#blogjune Kayak

Mr is building a kayak. The work is stalled at present because he needs a particular tool to assist in an awkward sanding job. Specifically he needs a finger sander.

Still, once it’s done we will have a double seater stitch and glue kayak. He’s got a twin to build so the whole family can join in the fun. I post on instagram about it’s progress... when it happens. #wakadugmore

# blogjune Words

Sean’s post reminded me of all the family word play / puntastic times we have.  Some come about due to child speak that has become standard. E.g. Fy-ens for fire engine. Others because of a habit of spoonerisms e.g. local road Don Buck road gets changed to Bon Duck road. A nearby road called Rush Creek Drive gets the treatment as well. I’ll let you change that one yourself.

Then there are things like cat names that morph into something else. Usually Mum will name a cat and everyone else in the family re-names it as their personalities emerge.Thus Simba became Pork Bun, Moustapha became Adder.

Certain personalities that we know earn themselves nicknames too. E.g. The Penguin.

My kids used to love some Watties canned ravioli they produced for babies - they called these Little pillows.

#blogjune Party

My niece turns 4 this week so there was a party today. I had instructions to make emoji poo cupcakes. So I did.

#blogjune Limerick

There was a librarian of Huapai
Who said with a long suffering sigh
What to write for #blogjune?
Inspire me soon!
But sadly, there was no reply.

Good night.

#blogjune Hear our voices

Last night I attended an event by the development arm of Council about the community and area in which I work. It was a well run event, a panel of articulate people, preceded by a mix and mingle with elegant cocktail foods and alcohol freely provided.

The intentions and plans for the area are all good, well meaning and hopeful. However, I couldn’t help notice that the demographic of those attending and those on the panel were not representative of all the community. There were voices missing, those that would benefit the most from the development and whose voices should be heard.

I had thought there would be opportunities for audience feedback but there was not. We could submit questions via an online medium to the panel, but these were moderated and only 3 were chosen. I did submit some in the hopes that the missing voices might get some air time but none were chosen.

I came away with mixed feelings. On one hand the event felt like a self-congratulatory “haven’t we done well” and on the other it was an event that could have been a lot more inclusive.  If that was an attempt by Council to get real community engagement, it was not a representative sample.

#blogjune Soap cutting

We cut the soap tonight. It is a bit soft so I hope it hardens up. Miss12 wanted to use a lime fragrance so it smells like a lime milkshake but she likes it so I guess that is ok. 

I need to get a proper soap mould.

#blogjune halfway list

It’s Monday.
I went to work.
I did works.
I trolled through a photograph database and found some ancestral images.
I did more works.
I got change for the till because ATMs are now giving $50 notes which customers then give to us for 20cent transactions. 😤😡
I picked up kids from maths tutoring.
I came home and cooked dinner.
My order from Dirty Hippie arrived and I tried the tooth powder I ordered. It is weird.
The end.

#blogjune Press pause

It’s important for my mental wellness to press pause, particularly on the weekend when I am running around doing things I can’t get done during the week.

Yesterday I didn’t blog for that reason. But pressing pause meant Miss12 and I did the soccer run, I picked up soap making supplies and while Miss12 played her game I popped into the Farmers Market being held next door to the soccer field. We went for a beach walk and breathed salty air.

Today has been similar. After church we made soap and DH and I went for a neighbourhood walk.

Now it’s dinner time and I will have to press play again to get things ready for the work week.

#blogjune Soap

In my attempts to avoid products with palm oil I have been making my own soap.

It’s been a bit of trial and error. I’ve been using the Soap calc website to make up my concoctions - you can put in how much of each oil you are going to use and it will calculate the proportions for the lye which is really helpful.

Soap in the moulds

Moulds for the soap with lavender flowers sprinkled on the bottom

Lye waiting to cool to the right temperature 

My recipe had olive oil, rice bran oil and coconut oil in it.  I'd like to experiment with some other oils too like macadamia nut oil, though that is quite expensive so I'd only be using a small amount.

Because of the chemistry of soap, getting colour into the soap can be quite tricksy but also rather fun when you get surprising results.

You also have to let it cure for 6-8 weeks at least so planning is required.

I've also done some melt and pour soap which is fun because you can embed things into the soap.  However, it's not palm oil free.

PureNature, a local company is a good source for many of the ingredients I've been using.  But I do tend to buy the oil in bulk from a cheaper source.

