July 30, 2016

 After my late night last night I slept in a bit. Not too terribly late but it was better than getting up early. My main goal for the day was to finish the group website and I have almost achieved that. I have finished writing sections on mobile gaming, RPGs, and gamification. The only thing left is to add some more stuff to the research and resources pages. My roommate went in and added some pictures from the conference and some links. He also informed me that he has lost all motivation to put any more effort into it. I kind of feel the same way. He has had our professor before and doesn't think she'll grade the site too harshly and it looks to be about on par with our classmates' websites, so hopefully that is the case. I'll be honest, the site kind of looks like crap. Definitely like a site just kind of thrown together at the last minutes. It doesn't help that the Wix layout is kind of awful. I am waiting to post the last of my stuff after my roommate is done adding a few things because only one person can edit the site at once. The last two days when I have been doing stuff I save and publish it but if he tries to get on when I'm still on, even if I save and publish my stuff it doesn't save my work. That happened again earlier today so I have to go back in and add my stuff again. Thankfully I am writing all of my stuff in a Word document and not directly in the page. It is saved in the site history, so I could get it from there, but I really don't understand why it gets overwritten every time. I'm hoping it is just a glitch that won't happen when I'm on by myself.

So, before I go to bed tonight the website should be done and I think we're going to post it to the class discussion tomorrow. I think there is also a feedback form or something we also have to submit and then before next Friday we have to comment on our classmates' pages. Or something like that. I need to look at all of the instructions. Either way, that class is nearly complete.

My main goal for tomorrow is to make my video talking about my capstone portfolio. Originally I thought I would be working on that throughout the week, which would have been a little stressful because I work every day next week. Now that I have the portfolio done I thought it would make the most sense to just make the video tomorrow. Depending on how well that goes I might even be able to edit it and get it submitted tomorrow. It is supposed to be between five and ten minutes, which is still a really short amount of time to sum up the last two years of my life. It also means that in theory the video shouldn't take me too long to make but I'm a little anal. I know that I'll have to go back and cut out all of the loading times between pages because the site takes a really long time to load each page. I also think that maybe I should come up with some sort of script just to keep me on track and keep me from rambling. Knowing that I'll be cutting after each page kind of makes me think it might just be easiest to record a bunch of individual videos, one for each page until I get them right, and then edit them all together. That's what I did for my tutorial video and it worked out well, but it does require a lot more work. If anything I have until next Friday to do the editing.

I also need to write my reflective journal for my practicum by next Friday. That shouldn't be too hard because I've written about everything already in this journal so I just need to compile it all. I have always had it in my mind that the journal would be turned in at the end like a paper but I am realizing now it is what people have been doing throughout the semester in the discussion section for the class. The other people taking practicums have been posting daily or weekly talking about their practicums. I posted once after my adviser sent out an email asking people for an update. That should have been my cue to continue posting. Oh well. We'll see how the video recording/editing go tomorrow and maybe I can get caught up on the journal. I think I may just pretend the first post doesn't exist and make one big post that includes everything, just for the sake of it all being in one post. We'll see.

And speaking of the practicum, I have a lot of assessment grading left to do. Like a whole bunch. If I can get all my other stuff done my week should probably be filled with assessment grading. I am hoping I can figure out a better system for that and get in a groove so it doesn't take me as long as the ten we did to calibrate our scoring. It will obviously take me longer to do the real thing because of how many records I have to cover, but on an individual record level, I hope it doesn't take as long. I'll be working on it until Christmas if it does.

July 29, 2016

 This morning I woke up early so I could go to the health screening. I scheduled it three hours before I was scheduled to work because I didn't know how long it would take. Finding out it only took ten to fifteen minutes was disappointing. Anyway, I got there early and only had to wait a minute or two before being helped. I went to the first lady who measured my height, weight, and took my blood pressure. Then I went over to have my blood drawn. The guy first tried my left arm but apparently my veins suck in my left arm because he missed. So we switched to my right arm. He apologized but I said it was alright because now I would have symmetrical bandaids. I'm glad I have a high tolerance for pain and don't have any issues with needles because I didn't really have a problem with the extra needle. I will say that later on, taking the bandaids off, hurt way more than the needles. Rather than missing my vein the guy should have apologized for putting bandaids on my arm hair.

