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I have been working on the concept for the “bad guy” in the newest Bunny Baron story.  I decided on the final sketch and wanted to give a peek of the newest bad guy, Lumber Jack. You may notice he looks a lot like the mean old Captain Barnacle…Correct! My idea is that the “bad” character will be constant throughout the series, but will be outfitted to fit the story, and have a different name.

In this story, the bad guy, Lumber Jack is dressed in a red flannel shirt with black suspenders. His hat is a flannel and fur trapper hat to protect himself from the cold northern climate. To finish off his rugged look, Lumber Jack grew out his beard and is ready to chop down some trees.

In my next post, I  will add a short sneak peek of the story itself.  I am still in the editing phase of it, but It will all come together soon. Thanks for keeping up with the Bunny Baron!

Dream Big!

I try not to think about this too often, but at times it’s depressing to contemplate that a capital city with two universities can be home to a “Gourmet Guide” — really, next to what you can find on Chowhound, the only local guide to dining in Tallahassee — with a rating system that makes absolutely no sense.

Last week’s review of Liam’s should have afforded me some comfort. It’s a relief to see coverage of a restaurant that is not a chain (why does Outback even need a review — do Blooming Onions change that much city to city?), did not last update its interior in the Eisenhower administration, and hasn’t forged new records for critical health inspection violations.

Stiff’s language was even, for once, restrained — which is, believe you-me, a Good Thing. I have written on Chowhound how painful Stiff’s writing can be when the Dem’s editors (clearly distracted by the far more important business of reporting ad infinitum on FSU’s football team) let Stiff stain their newsprint with far too many of his sappy puns, down-home yucks, and windy references to The Good Old Days of forty and fifty years ago (you remember those days, when Jim Crow reigned and women couldn’t get credit cards on their own recognizance).

I won’t even quibble that his review of the actual food at Liam’s is scant on description, as is true with most of his reviews. His background in the industrial-strength hospitality business is evident in his focus on the setting and service (not bad things to address) and his brief, sensory-limited comments that a dish is “nirvana” or that the duck is “rose-pink rare.” (With duck, the first question is always is it rubbery.)

Nor will I dink Stiff, who comments on Liam’s commitment to healthy food, for failing to observe that one current discussion in the foodie world focuses on the environmental tradeoffs to shipping organic goods long distances — as in, flying in organic duck from upstate New York. Liam’s does feature many local foods; the pea shoots that graced my (local, sustainably-caught, sweet as sugar, fresh as a splash of ocean foam) sea bass grew somewhere between here and Thomasville.

Furthermore, with respect to environmentalism, Tallahassee is so far behind on its developmental milestones — the topic is still a big yawn to many in this area, where the unapologetic guzzling of energy resources can border on the grotesque — that Liam’s may have to simply serve a high-demand food such as duck if it’s going to compete with other top-drawer restaurants. I have had duck at a number of local restaurants (Urbane’s so far was the best), and it’s only my gradual interest in ethical, environmentally responsible dining that even has me raise this question.

I will even forgive Stiff for attempting to go foodie on us in his wine discussion while not realizing that despite their small but nice wine list — a fairly new turn at Liam’s — they welcome “BYOB.” They have no corkage fee, and will store and open your wine for you.

But then — for no reason stated — Stiff gives Liam’s four and a half “hats.”

Four and a half effing hats.

Liam’s is a restaurant that is in a completely different stratosphere from most of the — I must say it — crap in this area. Liam’s is often referred to as “big-city-good,” as in, if it were suddenly transported to Manhattan, it could stand proud next to many a restaurant of its ilk. (The lone pho house in Tallahassee is only Tallahassee-good — respectable for this area, just not in a league with big-city pho houses.)

You speak of Liam’s in the same breath as Avenue Sea (in Apalachicola) and Urbane, Sage, and Cypress in Tallahassee (Kool Beanz, Clusters and Hops, and Fusion often enter this debate as well, as do some very good ethnic restaurants, rib shacks, and breakfast or oyster joints).

But based on that ludicrous Gourmet Guide — a guide based on the singularly incomprehensible food rating efforts of Stiff himself — Liam’s is half a hat above Outback and The Melting Pot — two chain restaurants!

But then again, the Tallahassee Democrat’s Gourmet Guide is top to bottom a ridiculous mess.

Sahara — with its hand-rolled dolmas, meat or vegetarian — has three hats– just like Macaroni Grill. Meanwhile, my beloved Shell Oyster Bar has three and a half hats — right up there with Stiff’s rating for The Olive Garden.

In the “light meals” category, Jenny’s Lunchbox — a cute and tasty breakfast and lunch joint — has only three hats, while Crisper’s, a forgettable chain, has three and a half.

