poshlost.net

Ideas that have seemed hysterically funny to me in the past two days:

* Drawing a Domo-kun-style monster face on a Hollinger box.
* Drawing a Domo-kun-style monster face on ALL of the Hollinger boxes.
* A webcomic starring an anthropomorphized Hollinger box.
* A webcomic starring an anthropomorphized Hollinger box… with a microspatula sidekick. Possible villains: entropy, mold.
* LOLcarts: take photos of heavily-laden bookcarts, write LOLcat-style captions for them.

Six things I’ve done in the past month:

1. Gotten my hair cut shorter than it’s been since mid/late 2003.
2. Received/accepted an offer on the Atlanta house.
3. Presented on the Archivists’ Toolkit panel at the Society of California Archivists meeting in Monterey.
4. Started (and finished 3/4 of) a knitted lace shawl, which barring unforeseen disaster will be the first lace item I’ve successfully knitted.
5. Saw the Breeders at Slim’s.
6. Went to Sonoma, tasted a bunch of wine.
   

Three new places I’ve eaten in the past month:

1. South Beach Cafe: good little thin-crust pizzas.
2. Little Star Pizza: really really good deep dish pizza. Not as good as the pizza I had in Chicago last year, but still really really good.
3. Oola: eh, kind of disappointing. Food was good and all, but if I’m on that stretch of Folsom I’m going to pick Lulu over Oola.
   

Seven musical artists I will be seeing this year:

• R.E.M./Modest Mouse/the National - on my birthday
• the Hold Steady - July
• Spoon - September
• My Bloody Valentine - September
• Nick Cave - September
  

Two musical artists I might see this year:

1. Camper van Beethoven - end of June; haven’t decided if I’ll go.
2. Liz Phair - acoustic performance of songs from Exile in Guyville supposedly coming to San Francisco.
   

Two musical artists I am definitely not seeing this year, to my regret:

1. Tom Waits - not coming to California on his summer tour (I mean, come on! He lives here!) but is playing the Fox in Atlanta. I saw him at the Tabernacle in Atlanta in 2006 and it was pretty much the greatest thing ever. Seriously considered flying east to see him at the Fox time this around (show is on the Saturday of the July 4th long weekend) but finally decided I could not justify blowing so much money on a single show. The fact that my two most Tom Waits-obsessed Atlanta friends will both be out of town that weekend was also a factor.
2. Leonard Cohen - whose management claimed earlier this year he’d tour the U.S. in May, but is now only touring Canada and Europe later this summer. Supposedly U.S. dates are a possibility for 2009.
   

Three writers whose fiction I am enjoying these days:

1. John Fante
2. Edmund White
3. Christopher Isherwood
   

Six things on the horizon:

1. Tagging along at Google I/O next week.
2. Turning 29 in nine days.
3. House sale closing on June 20th.
4. SAA annual meeting here in San Francisco in August.
5. Going up to Seattle with Dan for PAX, Labor Day weekend.
6. Parents visiting in September.

1. I had what was possibly the best dessert of my life tonight: chocolate croissant bread pudding at Chaya. Seriously, it was out of control.

2. I’m going to see the Breeders on Wednesday night!

3. I found an original 1986 copy of the first Throwing Muses album in the used CD section of Rasputin Music. I had absolutely no reason to buy it (the content was rereleased in 1998 as part of the In a Doghouse double-CD package), and I thought that whatever music-collector tendencies I once had were gone… but I bought it anyway. It was $5. It was a UK import, never released in the U.S., and it’s been out of print forever. It makes me ridiculously happy.

4. I fixed my broken iTunes library a while ago, so I can actually listen to music off my computer again, and I’m finally on last.fm. It’s fun to have all these stats about what I listen to. I’d add a little “recently played songs” badge to poshlost.net, but I’m lazy.

5. On Thursday morning I’m leaving for a conference in Monterey. I haven’t missed my car much since moving here but I’ve got to admit that I did when I learned that going to Monterey without one involves a five hour bus/train/bus trip. I’m speaking on a panel on Saturday afternoon — if you’ve ever wanted to hear me talk about my experience implementing Archivists’ Toolkit in two smallish repositories, this week is your big chance.

