So since a certain someone (queen_beeanna) outed me on this in my comments, I figure I better let my y'all in on the following:

I'm pregnant, 9 weeks today, and due June 1st.

Things are a teensy bit complicated ("oh, hello new job, I'll be taking maternity leave in 5 months, but I'm so glad to be here for the moment!") but in the main I'm beyond thrilled, as is David.

I feel great (and not particularly pregnant), my midwife is superb, and my blood pressure is exactly where it should be, so my immediate worries on the medical end are soothed. Because I'm on the NHS, I've had exactly no scans, blood tests, etc. They don't even weigh you here, just measure you with a tape measure! Julie (my midwife) says she just assumes everything is proceeding as normal unless something weird happens. I'll have a 12 week dating scan in mid-November, and we're holding off going public in general until that happens, just in case.

Last week I got my maternity perscription card, which entitles me to free perscriptions and free dental care until 1 year after the baby is due. I am such a fan of the NHS. And now I need to make a dentist appointment.

Anyway, that's my news.

I am craving a TBBC, for the first time in about 15 years. That's sliced turkey breast, crispy (streaky) bacon, and processed cheese slices, thrown on a sub roll (baguette) and grilled until the cheese is softened, and garnished with shredded iceberg, tomato, and a good thwack of mayonnaise.

I miss the weirdest things.

So here's something interesting. I'm pregnant. Two lines, clear as anything, there on the stick. I reckon I'm in the area of 3 weeks along. Yowza.

It doesn't seem real yet, and I'm very concious of how early I am, but wow. Wow. Wow.

The timing is complicated, yes, but this is a Good Thing. A very, very Good Thing.

Anyway, at this stage, Joan, Christina and David are the only people on the SOOPER SECRET filter.

1. I'll respond with something random about you.
2. I'll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. I'll pick a flavor of jello to wrestle with you in.
4. I'll say something that only makes sense to you and me.
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll ask you something that I've always wondered about you.
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on your journal.

*Please remember I have a weirdly fluid and fuzzy memory, and my lack of detail and inability to get inside jokes has nothing to do with the depth or breadth of my affection for you. Seriously.

Happy birthday, girlie! Now put down those textbooks and go do something fun!

Today my sister turns 20. Which means I have now known confabulator for 20 years.

We don't see eachother or speak to eachother nearly enough, but knowing she's around makes me feel better about the world in general.

20 years is a damn long time. People you still like after 20 years are worth hanging on to, it seems.

I got the job.

This morning my running buddy and I managed to scare a young rabbit out of its hidey-hole beside the road through the university farm. Since the most exciting thing we ever see is usually a woodpigeon, this was a big deal.

Needless to say, it outrun us easily.

The Library of Congress has just changed subject Iraq War, 2003. to Iraq War, 2003-, to reflect the ongoing nature of the conflict. I don't know why this felt significant to me this morning, but it did.

Dear American family and friends, Cambridge is far away from London, and we're both in Cambridge and we're both fine. So far the same is true for everyone we know. Please don't worry about us.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is retiring.

Frankly, I thought someone was going to die on the bench before it came to this.

So I'm cataloguing a pamphlet published by the National Museum of Labour History, and in trying to find a date for it, I find that the NMLH has merged with another museum* to form the People's History Museum. Which is pretty darn neat (and another reason to get to Manchester ASAP).

But it just gets better! Some of their collection is digitized here. They have a lot of banners. Fun, though I wish the online documentation were a little richer.

*Actually, I'm not totally sure that my labour history museum is the same as this one, as my pamphlet bears a London address. It's still darn cool, though.

All my library friends are starting to head out for the ALA conference in Chicago. I am jealous, and sad. It's the first one I've missed in 7 years, I think.

I want a job that pays me enough to go. I'll even sleep on the rollaway. Clearly I need an annual helping of my library people. I love being in a city that's been invaded by librarians, cat-themed totebags notwithstanding. And I miss talking shit and shop with my friends.

Have some fun for me, will you girls?

From my desk in the library, I can see the front doors of the adjacent faculty. Currently there is a gaggle of fifteen or twenty students forming a gauntlet outside the entryway. As individual students emerge, having finished their final exams, there is a whoop from the crowd, champagne is poured for and on the lucky person, and the crowd grows.

I find this sweet and utterly foreign. I've never managed to identify with an academic (or really, any other) cohort that way.

But they seem to be having a good time.