When I got home I started updating my laptop to Windows 10 because I have been ignoring the message for months and today was the last day to update for free. I spent the last four days backing up all the important (and not so important) stuff on my laptop to Dropbox. That was a slow process and in the end unnecessary because all my stuff was right where I left it after the update. Kind of annoying but better safe than sorry. I haven't really had time to play with Windows 10 but I'll have time for that in a week. We use it at the library and it is pretty similar to Windows 7 it seems, at least in terms of basic functionality, so I'll be fine not learning the ins and outs for a bit. I do want to learn that stuff eventually, however, because I think in October or November I'll be teaching a class about it at the library. So, you know, I'll need to learn at least a few things by then.

Speaking of work, I did things. I came up with my Most Popular display idea. It has typically been the most popular books in the recent past, but it gets a little tricky because we also have a Bestsellers display, which could have some crossover. I decided to go with books from before 1950 and made a big list of some of the books we have. The whole idea of the book displays is to promote items in our collection, especially ones that may not circulate as much. I figure picking old books is a perfect chance to promote them. The display is also by the reading room, which tends to attract older individuals, so maybe they will appreciate it more.

I had a long and awkward conversation with a teenager today. Yesterday we had brief interactions, one of which was him coming up with a blank stare on his face and telling me he was bleeding, which he was, through his jeans. I got him a bandaid and he continued to stare at me so I suggested he go to the bathroom and clean himself up before putting the bandaid on. Today he came up and wanted to use the phone to call him mom. He didn't have his library card and there is a block on his account saying a parent doesn't want him checking out video games or getting on the computer, so we couldn't give him his library card number. We discovered later the block isn't working because he is still able to get on the computers. Anyway, he called his mom and she was apparently busy because she told him to call back in twenty minutes. So he just stood there in front of me for twenty minutes. He would occasionally say stuff and I engaged in the conversation but he really wasn't much of a conversationalist. I did manage to learn that he wanted to start a technology company. Or one related to people going through gender transitioning, because apparently he is doing that. I was apparently the fifth person he's told and I had no idea how to respond to that. I don't even know how I would respond to that if a friend told me, let alone a teenager I had just met. He's a cool kid, even if he is extremely awkward. I'm kind of awkward, too.

I had to wake up the same sleeping man in the reading room I had to wake up last night. There is a chance he's a bit of a chronic case, and one prone to alcohol consumption. He did appear a little drunk but I was giving him the benefit of the doubt that it was just grogginess slurring his speech.

I spent the last part of my shift coming up with a possible new layout for the work schedule. My boss just came up with a new layout that is through Google so we can easily access the most up-to-date version of the schedule at home which is nice, and the layout is better than the old one. For my version I just switched the rows and columns to put the names along the side and the time along the top. This allows the whole schedule to fit on one page and may be slightly easier to read depending on your preferences. I don't know. It gave me something to do that wasn't schoolwork. My boss is on vacation for the next week so we'll see what she thinks when she gets back.

I got off work at eight o'clock and spent the rest of my evening working on my capstone project. I finished all of my reflections and I think I'm calling it good. I'll give it the once over again just to make sure but I think I'm done with it.

My roommate from the conference started adding some stuff to our website, which was good to see. He didn't add a lot but it is better than nothing, which I've had group members do in the past.

It's now 2:30AM and definitely time for bed.  

July 28, 2016

 I've got a headache so let's make this quick.

I woke up this morning and worked on the group website. I wrote a bunch of stuff and made progress.

Then I got ready, ate lunch, and went to work. For the first part of work I started coming up with lists of words that could be used as appeal terms to describe story, character, language, and setting. I then had the idea to use a Google Form to collect the data. The idea is that after someone finishes a book they can go onto the staff blog, open the form, put down the title and author of the book they read, and then check off all the words in each category that describes the book. I think I can then export that data and sort it based on specific terms so we can match up books that share similarities across those categories and create displays or make reader's advisory suggestions with them. It's all sounding good in theory. We just need to come up with a core set of words for each category. Ones that are descriptive enough to be useful but not too many because then it will become overwhelming. I'm kind of excited to see if it will work.

