June 14, 2016

 This morning I woke up, got ready, and went to get my hair cut. I spent the rest of morning and the first bit of the afternoon looking through conference sessions trying to figure out what I want to go to during my free choice time next week. There are so many freaking choices that sound interesting and it seems like they all happen at the same time. My idea is to mark all the ones that sound interesting during my free time, regardless of how many start at the same time. Then I will go back through and focus on each start time and pick the one in that group that is the most interesting. We'll see how that works out.

At 3:00PM (or really 2:30PM) I went to campus to put in an hour at the library booth for orientation. When I got there I relieved one of the librarians and I was left with a student worker. I am trying to get better at my small talk and managed to keep a conversation going with her for the ten minutes or so that she was there. When I asked if the libraries were her thing or if the job was just a job she said that libraries were definitely her thing. She helped in the library when she was younger in school and volunteered at libraries before going to college. She thought she wanted to work in a school or public library but then started working at the academic library and that became interesting, but now she's also interested in the idea of special libraries. I'm a little envious because it took me forever to figure out libraries were my thing.

She was relieved by another student worker and we were there for the next hour. Again, I practiced my small talk and we were able to keep a conversation going. I often think of things to say in social situations and then the little voice inside my head prevents me from vocalizing them. It is a genuine struggle pushing that little voice aside and actually talking. I occasionally have successful moments. This new girl is a Psychology major and wants to go into criminology, which sounds pretty interesting. We talked a little bit about that and a lot about random things. We also occasionally got people to stop by the table and play the game and learn a little more about the library.

At 4:00PM (or slightly before) we packed up all the stuff on the dolly and headed back across campus to the library. It was hot as hell outside and the dolly handle is short so it was an awkward, sweaty walk. If I stood behind the dolly I couldn't make full steps without kicking the dolly and when I walked off to the side and pushed the dolly with one hand it easily went out of control because a small bump of the handle made the dolly swing dramatically. But we made it back to the library and I didn't run over anyone.

I turned Tuesday into the new Chipotle night, at least over the summer, because it is my day off from the library and going to Chipotle around six o'clock is mayhem. So on my way home from campus I stopped by Chipotle. For the last little bit on the side street before turning toward Chipotle I got behind some sort of wide construction vehicle. I think it might have been a paver. Or at least somehow involved with paving. Regardless, it was driving slow and the dude on the back looked around to the front and then started waving me forward because no one was coming the other way. As I was briefly pulling up beside them before turning left, a Gatorade bottle fell of the truck onto the road. The guy on the back jumped off to get it and after turning I looked in my review mirror and saw him running after the truck, which hadn't stopped, to get back onto it. It was a funny thing to see and kind of reminded me of when someone inches the car forward every time the passenger reaches for the handle to get in the car. Or maybe those videos where people try and “ghost ride the whip” and the car gets away from them.

Chipotle tonight was good but I ate too much. There wasn't enough to split into two like I normally do but it turned out to be slightly more than I would have liked to eat in one sitting. I'll survive. After dinner we watched videos and then I had a class meeting at seven o'clock.

It was supposed to be a short meeting but it was extended due to one of my classmates being slightly intoxicated. At least that is my assessment of her actions. She has to be nearing fifty, if not there already, and it seemed like maybe she had a little too much wine with dinner. She just kept talking, often repeating herself or going back to the same thing over and over again, and her speech was a little slurred. At first I thought it was just a bad connection making her speech sound slurred but then all of her actions made it more apparent that she was at least a little bit intoxicated. It was kind of amusing at first but then she wouldn't shut up. The professor finally managed to end things at 7:45PM.

I spent the rest of my night watching YouTube videos and continuing to look at ALA conference sessions. We have to pick two divisions and two round tables to research and then go to a session for each at the conference. I think. I believe that is also what we're writing our blog posts about. Maybe. I need to just take a minute and get all of this stuff straight. I have been so overwhelmed with information from all over the place recently and my organization of that information has been a bit crap. I'll work on it.

But not tonight because it is coming up on midnight and I need to go to bed. Tomorrow I go on my first homebound delivery so I'm going to meet a bunch of interesting old people and hope I didn't completely fail at picking out books for them. I also hope that the assistant had some time today to get some of the books off the shelf for me. There were a lot of books and I don't know what all she had going on today so I assume I will need to spend a decent amount of time tomorrow morning grabbing books. My main hope is that not too many of the books I have picked have been checked out since I made the lists on Monday. It was hard enough finding the books in the first place.