I should be working.

LiveJournal Haiku!
Your name:	arasay
Your haiku:	i would do so hint hint i need to get my hands on the fancy jobs
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Created by Grahame

You may have seen this already, but just in case you thought all the bad news about intellectual freedom was happening in libraries, here's the latest from the Ivy League:

"David Graeber, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Yale University, and the author of Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams and Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, among many other scholarly publications. Last week Prof. Graeber was informed that his teaching contract at Yale would not be extended. However, it was not Graeber's scholarship that was ever in question; rather it was his political philosophies that may have played a heavy hand in the administration's unwarranted decision." Graeber, a renowned anarchist scholar, recently spoke with CounterPuncher Joshua Frank about the fiasco.

(I got this link from my dad, whose judgement on anthropologists I trust.)

I was much happier about D's conference in Turin when I thought he was staying in a garret room in a hostel. Turns out it's a fairly spacious garret, with a balcony. Bastard.

Ah well, I've got the flat to myself for 5 days. I'm going to eat stinky food (how I live with a person who hates kimchee and blue cheese is beyond me) and use up all the hot water. I also hope to have more mornings like this one, which involved a proper cooked breakfast and warbling along with a bevy of country-music girlies while getting ready. Turning off the Radio 4 puts me in a much better mood, I've discovered!

I can't take any time off (it is still term-time), and someone dear to me is leaving for the field on Monday, so it's not like my time is completely my own. But I don't have to ring anyone to say "I'll be late" for the next 5 days, and that's just lovely.

Because I'm thinking about breeding these days, I'm also thinking this is the sort of thing that will get more complicated when we are a family of 3; it's going to be interesting to see how we work it out. Probably it's less drastic than I've been led to believe.

And because I generally post more when I'm in a bad state, which might lead to an unbalanced picture of my situation, can I just say that I've been really, really happy in and about my life over the past while? I don't know what it is*, and I don't care much (except so that I can reconnect to it when I'm feeling less contented), but things feel good in a way they haven't been for a while. Plus they've been that way long enough that I'm starting to trust and expect the goodness, if that makes sense.

*Well, I have some ideas, but you'd be bored, or think I'm sentimental and cheesy. Plus I'm running 3 times a week, maybe that whole "exercise as antidepressant" thing actually works!

In Tulsa, they're moving the gay kid's books. Not to an "Adults Only" section, true, but to a "parenting collection".

Parenting Collections, in my experience, can be one of two things. Often times, they're collections of adult books of the "bringing up baby" variety, housed in the in the children's room for the convenience of parents.

The other kind of parenting section, the kind of parenting section that they're building in Tulsa, is different*. Basically, it's a section where you stash books written, designed, and published for children, about which the adults in your community are willing to throw a hissy fit. It is not a perfect compromise, not by a long shot. We know that in Tulsa, that shelf will be where the books with gay characters will go; other places it'll also be books with illustrations of naked people, books about puberty and pregnancy, maybe even books about death and evolution. By setting those aside, we're saying, "This stuff is special, dirty, dangerous. This stuff could hurt your children. Be careful." Are there parents who won't go look at the scary shelf? Yes. Are there parents who will yell at their kids for looking at the scary shelf? Yes. It's also clear that moving such books into a special section says "if you are like this, you are not completely welcome here". On some level, it is the community condoning bigotry, under the rhetoric of preserving 'parental choice'.

I'm glad the books aren't being withdrawn; I'm glad they're not being sent to an Adults-only section; I hope the 'parenting section' is accessible and non-intimidating. I hope the librarians make sure the stuff that gets ripped off and defaced gets replaced.

I also hope there's a public outcry, and the citizens of Tulsa say they don't want their libraries condoning this crap.



* Some might say it's a cop-out, and there are moments when I'd agree. But the good librarians working in Tulsa are working under siege as far as I'm concerned, and while I don't support this compromise, the fact of the matter is that they're doing a job I am not willing to do, and I'm not interested in adding to their burden. Better to work to defeat the folks that backed them into this corner.

In looking for more information on what's going on with the gay books in Oklahoma, I stumbled upon an informed and library-centric write-up by Mary Minnow (who lives on the library/law interface).

Lucky for us, LibraryLaw Blog has an LJ Feed, librarylaw.

Because, y'know, family life and grad school and making pretty pictures aren't keeping you busy enough.

So why do you think this hasn't been mentioned on YALSA-BK?