Vintage Wednesdays-This Old House

I enjoy making these digis so much. I find the creation of them to be very destressing. I try all kinds of things on them before I post them here. While making them, I get all kinds of help too. Once while making this one, Ollie stepped on my computer causing it to go all haywire and at another point, Claude had his two front feet resting on my shoulders as if he was watching. Claude is super good. He is my special old fellow. I tell these young whipper snappers to be nice to him because he has seniority. This is kind of a composite of Vintage Wednesdays and Finding My Style Saturdays. It was a case of Finding My Style while using a vintage picture of a house.

Grungey Rose

Is there such a thing as a grungey rose? I do not think so. This is my attempt at a grungey piece. I figured it would take the edge off of it some if I included something beautiful too. What do you think?

A Day in the Life

This is not going to exactly be Sunday Song Lyrics but it is taken from a title to a song. I hope that is close enough to count. This is a pictorial review of my life in the Digital Library. Since January, I have been working in an academic library in the part of the library called Digital Library Services. It is in the basement of the large central academic library. The university is working on a large initiative to convert all audio visual materials to digital formats. The Library of Congress has a similar initiative on a much grander scale. This is what my work station looks like in the DLS...not fancy but it does everything I need for it to do. I do not spend much time at my station.

In the next picture, I am logged onto my favorite site which has nothing to do with my duties (OED).

These next pictures are from the Special Collections offsite storage location. Essentially, it is a climate controlled warehouse specifically built to hold library materials. I am not concerned with digitizing all of the libraries audio visual materials but only the items in Special Collections. Special Collections is largely a collection of donated materials. It is where you would go to find genealogical items. There are other items there as well such as donated record album collections and art work. The items are treasure troves. For example, there is a donated home movie from the 1950's of a personal tour of the Pope's Summer Palace. There are private photographs of President Kennedy, President Johnson, President Roosevelt just to name a few. This warehouse stores materials that have been weeded and are not yet prepared for sale to other academic libraries. It also holds materials that have recently been donated but are not yet catalogued. It would be safe to say we really do not know yet what treasures are in here. Here is where my job comes into play. Remember I said I was working on a digital initiative? It is my job to find all audio/visual materials contained here then, map it in a fashion so that it may be found again here when it is time for digitization. As I said, these items are not catalogued yet, they only have an accession number. It may not seem like hard work but it is. It is very physically demanding to climb to the tops of these stacks, pull out boxes and go through the contents. It is necessary to get on an electronic picker to reach the tops of these rows. This is not all of what I do or where I do it. I will post more about this digital initiative at a later date. The pictures at the very bottom are examples of what happens to art work that has no place to be viewed currently. Items rotate in and out of these cages as needed. There is a lot of physical work to librariaship and contrary to what you might read, librarians are not going away anytime soon.

Fashion Fridays-Well Sort Of

I missed Fashion Friday by a few minutes. Well, I tried. I love these fashion pieces. They are fun. This is off topic yet funny. I have myself a little cat that I have been taking care of outside. He is so cute. He has one of those little snub noses and very round face. He is just adorable, really. He has taken a liking to me too. He sees me come home and here the boy comes running. I can hear him purring already from 3 feet away. We are a match made in heaven for each other. Okay, here is the odd part. Sometimes when I see him, he completely ignores me. I call out to him, he stops and stares, then saunters off as if he could not care any less. I had begun to think of him as a Doctor Jekyll Mr. Hyde type cat. Long story short, last night he ran to meet me. I was outside talking to him and he was carrying on with his cute self. I looked up two houses down and there he was...no, he is still carrying on his cute self at my feet. He has a twin! And his twin is not so friendly. Mystery solved.

Visiting with Mother Nature

I really love spring! It is my favorite season of the year. I especially love it this year! I have missed the birds and the beautiful green leaves. When I see a daffodil, I know spring has arrived.

Fashion Sunday

I didn't get around to doing a post on Friday. I do not plan to post everyday or make up for posts when I do not. However, I made this little thing this afternoon.

Sunday Song Lyrics-Bad Romance

I think Beauty and the Beast pretty much epitomize the song "Bad Romance". At least, that is always who I think of when I hear the song.

Finding My Style Saturdays

Just a little something I created to represent city nights....I really like 'Finding My Style' better than any other category. It is fun to find your style!

Alternate Universe

In the alternate universe I created, things with wings still exist.

Vintage Wednesdays

London may be cloudy and dreary some of the time but it brings sunshine to my soul and joy to my heart. If ever a person was truly in love, it is I...with London.

Visiting with Mother Nature

I am especially tired this evening so my creation will not be much. A lot of times when I am making these little pieces, I am multi-tasking. I never have time just to do ONE thing. Wow, just to do one thing at a time almost seems self indulgent. I am so tired today that I am having trouble thinking of words. Do you ever do that? For me, it is a symptom of sleep deprivation. I have never been a good sleeper. As I get older, my sleeping habits become worse. I do not like to sleep. I want to stay awake all night. I figure some day I will sleep forever, right? I will catch up on whatever I am missing now, then. Sometimes I watch tv while making these little pieces. I only have a handful of shows that I like to watch. But true to form, when something catches my attention, it catches it completely. But there are some commercials on tv that just drive me up the wall. One that I hate is Swiffer!!!! That is just oogey! Showing that old broom in the hot tub or the feather duster and some kind of doll in the attic. Creeeepppyyy! Or a rake and mop in the garage having a spaghetti dinner. Yucko. I wish that cat in the feather duster one would just tear into that old feather duster and rip it to shreds. Okay, 'nuf said.
Here is my completely digital representation of the beautiful full moon I saw a couple of nights ago. There are some things that I love that crop up over and over in these creations...the moon and hearts are the main two. I love the shape of the heart. I do not know why but it suits my tastes right down to the ground.

Three Sheets to the Wind

A short time ago, I spent some time doing genealogy. It is very odd what a person discovers about their ancestry. There are many ancestors in my past that make me smile when I think of them, people that I never knew but that I am carrying their genes. Some of it is not surprising. Some of it is deep rooted down to the core and I somehow knew it without really ever having heard it. My mom's ancestry was done by another family member on her side of the family. He has done much more extensive research than I ever did. He has even collected photographs of ancestors dating back to early 1800 Scotland. I set out to find out more about my dad's side of the family as I essentially knew nothing about them. I was surprised to find that they were a most prolific bunch of people. It was nothing for their families to have 13 to 16 children. My original ancestor on my dad's side that came to this country came here from London as the captain of a ship carrying supplies to the new world. He never stayed but he did have a son that stayed and lived in Virginia.

This little creation is a tip of the hat to that ancestor. To say someone is 'three sheets to the wind' is to say that they are intoxicated. It is a nautical phrase. Sheets are not the sails but rather the ropes that secure the sails. If the sheets are unsecured, the sails are flapping. The ship is free to rock and roll. Therefore, sailors began to refer to wobbley, intoxicated behavior as being 'three sheets to the wind'. 'Three sheets' was very drunk. To be 'one sheet' was only slightly drunk. I think the ship in my creation has all of its sheets secured. It is setting sail for a new land.