Anything but transcription

Medical transcription is tedious work, in case anyone wondered. What's worse in this scenario, is that even though I have the day off from work at the office, I have my boss's voice transported into my living room via this lil electronic device. Ugh. Of course, I do try to fiddle with the speed of the tape, so that he might sound like one of the chipmunks (I wish I could type fast enough to keep up!) and once, accidently, I slowed it down too much and nearly threw the machine across the room cos suddenly my boss was doing a very good Barry White impression (*eek!*).

And so instead of listening to my boss talk about patients on my day off, I am surfing around Amazon and blogging, and blogging about surfing around on Amazon: I am never sure how early to buy my books for the next semester. The good student on my left shoulder tells me to buy them now and peruse them in preparation for the semester. The hillbilly/ruffian on my right shoulder says something to the effect of "*@#!"

I've actually been doing a good job of reading this summer--mainly intros to norton/longman, and other various books I've accumulated--as vague preparation for a GRE in the semi-near future. In addition, I am enjoying Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time (yay, string theory!), not reading The Three Musketeers despite my book group discussion about it tomorrow, and stumbling through The Book of Marjery Kempe.

Part of my hesitation regarding Amazon ordering is the fact that I'm pretty much completely out of room for books in my house, without purchasing another book case and thus re-arranging and cleaning where I've rearranged, and its all quite exhausting just typing about it. Then it occurs to me that there's large number of books on my shelves that I just need to get rid of. Again I say, eek. The idea is terrifying...I mean, just how does one get rid of a book? Here is where my nerdiness, or perhaps my pretentiousness, comes to a hilt. There is a growing list of books that have been on my shelf for years and never opened; those that I saved from undergraduate classes that I figure I might use again at some point; those that were vaguely recommended at some point, or cross-listed with another book I've enjoyed or studied...do I really keep all of these? I like to think of having my very own reference library, and yet this hardly works, because when I need to do that sort of thing--you know, research--I find myself at the "real" library. Plus there's the internet, lots of readable texts there...And so while I have worked long and hard to accumulate such a diverse array of books, I think they have become simply more 'familiar' in the home than actually 'useful' and it will soon come time to shed a few pounds in the literary area.

I sold some books on Amazon, but a lot of what I have left isn't worth much--a random novel here or there doesn't fetch much. There's a "free book" shelf at school but I always feel its more reserved for faculty, even though I've "snuck" a few on there from time to time. There's also a local bookstore that happily takes books, by the box load, in exchange for store credit.

Just what I need.

(On a side note, the owner guy is kinda creepy--he talks to me about Jesus and yet, when a certain friend of mine visits that store, the owner brings him to the secret old-school porn section).

And I am off to type s'more and worry my aching neck.