On and on it goes, no rhyme or reason.

I have tried in this discussion to steer clear of drubbing truly local restaurants. In food reviewing, one visit should never torpedo a local business. My sense is that local reviewing can focus on what’s great and good, and leave the rest to inference or at least, where a place must get reviewed, to unavoidable conclusions backed with extensive evidence. But let’s just say that I’ve dined at enough places on the list — some of which serve what I think of as The Food You Eat When You Go To Hell– to say without any equivocation that the “Gourmet Guide” is neither gourmet nor a guide.

Read Chowhound, ask around, learn about the area. We don’t have enough great places to eat, but we do have some, and they deserve your business. Just steer clear of the Democrat’s restaurant advice, or as happened to me far too often when I was very new here, you’ll get Stiffed.

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I wasn’t in the mood for Thistle and Shamrock on my drive home from a Sunday afternoon writing siege at Panera’s (a little Celtic music goes an extremely long way for me), and I really wanted to finish listening to the latest On the Media show I had downloaded to my iPod, so I rummaged in the scary bottom floor of my purse for my Kensington digital iPod FM transmitter — but came up with a handful of parts.

Somehow the transmitter had separated. The tip, which constrains all the innards of the transmitter, screws off, which is a good thing if I ever need to change the fuse (I didn’t even know it had a fuse until the transmitter deconstructed), and a bad thing for someone with a purse so messy for all I know the WMD are in there.

I found four parts. The only problem is that there are actually five, and the missing part is a bespoke little spring that makes the doomaflatchy stay firm against the whatsis so the whole thing works.
So I wrote Kensington and asked them if they sold a spring or could provide one.

No, they said, they couldn’t. (This unit is being discontinued, Amazon advises.) But they could send me an entire replacement unit, assuming I could provide them with my address (easily acquired; I ran outside my house to make sure I remembered it correctly) and the serial number on the unit, which gave me a day’s pause as I rummaged through my office (strangely evocative of my purse) for the handy Brookstone magnifying glass a friend had given me two years ago. (I think the magnifying glass was a regifting thrice removed from friends who are pretending they aren’t growing old, and who will later complain that they can’t read the serial number on the back of their iPod/transmitter/Treo/computer, etc.)

Now, I’m sure Kensington doesn’t replace entire units for every customer query or problem. I’m guessing “you need an X fuse” is their most common response, and if I could fix this with a fuse, I would. I also suspect that tepid reaction to their new unit might make it good policy to send out freebies for customers with problems with the old ones.

But I already adored Kensington for the value this product had added to my life — and if you think that’s an overstatement, try driving from Tallahassee to Atlanta with only the radio as your companion (which is why it usually stays in my purse: so I have it when I rent cars).

For that matter, try driving to Publix from your home when the local public radio talk show is all a-chatter about poor picked-upon Mr. Vicks who ain’t done nuthin wrong. In exasperation against local radio programming I have used my iPod and my FM transmitter to create Radio Free Tallahassee, and I now donate directly to the public radio shows I regularly download. My iPod transmitter isn’t some miscellaneous bit of technology; it’s part of my local survival strategy (and I went through several other brands before finding one that worked).

So while I wait for the new transmitter, I shall hum to myself quite a bit — and the song shall be “If only we could all be like Kensington.” When my transmitter finally meets its maker, the chances are extremely good I’ll buy another Kensington. If the new unit is a dud, I’m going to be a lot more forgiving, and still willing to give Kensington a chance, and if I like it, I’ll coo all over Amazon. Overall, they’ve set the temperature of my warmth for their company far higher than it had been before I reached into my purse and came up with a handful of metal and plastic.

Meanwhile, in preparation for some Very Serious Work (research about research — the thought makes me dizzy), I ordered The Black Swan from the Leon County library. It arrived, but in the wrong format (CD instead of print). So I wrote the library, and guess what? I got the same service.

The library didn’t say “You ordered the wrong format!” There weren’t demands to come in to get this right or even call them (this was all by email). They immediately reassured me that the right format was on order — and guess what, they even told me when it might arrive. I know they have funky old catalog software that makes it difficult if not impossible to put this last bit of information into messages, but how wonderful that they took the time to share it with me so that I didn’t have to give up and buy the book from Amazon.

I’m always happy at that library — if they don’t have a book, they get it for me fast, and everyone is so friendly. I feel welcome there. But I felt welcome by this email exchange, as well.

The key here is understanding that it’s not the freebie or the close attention to an interlibrary loan. It’s not about the policy or the workflow. It’s about the focus on making — and keeping — happy, even passionate, customers.

