Bartleby and 'Vertigo'

I thought you might like to see how Manny Two is settling in among the other plants in our dining room. Manny is second from the left, on the blue plant stand. He looks much better than when I found him! Five of the large plants in that picture -- and all of the orchids on the windowsill -- are foundlings.

See how badly our front garden needs trimming? That big bush is engulfing the window. I e-mailed the management company yesterday to ask where that stands. I filed the maintenance request in August and I've heard nothing.

Last week, when I was complaining about spreadsheets at work, blog pal Elizabeth left a funny comment: "You could write your own version of Bartleby, I think!" I thought, "My God, I AM Bartleby!" Bartleby the Scrivener is a character from a short story by Herman Melville, about a recalcitrant legal clerk who gradually stops doing any work at all, telling his boss at every request, "I would prefer not to." Eventually he will only stand at a window, looking out on a blank brick wall. He won't go home -- if he has a home -- even when the boss, who feels oddly responsible for Bartleby, reluctantly fires him. Eventually the boss has to move offices because Bartleby won't leave.

Nowadays this would be interpreted as an obvious case of incapacitating depression, but back then Bartleby was considered merely eccentric. I don't have the depression but I have at work recently been sorely tempted to answer some of my boss's requests with "I would prefer not to"! For the record, though, I usually do what's asked, even when it involves spreadsheets, and I am doing my utmost to be positive and agreeable. So I guess I'm not quite Bartleby yet.

Anyway, I bring all this up because Elizabeth's comment prompted me to re-read Melville's story yesterday, and it was darned amusing.

Here's another thing I did yesterday -- I rented Hitchcock's "Vertigo," from 1958. I had it in my head that I hadn't seen it in a long time, but no sooner had I clicked the rental button than I realized I'd watched it earlier this year. Argh! Not wanting to waste my $3.99, I watched it again, and was once again struck by Hitchcock's amazing eye (along with cinematographer Robert Burks) for composing beautiful shots.

Look at those dramatic shadows!

Again, terrific framing, and I loved the way Kim Novak's scarf blows in the wind as she walks along the bay (before eventually jumping in).

I mean, seriously. Does the use of light and color get any better than this?

I thought of what Barbra Streisand said about movies in her autobiography -- that they are time capsules. While we all age -- Kim Novak is now 91 -- and San Francisco is dramatically different from the city depicted in the film, we can time travel back to 1958 while watching it.

As much as I enjoyed it, I now have to remember that I have seen "Vertigo" and I don't need to rent it again! At least not for a while.

While all this was going on, Mr. Russia spent FOUR HOURS power-washing the terrace over our heads. It's only about 10-by-20 feet, but he wasn't just washing the surface. No, he was lifting all the pavers and washing BENEATH them, and informed us he had found cracks and will have to do waterproofing. (Although actually, it's our ceiling, so why does he care?) I told him to tell the landlords. It's always something with that guy.

Flowers and Treats

We had a very domestic day around here yesterday, as you can see. It was sunny and warm enough for Olga and me to sit out in the garden, where I read (and finished) "Long Island Compromise." I really enjoyed it and now I'm passing it along to several of my co-workers.

As you can see, the dahlias are still going, both in the garden...

...and on the patio.

The canna lily also came out with its first flower of the season -- in October! I really thought it wouldn't bloom at all but it managed.

And our purple anemone is blooming up a storm too, even though a chunk of the plant died earlier this year (and it has that big ol' fern frond growing overtop of it).

I cleaned the house yesterday afternoon, including vacuuming out the fireplace in the bedroom, which I don't think I've ever done. It's not a usable fireplace so there were no ashes in it, but it was full of dust and ten-year-old Olga hair. I'm not sure why I've never cleaned it out before, except that one doesn't usually clean inside a fireplace. You know how you just stop seeing things over time? And then I looked at it critically and saw that the grate was downright shaggy. Now it's clean as a whistle.

Of course I took Olga on a couple of walks, but just to the corner to sniff the trash. She would go no farther.

Oh, here's a little mystery. The last two or three nights Olga has wanted to go out in the middle of the night several times. I've always thought she hears foxes out there, but her hearing isn't so great anymore, so maybe she smells them? Anyway, she's been a pain in the neck, waking me up to let her out the door.

Last night, I went out with her and she began rooting around in a flowerpot at the back of the garden near the bench. I found her gnawing in the dark on this mysterious dog treat (above) that was somehow buried in the flowerpot. We've found weird dog treats (not ours) in the garden before, usually buried, and I've always blamed the foxes -- I think it's too large for a squirrel to bury. Someone must be leaving them out for the foxes and the foxes, for some foolish reason, bring them to us.

Anyway, I took it away from her and left it on the garden wall, where the foxes climb into the garden from next door, so if they want it they can take it. I doubt that it would hurt Olga but I'd rather she stick to her own treats.