My friend Rachel does some beautiful soaps which you can see on her Instagram.  I aspire to these!  But need more moulds and lye and colours.  Oh dear. Online shopping is such temptation.

#blogjune Filler

It has been a good day but a long day. So to bed. Goodnight good people of the inter web.

#blogjune Sustainable libraries

Today, the local council for which I work has declared a climate emergency. There is already a lot of cynicism out there in social media world about the declaration but I am glad. It’s a long awaited commitment and yes, it won’t be perfect but it gives us a clear mandate.

This is a hill I’m prepared to die on so I am very interested to see the actions that will come from this move.  I know this is going to be in the library’s strategy documents because it was signalled to managers yesterday, so I’m already thinking about specifics in my particular branch.

IFLA has a special interest group for the Environment, Sustanability and Libraries.

What can we do? This is a brain dump post so may be repetitive and less than logical or comprehensive. Feel free to suggest other stuff. I fully own that I need to do more research and this post is simplistic.

Reduce the amount of paper we use:

We print receipts all over the place - for items going into transit to another branch, for slips for books on hold, for due dates. We’ve got to  reduce those in some way.

We print lists of so many things - items to be put into transit for holds, items to be assessed for withdrawal.  The LMS we use does have a mobile app that could possibly be used for this kind of work. If we invested in RFID wands that could also help and could also help us to be more efficient in locating items quicker.

Our buildings:

Some of what goes on in our buildings in terms of efficiency is out of control for my team.  Our HVAC is a perpetual issue for us. Facilities are working on improving it, so that could help reduce the power use but it’s not something my team has much control over.  However, we are a bit slack about turning things off at the end of the day so that can easily change. Facilities recently changed most of our lighting to LEDs which are more efficient.  Hmm what else?

Recycling:

We could do a lot more in this area. We already recycle bottles, cans, some plastics. We re-use paper for scrap.  We do craft recycling activities.

We separate our food scraps for composting.  I don’t fully trust that this gets taken to an appropriate place though.  We are reliant on all recycling stuff going to the right place. Ideally I would like it if we can reduce waste as much as we can.

Stuff we consume a lot of:

Pens

Toner/paper

Tapes like sellotape, book mending tape

Information:

How can we support the community to address this issue for themselves? Can we provide good information about choices for things like electric vehicles, housing efficiency, alternative energy sources? We already lend out kits for people to find out how efficient their homes are.

Questions:

Could we do some kind of community garden thing in the outside areas?  How much work would my staff have to do though?

Could we do a worm farm here?

Should we mend more things rather than taking them out of circulation?

Some things we do could be more digital but will that remove choice for people who fall through the digital abyss? What does this do for the 40% of NZers who are functionally illiterate?

#blogjune Monday night

Today’s post is brought to you by ambitious Miss12 who has an “expo” on Wednesday that is about all things Spanish. Which means she wants to make tapas and churros and wear a bull costume. To be fair she signalled this plan a while back but I have been in denial about it because much of her plan involved outsourcing to Mum.  Hence my ambivalence.

Yesterday I modified a Kiwi onesie and a Fresian cow hat into a bull.

Tonight I have to help make bechamel sauce to be made into ham croquettes tomorrow along with the churros.

Forgive me but I really just want to put up my feet and read my book. 🤭 *whinge whinge*

#blogjune Pie

Do you like pie? I like pie. You would know this if you follow me on Instagram 😉😁

The photo above is a fish pie. Tonight I’m making apple pie.

One of my colleagues @philiplib has a handy list of all pie winner locations based on the NZ Bakers Pie Competition.

#blogjune Lessons from NASA

Today we were talking about rockets.... as you do. Mr15 is pretty interested in space flights, rockets and related subjects so these things come up in our family conversations.

Anyway, I mentioned the Challenger disaster in passing and my husband found this video on the topic to show Mr15.

I remember this happening of course. We were in Germany at the time and a bit insulated from international news, but we had a little bit to do with some Americans who worked on the US bases there.  Dad came home from work (Max Planck Institute für Physiologie) and said “The Americans have lost one of their rockets.”

The investigation into the disasters of Challenger and then Columbia exposed a number of problems, but one thing the video points out is the issue of the organisational culture at NASA and the effect this had on decision making and risk management. Librarianship has always been a risk adverse profession and one that likes to have rules around how we do things. (See also: fines, noise, reference only works). Many librarians work in complex organisations and in turn are influenced by the culture there. It is worth reflecting on the way organisational culture can hijack our thinking.  Are our rules, policies, practices actually improving our services?

