5 Minutes of Pure Happiness

I dare you not to smile all the way through.

Great Minds Think Alike

I've included posts about TED and the Big Think in the past and have come across five other thinking-person's conferences through Mashable's Top Seven Great Places To Watch Great Minds In Action:

Idea City held in Toronto 2010. Idea City is an annual Toronto event featuring exceptional people who present their ideas and experiences in a seminar style. It is the brainchild of ex-Montrealer Moses Znaimer.

BIL is an ad-hoc conference for people changing the world in big ways. It's a place for passionate people to come together to energize, brainstorm, and take action. BIL 2010 will be held in Long Beach, CA.

Gel ("Good Experience Live") is a conference and community exploring good experience in all its forms -- in business, art, society, technology, and life. Gel 2009 and Gel 2010 will be held in NYC.

The BIF (Business Innovation Factory) Summit will be held in Providence, Rhode Island in October 2009.

Lastly, PopTech 2009 will be held in Camden, Maine in October. POPTech is a network of remarkable people, extraordinary conferences, powerful ideas and innovative projects that are changing the world.

Day In the Life ...

Weekday, a.m. Library has not opened yet. Come in and walk up the stairs and turn on the Waiting List computer. Check to be sure Print Station is up.

Uh-oh, strange message. That’s because the power went off last night during the thunder and lightning storm. Go to the Reference Desk, drop off books, papers, reviews taken home, turn on Reference Desk computer, and then turn on the reference computer in the office and check to be sure the printer is turned on.

Read the entire article by Beth Goldman, Outreach and Reference Librarian, in the Daily News Transcript.

Library Car-Ma

Image from stilloverbookeddotcom
Read the article in the Daily News Transcript.

Library Director Charlotte Canelli said three of the cars belonged to library employees and no one was in the parking lot at the time of the accident.

Food For Thought Served At the Library

When my book club met at the end of the summer, 2008, we courageously decided to tackle fresh mozzarella cheese. Call me a skeptic once again but I never imagined that a cheese made at home, in an ordinary kitchen, could be palatable, let alone absolutely delicious. I was amazed when my group of wine-sipping book ladies frothed up a delicious, fresh hunk of mozzarella in the time it took us to make a quick dinner.
Excited, I deigned to make my own cheese weekly. You guessed right - that never happened because I am, after all, not living the good life in the Virginia mountains that Kingsolver did. I’m not forced to invent my dinner each night but instead come home only to serve it.
Yet, I appreciate the effort and seek out those homemade, local creations to add to my family table. Perhaps that is what Kingsolver hoped we all would do - food for thought.

Read my entire article in the Daily News Transcript this week.

Librarians Go Wild in Chicago

Watch a small bit of the book cart drill teams in Chicago this week. Individual teams should be posting more of the videos this week as performance fever wears off.

"The stereotype of the librarian — horn-rimmed glasses, hair in a bun, finger to her lips stubbornly shushing — was nowhere to be found at this year's Librarian Book Cart Drill Championships held recently in Chicago.

Five teams of librarians — dressed in costumes ranging from Vikings to Elvis Presley — competed for the coveted gold book cart. They marched in drill-team formation, equipped with metal book carts" From the NPR website.

Or listen to the podcast or read the story on NPR. Read the ALA Inside Scoop blog about the winning performance of the Oak Park Public Library's "Ride of the Valkyries".

Mo Willems, author of the crazy pigeon books, including Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late for children said:

“There’s a stereotype that librarians are boring. And I think they want to change that stereotype to ‘librarians are crazy.'

I think he's right.

Online Reading

Friend of the Library, Justin Sun, sent me this link to a great blog with a self-explanatory title, How Books Got Their Titles. There are one-hundred-seventeen titles thus far and the blog makes interesting reading. Justin sent another, Alternative Reading,

a blog about the odd literary productions of people famous for doing something else.

Sometimes I wonder how many words I am reading every day in blogs, online news, documents, etc. - perhaps an Anna Karenina every week. Thanks again, Justin.

Send Your Name to Mars

Send your name to Mars. You'll even get a certificate of authenticity to print.

NASA now gives anyone the opportunity to send their name to Mars. Just enter your name, country and zipcode into the form, and your name – along with many others – will be included in a microchip on the Mars Science Laboratory rover which will be heading to Mars in 2011.Thanks to the Mashable website for this info.

Gourmet Fast Food Done Fancy

FancyFastFood presents fast food gone gourmet. Mighty creative although NOT I'm sure about the remixed taste. My favorite to try? BK Quiche (Fancy Croissan’wich & Biscuit). FancyFastFood writes:

"Up for the challenge? Submit your Fancy Fast Food culinary masterpieces to fancyfastfood[at]gmail.com. Remember the rules: no additional ingredients are allowed other than a simple garnish (which won't necessarily be eaten anyway, [i.e. parsley]), and no Photoshopping other than minor adjustments in sharpness or color correction. Please submit a "before shot" and photos of the makeover process as well."

Chegg For Textbooks

Chegg sells, rents and buys textbooks. This seems like a great alternative for students on a budget. Compare $195.00 for an organic chemistry textbook to a $15.97 rental price for a semester. The founders of Chegg are raking in the dough and students are spending less. Read this article in the New York Times.

I could have spent all night on this blog, Awful Library Books. It's a hoot ... for a librarian. I hope we never find any of these books at the Morrill Memorial Library.

Here's a teaser:
Hanging Out: The Upside Down Exercise Book

Book Gluttons Unite

NPR highlighted BookGlutton this week. It certainly looks like a way to expand books groups to the online world - although it seems quite new at this point. I noticed that junior high students have formed a group to read Pride and Prejudice. Books read similar to Kindle books with sizeable text.

Read Chat While Reading: The Future of Books or listen to the podcast.

Air New Zealand's BARE Essentials

Irresistible and a safety video you can't help but watch.

A Traveler's Tale

We might have heeded the weather report and waited until morning. We might have turned around before we hit torrential downpours just 20 miles northeast. Yet, we were hearty, hardy, and determined travelers and we left on our three-hour trip mid afternoon on the 1st of July.

Even in my vacation reverie, snatched from car ride slumber, I knew that Gerry’s words “We’ve lost it” were extremely bad news. The not-quite-locked-down Space Cadet, buffeted by wind and rain, had finally rebelled against her load. Her lid had burst upward and she had carelessly spilled her guts onto the slick, wet, and crowded highway at the worst time of the day: the evening commute.

We braved a nerve-jangling stop in the breakdown lane and then forlornly watched our brave driver – husband and grandfather – retreat backwards and disappear around the curve and to seek out what remained of our rooftop load. The three of us helplessly left behind held our breaths as large UPS and Wal-Mart trucks whipped by at breakneck speeds. Our hearts sank as we imagined shreds of sleeping bags, tents, and towels pummeled into the tarmac of the busy highway. We anticipated turning toward home, sheepishly admitting defeat after the very best of attitudes and intentions. Worst of all, of course, we realized our champion was braving the speeding lanes of vehicles.

You can read my entire article in the Daily News Transcript this week. Happy travels!