Yesterday was the fifth and final celebration for my special birthday. Entering a new decade is a fearful experience and it’s good to have lots of people around to see you over the hump. We had lunch at “The Point” on Albert Park Lake – very pretty, very pleasant, great company and conversation and some amazing gifts. I feel very spoilt but I still want one more thing – a change of government on Saturday, topped off with a win in the seat of Bennelong. Then I can die happy.

Today is my birthday. It’s one of those Big Birthdays that end in zero and get you thinking about the meaning of life and the state of your superannuation fund.

A number of luminaries share my birthday:
1. The late great miss Veronica Lake who taught me that it was OK to have long lank straight hair;
2. The loathsome Prince Charles who gives me a focus for all my negative energy;
3. Condoleezza Rice – great to see a woman in power but some of her political ideas are a worry;
4. Senator Joseph McCarthy - now we’re in really dangerous territory; and
5. Claude Monet – any one of his paintings would be an acceptable gift should you be wondering.

Google Docs

Set up my Google docs and started sharing the writing of the ANZIIL report with Mary, Zarina and Sue, inviting Tom as a visitor so he’d know we were really doing it. But the next day some intruder with a Gmail address had joined the group and our document had disappeared! So it’s back to sharing on G drive I guess.

Hurray! At last I have my star for Week 4 and my cinema tickets are on the way. Bake up the popcorn! Freeze up the choc tops!

The original four family members (now we have seven) Left Foot, Right Foot, Grumpy Girl and Petite Soeur

Information Literacy and Mango Tarts

The ANZIIL symposium in Hobart last week was a great success judging by the comments on delegates’ evaluation sheets. This was good news for the organising committee as we had a few difficulties along the way, most notably our man on the spot moving from Tassie to Brisbane just before the symposium and our Chair also changing jobs and being unable to attend.

It appears though that the glory days of Information Literacy are over. The feeling is that there’s less support from senior management confronting issues of accountability and effectiveness. It’s difficult to demonstrate the lasting benefits of many of our interventions.

On the plus side, the lovely lovely unmatchable, unmissable CRIG information literacy forum is coming up soon. The forum is timed to coincide with the mango season and, apart from the presentations, the highlights of these gatherings has always been the socialising and networking over a mango tart. The mango tarts were legendary but I’ve been told that for the second year in a row there will be none.

It’s a portent of doom. The thin end of the wedge. How long before no mango tarts equals no information literacy? I fear the worst.

A quiet Friday arvo so I've knocked over a few more of the 23 things. I've used Google Booksearch many times but have had another look. There's still not many full books I want to read on it. I've set up an iGoogle homepage but found it did not transport from one computer to another. I've del.icio.used and posted photos of four late great pets.

There's lots of websites about Second Life and some articles in the databases too. It was reading one of these that alerted me to the existence of Web 3.0. And we're just coming to grips with Web 2.0! Enuff already!

I'm off to the ANZIIL symposium on Sunday so probably won't be blogging until the end of next week. See ya!

Star Quest

There is a black hole in the galaxy of stars alongside my blog. Week 4. I SWEAR TO GOD I have done all of the 23 things up to and a little beyond that point. So, Big Brother, I eagerly await the arrival of my Village cinema tickets any day now.

SWINBURNE LIVING LIBRARY TOURS THE ANCIENT WORLD

There's nothing like a night shift to get you romping through the 23 things. I've Flickrd and Googled and now have a few doz more passwords to remember. What have I learnt? According to Google Maps I could be getting home in one hour and 3 minutes instead of the hour and 20 it takes me now. I don't believe it.

I've sussed out Facebook and Myspace and know that they are not for me.

Now that I've arrived at the rest week I'm going to indulge myself by blogging about Living Library's tour through the Ancient World. LL visited the Topaki Palace in Istanbul to interview Suleyman the Magnificent; Delphi to consult the oracle; Olympia to win gold for Australia; Pompeii to ask for a ‘please explain’ from the vulcanologist; Rome to ask Romulus and Remus about establishing an empire; etc.

Pictures and details are on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/15224574@N08/

Here’s a few to go on with.