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At first, when I couldn’t find a post I had made on Chowhound yesterday morning before I left for work, I chalked it up to my own sloppy surfing. I have been acutely focused on Friday’s talk, as many people from MPOW are coming, which I am finding very stressful to the point of frazzlement and hair-pulling (if I flub a talk 300 hundred miles from home, I can fly home and be done with it; but I see these folks every day).

But then I looked in the cache for Bloglines and found my own Chowhound post and the one that prompted it, in reference to this discussion of Urbane, a new restaurant in Tallahassee.

It’s not even the first Chowhound post of mine that has evaporated into the net-ether. Last week I linked to my review of the Shell Oyster Bar, and that vanished. I thought, well enough: they don’t want bloggers using Chowhound as a honeypot.

But what was wrong with the following posts? (Posting dates refer to Bloglines’ feeds, not to Chowhound’s timeline.) I thought we were having a smart exchange about the nature of expression with respect to food.

And how comfortable are we about living in a world where commercial enterprises calling the shots on intellectual freedom — with nary a word to the authors? Yes, I know they say they can do that — but is that the world we want to live in?

The other poster’s comment (sorry, I don’t remember who it was!), Tue, Feb 12 2008 4:35 PM:

“Coffee & Doughnuts” sounds lifted directly from The French Laundry Cookbook. “Coffee & Doughnuts” is one Thomas Keller’s signature dishes. It is one of my most revered and treasured cookbooks. IMHO it is one thing for a recreational chef to prepare something right from a cookbook, but for a “Chef” who is paid for his creativity, technique, and talent to plaguarize…I would expect more than that. I have followed previous threads on different sites and this topic of chefs plaguarizing has been thoroughly dissected. Bascially, is it right for a chef to put a dish on his menu, take credit for it, when it has been directly lifted from another chef. Take classic dishes for example; Nicoise Salad, Beef Bourgogne, Tarte Tatin, the list is endless. These dishes are constantly replicated, however a good chef will reinterpret. In this case the classic dish is actually a cup of joe with fresh doughnuts. Thomas Keller is world renowned for his whimsical approach to classic dishes. So is it fair for another “chef” to steal his dish, even though it was published in his cookbook (meant for the home cook)?

My response (Wed, Feb 13 2008 9:54 AM):

Well — this was not a cup of joe with doughnuts (which I would not have bothered with); it was a silky mocha semifreddo topped with cream — a fake frozen latte — served with doughnut holes, really very moist, hot quasi-beignets. So if the name is borrowed but the dish is reinterpreted, is that not acceptable? In the literary world, titles of books are not copyrighted; unless someone outright trademarks them in advance, they are not protected. I can’t present the text of Pride and Prejudice as my own, but I can certainly use that title and then whimsically write my own take on this classic. To me this is not “lifting” (let alone plagiarizing) but responding. Food is a conversation. Urbane’s chef replied to Keller, “This is how *I* see this dish.” That to me is not only legitimate but delightful. Riffing on other chef’s interpretations is a way of saying we are all participating in an ongoing discussion about cuisine. Urbane’s interpretation may well be conditioned by the idea that in Tallahassee, palates are far less jaded than in the Bay Area, and a local diner might be acutely disappointed by a dish that would seem cute or whimsical for the culinary Brahmins of the world. I appreciate your erudition here, by the way — I will probably never dine at the French Laundry, but it’s nice to find out that a local dish has more classic roots than I realized. I just hope we never find ourselves dining on “Lamb Shanks French Laundry — All Rights Reserved.”

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I just finished a major draft of the first soup-to-nuts literary essay I have written since spring 2006, when I was crankin’ ‘em out for MFA workshop homework assignments. (The essay, about local food, was on request, for an anthology.) Yay me! I hope it doesn’t suck, or at least that any sucking can be easily de-sucked. I now know a startling amount of information about Apalachicola oysters — that’s always useful (particularly since I’m going to turn around and take what I know to build a review for this week’s homework assignment in my food writing class).

To celebrate, I’m going to make oyster chowder tonight (I bought a pint of fresh-shucked A-Bay oysters at the Shell Oyster Bar yesterday afternoon) with the very best ingredients I can hunt down, and serve it with the best bread and wine I can find. I plan to have a nice food week, as Shrove Tuesday approacheth, and those jeans I bought four years ago, when we got very serious about South Beach for a few months, are a wee bit snug in the seat. (Cookbook idea: Skinny Bitch Localvore, Southern-Style!)

However, my brain is too numb to write and so I bring you even more link love. Let the love flow!

I had my picture taken at ALA with a cardboard Obama (note: for Sandy, not for me), but I’ll be darned if I can fish it out of this website. They scanned my card, and they know my email, but they can’t point me to my picture? Fun idea, bewildering execution.

David Lynch on watching movies on an iPhone. Priceless.

