Sayonara!

Last week I took the plunge and quit my horrifyingly tedious job which was sucking the very soul out of my being. It took me all of about 12 hours to go from my first thoughts of quitting to telling my boss I was leaving. Once I actually began seriously considering it, it was obviously the right choice. So, in honor of ending my near year at Backstage Library Works, here is the final installment of silly/funny/weird stuff I stumbled across in the card catalogue.

The titles:

• The rueful mating
• Utilization of surplus prunes
• How to be happy though pregnant
• Short addresses to persons who are without hope
• A nostalgia for camels
• Sportin' ladies: confessions of the bimbos
• Squirrel talk
• Almost everything you hear about snakes is untrue
• The romance of mining
• Reindeer husbandry
• The star-spangled beaver
• The unsuspected but dangerously tuberculous cow
• Terrestrial slugs
• Sinister tennis
• Urology illustrated

Organizations I wish I belonged to:

• New England Society for the Improvement of Domestic Poultry
• American Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge

Funniest mis-reading of a card:

• East Indies hand-written, which looked like "East Undies"

Weird plot summaries:

• A little old lady decides to help her detective son and sets out to find the clown who is missing from the circus.
• A small girl wants to be something important, but can't decide whether to be a jester, a knight, or a king.
• While trying to please his mother, a boy turns himself into a variety of animals.
• The Golem, a clay man made by the Rabbi, saves a small village synagogue from some evil creatures from outer space.
• An awkward elephant stops day-dreaming when he finds that all his time and interest is devoted to a flower garden.
• With the aid of his good buffalo, a Japanese boy works to replace the copper bell he lost in the river.
• Five mushmen, related to elves and such, push themselves up from Down There to see if they can survive Up Here, set up headquarters under an oak tree, and live their pioneer existence, avoiding That Cat and keeping dry so they won't melt.

Duties of a doctor of music

Dr. Richards, I presume?

For those of you unable to read between the lines of my last two blog posts (which encompass 6 months of my life and contain very little real information), I thought I would announce that I've decided to attend the University of Utah in the fall for a Doctor of Musical Arts program. This was a long and arduous decision for me to make (as anyone who had to listen to me blab about myself and my brain during that time would know) but I'm feeling better and better about it day by day.

If you look in my blog archive to November-ish 2006 you'll see that I decided to bag music as a career and be a librarian. This is hardly news to most of you. In the year since my graduation from the U of Michigan I've been working two jobs: one as a data-entry-type robot at a library company and the other at the Springville Public Library. These two jobs have helped me figure out what I want and what I definitely DON'T want. I've really enjoyed working at the Springville Library. That is one of the few things I will be sorry to leave when I go to SLC.

I've also had a few opportunities to sub with the Utah Symphony, which I've been very grateful for. It's helped with my perception of the music world in a couple of ways: 1.) It makes me feel more like it's possible that I could be competent in that world, and 2.) It takes a little bit of the feeling of impossibility away from the thought of being able to make it as a musician. It's also fun! And it pays well!

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I want it all. I don't think I'd be satisfied just being a librarian for the rest of my life nor would I feel content with just being a musician, or at least being a musician the way I had previously gone about it. So I'm looking for ways to mix it all together, and I think they are two areas that can be very complementary. My future professor(s) at the U seem to think so as well and are very supportive of my interest in both areas, which is a major reason why I chose to go ahead with the program. My plan as of now is the do the DMA and a Master of Library science program at the same time, meaning that when I'm done with school I will have two masters degrees and one doctoral degree. Slightly pathetic. But as the judge said in the film What's Up Doc?, being a doctor in music doesn't mean anything if you can't fix a HiFi.

President Hinckley, we love you

The pits

Today I had a dream come true. No, some hot guy did not propose to me. No, I did not acquire omniscience. I was still judged by the color of my skin and not by the content of my character (well, maybe not) and I did not suddenly become independently wealthy.

But, the most realistic of my dreams came true when the Utah Symphony called me up and asked me to play for the opera in January: Tosca by Puccini, my favorite opera composer. For those of you who may not know, I absolutely love playing for operas. It's a perfect mix of music, drama and spectacle, topped off by the wonderful feeling of anonymity that comes from playing in an orchestra pit. There's something so relieving about people not being able to see me when I'm playing. It seems kind of silly, since the reason people usually go to concerts is to hear a performance not see it. But I usually like feeling invisible so pit playing is perfect for me.

So instead of having to wear a silly costume and wear pounds of makeup like this:

Or be uber dramatic like this:

I get to sit in a dark, cold pit like this:





I'd imagine that a professional orchestra opera pit would be a little less relaxed than the ones I experienced in my college days. Those usually included lots of snacks and goofing off. You never know, though. Musicians of any caliber can be kind of strange.



And here's a picture that came up when I did a Google image search for "opera diva". I don't understand it but it sure is interesting.

I have a great body

This is hardly new information for any of you, but I work a lot of hours. My bank account is happy, but my soul is suffering. I've been having a couple of especially bad weeks--weeks which include 14-16 hour days and staying up all night staring at a flickering computer screen. I HATE those kind of weeks. A lot. And every time I pull out of those weeks I'm amazed that I'm still physically functioning.

I don't have a particularly nice-looking body, but it sure does its job well. I find it hard to believe that I can have days where my major source of calories comes from Smarties (thank you, Springville Public Library), or Pepsi and crackers, or whatever else I can lay my hands on, and not come away with some kind of serious illness. Maybe someday all those artificial flavorings and dyes and preservatives and partially hydrogenated whatevers will conglomerate in some nasty mass in my liver or kidney and then I'll rue the day I was so abusive to my body, but for now it's still trudging along and I'm sure grateful for it.

More funny titles

Maybe this is getting old for all of you, but there's really not much more I can do to entertain myself at work.

Favorite titles:

• The common sense book of drinking
• Hopes and fears: scenes from the life of a spinster
• Metric units to unite the world
• The evolution of the snob
• The mule on the minaret
• Festal postlude (which isn't that funny, except that I first read it as "Fetal postlude")
• The sacred and profane love machine
• The naked bishop
• Single and human
• A short history of fingers
• Faith, love and seaweed
• St. Anne's gut
• The sacred circle of the hula hoop
• Homework and sweating

And my very favorite:

• The golden rules of gynecology

For some fiction books, the digital record gives a short plot summary. Reading some of them leads me to think that maybe it would be better to not try to summarize the plot and let the reader be surprised.

• While a school group is visiting the great temple at Nara, one young Japanese boy becomes separated from the Group, and, while finding his way back to the bus, helps a lost deer and two lost North Americans.
• A little boy of India, who loves his pet kid too well to let his father sell him, becomes a successful flute accompanist to the small goat's dancing.
• A twelve-year-old girl and two unusual friends conspire to prevent a retired sea captain from being sent to a home.
• A moose-child goes north looking for other moose-children, but on the way he finds other playmates right in his own forest.

If this post makes you jealous of my job, the company is hiring in December.