OK, I've just polished off the Week 5 stuff, including subscribing to some feeds and blogs on health issues. I expect to be a complete hypochondriac within a week.

I've just done the Library Thing (23 things week 4) and now I know that 87 other people also enjoy the novels of Barbara Trapido. That'll come in handy.

After zillions of attempts and frustrations and much advice from peers, I have finally managed to Simpsonise myself. And it looks just like me!!!

23 Things

Just back from leave, I'm very late to the party on the 23 things. Have got as far as Flickr but have resisted putting up my holiday snaps. Didn't think you'd be interested.

Here are the 23 things I wish I were still doing:
munching a light and crispy pizza in Rome
savouring a chocolate gelati in Sorrento
browsing the market in Amalfi
sipping a limoncello
admiring the view from the ferry on the way to Capri
inspecting the ruins at Pompeii and running in to a former student)
visiting Santa's grave in Bari
touring the colosseum
sneaking into a bar in the Piazza Venezia for a free pee
dining right on the beach at Tolo with the waves lapping around my feet
consulting the oracle at Delphi
running down the track at Olympia
singing my heart out in the theatre at Epidaurus
having a picnic lunch in the grounds of the public library at Nafplion
baking in the Athens heat
climbing halfway to Heaven at Meteora
picking up the great vibe on the streets of Istanbul
admiring the homes of the rich and famous from the middle of the Bosphorus
rapping with Suleyman the Magnificent at the Topkapi Palace
shopping for cushions in the Grand Bazaar
steering clear of the Istanbul carpet salesmen
getting high on the aroma in the Spice Bazaar
choosing among a dozen different breads to have with my kebab.

Sigh!

In his book ‘Microtrends’ Mark J. Penn identifies 75 consumer groups which are growing in importance for marketers. I seem to belong to several of them: Wordy Women (gotta admit to this), Southpaws Unbound (militant lefthanders), Powerful Petites (women tired of buying their clothes in children’s boutiques) but most of all, I am an Extreme Commuter.

Driving from St Kilda to Lilydale every day I have tried most of the time-passing activities Penn discusses. I have decimated the audiobook collections of every library in the south-eastern suburbs and can claim to have read all sorts of weighty tomes I would never have struggled through if I’d had to read them myself instead of having a professional actor read them to me. Being stuck in the middle of the Glen Iris level crossing while some fruity-voiced actor reads Proust to you is a unique experience.

Language tapes are another option. Penn claims you can learn Spanish in 16 hours and get a job as a UN translator. I haven't achieved those dizzy heights but, on and off for 10 years I have practiced my parley vous and can now place an order at a restaurant or book a hotel in Paris while simultaneously negotiating my way around the number 6 tram at the corner of high Street and Glenferrie Road.

Penn is right about the marketing opportunities. Extreme Commuters are a captive audience eager for anything to make the drive more pleasant. Libraries should be targeting us. Just be careful with the relaxation tapes - ZZZZZ.

The Frontier Librarians, Left and Right are off to explore some very ancient frontiers in Turkey, Greece and Italy. I've got lots of questions ready for the Oracle at Delphi:
1. Will I ever have another grandchild?
2. Will Cee ever reach her goal weight? (She really wants to know)
3. Will I fall so far behind with my 23 things (this is only the 2nd) that Derek will let me off?
4. Will that beagle at Melbourne airport bail me up again?

I hope I'll be able to tell you the answer to some of these questions when I return. I'm not sure how many goes at the Oracle you're allowed to have.

Imagine this. The best information literacy session you've ever had. All the participants have chosen to be there and all seem eager to learn. They speak the lingo, they are all PLU, they are on your side. If you've had this experience you must be a teacher of library technicians too.

Clearly retrospective travel blogs are too boring even for those on the trip. Never mind, the frontier librarians have another adventure coming up soon. Stand by for the first installment

Novgorod. Did I say Novgorod? After four months I can still remember it but my intention of writing a retrospective travel blog obviously didn’t happen. I came back from Eastern Europe and walked into the busiest semester I have had in ten years. There are still two weeks to go and i am crawling to the finish line.

