no bananaramas
I awoke at 8:15 to a voice calling "Noooo bananaramas.. Nooo bananaramas" over a megaphone.
"Oh, the pool 15 stories below my window has opened finally," I thought, "and the lifeguard is telling the kids to stop bringing their bananaramas, er pool noodles, into the pool."
Then I pondered that the pool was probably not filled in the middle of this windstorm at 6am on a saturday, that bananaramas are not called bananaramas, there would certainly never be a lifeguard, and furthermore that only one child lives in my building, that I have ever seen. He lives in the penthouse and is probably sleeping right now, but when he gets up I believe he will eat Corn Pops with chocolate milk, sit in his jacuzzi and play Xbox or whatever it is that bratty kids do.
No, I doubt the pool has been filled, because in fact it was an illusion of the high winds blowing into my rickety old windowframes, blowing into the frames sideways, under my door, making occasionally chopped hooting and whistling sounds and syllables like a haunted bluff ..
Yesterday at a Western and Anglophone branch I was working at, some people were talking about a 3-page glossary of English-French library terms they wanted to review for an interview in French, and I asked to borrow it for a second to photocopy it. H'meh, it's not bad, there are some mistakes in it, but it's still a decent reference..
I have actually wanted something like this because in many parts of the city the workers talk in French to each other, but the computer systems are (somewhat prejudicedly, in my opinion) unilingually English. So, the patriotic Franco-ontarians who always insist speaking French whenever possible end up speaking a very garbled library dialect..
« Hé Dan, passes-moi le stapler, hé, qu'est-ce que tu fais avec le holds expired list? Non, i' faut attendre pour le drop box et le pull list. Attends, vas dans le Checkout Screen pour un moment, j'veux te montrer quelque chose.. »
Pretty typical sentences to be honest, it got to the point where I actually considered going to the Gatineau public library on the sly and asking them what terms they use for day-to-day things, surely their computers are not unilingually English also?
"Oh, the pool 15 stories below my window has opened finally," I thought, "and the lifeguard is telling the kids to stop bringing their bananaramas, er pool noodles, into the pool."
Then I pondered that the pool was probably not filled in the middle of this windstorm at 6am on a saturday, that bananaramas are not called bananaramas, there would certainly never be a lifeguard, and furthermore that only one child lives in my building, that I have ever seen. He lives in the penthouse and is probably sleeping right now, but when he gets up I believe he will eat Corn Pops with chocolate milk, sit in his jacuzzi and play Xbox or whatever it is that bratty kids do.
No, I doubt the pool has been filled, because in fact it was an illusion of the high winds blowing into my rickety old windowframes, blowing into the frames sideways, under my door, making occasionally chopped hooting and whistling sounds and syllables like a haunted bluff ..
Yesterday at a Western and Anglophone branch I was working at, some people were talking about a 3-page glossary of English-French library terms they wanted to review for an interview in French, and I asked to borrow it for a second to photocopy it. H'meh, it's not bad, there are some mistakes in it, but it's still a decent reference..
I have actually wanted something like this because in many parts of the city the workers talk in French to each other, but the computer systems are (somewhat prejudicedly, in my opinion) unilingually English. So, the patriotic Franco-ontarians who always insist speaking French whenever possible end up speaking a very garbled library dialect..
« Hé Dan, passes-moi le stapler, hé, qu'est-ce que tu fais avec le holds expired list? Non, i' faut attendre pour le drop box et le pull list. Attends, vas dans le Checkout Screen pour un moment, j'veux te montrer quelque chose.. »
Pretty typical sentences to be honest, it got to the point where I actually considered going to the Gatineau public library on the sly and asking them what terms they use for day-to-day things, surely their computers are not unilingually English also?