Biblioball 2010

Last Saturday The Desk Set hosted it's annual Biblioball, the New York winter librarian ball. The event took place at the Bell House in Brooklyn and had a DJ who played 50s and 60s girl group pop, soul, and doo-wop, local bands, trapeze artists, and a raffle.


She flies through the air with the greatest of ease...


Ricki, Lis, and Me


At librarian parties, even the alcohol gets classified. That's the Dewey Decimal classification for beer.

Fall into Fall!

Fall is here and in fact, nearly gone! It's been a good one albeit extremely busy too. I picked pumpkins, hosted a cocktail party, inflamed my cornea, celebrated my favorite holiday, and almost been crush by the sheer amount of school work!

The next few weeks will be dedicated to finishing out this semester and trying not to pull my hair out. Below are pictures of my exploits!

Food spread at our cocktail party including stuffed mushrooms and graveyard cake

Pumpkin rum punch!

Babies in a pumpkin patch

Broadway: American Idiot

Wednesday evening, Lis got us discount tickets from the TKTS booth for American Idiot, Green Day's rock opera about punk rock kids in suburbia. The show was most excellent and brought a tear to my eye, recalling my own youth spent in anger and angst in the suburbs of Salt Lake City. The set was really awesome and the choreographer was extremely creative in the use of ariel space and the floor to ceiling rigging that dotted the set.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a good video of the show, but I did find a number performed on David Letterman.

Fame!

I finally found the video of me being interviewed at Coney Island! My quote is available 0:28 seconds in the clip!

Urban Tornado!

Yo, Toto! We are definitely not in Kansas, but apparently the tornado gods don't discriminate.

A tornado/fierce storm hit New York yesterday, mainly affecting the Park Slope/Bed-Sty area of Brooklyn and Flushing, Queens where one woman was killed. My neighborhood wasn't affected, but it did screw up the trains for the whole city, so it took me two hours to get home. It took 40 minutes to get from 14th st to Essex st (normally a 6 minute ride), another 30 minutes standing around waiting in various stations, and then a 45 minute walk from the Lower East Side to my house. Luckily we live not too far from the Williamsburg Bridge; I shudder to think about what would've happened had I still lived in Ridgewood.

Here's some of the damage in Park Slope:


(C) New York Times

Moved in

After two and half long weeks, we are finally moved in! We still need a couple of odds n' ends, but we are done for the most part. Courtesy of my boss, who was also moving and getting rid of most of her old furniture, we now have a sofa, love seat, coffee table, floor lamp, and bookshelf...almost more furniture than our small living room can handle.



Kara arrived on the third and is adapting well. We are having a good time!

New Apartment!

It's official! I've found a new apartment, signed the lease, and put down a deposit. My new place is in Williamsburg, smack in the middle of the JMZ, L, and G trains which are the three trains I need to take to get pretty much everywhere in my life. It's also within walking distance of some really great restaurants, bars, and other fun stuff. All my commute times are getting slashed in half and I am now two stops from Manhattan.

I'm moving in with Kara, my former roommate from Seattle, and Mindy, who is one of my library school friends. I am very excited! This week is all about packing up my things and then moving this weekend.

ALA 2010 Conference

I just got back from the American Libraries Association Conference in Washington D.C. late last night. It was fantastic! I went down with my girlfriend from library school, Lis. This was our first library conference and we had no idea what to expect!

First on Saturday, we went to see the legendary Nancy Pearl speak....err, sorta. What it really turned out to be was Nancy Pearl interviewing a filmmaker who just made a documentary about the filming of To Kill A Mockingbird. Interesting, but not really what we thought we were going to. Next we went to a panel of romance writers. Now, I've never read any romance, and I wasn't particularly excited for this program, but it sounded more interesting than anything going on during the same time slot. However, it ended up being one of the best programs of the weekend! Every writer (there were six total) discussed their writing process and how the library related to that. Typically, I am immersed in conversation about libraries from a librarian's point of view, so it was interesting to hear about libraries from an author's viewpoint. My own bias made me assume that romance writers were vastly overweight middle aged single women who lived with their cats in a fantasy world where Prince Charming would really show up on their doorstep on a white steed. Instead, all of the women were very intelligent, articulate, and very funny! They came from a variety of backgrounds, including one who is a published professor of art history. Other programs attended include: the Feminist Task Force's Introduction to Women's Issues, Career Development for New Librarians, and Self-Censorship. The opening remarks were given by Toni Morrison, who is a fabulous speaker. She told a story about how she first "learned the brutal power of words". She truly is a wordsmith with amazing delivery and her speech was really one of the weekend highlights.