While I have been going up and down on the spot for four months Right Foot has completed his PhD and is no longer known as Mister Shed around the neighbourhood. He is now Doctor Shed. And officially An Historian. I am going to insist on his correct title appearing on every piece of mail that comes into the house: Telstra bills, Australian heritage magazine, parking and speeding fines and all sorts of junk mail.

His career as a jazz banjoist has blossomed as well and he is now playing in four groups, a couple of them for money. So now I am not only married to a doctor but a popular musician as well!

RETROSPECTIVE TRAVEL BLOG

Sunday, 11th June
Right Foot and I, along with my sister, Middle Sized Bear and my brother in law, set off on our “Not too young & not too old” tour of Russia, the Baltic countries, Poland and the Czech Republic. Middle Sized Bear and Brother-in-Law (BIL) had not travelled overseas since their honeymoon in New Zealand in 1969 so were diving in the deep end.

After numerous adventures involving Singapore Airlines, Luftansa, incorrect boarding passes, wrong gate numbers, etc we arrived in Moscow 27 hours after leaving Melbourne. By this time we had gathered up 9 other not too young, not too old companions so we arrived en masse at our hotel in Moscow where the staff denied all knowledge of our bookings. This turned out to be the pattern for all our dealings with Russian bureaucracy. Processes are very unwieldy, time-consuming and mysterious.

Moscow itself is absolutely wonderful - fabulous streetscapes and buildings such as St Basil’s Cathedral, http://www.moscow-taxi.com/churches/st-basils-cathedral.html
the amazing Metro stations http://www.moscow-taxi.com/sightseeing/metro.html
wonderful scenery (seeing Swan Lake which inspired Tchaikovsky’s ballet, at night was absolutely magical).

Russians became accustomed to queueing for staple items in Soviet times. Now they queue in their thousands for many hours outside the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour to view an extraordinary relic: John the Baptist’s right hand, the very hand that baptised Jesus Christ. We saw many such demonstrations of unquestioning faith throughout Russia. It seems there is nothing like years of oppression to strengthen the hold of religion. http://www.moscow-taxi.com/sightseeing/savior.html

Right Foot led me to a park and tried to convince me that it was Gorky Park. It wasn't, but was interesting all the same. The old-fashioned, run down amusements reminded me of Vietnam. My favourite was a ride for young children, similar to a little train but featuring toy tanks instead of railway carriages.

Contrary to expectations we ate well. Petite had predicted ‘meat stuffed with meat with a side serving of meat’ but we found lots of fresh fruit and vegetables including bananas, bananas, bananas! The beer was not bad and the wine was not good.
As an accompaniment to our dinner we were treated to the first of several corny, hokey folkloric performances, got up for the tourists. No local would be seen dead attending.

The yuckiest thing was the lat night entertainment, the horrible Moscow Circus with its outdated performing animal acts. It was surprising and depressing to see that this old hat style of circus is still around.

NEXT: Novgorod

Oh the joy!
The Frontier Librarians have a grand-daughter. Madeleine Pearl Wallace was born on 17th October at 7.50 pm in St Vincent’s Private Hospital. She is the most beautiful, intelligent and finest human being the world has ever known.
Thank-you Grumpy Girl and Matt.

People have been chiding me for my prolonged non-blogging. No excuses really except that Winter saps my strength to such an extent that I usually lose the will to live between June and October and who would want to read about that?

Feeling has returned to my fingertips so now I can record the excitement of contemplating the arrival of Our First Grandaughter who is expected to put in an appearance in about three weeks.

Grumpy Girl is blooming: she looks healthy, relaxed and ready for anything which is just as well of course.

The only worry Right Foot and I have at all is the baby’s name. Grumpy is steadfastly non-committal and I fear the worst. One of those stern First World War names like Bertha, Dorothy, Mildred or Gladys. Could I love a child called Beryl even though she has a quarter of my genes residing inside?
Or the baby may be given a relative’s name in honour of a family member blessed with a winsome personality but cursed with an unattractive moniker.
I feel safe from all the cutely spelt names with their superfluity of Es and Is and the unfortunate inventions of a mother determined to be original but fear there is no hope of any of my current favourites making the cut. However, for what it’s worth here are my suggestions: Miranda, Alicia, Saskia.

Fat chance.