I’m giving a talk on Tuesday about the state of the ILS, updating my presentation from last September with such news as I have gleaned about updates for Evergreen, LibraryFind, Koha, xCatalog, Aquabrowser, WorldCat, and so forth. I’ll be showing some before-and-after slides of sucky OPACs and unsucky OPACs, so suggestions welcome. I have a few but I’m always looking for the nadir of bad design, particularly where the heavy hand of librarians playing interface designer is evident.

(Incidentally, if you look at the presenter evaluations, take note that Michael Norman’s presentation was luminous; he just said some things about the future of cataloging that some folk find a twee unsettling, so you can read his ratings as polarized, versus my usual crowd-pleasing. Bravo Michael.)

In the course of looking for simple ideas to express service-oriented architecture, I found this YouTube video, “SOA this, SOA that.”

I stole my slide design from David Lee King’s talk at Peninsula Library Access Network the previous week — white Gills san serif on dark grey, heavy on the visuals, sparing with text. Thanks, David! Great talk, too.
Dan Chudnov goes ballistic on WoGroFuBiCo, and I’m with him. The final report stinketh of typical librarian change-avoidance. We do NOT need to stop RDA; we need to implement FRBR and get it right, not “test” it more; and we do NOT need to do years more of “user testing” to teach us what we already know.

There’s been a Library 2.0 “course correction” which is both healthy and inevitable. Kate Sheehan and John Blyberg are particularly astute on this topic. This doesn’t mean that Library 2.0 is “over”; it means that people are thinking more carefully about what it means (and quite a few people have been doing that all along). My feeling was summed up Friday in a Skype chat with a wise colleague who said the driving question needs to be, “What are we trying to be successful at?” Amen, bro.

OCLC’s governance study, or at least core docs thereof, have been on the Web since mid-November, I learned last Friday. If you skim or read the recommendations, note how without fuss or muss they say meetings will be both f2f and online. No extended hand-writing, no blah blah blah. Also note that they increase the percentage of self-appointed directors on their board (hmmm), eliminate Members Council (a good thing — it has no real power anyway and is too cliquey) and establish regional member groups (fascinating).

Random thought: I like buying books. I like reading online. What I don’t like to do is use my own printer, paper, and toner to print out and staple some unwieldy PDF and try to read it, even if it’s “free.” It’s the clumsiest way to read anything: it won’t fit in my purse, the page-turning gets ridiculous, and then I can’t file it easily if I want to keep it (duh, binding?). Delivery is crucial.

I really wish NPR reporters wouldn’t get cutesy with food reporting and munch over the radio, especially while they’re talking. It’s gross and puts me off my feed. LIANE HANSEN STOP THAT NOW!

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I don’t get Christmas letters any more, and that’s a good thing. How I loathed them. “We had an amazing year! Look how well we did! Life is great!” I was able to stumble through the year, for better or worse, until my life was held up against someone’s improbable standard.

This won’t be that kind of Christmas card.

2007 started out badly for me, and got worse. I was unhappy, and getting more so. I was mourning my old life, where I had the perfect job, in the perfect place to live, and had ever so perfectly spent my free time happily studying writing. Here, in this new place, I was sad, but so stressed and busy that I did not have time to do any of the things that make me happy (like writing).

I felt I was living in a movie I now call Ugly Tallahassee, a listless place with bad food, a weary downtown, and rundown city neighborhoods with crumbling frat houses. Even the YMCA closest to my house was dolorous — a weary, smelly small building, in contrast to the flossy redwood-and-glass affair two blocks from where we lived in Palo Alto.

Not quite mid-year, I changed what I could about my life. I quit my job, and because I quit my job, I suddenly went from having no free time to buckets of it, and spent a lot of it writing for both money and pleasure. It meant a lot of belt-tightening, but we’re used to that — I’ll address that in a minute — and during that period we were blessed with no emergencies. Appliances kept functioning, cars kept running, body parts worked as advertised. I did a lot of revision and I did a lot of submission, and I did some paid writing gigs as well, as well as a couple of talks. I was patient, and when some job possibilities popped and then fizzled, I kept the faith. And kept writing and submitting.

Then I found a great day job at a terrific organization, founded a writing critique group, and restructured my life to ensure that no matter what went on at home or at work, I had some time every week for things that give me pleasure. (It’s not always writing, either: last Saturday I took myself shopping and then played in the kitchen.)

I also wrote a new movie. It’s called Pretty Tallahassee.