Sunday, we decided to conquer the exhibits hall, which featured 42 aisles of exhibitors, of which we had barely made a dent in visiting Saturday, despite three trips to the hall. The exhibits included everything from job recruiters to library furniture, to book ATMs, to database vendors, but the best part was definitely the 10 aisles of publishers. There was everything to the big publishing houses like Random House, Harper Collins, & McGraw-Hill, to tiny independent presses. They were giving away books like candy, and Lis and I both made a killing! Many of the novels we received aren't even out yet, and we are both excited to dive in to them. We concluded our conference weekend by attending the sixth annual Book Cart Drill Team Champions ships, where four teams from every corner of the U.S. competed with their book cart dancing...yes, I said book cart dancing, librarians know how to really blow off some steam!

Mermaid Parade 2010

Saturday was the 2010 Mermaid Parade down at Coney Island. We ended up having perfect weather; sunny but not too hot! My friend Brooklyn Babydoll organized a group going as "Tony Montunafish presents 'Scarfish'". The theme actually ended up turning out really well. Below are pictures I snagged. Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson presided as King Neptune and Queen Mermaid.

Our whole group from left to right: me, Coco Le Pearl as Elvira, Shannon, Brooklyn Babydoll as Gine Montunafish, Machine Gun Mermaid, Julian as Sonny, Jacqui as the statue at the end of the film, and Bob as Tony Montunafish.

Brooklyn Babydoll modeling our banner

Brooklyn Babydoll and Me
It ended up being a very fun day and I look forward to participating again next summer!

Busy as a bee!

Oh me, oh my! My schedule is June has been crazy busy and the craziness has just started. Last weekend was the Stein-Gray Wedding (see previous post). This Saturday is the annual Mermaid Parade. In the Mermaid Parade, participants dress as up as various kinds of mermaids and promenade around Coney Island. Later in the evening is the Mermaid Ball, where all the spectators and participants mingle for dancing and burlesque. Sunday is Punk Island, where 130+ tri-state and New England punk rock bands takeover Governor's Island for a free music festival.

The following weekend I will be in DC for the annual American Libraries Association Conference with my good friend Lis. I come back to New York for a four days and then jet off to Salt Lake for a week to visit my friends and family. When I get back I am going to need a vacation from all this craziness!

Stein-Gray Wedding

Early on when I moved to New York, I had the great fortune of meeting Liz and Chris. This dynamic duo have been really wonderful friends as I've been building a new life here. Liz is a New York native and Chris is from Salt Lake, something that we have bonded over. I had the joy of seeing these two tie the knot this past weekend, which resulted in one of the most fun weddings I've ever been to.

The bride and I at her bachelorette party.
The ceremony was held at Brooklyn Bridge Park, which provided for a lovely backdrop. The New York skyline was in the background, the Brooklyn Bridge was overhead, and the sun was shining down on us. The reception was held at the DUMBO Arts Center and featured live music from Susquehanna Industrial Tool & Die Co. A good time was had by all!

Liz and Chris

Erin, Brooke, Emma, Me, and Tara enjoying ourselves

Me at the ceremony

Memorial Day Weekend

My visit with Kara this past week went splendidly! She was tied up with Fordham a lot of the time, but we still managed to have fun. This past week was Fleet Week here in NYC, where all the Navy ships dock in New York Harbor and the city is overrun with sailors.

We went dancing at Webster Hall on Friday night, followed by drinks at Otto's on Saturday. We also tried Foodswings, a vegan fast-food joint in Williamsburg. Now, just because its vegan, doesn't make it good for you. The menu is full of all sorts of burgers, shakes, and other bad for you fried goodness. I had a gyro with a peanut butter whoopie pie and Kara tried the Ranch Bacon Chicken sandwich with a pistachio milkshake (with fresh chopped pistachios!). Kara has decided that she wants us to live within a 12 block radius of this place. No, seriously. So we've added Williamsburg to the list of potential places to live.

Ice Cream Tour: L'arte Del Gelato

New York City is home to many things, but the coolest (wait for the pun) is quite a few awesome ice cream places. They frequently show up on Food Network, foodie mags, best of lists, etc. My friend Lis and I decided that it was our duty to give them all a try. The NYC Ice Cream Tour 2010 currently has 9 places all around the city.

We kicked off our tour Wednesday night at L'Arte del Gelato in West Village. You know you are in a serious, serious gelato shop when all the flavors are in Italian and the shop girl barely speaks English. A small cup comes with 2 flavors so I got Stracciatella and Hazelnut, which was to die for. It was seriously a bangin' way to kick off our tour.

House guests, round 2!

For the past week I've had my good friend Jeanette in town. We had an action packed week, doing all sorts of great stuff. I love having visitors because I get around the city more than usual (and of course, I love the city!).

