June 3, 2016

 This morning I woke up, got ready, and went to the campus library. My supervisor's office was dark so I went over to the office I'm working in and my officemate was there with another librarian. I asked them if they had seen my supervisor, and they hadn't but they invited me in to hangout while I waited for a response to my text. I eventually got one and found out she was calling a reference for one of the job candidates and the call was running long, so I hung out and talked with the two librarians until my supervisor showed up. I think it was about 9:45AM when that happened but I was five minutes late to the library so we were really only ten minutes late getting started.

On Monday I am going to come in at two o'clock and shadow a librarian at the reference desk. The librarian is actually one of the one's I interviewed for one of my classes and the one who helped set me up with my supervisor. Our interview was through email so I've only actually met him briefly when I went on the tour of libraries around town for school. But he was really nice, he's really knowledgeable, and he seems to be well respected, so I'm looking forward to it. After the shadowing I have a meeting with my supervisor and my officemate to discuss an assessment project that they're working and I'm supposed to help with. Then on Tuesday they are having a mini-conference just for their library, so that should be pretty interesting.

My supervisor wanted me to look up examples of what other libraries are doing for library orientation and said I could work wherever I wanted. I said at least for today I would opt for working at home because it was air conditioned. All week the library has apparently been without air conditioning because they have been fixing something, which required them turning off something else that led to the air conditioning having to be turned off. The office I'm supposed to work in was hot as hell so I knew I wouldn't get much work done there. I knew going home would just be a distraction, but at least I wouldn't be hot and sweaty. It took me awhile but throughout the rest of the day I managed to get in an hour and a half of work. I'm not done, though, so I'll need to put in more time over the weekend.

I think yesterday or the day before my mom brought up the idea of starting to look for a house/duplex/townhouse, now that I have a big kid job. I'm all for that but I said that wasn't really going to be on my radar until the end of the summer when I had a little less going on. Well, that whole thing seemed to speed up today and after lunch we ended up meeting a realtor at a townhouse. It is pretty close to my mom's house but the whole row of townhouses looked pretty rundown, even though they were built in 2009. There were HOA dues but it didn't look like any of the yards had been cut recently. We beat the realtor there and while we were sitting in the car my sister said it already wasn't going to work out because there was a very loud dog barking constantly. I hadn't noticed it because I was focused on other things but as soon as she mentioned it that was all I could here. And the dog ended up being in the townhouse on the left of the one we were looking at, and the front doors were right next to each other, so the dog was just sitting there looking at us and barking.

So we had all written the house off as an option based on the appearance of the neighborhood and the loud dog before the realtor even showed up. But when the realtor got there we went in anyway just to get an idea of what it looked like. The outside appearance was marvelous compared to the inside. The dog could still be heard clearly when we got inside and we were immediately overcome with the smell of cigarette smoke. The house had been foreclosed on and it looked like whoever lived there before obviously didn't care about taking care of the place. The carpet was really dirty and covered in stains. My sister and I went upstairs and halfway up the stairs we caught the wave of the smell of cats. The carpet was equally dirty up there and one of the doors had two holes in, most likely made in anger, and they were covered with white duct tape and glittery butterfly stickers. The whole place was pretty much a train wreck and the realtor was immediately aware of it so she was on her phone looking up some other options. We parted ways and she said she would find some more options and email us.

After that my mom, sister, and I went to buy birdseed for my mom and then we went to the mall to look for shoes for me. We ended up going to Tradehome Shoes, which lets you walk around and try on shoes without being bugged by salespeople, which is nice. I only tried on two pairs but ended up going with the first pair. They are more of a sporty-looking brown pair of shoes that should work out well for the Florida trip. I also ended up buying four more short-sleeved button-up shirts, specifically for the Florida trip, because we have to dress business casual and it will be too hot for long-sleeved shirts (at least outside), but they will also be nice when the air conditioning isn't working in the library.

When we left the mall we ended up driving around and looking at some of the other places the realtor had mentioned and my sister found on her phone. That took us all over town. Some were out based on location or appearance but I think there were a couple that seemed possible. The coolest one was probably out of my price range but the inside looked awesome in the pictures, so that can be something to aspire to. My standards are not that high, I don't need a lot of space, and I don't think I need to find my dream house for my first place. But I do have some standards, like no loud neighbor dogs or places that smell like smoke. Two things I hadn't really thought about until that first house, so it is a good thing we went there.

Not long after getting home the realtor emailed me some more options and that sent me down the rabbit hole of not only looking at all of them, but also doing really rough calculations to try and figure out what I could really afford per month. I quickly realized figuring out actual numbers would take quite a bit of time and work. And that reminded me of why I didn't want to think about this stuff until after the summer when I was done with school and my practicum and only had to worry about my job. It's nice to have an idea of what's out there but I need to focus on more important things at the moment. I think the whole house hunting process is going to slow down now. Originally my mom brought up the idea of her and my sister going to look at places and then if they found a good one they would have me take a look at it. We might go with that strategy soon if my mom wants to keep looking. The realtor mentioned possibly looking at some more places this weekend, which I would be on board with, but next week when I start juggling the practicum, my other schoolwork, and a new job, I'm not going to be able to divide my focus or my time.

Tonight I did some research for my practicum and watched a few episodes of The Good Guys. Then I placed Minecraft for a bit because I needed to zone out for awhile. I think it worked. But now I need to go to bed because it is two o'clock in the morning and I think I have been mildly sleep deprived all week.