Here at CIL. Hi!

There are two types of people in the world: those who will happily sing along with the Oak Ridge Boys' "Elvira" whenever they hear it on the radio ("Hmm pappa hmm pappa hmm pappa maow maow") and those who will run screaming from the room. I am in the first group and my husband is in the second, so it's lucky he didn't come on this trip with me. Much cheesy country music was played and sung along to on the drive.

I'm in Washington DC for the Computers in Libraries conference 2005, and for some reason they're letting me 'blog it. It hasn't started yet, so aside from meeting a few librarian rock stars (more on that in a minute) I don't have much to report yet. but I do want to mention a few things that happened on the drive up.

* The Virginia welcome center on I-95 is absolutely gorgeous. Seriously, I've been in hotel lobbies that weren't as opulent as their welcome center.

* I would love to know the story behind the "No Smoking in Line" sign at the Bojangles off 12-A.

* Dear Seagulls: when someone is handing out the leftover Bojangles biscuit that she saved JUST FOR YOU, proper etiquette requires you to swoop down, grab bits of biscuit, and fly away. Dive-bombing the benefactor while screaming at the top of your lungs is not recommended.

* While stopping and buying the mouse that I forgot, I saw this in a handicapped parking space:

.. I think I will be very careful about not parking in the wrong space around here.

The driving gourmet: normally I rarely drink sodas, because they're not very good for me. But today I tried peanuts in Coca-Cola at the recommendation of my mother. She used to drink this (only when she did it it was RC Cola and peanuts) when she was working in tobacco. The sleds of tobacco would come in, and she would help unload them and bundle them together. Her hands would get filthy-covered with tobacco-ick. (She said her hands would turn black and they'd have to peel the tobacco stuff off.) So the person with the cleanest hands would pour the peanuts into the soda. As she explained it, it was a way to get something to eat when your hands were dirty.

.. It looks a bit weird, it makes your soda foam up, and the soda goes flat really quickly (all the salt?) It was good, though I'm not sure it was worth carbonated bazooka peanut burps all afternoon.

After I got to the hotel, I went downstairs to get my badge and ran into Steven Cohen, Blake Carver, and a few other people. It was so great to meet these people, though I did feel a bit intimidated.

That's all for now. Unless the ITI people revoke my blogging priv's for this silly, off-topic entry, you'll see me tomorrow with more comments.

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