I have handed in and/or e-submitted all of my cataloging assignments. Phew. That was hard. Yay for being done!

Last night I think the Green Line train I was on was haunted. The signs kept changing between "B Boston College," "Instructional Car," and "Out of Service," and I heard some really weird noises between Boylston and Park Street. The kind of noises a Ghost Train might make. A really loud Ghost Train, obviously, because these mysterious noises were audible above the normal screechy noises of a non-haunted Green Line train. Is it a coincidence that Boylston and Park St. are among the oldest stations on the line, and indeed in the country??? I don't think so.

Here's a news item I wanted to call to all of your attention: Boy Scout Jamboree... OF DEATH!. So far at this year's national Boy Scout Jamboree, four people have been electrocuted to death, and dozens have been hospitalized with heat-related illnesses. Well, that sounds like a good time, doesn't it? Heck of a jamboree. Also, please note that the specific identifier in the URL for this article is "boy_scouts_all_started_screaming".

Today as I was walking to school, there was a flock of Canada geese on the same sidewalk with me. It was hilarious; they were pretty slow, and they were walking two by two down the Fenway in front of the Gardner museum, and I walked right past them (I was within a foot of them) and they either ignored me entirely or shot me brief worried glances. Cracked me up.

All right; I've written 1000 words about FRBRization (don't ask) and I'm feeling much better about this essay thing. I should have this done by the time I have to leave work, then I will sleep, and then I will wake up in the morning and make corrections and then turn it in and that will be just as good as having it in on time, since after all there's no way she's going to have read even half of the essays by tomorrow at 9AM. I think. I won't even have to skip work. Sadly, however, I have now used the words "FRBR" and "MARC" so many times that I have divested them of any meaning they may once have had. But it's OK, because in the next part of the essay I will be overusing the words "FRBR" and "OPAC", so "MARC" will get a rest, at least. FRBR is in for the long haul, I'm afraid.

I just got an email from my dad with the subject: "Gramp - not feeling so good." Which, in the context of my family's relentlessly optimistic/avoidant communication style, means... well, I'm not sure, but nothing good. Apparently his heart is "functioning at about 30%" and not likely to get better (what this means, I have no idea, because again, no one in my family would ever want to use an actual, look-up-able medical term). My dad says that although Grampie's not in inmmediate danger (he thinks), we should probably plan on visiting sometime in the next month or so; fortunately, I was already planning to go up to visit for a family party in two weeks. My grandfather is in his eighties (shamefully, I don't know exactly where in his eighties) so this shouldn't be a big surprise, but his mother lived until she was 103 (I was maybe 13 when she died) and his older sister still mows her own lawn (with a gas push mower! and it is a big lawn!), and I just kind of assumed he would live as long. I'm also feeling very guilty because I haven't seen my grandparents since Thanksgiving, and I've missed the last two Christmasses. On the other hand, I have been worried for a while now that Grampie would outlive Grammie -- he is so totally dependent on her that I can't imagine him lasting very long at all without her, whereas she is much more independent and could sort of enjoy widowhood, I think, not to be all callous and stuff -- and that seems less likely now. Still, I'm worried and sad.

Essay isn't due Thursday. It's due today.

I AM SCREWED!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(OK. Not necessarily. But a little bit.)

So, one nice thing about having done NaNoWriMo a couple years ago is that I now know that I can churn out quite large amounts of intelligible prose in short periods of time. Which skill is very much going to be put to the test over the next two days. I have pretty well finished my reading for my final essay for cataloging, and I have some ideas about what I want to write, but I have not begun to write yet. And it is due Thursday. It is supposed to be 3000-4000 words, and I was easily churning out 5000 words a day during the last days of NaNoWriMo (granted, many of these words were really, really stupid, but I also didn't have any notes or outline to be working from, and I do have those this time around). So I know it's entirely do-able; what should do is write a draft tomorrow, revise the draft Wednesday, and then put on some finishing touches on Thursday. But I have a bad feeling that I'm going to get into a lot of procrastinating followed by freaking out on Thursday. Also, I have less difficult assignment to complete as well;I was hoping to do that after I got back the last assignment, but unless the other assignment is returned tomorrow, I don't think that's going to work. Eek. Totally should not be posting to LJ right now, you know.

