Accepting rejection

I received a letter of rejection yesterday from the City of Krum Public Library, where I applied for an assistantship position to garner some résumé-building library experience while I'm in library school. I was about to toss the letter when I realized that Ms. Rebecca Ivey, library director and University of North Texas School of Library and Information Science master's program alumna, punctuated the salutation with a semicolon.

Of course, formal business letter salutations are most often punctuated with a colon or, in the case of an "open punctuation" letter, use no punctuation at all after the salutation. Informal letters use commas, but to my knowledge, a semicolon is never appropriate. There are plenty of resources for proper business letter formatting, so if my readers are curious, they can poke around in university online writing center sites or check the library--or even ask a librarian--for assistance.

And, Ms. Ivey, if you happen to read my blog, I have a word of advice: next time you need to send out letters of rejection, consider hiring a technical editor. I think you have my number.

Meeting new people

I’ve been toting around a borrowed copy of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2d ed., 2002 Revision, with 2005 update, for about a week now—you know, because I’m trying to pick up librarians. Today it worked. I was at Jupiter House, the coffee shop I’ve lately taken to calling “my office,” and lack of seating left me standing there waiting for someone to invite me to table. A woman with dowdy hair, bad teeth, a kind of eighties-with-a-nineties-update glittery sweater thing, jeans, and a totally eighties bleached denim jeans-cum-backpack thing invited me to sit down next to her at her couch. I was elated.

It turns out she’s a library science grad student at the other library science program in town. It figures. She started asking me about my Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules book, which quickly led to a fervid debate about website usability (shrug…hell if I know). When she left she gave me her email address and a pamphlet for a yoga class she teaches—at the library. I guess I need to start working on my downward dog.

My advice on handling a situation we all face from time to time

What do you do when you're seeing a Texas country band at Dan's Silverleaf in Denton and you order two Coors on draft, which you are not particularly excited about, but which is on special for $2, and then you realize that the bartender is serving you two bottles of Coors Lite instead AND that your friend is down the bar getting his own beer, which appears to be the beer he actually ordered?

Do you push the beers back? No. You take them and carry them proudly, one in each fist, as if you had intended to take two at once for yourself. You're at a country show, afterall. Nevermind the fact that you're not wearing a pearlsnap shirt or boots or a cowboy hat: you're drinking two beers at once.

Then you must chug one fast enough that the other one is still ice-cold when you're ready for it. This chugging should take no longer than one good fiddle solo. Then you pitch the empty bottle into the trash bin full of empty bottles with such force as to make that familiar bottle-on-bottle clashing sound that assures everyone around you that they really are seeing a low-down, fallin'-off-the-wagon Texas country band. Then, with a bit of smugness for sure, you can try to enjoy the other beer you never intended to order in the first place. I'd recommend taking the second one a bit more slowly--not that I can speak from experience or anything.

Walking to the bar, not trolling for women, Friday night

Last night I was walking to a bar with a friend--a male friend--and a guy passing us in his car called to us. "Hey fags!" he said. He was trying make his voice sexy yet mocking. I don't know if my friend heard, but even if he did, we didn't discuss. Men walk to bars together without women all the time. I wonder what seemed so different about us.

One incident would be easy to forget, but this is the third time recently someone has made such an assumption, and the second time I've been called a "fag" from a stranger passing in a car. The first time was several months ago in the French Quarter. Then, a couple weeks ago, a dinner guest made a really akward comment that made me think that he thought I was gay because of my baking ability. My readers should know that, of course, I'm not gay. I'm a pretty decent baker, though.