#blogjune End of week reflections

If you only do what you can do, you’ll never be better than you are” – Shifu, Kung Fu Panda 3

Over the last 6 months my team has been holding 4 vacancies.  I’ve managed to recruit to all of them now so on paper at least I have a full team.  The reality of day to day is that I sometimes have everyone there and sometimes not, depending on sickness, leave, jury duty, family needs and so on.  I have had to accept that.

I hadn’t realized how much stress the lack of FTE had had on me until the other week.  I was up on the top floor of a building in the CBD overlooking the city and could see all the way west to Manukau Heads.  Looking at the contours of the land, the Tāmaki River entrance and being able to see where the portage path of Māori going from the Manukau to the Waitemata would be, reminded me of the importance of taking the balcony view once more.  I’ve been so focused on the dance floor, trying to get cover, doing extra customer facing shifts to make up for the lack of staff, not being able to look up from “just getting through” and it has taken a toll.

I don’t really know where I’m going career-wise anymore.  I have been thinking about “what next” for a while. I’ve applied for a number of jobs with no success. I don’t even know if I want to move on or not – there are some aspects to my current position that are positive, especially for my family and the latter has a lot of weight in terms of my direction.  There are still some things I want to achieve in my current position too and I finally feel like I can plan ahead with my new staff.

One thing I would like to do is regain my learning mojo. I feel very behind in terms of digital developments, technologies that affect my profession and potential uses of tech in services we could offer. I used to keep up with this but no longer.  So I am going to increase time spent on professional reading in these areas. I’d love to go to VALA again but self-funding is problematic. So this will have to do.

#blogjune Fermentation

Last year I made sauerkraut. It was a success and I used up a massive cabbage that FIL had given me. I didn’t have any special equipment, just jars, weights and ingredients.

I’ve toyed with the idea of doing some other fermented foods but got busy and didn’t pursue it. I work with someone who makes kombucha so I am interested in doing that. But I also really like things such as kimchi.

Anyway, I am thinking of doing some fermenting this weekend. Of vegetables just to be clear. I may treat myself to a crock just to make it a little easier to deal with. I’ve got yet another book out of the library with recipes to inspire.

There are some excellent purchasable fermented products out there which I like also. But it’s fun to make things yourself sometimes.  It is good for your gut flora.  Apparently it can help your immune system as well as a result. 

Have you tried this style of “cooking” before? Any tips?

#blogjune Loved titles

Inevitably I bring you a post about books.

I am not a particularly “literary” librarian. I read what I like to read which varies according to my interests and mood. You can find me on Goodreads (in the sidebar) if you want to see what I’m reading.  I'm exploring a lot more titles from non-white, European backgrounds these days in an attempt to decolonise what I read.

Here are some of my favourite titles from childhood reading.

I don’t recall when I started reading this series (and the Emily series too) but I re-read them over and over for quite a while.

Similar in style to Anne of Green Gables.

I loved this series and must have revisited them a bazillion times. I still love them and the illustrations by Garth Williams.

This mystery series along with The Three Investigators were constant reads for me.  I have a life long love of mystery,  crime and thrillers.

Blyton, (although much maligned by many) was staple fare. The Famous five, Magic Far Away tree, the Children of Cherry Tree Farm. Not the Secret Seven though, I thought they were a bit tame.

This was another series I liked.  I enjoyed books about animals and vets.  James Herriot, Joy Adamson and Gerald Durrell were devoured once I was old enough.

Like other bloggers doing #blogjune, Tintin and Asterix were constantly read too.  In fact, some of the family vocabulary and sayings stem from these.  For example, "could be, could be not, couldn't rightly say" from one of the Asterix books.

Judy Blume was another author I read frequently in my teen years.

Ultimately, I reached the age when I ventured into the Adult section of the library.  My parents never censored what I read and apart from a brief prudish episode in my 15th year when I tried to avoid sexy bits in books, I ranged far and wide through many authors. Leon Uris and James Mitchener were some I remember exploring.  I read Samuel Pepys entire diary from start to finish. I read voraciously, often staying up late after everyone else at turned out the lights, to finish books. I suspect I don't read quite as much as I used to, and these days a very rarely re-read books.  I'm also a lot fussier and will abandon something if it isn't grabbing my attention.

