Yard Sale Finds and Customary Bitching
Yesterday, I went to the. . . choicest of moving sales. I managed to walk home with a lovely bright green framed wall print, as well as a set of vintage dishes that have a square seventies geometric-y pattern on them, and amazing oblong seventies dish that I can't really describe. I also got a few cds, and a pile of books to fuel my existentialist summer reading (Kierkegaard, Sartre, de Beauvoir) and poetry. In addition, I successfully "haggled," something my grandmother and aunt (both avid flea market and auction shoppers) have been trying to impress on my since I was about ten. No, I didn't suddenly summon a well of here-to-fore undisplayed assertiveness. Rather, I had my arms full of stuff and told the boy in charge that I only had $20, so maybe I'd need to refigure things. . . . In short, I successfully saved at least $10 by, as Brianna termed it, "being emo." Yay me!
Having all this cool stuff, I am certainly looking forward to moving in July. Despite the good memories, and endearing "idiosyncracies," this apartment just seems unbearably small at times. And I feel like I need to confine myself to my room in order to just feel like I have my own space. ::Sigh:: Which is often fine. But it does interfere with my compulsive room-to-room pacing.
And while I've begun bitching about things. The brilliant novel glow of working at the library is starting to dim. Mainly because lately I've been assigned to do a lot of work in East Asian (otherwise known as the entire 2nd floor, which contains nothing but irradically-shelved Korean, Japanese, and Chinese books and journals). There is only a semblance of order in this area. It is so frustrating to do things in, because there are people who are supposed to be in charge who don't seem to do anything except photocopy stupid bureaucratic charts that we have to fill out when we do clean ups. Because it is probably the largest/only(?) resource of East Asian books in Pittsburgh, you would think it would have its own staff to assist patrons, and take care of shelving journals (which, for a long complicated reason involving the phonetic translation of East Asian characters into English, is really a pain). Many of the patrons on this floor don't speak English, and if, as happened yesterday, they write down a book request in Chinese characters, there is absolutely no way I can really help them. It's just frustrating to see a resource that doesn't effectively serve people the way it is supposed to, because of poor management and an emphasis on pointless beauraucratic paperwork. Anyway. That was a pretty lengthy rant on something pretty boring, so I think I should wrap up this post now. Before my anal-retentive whining reaches an epic level of tedium. . . even for this journal.
A final thought, from Sartre, because. . . well, because I thought it was pretty. . . good--yes good! Because as I trudge through Being and Nothingness I keep wanting to say, "Yes! Yes! That's it! And it's so fucking sad, but also, not sad at all." Anyway, I end on this: "the peculiar character of human-reality is that it is without excuse."
Having all this cool stuff, I am certainly looking forward to moving in July. Despite the good memories, and endearing "idiosyncracies," this apartment just seems unbearably small at times. And I feel like I need to confine myself to my room in order to just feel like I have my own space. ::Sigh:: Which is often fine. But it does interfere with my compulsive room-to-room pacing.
And while I've begun bitching about things. The brilliant novel glow of working at the library is starting to dim. Mainly because lately I've been assigned to do a lot of work in East Asian (otherwise known as the entire 2nd floor, which contains nothing but irradically-shelved Korean, Japanese, and Chinese books and journals). There is only a semblance of order in this area. It is so frustrating to do things in, because there are people who are supposed to be in charge who don't seem to do anything except photocopy stupid bureaucratic charts that we have to fill out when we do clean ups. Because it is probably the largest/only(?) resource of East Asian books in Pittsburgh, you would think it would have its own staff to assist patrons, and take care of shelving journals (which, for a long complicated reason involving the phonetic translation of East Asian characters into English, is really a pain). Many of the patrons on this floor don't speak English, and if, as happened yesterday, they write down a book request in Chinese characters, there is absolutely no way I can really help them. It's just frustrating to see a resource that doesn't effectively serve people the way it is supposed to, because of poor management and an emphasis on pointless beauraucratic paperwork. Anyway. That was a pretty lengthy rant on something pretty boring, so I think I should wrap up this post now. Before my anal-retentive whining reaches an epic level of tedium. . . even for this journal.
A final thought, from Sartre, because. . . well, because I thought it was pretty. . . good--yes good! Because as I trudge through Being and Nothingness I keep wanting to say, "Yes! Yes! That's it! And it's so fucking sad, but also, not sad at all." Anyway, I end on this: "the peculiar character of human-reality is that it is without excuse."