In this movie, I work with nice people in a building that feels new and attractive, and has pleasant creature comforts — one of the few places I’ve worked where the staff lounge was really a lounge, with comfortable, attractive furniture and a large TV. When I drive home, I try to take the pretty entrance into Meyer’s Park, so instead of taking the ugly way in — driving past gun and pawn shops, empty commercial buildings, and the world’s worst Thai restaurant — I’m driving through several visually appealing points of access and winding past the real park itself as I go home, where joggers are huffing down the path and the tennis courts are often full. I make sure to keep our birdfeeders stocked so that when I pull up to our house I am often greeted by birds fluttering and chirping near our front door.

In Pretty Tallahassee, when we choose where we go out to eat, it’s someplace delightful, like the Shell (a sweet little dive of an oyster bar) or a luxe place with great food such as Cypress, Sage, or Urbane, the new kid on the block, and a welcome sign of life in downtown Tallahassee (chorizo and fig on a pizza? Oh, mama mia!).

I find I am also tougher in this movie. When the vindaloo was disappointing at Essence of India — which by local standards is usually better than you’d expect for Indian food — I told them so. If someone orders “hot,” she means “hot,” not flaccid. This restaurant can choose to be part of Ugly Tallahassee or Pretty Tallahassee, and some of that rests on not screwing up my vindaloo.

I also stopped going to the ugly YMCA after visiting the new one in Southwood, which made me feel I was in a different city: large, new, loads of equipment, dramatic windows, clean-smelling. Suddenly I realized that the other Y was contributing to my unhappiness; the message was “this is your weary, cramped, odiferous life.” I also started a walk/run routine where I don the iPod, filled with NPR programs and short stories, and run through the pretty park. I’m really enjoying that; I’m getting to know other runners, as well as some delightful doggy neighbors. Sometimes my church offers evening aerobics classes, and these are really fun; I actually learned a dance called The Electric Slide, and in two or three years I might even get up enough nerve to do it in public. (The ratty old Y is undergoing a renovation, and my assessment of it will determine if we keep or drop our Y membership.)

I am measuring good physical progress by my posterior’s jiggle factor: when I started my walk/run (walk to the courts, run down the path, hit the undo button), I felt my bottom had its own life, bouncing behind me, but now it moves in time with the rest of my body. I don’t know if you could bounce a quarter off it (something Condoleeza Rice is reputedly proud of — for her bottom, not mine), but I’m feeling more in shape than I have in years. I generously donate my higher, firmer tush to Pretty Tallahassee, just as I now exercise in matching outfits, not the old sweatpants with the stains and the sagging seat.

The other woman I workshop with (separate from the critique group) commented that we had passed the one-year point, and those monthly sessions at Panera’s, plus many an afternoon on my own, have also been a big part of Pretty Tallahassee. She’s a great writer and an equally great person, and yes, she knows what creative nonfiction is and even how to critically approach it.

As writing spaces go, I’m rather delighted with Panera’s. It’s clean and light but unlike Starbuck’s, it’s not pushing a prefab “lifestyle” on me. The staff leave me alone — actually, they smile at me as I work (I imagine they are thinking, “there goes that sweet lady with the amazingly round, firm posterior”). I even have what I consider My Table, though I try to be flexible about that and do not stare down people who mistakenly take that spot. Well, I don’t consciously stare them down, but the table often does become available sometime during my writing sieges.

Now that my life is prettier, I remember the problems with my Christmas-letter-perfect former life. California was expensive — nosebleed expensive — and every year was its own financial worry. My job, fun as it was, was also a grant-funding roller-coaster in a state with wildly fluctuating financial fortunes in a very highly politicized funding environment. I interviewed for several permanent jobs that never panned out. After five years, Sandy hadn’t found stable employment, either; she had one year of unemployment, and two interim positions.

In the land of milk and honey, we were also spending $2200 a month to rent a dumpy, tiny, one-bathroom house on a noisy street in Palo Alto, next door to a garage band that played loudly, and badly, every weekend. We owned a small condo (which we rented out while we lived in Palo Alto) that was absolutely adorable but was part of a three-member condo association with owners who were so cheap and short-sighted we couldn’t even convince them to upgrade to locked mailboxes. We didn’t resent the wealth around us — we live below our means, and like it that way — but we once felt very ashamed when a veterinarian recommended a dental procedure for our cats that we declined because it was more money than we could spend on our own (deferred) dental work.

My writing life was perfect, but artificially so, propped up by an environment where I had highly specific deadlines and word counts and an enforced writing community. Had we stayed in PerfectLand, I would still have had to confront the post-MFA “what do I do now” hangover.

Life is not perfect here either. I don’t work for a perfect organization, I don’t have a perfect family life, I’ve never had a perfect meal, my body still has plenty of wrinkles, ripples, and sags, my writing life could be better — I still struggle with “what do I do now” — and I myself am oh so not perfect.

But for 2008 I can roll the film on two movies. I know which one is part of my survival.