6. I am not too proud to admit that I went to see Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay this weekend. And liked it. Great antidote to a week of stress at work.

7. Dmitri Nabokov (son of Vladimir) has announced that he is going to publish The Original of Laura, his father’s final unfinished novel. VN had requested that the manuscript (written on about 50 index cards) be destroyed after his death. For years Dmitri refused to announce a decision one way or another for years, and the issue prompted a lot of debate among people who care about this sort of thing — should the author’s request be respected, or does the fact that he is pretty much the greatest novelist of the 20th century give Dmitri the right and/or obligation to override it? I’m happy with the way this one turned out. More Nabokov out in the world is better than less Nabokov.

Like many people who were geeky teenagers in the 1990s, I spent a lot of time watching The X Files in high school and college. Today I was surprised to find out that the long-rumored second X Files movie is not only being made, it’s finished and coming out in late July. And yes, I am probably going to have to go see it. So why do I feel old? Because in this article I saw, series creator Chris Carter pointed out that the twenty-year-old college kids of today were FOUR when the show premiered.

Other recent evidence that my late adolescence/early adulthood are over, never to return:

• The O’Rahilly Building “coffee dock” at University College Cork (where I ate many scones in the fall of 1998) is now a Starbucks.
• Pyramid Mall in Ithaca is no longer Pyramid Mall.

As of today, I’ve lived on the West Coast for four months!  And after all that time, there is a single question that still haunts me:

Why are the sticks of butter shaped differently out here?

Every stick of butter I have purchased since moving to California has been shorter and fatter than the sticks of butter I used to buy on the East Coast.  And it’s not just that there are different brands out here; the Land-o’-Lakes butter sticks here are a different shape than the Land-o’-Lakes butter sticks back east.

This fascinates me.  Somewhere in this country there is a dividing line where sticks of butter sold under the same brand name switch from longer and skinnier to shorter and fatter.  Where is that line?  And, more importantly, why does it exist?

…with links!

* Doing a tasting/tour at St. George Spirits.  St. George is best known for the Hangar One line of vodka.  What’s cool is that it’s actually made in a hangar, on a decommissioned Navy base in Alameda.  The hourlong tour is free and entertaining, and $10 will get you tastes of just about everything they make (plus a glass to keep).  Their white tea liqueur is awesome.  For an additional $10 you can taste their absinthe, which is currently the only American-made absinthe on the market.  And there’s a nice view of the bay and San Francisco from their parking lot.

* Dinner at Fringale.  Especially the French onion soup and the almond tart.

* Prescription allergy meds.  Because being able to breathe is awesome.

* Season 1 of Deadwood on DVD.  Al’s monologue at the end of the 11th episode is possibly the greatest thing ever shown on TV.

* Cowgirl Creamery’s Mt. Tam triple-cream cheese, available from their store in the Ferry Building and at the Whole Foods on 4th.  Pairs well with bread from Acme, which by happy coincidence is also available at both places.

* Colored dot stickers for coding your archives boxes during a move.  These were suggested by two different people at the “Archives on the Move” workshop I attended in January.  I was skeptical; these people had moved collections many times the size of mine — surely I didn’t need to complicate my move with a multi-phase staging plan and accompanying color code.  Surely I wasn’t going to go around putting color stickers on thousands of individual boxes.  But trust me: no matter how simple you think your move will be, chances are you will end up with definite ideas about the order in which things should be moved.  And next thing you know, you’re be at Office Depot buying packs of colored dot stickers.

1. I got hit by a car about three weeks ago, crossing the street at 4th and Bryant on my way home from work. I had a walk signal, and a car that was traveling parallel to me tried to turn left on a green light. I guess that anytime you get hit by a car and can physically get up to walk out of the intersection, you have to count it as a positive outcome, but it’s not an experience I recommend. At least three people saw it happen and called 911 simultaneously. The driver who hit me stopped, and was very apologetic, and held his umbrella over me while I sat on the pavement and waited for the cops to arrive. I got away with one big bruise and a lot of full-body soreness (according to witnesses, I went airborne a bit before hitting the pavement… I don’t really remember; it happened very fast). And when the nice people at San Francisco General Hospital tell you that you’ll hurt most 24-48 hours after the accident? They’re not kidding.

