Filed under: Books, Random Observations | Tags: Books, diploma, hours, librarian, library, love, time, volunteer, work
Volunteering is something that many teenagers my age are acquainted with. In order to get a nice shiny seal on your diploma, you need to complete a certain amount of hours volunteering in places that the school deem fit. I think that the intended purpose of this is to teach you about self dedication and giving back to the community but the only thing that I’ve learned thus far is that I prefer painting flowers to butterflies on the cheeks of small children. Over the course of the school year I try to pick up a few hours here and there but a majority of my hours come from my gig a the library. Every summer since I started high school I’ve been clocking hours at my local library, playing the footman of the librarians.
On Tuesday I began my term and got to kick off the season by shelving the non-fiction book. Yeah! If you’re into the whole Dewey decimal system. (By the way it really isn’t fun if you haven’t caught my drift yet) According to this system each book is assigned a number depending on what genre it falls into. These numbers can be found on the spine of the book, but not always, and are printed in size 9 font. Dewey must have had fun creating his system because some of the genres were in the weirdest relativity. For example the books about love and umm… love making were right next to the books about coroners and death. I have to say though in spite of myself I actually had some fun. It was interesting to see what kinds of books people were checking out from the otherwise quiet section. Something that I found rather amusing was that a book called “How to Prevent Strokes” smelled like cigarette smoke. *sigh* The joys of irony.
I <3 Books (and libraries)
Filed under: Random Observations | Tags: anecdote, arizona, coop, eggs, green, illegal, little, men, mexican, mexico, story, travel, working
I don’t know why but lately I’ve been hearing a lot about aliens lately and not just the green ones either.I was talking with my Dad at the dinner table yesterday about his first job at a chicken farm and he told me about his fellow workers and their habits. Dad was born and raised in the Southwest and around the time he took this job he was living inArizona. Since Arizona is on the state borber line with Mexico more often than not you could find immigrants of illegal means about and working the low paying jobs, egg sorting being one of them. Immigration control made a show of going to these sorts of jobs and checking to see if everyone was on the right side of the border. The first time that control paid a visit to the coop blew Dad’s mind away. He was sorting through the eggs when suddenly he heard this whisle and all the Mexicans around him bolted. Apparently one of them kept watch for the cops and if he ever saw one of the sort he sounded the alarm and they would all crawl under the convery belt and hide in the chicken coops. This left Dad all alone in a room ful of egg when the officer walked in.
I’m not trying to diss Mexicans if that is what it’s coming of as, I’m just trying to wrap it around my head why people care so. Who cares if they creep over the border to work? They are doing the jobs that Americans wouldn’t want anyways. I think that it’s funny that the government is trying so hard to purge the country of them when they are the fundation of our economy.
I found this video this morning while surfing the web and I believe that it’ll produce a giggle or two. Ladies and gentlemen I produce our tax dollars at work…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nxHjA8QC18
Filed under: Books, Le voyage | Tags: airport, bed, book, cough, deprived, fall, flu, heathrow, home, london, shelf, sick, sleep, sneeze, space, swine, traveling, unpacking
I am so glad to be back home even though I am incredibly unaccustomed to the humidity. The flight was pretty uneventful though we were waiting in Heathrow London Airport for 4 hours. Because of the outbreak of swine flu in England, I was a bit more paranoid about germs than usual and when ever the opportunity to wash my hands presented itself I took it. Every time I heard someone cough or sneeze I subconsciously felt myself inch away from that person. I haven’t felt sick yet so I’m going to take that as a good sign so far 
There is probably nothing better than sleeping in your own bed after a long time away from home. When we got home after a 4 hour drive down from D.C. it was 2:30 in the morning and I felt like the walking dead, moving my feet but not really thinking. I crawled into bed shortly after walking (or should I say staggering?) through the door, having not retrieved the the luggage from the car or brushed my teeth. A sense of peaceful euphoria came over me as I pulled my covers up to my chin and let the waves of sleep wash over me.
Now all that’s left to do is to unpack my bags and put everything away. Unpacking for me is no fun because it is just cleaning in disguise but with a twist. Instead of just placing pieces of disorder back into their respective place like regular cleaning, you have to find entirely new places to put things. Take for example, my shrinking bookcase. I brought back some books that I liked from Prague but when I tried to put them away I found that I barely had any space for them. This does not bode well for my collection of books that are physically attractive yet otherwise uninteresting.