Also, really, it doesn't make any sense to go to class tomorrow, given that I'm not going to be graded on anything I learn in these last two classes. But I probably will go; I paid good money for this class. And it's been pretty interesting so far. I might have to call in sick on Wednesday, though (but I never do that, at least not unless I'm a little teeny bit sick, and I don't think I'm likely to get very sick by Wednesday, although I've been eating and sleeping badly for the last week or so, so you never know).

I wish I could take a nap. I am tired.

Also I feel very stupid right now because I can't seem to understand how to construct Dewey numbers. I thought they would be easy! Perhaps because I thought they would be easy, I didn't really pay very much attention in class and now I am finding I don't actually understand what I am doing. The assignment's not due until Thursday, so hopefully I will understand more after class tomorrow (in which I will pay rather more attention). Also I may skip on over to the library and see if Learn Dewey Decimal Classification (which is, apparently, the equivalent of DDC for Dummies) can help me out.

ETA: I have been puzzling and puzzling and my puzzler is not quite sore and even better I am somewhat surer of myself in this area, yaye.

EATA: No, I think I've just been deluding myself and I don't actually get it at all, dammit. And I still want a nap.

Things are getting in the way of my Harry Potter reading: I'm going to New York tomorrow, which will be fun, and I'm only staying the one night and then coming back in the morning so that I can work all day at the museum, and then Saturday night I think I might go to a party that one of the girls in my cataloging class invited me to (or said she was going to invite me to; I don't actually know, like, where it is or anything), and I am finding building Dewey numbers rather more difficult than I expected, possibly because I totally failed to listen in class, and so now I'm not even sure when I'm going to get the chance to buy the book, much less read it. I'm being silly, because really the worst-case scenario is that I don't buy the book until Friday, when I'm done with the cataloging assignment, but I don't care if I'm being silly! I want it now! Saturday morning would be OK too!

Also, I don't even have enough time right now to read the other stuff I want to read -- I've got the new Mary Russell book in my bag right now, and I haven't even finished the library books that are due tomorrow. I should be able to read most of the Mary Russell on the bus tomorrow, though, assuming I am not so tired I just pass out. I am too busy right now. I feel good, and I think I'm handling it well, but I'm just not getting to do all the things I want to do, and that makes me sad.

I kind of really dig cataloging. I already knew I liked the course, which is the first one I've taken at Simmons where the professor is teaching to the smart people rather than the many brain-dead people who seem to find their way into library school (or at least Simmons (obviously, I do not mean any of the librarians and/or library students on my flist(even the ones at Simmons))). But now I'm actually kind of liking the cataloging itself. It's like doing little puzzles. I get sucked in like it's some kind of addictive word game -- I'm sitting here doing my homework and I'm thinking "I can squeeze in one more classification number before I go! Really!" when actually I totally do not have enough time to do that. But Cutter numbers are fun! Well, annoying and fun.

I'm not sure whether I would continue to find this fun for long periods of time, though. Hmm. Still, it's interesting; I hadn't really seriously considered becoming a cataloger before, but I kind of am right now.

Library of Congress subject headings, why are you so weird?

According to the LCSH, we should not use the term "Cheese antennas" but rather "Microwave pillboxes". Hee.

That clears things right up, doesn't it? Seriously, though, how many people in the history of the world have gone to a library catalog and looked up EITHER "cheese antennas" or "microwave pillboxes?" (Other than catalogers and people in cataloging classes who were like, "'Cheese antennas'? 'Microwave pillboxes'? The Hell?" And just so you know, it looks like Robert C. Hansen wrote the definitive work on cheese antennas microwave pillboxes back in 1964.)

In case you hadn't guessed, we're doing subject analysis this week (which, btw, I should properly call "Content analysis (Communication)," "Indexing," or "Subject cataloging"). I have been using the LCSH for two hours and I am already perplexed, amused, and annoyed.

Cheese antennas. Microwave pillboxes. Cheese antennas. Microwave pillboxes. Cheese antennas.

Oh, and "Women figure skaters." Well, where's "Men figure skaters", then? (Answer: I guess we just call them "Figure skaters.") That sort of thing is bad enough when you're talking about fields where women are rare, but it's just silly in figure skating, where there are as many world-class women as men, and vastly more women amateurs.