One of the quickest way, I find, to get a handle on the culture of a place is to look at the bags people are carrying, particularly when it's a college you're trying to infiltrate. In Portland the bags of choice were Timbuk2 and Chrome messenger bags, all the easier to bike in the rain with and if you spilled your Stumptown on them - no problem, just wipe and go. And of course local lady Queen Bee bags showed up often as well. But here in the Piedmont, bags like this are what the 18-22 year old set are carrying. Thousands of them. I have nothing against floral fabric or quilting or tote bags but put together and these old lady bags gracing the shoulders of all these fresh faced undergrads - it just seems to say a lot about the place. But I guess if a young girl wants to tote around an impractical bag that looks like the Bonus Gift from a bad Crabtree & Evelyn campaign, I suppose that is their prerogative. But when in SF at a drugstore, I laughed long and hard as an old Chinese woman tried to bargain down the clerk over an identical type of bag that was already marked "Clearance: 75% off", not knowing she would have been the height of fashion at UNC.

In other random snippets, I have resumed my career as a card catalog rescuer. To my horror, I realised that the library was using the cards from the former card catalog as - scrap paper for students to write call numbers on. This breaks my heart. When I think of the women (most likely all women) who slaved over these damn cards, typing them out with 100% accuracy and perfect formatting, each one done by hand...it just doesn't seem correct to have some jock undergrad write the call number {for his Communications project in which he has been expressly forbidden to cite Wikipedia so goddamn it he has to go to the library...}on it and throw it away. They did this at PSU as well so I'm back to my old habits of scooping up fistfuls of the things as I walk by and hiding them in my (non-floral tote) bag to smuggle home. It is fortunate I have a card catalog at home to store them in (I really do!) and I don't know what I will do with them ultimately - but they deserve a fate better than what they are facing. I'm thinking of forming an organization for their preservation and rescue.

I spend approximately 23.5 hours a day on the computer these days and as one of the (new! improved) symptoms of pregnancy is random carpal tunnel syndrome, I better not push my tendons luck any further tonight. Stay tuned for details as to why my new job is equal parts terrifying and fun.