This is what we do with state money.

We have fun with it.

Tonight I and four other library staff members participated in a concert at our college. We sang the Java Jive, which we have been snatching small amounts of time from our state overlords to practice over the past several weeks.

There was some struggle to come up with a name; we discussed ones like the Novel Lovers, Circulation in G, and Withdraw and Destroy (which was too metal for us). Eventually we settled on The Librettos (a libretto is the text of an opera and means "little book" in Italian . . . although I have to add that through Google I discovered the actual plural in Italian is "gli libretti." Yes, I'm a geek).

Although a libretto is probably too grandiose of an image for a bunch of librarians singing the jazzy Java Jive, it was all fun and we pulled it off surprisingly well.

The rest of the concert became progressively more and more amazing. It had Monteverdi, it had Brahms, it had us, it had a ginormous jazz band playing swinging songs, including a big band version of The Nutcracker Suite during which an alto saxophonist got up and passed out Jolly Ranchers to the audience from a Santa hat.

Before it all started I was a little resigned to be there since the original two practices had turned into five or six, and I felt like I was done. But, it turned out to be so much fun. There have probably been other singing librarians, but we had that audience snapping their fingers! Everyone did well. The evening put a smile on my face and helped me unwind after a stressful week (high workloads and term project and dentist, oh my!)

To anyone who would have wanted to be informed and/or invited, but wasn't, I do apologize. I thought it wasn't worth it to ask people to come to an hour and a half concert just to hear me sing for five minutes. My co-worker took a recording, so if you're interested in seeing it, let me know and I will see what I can do.

The only really bad news about the week is still pretty good--the library is having a book sale today and tomorrow. Your direct logical conclusion to this should be that I bought some books, and you're absolutely right. And tomorrow they're a dollar a bag . . . ! (Puts hand in mouth to stifle glee and runs away)

Love and peace! One more week gone by.