Tell me your childhood favourites!

#blogjune We all scream

For ice cream!

This is a frivolous post really, but first day back after a long weekend and my brain just wants cheese, chocolate and bed not necessarily in that order.

I mentioned ice cream on Sunday. It is probably my favourite dessert, alongside cheesecake.  My favourite flavour is chocolate but the other top flavours I like are:
Orange choc chip
Mint choc chip
Rum and raisin
Hazelnut and chocolate
Maple and walnut

So far the only flavour I’m not a fan of is licorice, which I like in it’s normal form.  Oh, and green tea - it’s okaaaay but kind of boring.  Caramel iterations are fine but often too sweet for me.

I haven’t had some flavours that are popular in other countries like corn or some of these Japanese flavours, but I’d be game to try one or two. Maybe not wasabi.

I canvassed the family and chocolate is the most common favourite. Miss12 is keen on Cookies and cream so she is happy TipTop have brought it back.  My granddad liked vanilla. “Can’t beat vanilla” he’d say when we would scoff at his choice.

If ever we had Neopolitan in the house, the chocolate side would get eaten first!

What about you?

#blogjune Quickie

A short post today. We’ve been out all day and there hasn’t been time to sit and write a long post. Nor has there been much planning for dinner so it was a quickie dinner of  Nasi Goreng.

I use a combo of recipes I found on the internet and serve it with peanut sauce. The vegetables tend to be what is in the crisper and the protein whatever is available in the freezer. I also serve it with prawn crackers.

#blogjune Loved places

Maungakiekie/ One Tree Hill is one the 60+ volcanoes that make up Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland's landscape.


In pre-European times it was the largest Māori pā in the region. It has seen long periods of occupation, fighting and cultivation for the rich, volcanic soil is highly fertile and proved excellent for growing crops.  Just as the soil is highly fertile, so is the history rich in tales.  Those aren't my stories to tell in this blog, but you can read them elsewhere. 

The surrounding land became a public park in 1901 (more or less) through a circuitous route.  This is the park I've known and the threads of my life have been interwoven with it at a number of points along the way.

As a child, I could see the top of the cone from my bedroom window at least until the neighbor's oak tree grew too high. We regularly drove by the gates in our maroon Cortina and then the sunshine yellow Datsun Sunny on the way to Sunday morning fellowship. Squeezed in the back with my sisters, we'd frequently clamour for a visit on the way home.  At that time, our greatest interest was the playground which contained three important features.

Firstly, a mono-rail train that we sat in while some hapless adult pushed us around the rail circle, through a damp, mouldy smelling tunnel and out the other side to a "station". Given the effort required to propel this, the adult quickly tired of it and we'd be encouraged to move on to something less taxing.  

The second point of interest was the slide.  Painted an optimistic winter sky blue, this slide wound it's way around an oak tree and emerged at it's roots onto a rubbery type mat.  The original planter of the oak probably didn't intend these venerable trees to be forced into such frivolous activity, but this wasn't one of the boring, safe slides you have today.  This slide was actually a worthwhile ride.

Lastly, this park had a genuinely exciting flying fox on which you breathlessly swooped down to a hard braking bump, the momentum forcing you to swing joyously out over the path and back again.  It is a bit tamer now.

A trip to the park often ended at Ollies, the ice cream parlour in nearby Royal Oak.   Ollies seemed to have every possible flavour of ice cream including some exotic ones that adults liked and we did not, such as Rum and Raisin or Cassata.  We would roll the wooden slider door back and press up to the counter, searching the menu board while breathing in the heady, humid mix of milky ice cream and cloying hot oil for the fry ups.  Having obtained the cone of choice, we would seat ourselves at a sticky table, surrounded by the beeep boop beep of the spacey machines and continuous woosh from the cars outside driving around the round-about. 

We often took overseas visitors to the park.  From the top of the cone there is a 360 degree view of the Auckland isthmus showing both harbours.  It was a picnic park of choice for family and church gatherings.


Fish-eye view from the top of One Tree Hill by Beth Wilson on Flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mirsasha/40960237115

In the late 90's, it became the place of courtship for my husband and I.  I would drive there in my rusty blue Mazda hatchback and meet him in one of the car parks. From there we would walk, earnestly talking about our hopes and dreams, forging connections and exploring if we wanted to spend our lives together.  It was here he first grabbed my hand, startling me, as we walked along, a thing that became natural as the day wore on.



