped into Tanya after and asked if she got in trouble too. “Oh, I came in on my day off for that meeting. I was on my own time!” she said, laughing.

Those are a couple of memorable times where beer and libraries have intersected in my life (at least stories I’m willing to share publicly!). But anyhow, my point is that libraries and beer are natural allies and shouldn’t be separated in any way (except maybe during a working lunch?) 😉

¶ Posted 08 May 2019 § Humour § Library § MemoryLane § Work ‡ Comments (0) °

Ramadan Library Display

I’m a big believer that you should hire the most qualified person for any job you have (with minor exceptions – for example, I’ve passed on interviewing someone with a masters degree for a half-time page position because I was fairly certain they would move on – and they soon did from the branch that hired them.)

I also believe that, with all other things being equal, if you have the opportunity to hire someone that makes your workplace more reflective of your entire community, that’s a good thing.

I managed to accomplish both when I recently hired a new employee at my branch who has a background in libraries and also happens to be Muslim.

She’s been a great asset to our team in a number of ways – providing recommendations for our multilingual collection, correcting a typo in the label for that collection, and bringing pakoras to our staff meeting! 😉

We recently worked together to create this Ramadan display with her providing her knowledge and expertise in various ways – from creating an overview of what Ramadan is to correcting me when I put a multilingual title on the display backwards! 🙂

We looked at a few options we have for signs for our displays but I decided to let my employee pick. And instead of picking “Discover and Explore” or “Holidays” or something like that, I love that she picked “Local Interest.”

It’s not what many in Saskatchewan would think of as “Local Interest” (books about tractors or whatever) but having just attended an NDP nomination in the same area served by my library which had a huge presence from the Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian communities, not to mention that Regina’s only Muslim school is just a few blocks from our service area and their students are regular visitors at our branch, I can’t think of a better sign to use!

¶ Posted 07 May 2019 § Canada § Saskatchewan § Travel § Work ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: education, history, language

Music Monday – “Don’t fill out any forms/Don’t compensate/Don’t cower/Don’t crawl/Don’t come around late/Don’t hover at the gate”

“Numb” – U2

¶ Posted 06 May 2019 § MemoryLane § MusicMonday § PopCulture § Randomness § UK § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: cool, language, music

Saturday Snap – A Little Leprechaun Indeed! ;-)

Sasha recently presented us with this piece of artwork which required us to very delicately sit her down and have her talk us through some of her artistic choices.

The blue hair, the dangly gold earrings, the check-mark smile and oh, by the way, what is that picture on the front of the shirt?

“It’s a rainbow with two pots of gold!”

Of course, honey, that’s exactly what your mother and I thought it was. 🙂

¶ Posted 04 May 2019 § Censorship § Family § Humour § Photo § Sasha § SaturdaySnap ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: cute, language

Friday Fun Link – What’s the Secret of the Most Successful Jeopardy Champion of All-Time? The Children’s Library!

James Holzhauer hasn’t caught Ken Jennings in terms of number of victories in a row but he’s setting records for most money won per game which is arguably a more impressive achievement?