Here she is with one of hers. Dave and I both laugh at the sounds she makes when she's eating them. She doesn't do that when she eats normal food. I guess it's because she has to breathe during the chewing, rather than taking breaths between bites?

And now Olga is beseeching me for another walk. She is no doubt eager to sniff more trash. (Insert eye-roll emoji here: 🙄)

The Concentration

Well, yesterday turned out to be busy but manageable in the library. My boss was out and she had a substitute -- a guy who's getting a library degree and is interning with us. We had five 9th Grade English classes come in and check out books to read next week, when the students will all be on break. I didn't allow any kids who still had summer checkouts to get a new book, and at the end of the day that only prevented three students from getting something -- the rest all brought their overdue books back. I call that a win!

Everything ran smoothly and the day was very calm. And at the end of it all, I went to a pub with the middle school librarian and some other teachers and had a couple of pints as a little end-of-the-week celebration. A surprise element was meeting the director of this movie, who is married to one of our school administrators. Who knew?!

So, yeah, break next week. Two days are parent conferences, which for me doesn't mean much but Dave will be busy, but then we're off after Tuesday. We have no special plans yet but I may try to stir up some kind of late-breaking adventure.

I walked Olga yesterday morning and she was feeling frisky and insisted on making a complete circuit of the neighborhood. I was afraid she would make me late for work but I squeezed in just under the wire. As we were walking I found some trash that included someone's miniature painting of (I think?) a tree trunk.

The big mystery in the library involved that spreadsheet of games I mentioned one or two posts back. One game was listed in our catalog as "The Concentration," and it had no picture and no descriptive information. I could not find this game anywhere. I looked and looked and was completely at a loss to describe it on the spreadsheet, much less link it to a how-to-play video or web site. I even went down to the Lower School to see if it was there, and it wasn't. I began to suspect it was some kind of test entry in the catalog that didn't correspond to a real object.

But finally I looked on our puzzles shelf and found this:

Yes, it appears to be a (donated) Asian game -- which I guess is why we didn't describe it in the catalog. All the rules are in Japanese -- or is that Chinese? I couldn't even find a description online, maybe because its name is so similar to the card game Concentration and its bazillion variations. I suppose someone might play it but they'll never find it if it's with the puzzles, so I moved it to the games cart and took this picture for the catalog and spreadsheet. We wind up with some interesting stuff in the library!

Bug Sex

Yesterday morning an 11th Grade girl came up to my desk and said, "Do you have one of those things that looks kind of like a safety pin? It keeps papers together?"

I said, "You mean a paper clip?"

"Yeah! That's it!" she said. "I couldn't remember the word!"

Dear God. I fear for the future.

And then later in the day, a fifth-grade boy put this book on hold:

Normally, a book like this would cause no concern at all. It's just biology, right?

But this book is written in a rather cheeky style, likening insect behavior to various human activities including orgies, bondage, rape, prostitution, wearing chastity belts and whatnot. Despite a Goodreads reviewer who says "it could be read by a middle school or high school student with no trouble at all," I had qualms about giving it to a fifth-grader. I could just imagine the questions it might prompt at the family dinner table. I showed it to the middle school librarian and she's going to follow up with the student to determine why he wants it -- is it because of the sex, or the bugs?

Ah, life in a school library.

This morning I have to be in extra-early (7:30 a.m.) because my boss is away and I have to open the library for some classes we have coming. 

I mailed Dave's ballot yesterday, so now we have both cast our votes. I snapped the top picture on my walk to the post office, on that same dog-legged street I photographed when I mailed my own ballot.

Finally, last night as we were going to bed, we let Olga out for a final walk around the garden. When we let her back in, we neglected to give her a treat. When she didn't come in the bedroom I wondered why, and I looked out the door and got this:

"Ummmmm...excuse me but WHERE'S MY TREAT?!"

Where My Head Is

Another picture from Hackney, a couple of weeks ago. I don't know what's going on with me lately but I haven't been taking many (any) pictures. I think my head has just been elsewhere.

Yesterday I mentioned that my job might change as a result of my co-worker's departure. One of the possibilities was that I might go half-time. A part-time vacancy arose because of some departmental reorganization and I proposed to my boss that I step into it, and I seriously considered it. I thought it would be a good way to back away from the library as I get closer to retirement and perhaps get more days off to travel around and explore.

But alas, it looks like that idea is not going to work. Because of the library's requirements I'd have to come in every day anyway -- for fewer hours, granted, but I'd get no days entirely free. I would never have enough time to, say, take a train somewhere and go on a weekday hike. And of course I'd be losing half my paycheck, which we could manage but I'm not sure there's enough benefit to justify it. Why not keep earning that money and save it?

So I think for the time being I'll stay full-time. It was good for me to look into this but I don't think the timing and circumstances are right.