Friday night we went to Otto's Shrunken Head for Rebel Night, where we caught up with some friends. Saturday we spent at Coney Island. Unfortunately we had overestimated the weather and found that hauling out our beach stuff was totally unnecessary. We did go to the Freak Show, the Coney Island Museum, and rode the Wonder Wheel, so a good time was had by all. Sunday afternoon Laura Rebel Angel was hosting a Wayne Hancock BBQ at Public Assembly. We had some bitchin' mac n' cheese, saw some doggies dressed in Western wear, and saw 6 tri-state bands as well as Wayne "The Train" Hancock himself.

Jeanette left this morning and tonight Kara, my former college roommate, will be arriving. She is going to be doing a bunch of stuff with Fordham, which she will be attending in the fall, and we will start exploring some of the neighborhoods that we are interested in moving to in the fall.

They're creepy and they're kooky...

Tuesday evening, Lis and I went to The Addams Family Musical on Broadway. Nathan Lane played Gomez and Bebe Neuwirth as Morticia. The aesthetic was amazing! The costumes and set were really spectacular. The ticket was birthday gift from my mother, thanks mama!

Halfway done!

Yesterday I completed my last class of the semester. I am now halfway complete with my masters! I cannot believe it.

The final project for my Cataloging class was to catalog a collection of our choice. I decided to do my "hair ornament" collection which consists of my hair flowers, bows, cocktail hats, and fascinators. One of my other classmates decided to catalog tattoos, of which I got to be a participant! She is a computer programmer (she writes iPhone apps for a living) so she decided to be super fancy and create her own XML schema to display her project. She took it a step even further and registered a domain name for it. You can check her project (and me!) out at Skin Art Library. I am 7 rows down, on the far right.

Happy Summer everyone!

Going to D.C.!

Tomorrow SILSSA (our student organization at library school) is sponsoring a free day trip to the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. We are catching a bus at the ungodly hour of 6 am, heading down to D.C., and then will be back around 10 or 11 pm. Details and pictures to follow!

New Job!

Earlier this week I interviewed for a new job, and yesterday I found out that I got it! I will be working as a Library Associate in the library at the Leo Baeck Institute which is a research center for German Jewish history. The gig is only part time, so I will be working there in addition to my current job in the admissions office. I'll be cutting my internship at the Met down to a half a day, but I am in for a very busy summer! It feels really great to actually be paid for using my degree!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to me! This is the gorgeous black forest cake that Aunt Jo got for our birthdays! It was from Alpine Bakery, our favorite bakery in Smithtown. Easter weekend was celebrated with a lot of food and family. Later that night I headed back to the city where I met up with some friends at B-Side for some punk rock and Tom Collins. Very good birthday, even if I had stitches :P

This is why they call me gorgeous...

So as you may have heard, I got hit by a cab Tuesday night on Bowery and Delancey. I'm okay, but it's really not an experience I'd like to repeat. Stitches come out tomorrow on my birthday!

Michelle's Visit

So last week, my friend Michelle came to visit me from Seattle. We had a really great time. I enjoy having guests because it gives me an (extra) excuse to get out and about in the city. Thursday we saw the Tim Burton exhibit at MoMA. Below is a giant balloon of on of his characters.

Later that night we went to see the off-Broadway Avenue Q, which was super offensive and super funny.

The weather was a beautiful 71 degrees on Saturday, so we went to Coney Island, one of my favorite places outside of Manhattan in New York. Michelle had a Nathan's hot dog and I had a knish off the boardwalk. We also went to the Coney Island Museum, which for 99cents was quite a deal.

I also took Michelle for a true NYC bagel...quite different than a crappy West Coast one! I think she was pleasantly surprised at the difference.

Costume Institute

Michelle went home today and we had a really great time. I will write more about her visit after she gets her pictures up.

Today was very exciting because I have been transferred libraries at the Met. My intern friend Anthony and I have been moved to the Costume Institute Library and today was my first day. Yes, it really is as cool as it sounds. Today I spent the day measuring binders containing sketches from the house of Mainbocher from the 40s, 50s, and 60s (see example below). I believe that I will immensely enjoy this opportunity!

Dancing Queen(s)

So a friend sent me this video taken last summer at Urban Lounge at the Rhythm Radio Makers show. If you watch the bottom of the screen, you can see Vince and me dancing! He is wearing a newsboy cap and I still have my two-tone hair.

Lunch Break

My internship is going great. This week was the first week where I spent the whole day at the Watson and didn't do any off-site processing. Instead, I was taught some new skills including labeling new books (slightly harder than it sounds) and reclassification. Learning how to reclassify was really cool because it tied together a lot of concepts that I've been learning about in my cataloging class.

