Lu la lu la lu

Viking Kittens!! I mean, Viking Kittens....not much else to add to that.

I stumbled (thanks, Myles, for pointing out that little productivity killer - I love it!) across the coolest graphic knitting tool. Save the picture you want to knit up to your computer, upload, and it turns your picture into a knitting pattern! Really nifty - Allegra is getting a Totoro Sweater soon. Meet KnitPro

I'm feeling a bit stressed this week. The Literacy Fair is Saturday, which is usually great fun as I have a project that I take there and kids can do all day. But this year things are different. I'm running a discussion on Paul Fleischman's Seedfolks, and we're going to be giving out copies of the books to people that participate. I'm prepared for that one as I've done a few discussion groups around it already. But, then I'm to do a book and movie combo on Spirited Away. I'm actually pretty prepared for it - the stressful part is that I'm supposed to give away several copies of the first volume of the manga and none of them have come in yet!!! This is after I ordered them in August and didn't check on them until Monday (ok, yeah, that wasn't such a great thing to do), when I learned that they are "Permanently out of stock". ARGH!! At least, from my jobber (the company that I buy all the library's books from), so then I went to the publisher, Viz, and they had a bunch, so I just direct-ordered my set of mangas to giveaway and they should get here before Friday. Still, they might not, and I'm a bit, no I'm really stressed that they won't. Oh yeah, and I'm taking the radio station's digital recorder and will be creating a radio show from the Literacy Fair, and I haven't trained on that yet, but that's like a five minute how-to, and then it's just talking to people, so I can handle that.

So, I won't think about that. If the books come, great, if they don't....I'll wing it :)

In the meantime, distraction.... How about a scifi/fantasy book that you can read in a minute, like The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy or The Lord of the Rings Trilogy? Sscifi/fantasy books in a minute

Wonder if you might have a virus? Try the Human virus scanner. Apparently, among the other things I suffer, I also am afflicted with Gaming (Life is not a game. Roll 3D6. On a 4 or more go out and do something with your life); Politics (Stop caring!); and Scifi (Stop wearing the stick-on ears).

Elevator Moods - I don't actually know what this is because I'm out of time to continue exploring it, but it looks fascinating.

What I'm reading: Shojo Beat - this is the new magazine answer to the popular Shonen Jump. Basically Shonen=boy and Shojo=girl. So, while Shonen jump features Yu-Gi-Oh, DBZ, One Piece, Bleach, and other violent serials, Shojo Beat has drama and romance rich serials like Nana and Absolute Boyfriend. Despite the violence that's in Shonen Jump it's rated for ages 13+, while Shojo Beat is rated for ages 16+. So, since I had three Shojos come in at once (darn mail) I took them home to read them - still a bit worried that maybe there is too much going on in them to have them in the YA collection. But really, it's not that bad, sure there are a few bedroom scenes, and there's talk of sex, drug, and alcohol use, but it's not nearly as raunchy as say Gossip Girl. It just seems that the ratings are reinforcing that thought that violence is ok and romance is bad - which bugs me no end. Take the Redwall series: at heart this is a series of animal wars, sure there's more going on, but still this series is massively violent to which there is very little complaint. But then compare it to Naylor's Alice series, which is one of the most challenged juvenile series for "inappropriate subject matter" - romance is bad, violence is ok.

Anansi Boys - NEIL GAIMAN'S NEW BOOK!!! I just got it two days ago, and since I was in Berlin again yesterday didn't get a chance to start it until last night. I'll have to review it later. But, speaking of Gaiman, at this picture book workshop that I've been attending in Berlin I had to put together a whole picture book story hour and present it as my final bit of homework. So, wanting to have some fun with it I did a "Spooky storytime" for ages 6 and up and made The Wolves in the Walls part of my program and read it to a large group of librarians in the workshop for my presentation. I had great fun with it.