We also had (once again) a minor bit of health drama with Olga. She has lots of lumps and bumps on her body, like any old dog, and one of them arose rather suddenly and seemed infected. I took her to the vet on Monday and they biopsied it, and it didn't show signs of anything terrible. But we have to keep an eye on it and make sure it heals well. That was another £250 down the drain.

Yet another reason not to give up any of my paycheck -- Olga maintenance!

(Above, that's her lying next to me on the couch as I type this.)

Yesterday was very busy at work. Among my other duties I'm updating a spreadsheet (!) that shows all our board games with links to descriptions and how to play them. This is for our annual Board Game Night, which I normally don't attend myself but I do help prepare for it. I actually found it pretty interesting work and it kept me absorbed (between "customers") most of the afternoon.

It made me realize how many games are a sort of indoctrination (some would say preparation) for our capitalist, competitive way of life -- Monopoly being the most obvious example. It's funny how we play it as kids and don't really question the ethics of the objective, to drive our competitors out of business and bankrupt them. I guess all games are competitive and if we simply shared all the resources the game would never end. But in real life, that's kind of what we want, isn't it? A balance that allows us all to prosper in perpetuity? Or am I talking like a Communist now?

Sticker Shock, and the Bat

I think I may be repeating myself with this photo of a car in my neighborhood, but I can't find any evidence that I've blogged a similar picture before. I took this one yesterday, but if it looks familiar, my apologies!

It's an eye-catching way of making one's car stand out in a crowd, anyway. I wonder if the fender was damaged or didn't match the rest of the car, and this was the solution? Like a fancy Band-Aid.

I mentioned earlier that my co-worker Joanna, the other assistant in our library, was leaving her position. Her last day was yesterday, so for the foreseeable future there's now only one library assistant -- me. Joanna's duties will be parceled out between me and the two remaining librarians.

We didn't have a special send-off for her yesterday, because she dislikes attention and inevitably feels obligated if someone gives her a gift or makes a fuss ("Now I have to write a thank-you note!") but we've all told her repeatedly in many ways that we will miss her. Which is true.

How this will affect my own job in the long-term is still under discussion. (And I'm part of that discussion.)

Hopefully I didn't give Joanna a cold as part of my going-away gift. The cold I thought I had Friday and Saturday seemed so mild that I began to doubt I had one at all, but now Dave thinks he's sick, so who knows. I feel pretty much normal, if a little sniffly.

My Halloween bat has made its reappearance over my desk. I realized yesterday I've been hanging this bat up for ten years, at least -- and it's been deflated for much of that time. (It used to be much fuller, sort of football-shaped.) I found it in the supply cabinet at work and it has become my annual tradition.

I'm not going to post the video of Olga scratching around on our bed pillows, partly because it seems weirdly intimate to show her on our bed with Dave walking around in his pajamas and our laundry on the chair in the background, and partly because it only captured her scratching for a few seconds (and believe me, it is a much lengthier process). I'll try to make a better one.

But this is the end result. We put that striped pillow in the foreground on the bed especially for her, so she wouldn't nest in our own pillows, but of course she doesn't like to use that one. She does run our lives, that dog.

Spreadsheets

Here's another photo from my walk around Hackney a few weeks ago. I'm not sure I took a single photo yesterday, which is unusual for me. Last night I took a video of the dog scratching around on our bed to make a "nest," but I'd rather not show you how much we let her get away with, so I don't think I'll post it. We might seem like pushovers.

Yesterday was partly consumed by gathering statistics of various kinds for a report about library usage. My new boss is a data fiend -- she loves spreadsheets and numbers and says (not wrongly) that they're the only way we can objectively know how people are using the library. So she has created multiple spreadsheets for all kinds of things, from how many parents checked out books last month to how many people were in the library yesterday during lunch. I must populate those spreadsheets with data.

The other day I ran into someone formerly from our finance department in the staff lounge. He left the finance job but is back on campus doing something else. He said he will never look at another spreadsheet again. "I'm done with spreadsheets," he said. I know how he feels.

I don't mind data but I tend to value personal experience and judgment more than my boss does. Our opinions are based on observation and analysis, after all -- they're not just whims. There's a coldness to relying on numbers. It removes the human element, for better and worse. It's also erroneous to believe numbers are foolproof -- you know the old saying about lies, damned lies and statistics. I think spreadsheets should be supporting players, not the headliners of the show.

Anyway, that's what I did yesterday, in addition to continuing my campaign to get back summer books, which were all due Sept. 6. I still have pages and pages of kids with those books still checked out. I suspect kids are less responsible now about that sort of thing than they were even ten years ago -- some people blame the pandemic but who knows. Maybe I should create a spreadsheet and compare statistics about summer book returns...ten years ago vs. now.

Aaaaaaargh!