blakspring

…nothing crazy happening at work. Even the man who reeks of a different revolting odor every day did not have a noticeable smell today.
It’s enjoying a dinner with a friend I hadn’t seen in way too long, sharing a huge plate of black bean nachos, biting into delicious sandwiches, and laughing about how long […]

I cannot imagine a life without travel, without visiting new places. Traveling is my drug of choice. I get what D likes to call “airport high” when we are about to embark on a new adventure, because I get completely giddy and can’t sit still or stop smiling, a new energy overwhelming me. […]

After my love affair with the parakeets ended, I decided that I didn’t want any other pets (other than a dog of course, which my parents were never ever going to get me). And so I was pet-free for many years until I got a betta, a.k.a Siamese fighting fish, from my co-workers right […]

Even with articles such as this one from The New York Times about the “new generation” of librarians, and cool sites that break stereotypes, it is still amazing how many misconceptions there are about this profession. Here are some of the gems I get to hear:

“What do you mean by ‘librarian’?”
“You don’t look like […]

On Thursday night, D and I went to see Sicko, Michael Moore’s documentary on the health care industry. I’ve heard medical horror stories before but usually these things happened when people did not have health insurance. This film shows how even with insurance, there are no guarantees. We were so upset and […]

The best party that Emer ever threw was on the Frying Pan, an old boat from the 1920s which had sunk and was eventually salvaged and rented out. The inside was old wood and metal. There was a DJ as well as The Odd Squad, a surf-rock instrumental band that a […]

This weekend my friend Emer Martin and her family arrived in NYC for a visit. Emer and I go back to our undergrad days, where we met in a fiction writing class. She already had one book published, Breakfast In Babylon, and she was working on her second novel, More Bread or I’ll […]

I’ve always had good teeth, not a cavity in sight - not even with my baby teeth.  And given the fillings, root canals, and other tortures that my parents suffered through with their teeth, I’m still amazed that my pearly whites have been pretty darn perfect.  (Of course, my parents will point out that they […]

D likes to point out that all too often I am a quitter. And as much as I hate to say it, I do give up too easily - I freely admit to that. If I don’t learn or figure out a new thing right away, if I am not completely brilliant at […]

The last thing I was expecting to be doing on a Sunday night was saving a baby bird.
D was taking out the trash when he found a baby bird, probably a sparrow, huddling in a make-shift home of a pizza box. It must’ve fallen out of a nearby nest since it is tiny […]