View from One Tree Hill, Auckland by Traveltt on Flickr
https://flic.kr/p/8knhde

The park was a place to escape the interested eyes of younger sisters and parents while we exchanged heated kisses and increasingly passionate explorations.  On Waitangi Day 1999 we strolled along one of the lava spurs overlooking a crater where some teens were sliding down the slopes on old carboard boxes.  He turned to me as I was avoiding clumps of olive green sheep poo and asked me, a little hesitantly, to marry him.  Reader, I said yes.  Six months later we celebrated our marriage elsewhere in the same park at a function centre.

It has been 20 years now.  I have taken the children to the park a few times since.

2009 at Cornwall Park

Now we live 33 kms away so it is not as easy to get to.  Tāmaki Makaurau - the place of many lovers, or perhaps the place of many loves.  Certainly Cornwall Park is a loved place for me.

#blogjune Writing with pencil

Writing with pencil as a satisfying tell.  Perhaps it is the tactile or haptic feedback of pressure on paper.  Or the swirly, scratchy sound of the lead trailing behind the pencil tip as it travels over the paper landscape.  Typing has it's own satisfaction but it is different for me.

A primary school we had to use pencil until we could write sufficiently well to graduate to pen.  Those early letters, painstakingly traced in the double spaced books we had, were like explorers venturing into an unknown terrain.  For some, there were monsters waiting, especially if you deviated from the "correct" formation or held your pencil "wrong".  Not so for me.  I still have a callous on my right middle finger even though most writing I do now is via a keyboard.

5x HB pencils were listed on the stationery list.  Back in the 70's when I started school there were only a few options for pencil brands.  Red and black Staedtler were the most common, I think.  You weren't to use any other grade pencil except HB.  Most classrooms had a table mounted sharpener that curled out long shavings, releasing the fresh smell of wood and the somehow grey smell of graphite.  Children got told off for staying too long sharpening their pencils.  Once a classmate proffered the top of her pencil to everyone sitting at our table.  "Here," she said slyly, "Smell this."  I knew the smell, even as the other children wrinkled their noses and pretended not to.  My suspicions were confirmed when I watched her sneak it under the table and inside the edge of her Womble undies to re-anoint it with odour.

Pencils had to be named of course. Gently Dad would scrap off a little bit of paint at one end leaving the wood bare for my name to be printed carefully on it.  The name would sometimes be destroyed by teeth marks as many pencils suffered the indignity of having their tops chewed.  But oh, the sensation of breaking through the initial resistance of the paint to the softer wood below was irresistible to young teeth.

Ultimately we moved on to ball point pens.  Bic was the most common brand for school pens. How gratifying to see 2x Blue Ball Point Pens on your stationery list?  No more "baby" pencils for you in Standard 3.  Even so, sometimes you would write in pencil before tracing over with pen.  Usually for title pages on which we spend large amounts of time ornamenting with fancy lettering, colour and pictures until it was almost overwhelmed.  The popularity of lettering books grew exponentially among us of this age group.  Mine was one of the common titles of the day.  One offering in the book was a cursive font that I admired mostly because Dad commented favourably that it looked like my grandmother's writing.  He had been taught by Nanny to write growing up on a farm and attending the Australian School of the Air.  Now an adult, he wrote weekly to Nanny and Poppy who lived still in Australia, and each week there was a letter back in Nanny's elegant cursive.  I made it my mission to write like Nanny and at least until I went to University, my writing was pretty good with swoops and dives of copperplate cursive.

I have always loved stationery, so imagine my thrill when obliged to use fountain pens for writing while attending the Ernst Ludwig Schule in Bad Nauheim, Germany during Dad's sabbatical there in 1985-6.  There was a much greater choice in pen style than boring Bic, even in the austerity of the 80's.  Plastic capsules of ink removed the challenge of bottles and suckers for school children.  We even had an eraser pen to dissolve mistakes like magic.

I don't write in in pencil much now.  I once used it to scribe notes from an interview but was told it wasn't clear enough for recording purposes so had to go back to pen.  Writing with pencil has a sense of impermanence. It is easily erased and we use the phrase "pencil it in" when we're not sure about committing to an event or meeting.  Maybe it is the sense of transience or potential that adds to the attraction.  But for me, I mostly like how it feels, sounds and the memories it invokes of school classrooms baking in the afternoon sun while we practice our capital A's.