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“Books won’t help you.”

I had been stammering through a discussion with a contractor about redoing our master bathroom.

My brain started stumbling at the first notes of disapproval in his voice. I could hear him take a breath before he spoke. “How am I supposed to git you a quote  when you don’t even know what you want done?”

My throat dried. What an idiot I am, I thought.  “Um… I haven’t ever had a bathroom redone,” I said. “We want the bathtub replaced with a shower, and we think we need new, what do you call it, sheetwall?”

“You need to tell me the details. Fixtures. Tiles. Cabinets. Then I’ll come take a look. It’s $200 for a visit.”

Oddly, this didn’t deter me, though by now it should be obvious he had written me off as a customer he didn’t need. Furthermore, we had one contractor lined up who we really liked, and without great enthusiasm I was doing the due-diligence get-a-second-quote thing. Yet I badly wanted his approval; I wanted to be the competent, knowledgeable homeowner for whose business he would vie.

I thought fast, or as fast as it gets when I’m feeling five years old. “I could go to Lowe’s and Home Depot and look around, and I could look in books for ideas!”

His voice, already deep, dropped an octave. “Books won’t help you,” he said. “You need to decide what you want.”

Then and there is where I crossed his name off my list of potential contractors.  Maybe it was an innocent comment, but I just can’t work with someone who says out loud that books can’t help me. Maybe they can and maybe they can’t, and maybe I was stupid to call a contractor about redoing a bathroom when we were still so vague about the project.

But I had expected him to say, soothingly, “Sure, that’s a good idea. Go git you some of them Sunset books. You can buy them at Home Depot. Pick out some ideas you like. Then call me back and we can talk about it.”

I’ll stick with the contractor who drives around with the photo album of ideas and emailed me a picture of a recent job. I don’t know what she’d say about books, but I’m guessing it wouldn’t chill my blood.

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I’ve been up since 4 a.m. — want to be productive? Try menopause! — so I’ll keep this to one heartfelt recommendation: Garrison Keillor’s short essay, “Bridges aren’t supposed to fall down.” (Though if you’re up for a second recommendation — same broad topic, in a way, but much subtler — read “Exit Wounds,” Pankaj Mishra’s review of Alex von Tunzelmann’s “Indian Summer,” as good an introduction to the partition of India as you can read.)

Today I was feeling grumbly because my clever plan to celebrate my 50th birthday by installing a writing shack in our backyard is running into obstacles — not the least of which is that I can’t fit a eight-foot-wide prefab shed through a six-and-a-half-foot-wide gate (and despite taking woodshop in the 8th grade, I do not see myself building a shed back there). The other obstacle is supposedly a variance we need, but that’s due more to the guy at City Hall who doesn’t return calls. Why do they give them phones if they won’t use them?

Anyway,  after church I pulled on my shorts, Crocs, and favorite library teeshirt and went to First Pres to help serve lunch to the homeless, and at that point I was reminded that pouting about a shed is pretty silly when there are people in Tallahassee who sleep on a cot every night and are grateful for meals that are basically packaged hospital food served with leftover bread and iffy fruit. I saw some of them after lunch, slouching around the deserted downtown plaza in the 98-degree heat as I got into my air-conditioned car and drove to the nicely-cooled cafe where I could sit with my cute little iPod and sweet little laptop and drink fancy beverages until my bladder burst or I finished revising my work. (It’s pretty quiet in Panera’s, so I finally folded my tent and got up, and had an even better table when I sat down again.)

Is it 2008 yet? Please can haz election?

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One nice part about life is how many do-overs you get, on everything from your love life to your hair color. Tomorrow I get my first Tallahassee Do-Over, where I start a new full-time job that sounds like a great match. But like relationships, good jobs don’t happen on their own; they take work, commitment, and intentionality.

Three years ago I set goals for myself in an MFA program, and two years later was pleasantly surprised to discover that the goals had leafed out and borne fruit. So I won’t memorize the following goals, but I’m going to plant them and see how they flower.

1. Learn everything I can about my responsibilities
2. Leave a good impression on as many people as possible
3. Give my best on every project and endeavor
4. Help my organization move forward in its goals
5. Leave some room for my personal life (spouse, person of faith, writer, gardener)
6. Make someone smile every day
7. Add something new to the work equation

That last goal is a wildcard that stands for that extra something we all have to offer every part of our lives. In my spiritual life, my wildcard is the chocolate pecan pie I bake for special events and bake sales; as a gardener, it’s my knowledge of miniature and other special roses; as a writer, it’s… it’s… my; special; affection; for; semicolons?

I don’t know what my wildcard is for this job… but I look forward to turning it over and seeing what it tells me.

