The hodge and some podge

It is Fiddlehead season! Have you ever eaten fiddleheads?  Their season is very short, so you have to snatch them when you see them in the store. I hadn't even heard of them until I lived in the Maritimes as a teen. I just had my annual dose this week, sautéed with double smoked bacon until nice and soft. Try them.  Trust me.


Danielle Steel.  Sigh.  Two different people in the last few weeks have asked for my help in their endeavor to read all of Ms. Steel's novels. I'm sending requests all across the province, and I must admit I cringe a little every time I do so. I'm such a snob, and really, I shouldn't be. Clearly she knows what she's doing and has been doing it successfully for a billion years. I get a kick out of her books whenever they cross my path at work because she has a different author photo for each book, and some of them are quite outlandish: ball gowns; windswept beaches; Dalmatian print dresses; Russian sleighs. Her imagination is not limited only to the inside of her books!

I just catalogued a new book titled: The Love shack.  Do you reckon the publisher has never heard of the B-52's?

I know that libraries are unfathomable and mysterious places to much of the public. It's hard for us library-type people to remember that because of how our brains work. We try to be helpful though, and provide signage, so I'm baffled when someone asks me, "Where do you keep the books?' when we've gone out of our way to put them on the shelves in such a way it's clear to see they are books, sitting on shelves right out in the open; or when someone walks all the way around the circulation desk, passing right underneath the "Returns" sign, to leave their large pile of returning books under the "Check Out" sign. We really need to strive for greater transparency!

I've written before - probably too frequently, you're thinking to yourself - about haircuts. Well, in the words of White Snake, here I go again. I just got my hair done for the second time with a stylist who has absolutely changed my life. At least as far as my hair is concerned. I don't fully understand what she's done, but it involves layering and thinning underneath, rather than the outer layer. It results in less volume (I have a lot of stubborn hair) which is such a bonus at all time, but especially in the humidity. For thick hair, this means you don't get the triangle effect of the blunt ends frizzing up and sticking out. It also looked good through every stage of growing out since the first cut four months ago.  Halleluyer!  While we're on the happy topic of haircuts, ladies have you noticed a new approach to cutting hair? I remember back in the day, it used to take for-stinking-ever. The stylist (they were probably called hair cutters then) would cut into your hair by taking down layer by layer from very large clips, carefully measuring against your shoulders for evenness before proceeding to the next layer. For. Ever.  Now they seem to let your hair spill through their fingers and indolently snip now and then with the scissors. Just when you're waiting for them to really get started, voila! Fabulous hair!

One year from today exactly, World Cup 2014 begins in Brazil.  Deutschland!