Category: overwhelmed

A Cacophony of Noms

Over this past weekend, The Good Man and I got together to celebrate a belated Mother’s Day with my in-laws. It’s always nice to have a chance to catch up with family.

The place we chose to eat was a nice hotel with a Sunday buffet brunch and a live jazz trio to add ambiance.

The family all got dressed up and converged on the hotel. The jazz was lovely. The setting sublime. Mimosas were poured. Chatter happened. Then the waiter said “go ahead and get started” and we were off to wander around the wonderland of food.

I have to admit that at first I could only stumble about with an empty plate. I was both surprised and astounded by all the food.

Prime rib and pancakes, sushi and dim sum, a huge table of seafood of all varieties! And that was only the beginning.

One part of me was like “Yeah baby!” I could easily envision myself much like Cookie Monster, shoveling it all in there while grunting “ahm nom nom nom nom!”

But another part of me was almost turned off by the literal piles of food. Good lord! So much food! A first world problem, to be sure.

After walking around in a daze, I finally dove in. I made the conscious decision NOT to lay right down and devour the entire dessert table (it was tempting). Instead I chose only the things I knew for sure I’d like and in small amounts. I had to remind myself that I could return for more if needed. That ol’ demon self-control.

I think the key to a buffet is if you take something you don’t really care for…don’t eat it. Yes, I know for many the idea of wasting food is terrible, but in this scenario, it’s almost necessary.

In the past, I’ve had occasion to think about the “I have to get my money’s worth out of the buffet!” concept. This plagues a lot of people and causes the desire to eat as much as possible. This is fairly common, actually. I’ve personally succumbed to this thought.

To be honest, the cost of the buffet is less about how much one can eat and more about how many choices the establishment is able to provide. It costs money to have enough people to put on a spread like that.

A buffet is certainly a deliciously dangerous place for a food lover like me, but it’s also a boon for a food lover. A buffet provides a huge range of choices that I’d just never get with a traditional sit down and order off the menu type of meal.

It’s all about balance.

At the end of the day, the intent was to be with family, not Cookie Monster the entire meat carving station. Though the thought did cross my mind…





Love Your Librarian

There was this lady named Erna Fergusson who opened up the world for me.

Erna was a New Mexican, one of our best. She was born and grew up in Glorieta and later spent time in Washington DC when her father was a Congressman. Erna was a worldly woman dedicated to capturing in writing much of the history and tradition of the indigenous people of both New Mexico and Latin America. She was a teacher and later helped found the Albuquerque Historical Society.

In 1966, the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Library System opened up a library branch bearing Erna’s name.

A few years later, here’s where I come in. My maternal grandmother, herself a schoolteacher, taught me how to read at a pretty young age. I took to reading like the proverbial duck to water.

My mom, also an avid reader, brought me to the library named for Erna Fergusson and showed me how to check out books. The world was suddenly my oyster! The scent of library glue, the perfect little rubber stamps and the shelves and shelves of books…well I was hooked. Obsessed, really.

I’ve always had a special place in my heart for both libraries and librarians.

Where I live now, I have access to one of the largest library systems around, and I’m in utter literary bliss. I’m constantly amazed by the obscure and not-so-obscure items in find in the collection.

A couple weeks ago right here on this blog, I professed my love (again) for another of my favorite New Mexicans, Max Evans.That same day, I checked into my library’s catalog to see if they had any of Max’s books that I hadn’t read.

Sure enough, they had a copy of One-Eyed Sky, a collection of three Max Evans stories. Well, I ordered it up to be sent to me via interlibrary loan. It took a couple days, and the same day I checked it out, with much anticipation, I opened the cover and was greeted by a sight that made me nostalgic:



It may be a little hard to see, but I added a red arrow that points to a rubber stamped date of Nov 30 ’64.

All of the stamps prior to that don’t have the year included, but one can assume 1964 and earlier. The book has a copyright date of 1963, but I figured I’d get a later printing of the book from the library. Nope. This is a first edition and it’s still in my library and still in good shape.

Behind the paper due date page was this:



Then I just went all squishy inside. I always did love that pocket they used to glue inside the front of books along with the card for the librarian to stamp that lets you know the day the book is due back. Can’t you just imagine the librarian typing up the title on both pocket and card, filing it neatly in alphabetical order while adding Max’s stories to the library collection? Then the series of librarians who dutifully stamped that card while checking it out to eager readers (like me!) over the past forty-eight years.

Well, it all made me kind of misty eyed. There’s ol’ Max, our Max, a fixture in the Bay Area library all these years. I read that book cover to cover, devouring every word and got to the last page feeling nothing but gratitude.

Just makes me want to say thanks to that one librarian, and all the rest as well, for giving me the world.




Photos by Karen Fayeth, taken with the Camera+ app on an iPhone4.


There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute

Yesterday at work, I printed a Very Important Document to the shared color printer down the hall. As my company is as cheap as possible, we’re not to use the color printer except for VERY Important Documents, so this was a very big deal.

As I waited for the dulcet tones of the finicky color printer processing my job, a message popped up on my screen. The printer manager was reporting that the “Waste Receptacle is Full”

Um. Ok. I didn’t know printers came with their own waste receptacle, but fine.

I walked to the printer and following the directions on its tiny LED screen. I opened the right flap. I pulled out “tray B”, and emptied tray B of a gooey black tarlike substance, replaced tray B, closed the flap, and heard the printer begin to warm up.

Ah, here we go. My beautiful full color document is just moments away!

“Printer warming up….”

