"I feel a blog post coming on"

"How do you spell that? Preposterousness."
"Preposteration?"
"Preposterivity?"
"It's positively preposteracious!"

This is the stuff we talk about when we've got sore brains and it's too early even for three-thirtyitis to kick in with any reasonable excuse!

This is the office of brain hurtiness at present. At the very least the majority of people in this office have sore brains from the work we're looking at in our inboxes (or, at times, not in our inboxes but elsewhere). Particularly as my colleague isn't even doing her "real work" but work that shouldn't really be hers that she's doing 'cause nobody else in this place knows how to do it. Or at least nobody who's been able to be roped into doing it.

Ssshh don't tell her I said that.

I think my work here (making your brain hurt too) is done.

Sugar Plum Fairies, dancing all around

If you feel the urge to swear but don't want to offend sensitive colleagues' ears, why not yell out, "Sugar Plum Fairies!" at the top of your lungs?

Sugar Plum Fairies is an inhabitant of our newly-cleaned-in-2012 whiteboard. Other things on the whiteboard include a map of all the different times of the day in which one can pause to eat:

• 8am-9am - Breakfast
• 9am-10am - Brorning Tea
• 10am-11am - Morning Tea
• 11am-12pm - Munch
• 12pm-2pm - Lunch
• 2pm-5pm - Postmunchitis

Some of these you may recognise from previous blog posts around here.

Also on the board at present is a note pointing to the "Naughty Fan Corner", where our fan sits sulking 'cause we made it face the wall (prevents unseemly blowing of air into library employees' eyeballs and/or carefully coiffed hair). The fan did have an outing one day, when it was loaned out to another colleague just down the corridor a little way. But the fan had been naughty once again so it's back in its corner. Sulking.

I'd go on, but I want to mention a very special author featured in our library catalogue: one William McConnel Wanklyn, who authored the works:

• The administrative control of smallpox : how to prevent or stop an outbreak (86 p., 1913)
• London public health administration : a summary showing the principal authorities, with their origin, services and powers (59 p., 1913).

It seems Mr. Wanklyn was a pretty busy guy in 1913!

To relieve crapback, butter your stuff with rock hard ButterSoft

image source

That's all I'm sayin'.

Except... Don't knock it till you've tried it!

And by "it", understand that I don't know what I'm talking about here. It's potentially all euphemism, or none of it's euphemism. It's really up to the individual!

Post munchitis brought on by kettle lack leads to crapback

If you slouch too much, it gives you crapback. If you've lacked a kettle for most of the day, you're liable to slouch (even after an emergency temporary kettle has been delivered, STAT!) (except it wasn't really stat, in fact it took a few hours...the guys who brought it claimed to have been "testing it" before delivering it to us. I think they were testing it on mulled wine). And, as mentioned previously, slouching can lead to crapback. Therefore it follows that lacking a kettle leads to crapback. Via kettleless-induced post munchitis.

There was nary a hair on the brawny tea

It was time for a cup of tea (being brorning tea time, you see...ahead of MUNCH, but after the usual breakfast time), so I went down to the ocean and scooped up a mugful of briny water, which I planned to boil in the perfectly ordinary kettle in the staff tea room. While I was on the shore, a frightfully robust dude slathered in coconut oil, with a shiny orange tan, budgie smugglers and peroxide blonde hair, approached me. He moved with an impressive swagger, and as he drew up before me asked, "Heez it gahn?" and favoured me with a sly wink.

I stammered an incoherent response and turned to run, freaked the heck out by this spectacle of nature.

Just kidding, none of that happened. But it is brorning tea time.

Boron in da house

And I quote...

Name: Boron
Type: Metalloid
Density @ 293 K: 2.34 g/cm³

Discovery of Boron

Boron compounds such as borax (sodium tetraborate, Na₂B₄O₇·10H₂O) have been known and used by ancient cultures for thousands of years. Borax's name comes from the Arabic buraq, meaning "white."

Boron was first partially isolated in 1808 by French chemists Joseph L. Gay-Lussac and L. J. Thénard and independently by Sir Humphry Davy in London. Gay-Lussac & Thénard reacted boric acid with magnesium or sodium to yield boron, a gray solid. ⁽¹⁾ They believed it shared characteristics with sulfur and phosphorus and named it bore. ⁽²⁾ [Chemicool.com - Boron]

What I want to know is, what does all that mean for Leo F. Boron, Sophie Boron and Walter F. Boron, all of whom are authors represented in our library catalogue over here?

Back in 1960, Leo was an added author on the book Transcendental and algebraic numbers, (so not my area of expertise...). More recently, Sophie's been writing about France's constitution, and during the 2000s Walter's been all about a cellular and molecular approach to Medical physiology (come to think of it, I'm an expert on none of these things!).

Happy Boron!

"Microbes and men" by Robert Reid

I love these dorky scientists and their very dorky book titles. Microbes and men - bring any famous books by Steinbeck to mind, folks? It should have been called Of microbes and men, though, really. Right?

Anyway, this is all I have to say today, but I want to explain that this post is part of the Library Treasures blog post series we will be featuring here. Great authors, great book titles, and great other things (authority records perhaps?) that we stumble across in our lovely dusty grimy library and its...errrr, "quaint" catalogue.

One down, many thousands to go!

P.S. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!