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“Go down the road that jogs off the main road, then turn right at the stump of the cypress tree that ain’t there no more, then pass by where the Monky Ward’s used to be, then go about half a mile to the place, I think it used to be an Esso, not sure any more, then go see Bill (I hear he finally stopped drinking) and tell him Jimbob’s daughter Suzy sent you.”

We’ve been in Tallahassee for close to a year now, and I’m still trying to build my basic life skills. The above dialog is a composite of directions from several previous lives, such as the reference to the Montgomery Ward’s in Albany, New York that had closed long before our arrival, but taken together, it is the gist of most referrals I’ve had for auto mechanics in Florida.

Other places, I’ve always had great luck with car mechanics. For fifteen years, we found mechanics who were sincere, hardworking, fair-priced, efficient, and highly-skilled. Some of them were funny (such as Dan in Albany, who after Sandy knocked off a side-view mirror for the third time asked her if she wanted him to buy them in bulk) and some were intense (the shop in Palo Alto always scrunched their faces as if they were about to transplant a liver, even though they never replaced anything more serious than the stereo some thug tore out of my car on Middlefield Road) and some were philosophical, such as Steve in El Cerrito, who opined often about the quality of Hondas and got moist-eyed on our wedding day (which was also the day my Honda got its newest set of brakes). Don in Wayne, New Jersey was the boyfriend of a dear friend who died, and we miss him and hope he is doing well.

Every car mechanic came with an excellent, and very specific referral… the best, because it was the strangest, was for Steve. On the afternoon of September 11 (yes, that September 11), when I was living in a dingy apartment on Cottage Street in Point Richmond, California, I was watching my neighbor May fill water bottles and tote them to her apartment, which was the sort of thing we were doing because September 11 seemed like an earthquake, only much worse, when another neighbor — an ex-cop who sat alone in his apartment with his fat calico cat, drinking wine and toying with his extensive gun collection — walked past me and told me to go to Steve’s. “He’s a good guy,” he said out of the side of his mouth, then clammed up and kept moving. So I took his advice, and he was right.

We’ve met a lot of people here, but I think I am experiencing cultural confusion. I keep waiting for someone to tell me to go to a specific auto shop and see a mechanic by the name of [Steve/Dan/Don/etc.]. Instead, I either get vague answers (”Oh I go… anywhere”) or cryptic, almost scary directions (”You turn right three miles past the place where the bridge used to be”) or faint praise that makes me hesitate (like being told that the mechanic in question was probably off the sauce right now).

So I took my car to a place in the paper, a place Sandy had used once (also out of desperation, though they worked out fine), and I want to believe them, and have no idea if I should. I split the difference on the recommended repairs: let’s do X today; let’s save Y for later. If these guys wanted to rip me off, they would not have called me up to say that despite my vague answers, my car did not need a new timing belt or other items associated with scheduled maintenance.

It’s not so much that I don’t trust them as I feel at odds with how I found them, and with the whole blasted process of making sense in this new world. I want things to work they way they worked elsewhere, where I could get Pellegrino water instead of the ubiquitous “sweet tea,” where on time meant on time, and where directions were precise in what I am now guessing was a Yankee sort of way. None of that will happen, so I guess I better grin and bear it.

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Yes, the long national nightmare is over! I have real employment, with great people in a wonderful organization!

As a: RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANT

(It was capitalized in the job announcement, so I assume that’s how it is usually spelled, OH, AND WHY NOT!)

And it is at:

College Center for Library Automation (CCLA)

Which despite not being in all caps is nonetheless:

a collaborative state-funded organization established in 1989, to provide and maintain the Library Information Network for Community Colleges (LINCC) to Florida’s 70+ community college libraries

And incredibly enough,the job actually entrusts me with MAJOR FUNCTIONS (also in caps), q.v.:

Monitors, assesses, and reports on library, information industry, and other standards for implications regarding CCLA/LINCC services and products. Coordinates CCLA consideration of emerging standards and technologies. Provides expertise on the integration of library and information industry standards (metadata controls, data structures, linking mechanisms, etc.) and related technologies into digital products and services provided by CCLA. Defines and recommends LINCC quality standards in cooperation with staff using established advisory processes. Monitors, assesses, and reports on technological trends for implications regarding CCLA/LINCC services and products. Monitors, investigates, tests and evaluates potential new or enhanced LINCC-related services and products as needed. Determines and documents feasibility, functional requirements, and product features. Proposes potential new applications for LINCC users and/or CCLA staff. Recommends appropriate implementation strategies for user needs and CCLA resources. Provides leadership for CCLA services and LINCC-related maintenance and development projects as designated. Coordinates all aspects of service/product design, development, delivery and resource utilization within CCLA’s team processes to ensure timely and effective implementation. Consults with CCLA staff, vendors, and other organizations as needed to deliver appropriate and timely services to LINCC users. Participates in CCLA planning, decision-making, and operations as member of teams and work groups. Maintains effective communications that keep CCLA staff informed of the status of all areas of responsibility and contribute to coordinated implementation of services. Provides input and advocacy regarding user needs, trends, and issues that can have an impact on CCLA/LINCC services. Serves as staff resource person in areas of responsibility. Represents CCLA at meetings and other professional events as required and makes presentations regarding CCLA/LINCC services as needed. Performs other duties as assigned.