This week I did some shopping and art-gazing while I was on my lunch break. I went to go check out the Victorian Photocollage exhibit and the Rodin sculptures.

Cupid & Psyche by Rodin

Spring Break Plans

During Spring Break (March 15-19), my dear friend Michelle is coming to visit me from Seattle. Michelle and I got to know each other during our semester abroad in Grenoble last year. Since we had a similar class schedule and similar hobbies (shopping, eating, and going out) we got to spend a lot of time together and I've missed her since returning back to the motherland.


We have a lot of great plans for when she is here, but I am most excited to go see Avenue Q, the deliciously offensive Off-Broadway puppet show. Other destinations include the Met, MoMA, and Rebel Night @ Otto's Shrunken Head. I will let you now how the visit goes!

Brunch: Rocking Horse Cafe

This past Sunday we went to brunch at the Rocking Horse Cafe, a "Mexican" place. I don't like Mexican or Tex-Mex to begin with so you can imagine that I was not stoked on the idea of eating Mexican east of the Mississippi. I had the Huevos Rancheros which were okay. I've had better. Again, I forgot to take pictures which is too bad because the place was adorable. When Mindy ordered the Croque "Senor", the waiter's eyes got big and he warned her that that particular dish was extremely spicy to which she replied "bring it on" (essentially). She took one bite and was annoyed to find it wasn't spicy at all. Oh East Coasters.

Despite the quality of the food, the quality of the company was superb. I love this tradition that we have.

Trendsetters

I just wanted to note that last week's brunch place, Sanctuary T, was featured on this week's episode of Kell On Earth. I have a feeling that this place is about to blow up now due to the publicity, so I just wanted to put it out there that, we were there before it was cool.

Just call us trendsetters!

Brunch: Santuary T

Every Sunday I go to brunch with some of my girlfriends. My mother suggested that this would make a great topic for my blog. Today we went to Sanctuary T in SoHo. Unfortunately I didn't remember I was blogging about it until after I finished my dish.
What you are not seeing is the remnants of a Banana-Caramel-Nutella Crepe. It was so good I had to stop myself from licking the plate. Lis had the Bacon-Egg-Goat Cheese Sandwich, Mindy had Eggs Benedict with Lox, and Madhavi had the Fresh Fruit Crepe.

The restaurant was right off of Canal Street which divides SoHo from Chinatown. We decided to do some junk-jewelry shopping. The secret to Chinatown? Pretending that you aren't interested in the item you want. The vendor dropped my new sweet bling from $10 to $8. It's a snake, in case you can't tell.
Lis headed off to work, so Mindy, Madhavi, and I headed uptown to help Madhavi shop for her upcoming MBA interviews (we were not successful). On the way they introduced me to The City Bakery which has famous hot chocolate. Really, hot chocolate is a misnomer, its more like liquid chocolate sludge. They also have a Hot Chocolate du Jour. Today's was "Sunken Treasure" which had a chocolate truffle, a piece of toffee, and caramel coral at the bottom of the cup. Then they poured the sludge over it, topped with a house-made marshmallow.
They had also decorated the place with "Marshmallow Curtains". Yes, those are real marshmallows.

Between the crepe and the liquid cocoa, I quickly entered a sugar coma. But oh, so worth it.

Trip to the Aquarium

Two weekends ago I went to the Atlantis Marine World Aquarium in Riverhead, LI with Uncle Joe, Carolyn, Melissa, and the babies! We had a really good time.

New Semester

I haven't blogged in over a month...my apologies! My computer crashed over the break and its still not working :(. I'm sending it to the service center next week, so hopefully it will be up and running again shortly.

I had my first week of classes this week and they were great. This semester I'm taking Knowledge Organization (Cataloging), Tech, and Online Database Searching...its a very technology-based semester! I have a term project for each class including cataloging a personal collection of my own, building a website, and researching a real information need for someone I know.

I also started volunteering with NYCares, an organization which staffs different organizations (everyone from soup kitchens to the NYC Marathon) with volunteers. They currently have 48,000 registered volunteers. The project I am doing is called Culinary Explorers, which is teaching underpriviliged kids 8-12 how to cook. Last week we made southern-influenced food including Un-Fried Chicken, Chipolte Mashed Sweet Potatoes, and Cornbread.

I also had my first day of work yesterday! I am working as a graduate assistant in the Pratt Institute Admissions Office. Yesterday I spent the whole day alphabetizing incoming materials (including transcripts, portfolio evaluations, letters of recommendation, SAT & TOEFL scores, and more). I'll be working Mondays and Fridays that the Pratt Brooklyn campus.

It was a very busy first week to say the least!