2. Have been mildly sick for over a week now. Spent my entire three-day weekend at home.

3. Moving an archival collection to a new building is hard. It’s not that any particular aspect of it is super-challenging on an intellectual level — there’s just so much work to do, and no real shortcuts — you’ve just got to slog through and it feels like it will never end. It becomes impossible to imagine that your job will ever consist of anything other than drawing up shelving schematics, and writing schedules for staging, and transferring things from old crappy boxes to shiny new acid-free boxes.

R.E.M. is releasing a new album this year. I know this only because Pitchfork told me; like a lot of people, I gave up on R.E.M. near the start of this decade. But what you have to understand is that in high school, R.E.M. was my #1 all-time favorite band, ever. This was the era of R.E.M.’s Monster tour, and I wanted so badly to go see them live. But I was 15, and I lived in the middle of nowhere. I had no driver’s license and no money.

I haven’t purchased an R.E.M. album in almost ten years (1998’s Up came out while I was in Ireland for the semester — I remember buying it at the Virgin Megastore in Cork. I got 2001’s Reveal as a gift, listened to it maybe twice). They’ve toured lots of times since 1995, but after I got my license and some disposable income and moved away from northern New York, it never seemed worth it to make the effort to see them.

But now they’re playing in Berkeley in May, and amazingly the opening acts are two bands I like a lot. And oh yeah, the show is on my birthday. I’m taking this as a sign that I should go. It will be the fantasy concert experience I wanted at age 15 but never got… or else a bitter reminder that attempting to relive one’s youth can only end in heartache. Fun times!

There are also reports that Leonard Cohen is going to tour this spring. I’d definitely go out of my way to see him — it’s not like he gets out much anymore. And I’m still holding out hope that Nick Cave will tour in support of his new album this year. In February I’m going with Dan to see geek-rock icon Jonathan Coulton at the Great American Music Hall. And Bob Mould in March, who was excellent live both times I saw him in Atlanta.

It’s a good thing I have this blog. Because it’s vitally important that the world know all about my show-going plans.

…so I guess I should write something. I meant to do a 2007-in-review entry that was at least semi-timely, but never got around to it. To be honest I sort of limped through the end of 2007. Spent a week visiting family in New York for Christmas, and the jet lag completely wrecked me. Spent New Year’s at home and barely stayed awake until midnight. I could hear fireworks from my apartment and did not even head outside to see them — how sad is that?

Obviously what I’ll remember most about 2007 is that I quit my job, moved from Atlanta to San Francisco, and started a new job. I like it here a lot, but it doesn’t feel completely real yet. Part of me still believes that I’ll fly back to Atlanta any day now, move back into my old house, and go back to my old job at Emory.

Musical highlights included the new Spoon album, the new White Stripes album, and seeing boh Kristin Hersh and the Arcade Fire live, twice each. Shows I regret missing are the Hold Steady (twice — once in San Francisco because I got sick, and once in Atlanta because it was my last night before moving and in the end I could not deal with going out) and X at Slim’s on December 30th. I also had a ticket to see Interpol at the Tabernacle in September, but Dan’s parents were in town and I elected to spent that night eating Thai food with them instead. And I don’t regret it; really, the new Interpol album was a disappointment.

2007 was the second year of my “read fewer books in an attempt at quality over quantity” experiment. And, like last year, I succeeded in reading fewer books but realized at the end of the year that not many were particularly memorable. I read a lot of Seal Press anthologies in 2007, for reasons I can’t explain. In terms of pure enjoyment, what really stands out are Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City books, which were just fun in a way that has been lacking from my reading-life for a long time.