Great job, huh? Thirty years in the full-time workforce, and this feels like one of those once-in-a-while jobs that offers everything — great people and organization, perfect responsibilities, a nice short commute, and a great location (who doesn’t want to say they work in Innovation Park?).

I took my time and so did they; I wanted this to be right (and I was willing to keep freelancing if it wasn’t, and passed up some other, not-quite-rights along the way). I’m happy, and so is Sandy (and I’m guessing the church will be, too). I start August 10. I’m going to take some personal writing time next week, after I wrap up a couple of deadlines, and we’re talking about going to Savannah the following week for a couple of days, returning just in time for me to dust off my workin’-lady clothes and find matching trouser socks.

Thanks to all of you who cheered me along and gave me advice… good to be back in the saddle again. I am sure my blogging will decrease quite a bit while I settle in to my new position (once I knew Real Employment was very likely in my near future, I stepped up blogging… revised some old essays… finally alphabetized my books… organized my office closet… and sent out a few more pieces… and slept in til 9:30 today, just because I could). But don’t worry, once in a while you’ll still see me out on the Free Range, postin’ away.

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Thanks to all of you who checked in when you heard that as of mid-April I have been unemployed (or “freelancing,” as I prefer to think of it).

Here’s where I am:

• I do not yet have permanent employment (either local or as a satellite employee), but I have some nibbles in that direction, some from unexpected corners. To use government passive-speak, c.v.s have been printed, suits have been worn, interviews have been conducted. Expect more in that area. I’m being cautious — I’d rather continue freelancing than take a job that’s a bad fit — so I’m glad this is a slow process.
• I have had two technology articles published outside LibraryLand, plus two more in the pipeline. I am unbearably proud of this, so if you see me be prepared to hear about this again.
• I have lined up presentations and consults for every month in 2007 except August (perhaps I’ll be French and take it off). I look forward to all the opportunities, but most delightfully, I will be conducting two events related to writing: a one-hour online “Death to Jargon” workshop (thank you, OPAL!), and an all-day “Writing for the Web” workshop.
• I’ve written a number of library schools to advise of my availability for adjunct work. It’s too late for the fall, but I’m talking to people about next spring. My hesitation is that I’ll land a permanent full-time position and then have to juggle a new job and online instruction, but down the road I plan to resume teaching anyway, at least once a year, because I love it.
• In April and May I sent out over two dozen submissions to literary magazines. I have had five rejections and one acceptance, which is a high acceptance rate. The other essays are just floating out there, but that’s pretty typical. I expect the rejection rate to rise because I subscribe to the shoe-store theory of submissions: when the clerk disappears into the back of the store for a long time, it’s not good news. Still, so far I’ve doubled my 2007 acceptance rate! It’s not “real money,” but it’s my soul food.
• I’ve applied to a literary retreat center for two weeks late this year to pursue My Craft.
• I started Twitterprose. It’s a blog! It’s a feed! It’s a twitter stream! And it’s all about creative nonfiction!
• I’m finally revising a portrait of Ann Lipow I wrote several years ago. It was “early MFA,” and I don’t like it at all, but I did a lot of research for it so the material is there. Now the writing needs to follow.
• I have not: started watching daytime TV (I don’t even listen to the radio when I’m writing, which is what I’m doing most days); reorganized our CDs, still jumbled since the move late last summer; finished digging out part of the garden for planting hybrid musk roses; installed the cute switch plates I bought for my office last December; made elaborate meals for Sandy; shifted my bookcase shelves, though they need it; been unhappy. (As friends at ALA noted, I look better than I have in a while.)

Thanks to everyone who looked at me and saw someone who could fill a need, short or long-term. We older librarians are often counseling new librarians to be “geographically flexible,” and if you’re unattached, that’s important. But I’m not unattached; I wouldn’t be in Tallahassee if it weren’t for a family move, and I have to work around that for the next few years. Fortunately, that’s not impossible to do.

Thanks also to all of my ALA friends who refused to let me pay for meals and drinks at ALA, and for my longstanding group of buddies who went the cheap pizza route this time rather than the glamorously expensive meals we’ve done in posher times.

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