So I waited. And waited. I wondered if I should wrap a sweater around the poor thing because it was clearly really cold if it needed twenty minutes to warm up. I mean, it’s hot like the bowels of hell hot inside our HVAC impaired office, but this little color printer must have a metabolism issue.

When it was finally reporting it had imbibed a hot toddy and was raring to go, I listened again for the sounds of the machine working, filled with happy anticipation.

Another message popped up on my screen. This time is said “Toner is low. Please replace.”

*sigh*

Fine.

Back I went to the machine and again followed the directions on screen. I lifted the main assembly, figured out which toner compartment was low, dropped several blocks of wax toner into the slot, thus using up the last of the supply, and closed the lid.

While the machine drank another hot toddy and shivered its way back to health, I took the empty box over to the group admin so she could order more.

Finally, the printer shuddered and shook and petulantly spit out my document.

This morning I needed to scan a document. Well that requires the big multiplex copier, printer, scanner, fax, coffee maker, photo booth, lube oil and filter change machine in the breakroom and shared by the whole floor.

I figured I was safe…this was just a scan. No toner or paper or other consumables would be required on this one! Scan, send. Easy peasy!

Nope.

I walk to the printer, lay my document in the feeder and immediately a message pops up on the screen.

“Scans may not be clear due to dirt on the lens. Please follow the directions below.”

So I followed the directions and I opened and shut doors and flaps, and found a little wiping tool and I slid it down the lens and then I cleaned the whole damn thing up and shut the doors and flaps and waited the twenty minutes and finally got my freaking scan.

The machines. They know. Evidently no one else on the floor will give them TLC, but I will. They line up and come to me for blessings, ministrations and tending to their wounds.

I’m Mother Teresa of Xeroxistan.






Image is a still from the fabulous movie Office Space.


Delicious Vindication!

Long time readers might remember back to February when I discovered that the San Francisco Giants organization had, ahem, “borrowed” one of my photos from Flickr, cropped off my watermark, and used it for a Twitter Valentine’s ecard.

We had a pretty good debate here on the blog and in my real life about whether or not I should be mad, and whether or not I should do anything about it.

Ultimately, I decided to rise above and let it go (The Good Man, on the other hand, has been unable to either forgive or forget).

Call me to easygoing, but I was just honored that my photo caught the eye of the organization, but I really was bummed about the lack of credit.

Well….fast forward to yesterday.

I received this note in my inbox:

___________________________

From: {name redacted}
Subject: Aubrey Huff Photo
To: < karen @ karenfayeth dot com >
Date: Wednesday, May 4, 2011, 7:53 AM

Hi Karen –

We’d like to use the Aubrey Huff and Pat Burrell photo from the SF Giants Victory Parade in today’s show Intentional Talk. Please let me know if there are any issues with doing so. We can of course offer a courtesy.

Thanks!

Best,

{name redacted}
Manager, Music & Media Clearances
MLB Network
One MLB Network Plaza
Secaucus, NJ 07094

___________________________


Well, I first did a Google search on the name of the MLB person, and found them to be legit. Then I replied that I would be happy for them to use my photo, I only asked for credit.

MLB readily agreed, and that was that.

And so WHOOOOO with a double WOWZA on top, sure enough, my photo made it onto the show.

Intentional Talk is a daily show hosted by Chris Rose and Kevin Millar for MLB TV. On Wednesday’s edition, they had San Francisco Giants player Aubrey Huff as a guest.

Below are links to the entire segment in two parts. My photo shows up in part 2, at around the 5:58 mark.

Part 1: http://ow.ly/4O1nH

Part 2: http://ow.ly/4O1FO

I am seventeen kinds of pleased that the MLB has turned out, in this case, to be an honorable organization. They did right thing by an amateur photographer.

I’m pretty gosh darn proud, really.

Just for reference, here is the MLB worthy photo:


Now That's Bromance




On the day I took that photo, The Good Man said “You’d better watermark that. There’s something about that photo…I just have a feeling.” Smart kid, that Good Man o’ Mine.


Calling Schenectady

When prolific author Harlan Ellison is asked where he gets his ideas, his response?

“Schenectady. They have them on a shelf in a Mom & Pop on Route 147.”

It’s a great quote. I mean, Schenectady is an inherently funny word. So is Poughkeepsie. And Poconos. Those East Coasters know from funny.

But the thought that the repository for the wild and engaging ideas of a writer like Ellison are neatly packaged, shrink wrapped if you please, and ready to be lifted off the shelf and plopped into form is one that tickles my senses.

In the opening credits of “The Ray Bradbury Theatre” television shows (dating back to the 1980’s, The Good Man and I have been watching them recently), Bradbury says that he’s often asked “where do you get your ideas?”

His answer refers to his writing space which is filled floor to ceiling with books and mementos and a whole plethora of, well, junk. He says all he has to do is look out and whatever his eyes fall upon, that’s what he writes about.

In an essay on the topic, Neil Gaiman says,

“…these days I tell people the truth:

‘I make them up,’ I tell them. ‘Out of my head.’

People don’t like this answer. I don’t know why not. They look unhappy, as if I’m trying to slip a fast one past them. As if there’s a huge secret, and, for reasons of my own, I’m not telling them how it’s done.”

Truth be told, there is no huge secret. There is no mystery. Ideas simply happen.

When the hose is squeezed too hard, hoping for water, no water can come out.

When you step back and let go, then ideas flow faster.

Then again, every once in a while, you get a big calcified chunk of gunk that blocks the tubes. An esoteric gall stone, if you will.

So where DO you get your ideas?

Hell if I know.

Some days that shop in Schenectady is out of inventory and I have to wait for my back order to arrive.






Photo by username Clix and used royalty free from stock.xchng.