I will also remember:

• The two weddings I attended.
• Spending my birthday sick and alone in a hotel room in Sunnyvale, because Dan was at a conference-type thing all day.
• Celebrating my third anniversary in April with an over-the-top steakhouse meal.
• Presenting at a conference for the first time in June.

Last week I took Amtrak to Sacramento for a Society of California Archivists workshop on moving archival collections. It was great, lots of practical advice that I’ll be using in the very near term as I prepare to move my collection across the city later this spring. And I met some archivists from the Bay Area, and got a tour of the state archives building — overall, worth having to get up at 4:30 in the morning. (On the way home I fell asleep on the train and didn’t wake up until two stops after the one I was supposed to take.)

In the short term I am looking forward to: new music from Nick Cave, Bob Mould, and the Breeders; seeing Bob Mould live in March; going (I hope) to Monterey for the Society of California Archivists annual meeting in April; and, of course, spending more time exploring San Francisco.

For someone who doesn’t write here very often, I spend a lot of time thinking about why I have this blog.

Back in the day (i.e., college) I was heavily involved with LiveJournal and other forms of online community. I invested a lot of my energy in meeting / interacting with others online, and I got burned in predictable ways. I put too much out there and hurt people I cared about, I trusted people I shouldn’t have and ended up getting hurt myself — all pretty typical, but I got wary and decided to scale back my online presence.

I started this blog because I missed having some form of online presence and wanted a place to write about random stuff. This feels more urgent now than it did a few years ago, since I’ve stopped keeping a paper journal. I’ve always been afraid of losing things if I fail to write them down, especially now when I’m in transition personally and professionally. I hope that living in San Francisco will lead to lots of fabulous new experiences. I hope that I live here for a long time, and someday I want to be able to look back and remember what it was like when living here was new.

But I’m still guarded, still afraid of saying too much. And not long after starting this blog, I was picked up by Archives Blogs. Their stated goal is to syndicate blogs “by and for” archivists. It’s a great resource for anyone interested in the archives world, but the majority of these blogs are strictly professional in nature. And though I write about archives sometimes, I write about other stuff just as often. In the back of my mind I’m always conscious of who might be reading this via Archives Blogs, and I’m afraid of coming off as frivolous.

And then, of course, writing about work raises all kinds of other issues related to professionalism and discretion and boundaries, and I’m never sure where to draw the line. Is it okay to come out and say where I work, especially when it’s pretty easy to figure out based on things I’ve already written? How much should I say about what I do on a daily basis? The safest thing to do would be to avoid writing about work entirely — but my job is such a large part of my life. I’m at an institution with close ties to San Francisco history, an institution that is on the verge of some major changes and has been getting a lot of media attention. I’m excited about that! I want to talk about it!

I don’t think there are enough archivists out there writing about what their work is like on a day-to-day basis. There are more of us than ever, but I want there to be more. I love reading about what others are doing at their institutions, and I want to be a part of the growing conversation among archivists online.

There are even fewer people talking about the career issues that archivists face, in the way that, say, librarians like Meredith Farkas do on their blogs. And while archivists deal with many of the same issues that librarians do (difficulty in landing entry-level positions, difficulty in gaining management experience to prepare themselves for leadership positions), there are issues that are mostly unique to archivists. Even more than librarians, we need to be geographically flexible when searching for our first (and sometimes second, and third…) professional positions. Many of us spend years in grant-funded project positions, which may or may not be full time, and may or may not provide the benefits we need. Many of us end up as the only archivist on a staff full of librarians, or museum curators, or businesspeople (in the case of corporate archivists), and find ourselves working every day to explain who archivists are and why we do things differently — and why that matters.

I want there to be more conversation about the archival life. I want to be a part of that conversation.

I suppose one answer would be to create a split blog-personality: to write about job and career issues in one place, and the personal stuff in another. But that has never felt right to me; I can barely manage to post regularly to one blog, much less two. So for now, it’s the personal stuff and the work stuff all in one place, with liberal use of tags and an ongoing struggle to reconcile my desire for privacy with my desire to reach out.