I did other things today but it is kind of a blur, and it is hard to think through my headache. Tonight there was a torrential downpour. We only had a couple leaks, which I think is better than the last time it rained. The streets surrounding the library looked more like rivers because the drainage downtown has always been awful. That is something to consider when looking at houses. That and how the power seems to get knocked out easily. Anyway, I knew it was going to rain but forgot my umbrella in my car. Thankfully the big downpour was over by the time we closed and it was only raining normally by the time we left. I put my notebooks inside my shirt and that was sufficient to keep them dry, which I was glad to discover.

At work tonight, in between doing actual work, I wrote the first three descriptions for my capstone portfolio. Which means I'm a quarter of the way there. Hooray. I was going to write a few more when I got home but the headache was already creeping up at work and it only got worse when I got home. I am really hoping I can sleep it off.

Tomorrow I have to wake up early because I have a health screening at eight o'clock in the morning. I didn't know how long it would take so I went safe with it and scheduled it two hours before I go to work. Turns out it only takes about ten or fifteen minutes, so that's annoying. As long as I don't still have a headache in the morning I'll get over it.

Goodness. I just blinked and my eyes stayed closed for like thirty seconds. I'm going to bed.

July 27, 2016

 I don't know that I accomplished much at work today but it was a good day. The girl who was in the library the other day working on a research paper for the same library school I go to came back to the library today to shadow the reference desk for another assignment. She was there for three hours and along with asking everyone questions about the library and reference, I had conversations with her about her classes and random other things. I barely feel like a librarian so it is weird trying to act like a librarian in front of a fellow student. But I think I pulled it off.

This afternoon I had good conversations with two of my fellow librarians about displays and other random stuff. I got to read the book I Love Lemonade by Mark and Rowan Sommerset. It is a sequel to a book I have not read yet but it is a kids book that takes three minutes to read, so I survived. And the book was pretty funny. Gross, but funny. I ended up buying the book (and the first book) when I got home as a present to my mom because she is very entertained by funny kids books. Her birthday isn't until December so I figure I will give them to her as graduation presents.

While talking to my coworkers I was also flipping through an issue of Library Journal and saw a short article about browsing and it has led to a new project. The article brought up the idea of appeal terms and how Netflix is able to create new categories for movies that aren't confined to genres. I would like to try something similar at the library. The idea is to start small and come up with a word bank of controlled vocabulary words to describe books in more detail than just a genre. We can then have library staff, whenever they finish reading a book, use the word bank and pick out the words that describe that book. Then, we can use that metadata to link books that have been described using the same terms. This information can be used to create displays for books that aren't necessarily in the same genre (which is how most of our displays are grouped at the moment) but have similar qualities. We can also use this for book recommendations. Novelist has a similar system built into their site, something I just learned about today, so I need to play around with that. I am excited about the potential of this project. It might fail miserably but there's only one way to find out.

Tonight I worked on my capstone portfolio and I did not make the kind of progress I would have liked. I finished adding in all of my extra artifacts and I added class descriptions for each of the required artifacts. That means I still have to talk about each one. Maybe that can get done tomorrow. It's late now but I need to wake up early-ish tomorrow so I can take advantage of my time before I go to work. Either working on my capstone stuff or adding content to my group website. Can't wait. But I can't complain too much because I am nearing the end.

Oh, also. I bought a skateboard. I made a decision and went for it. I am getting the Sector 9 Ft. Point board which is 34” long and 8.75” wide. It looks pretty cool and looks like a pretty forgiving first skateboard. It is a complete board, so it's already put together, but I also bought green wheels to replace the orange ones that come with it. I found a promo code for $20 off with free shipping so the extra wheels only cost about eight dollars. Not bad. I got an email today saying it had shipped and the estimated delivery date is next Tuesday. I won't be opening it until my final assignment is turned in but it will be nice to have it and not have to wait on it.

And now I'm going to go to bed because it is even later than it was when I previously said it was late.

July 26, 2016

 I forgot to mention I pre-ordered Harry Potter and the Cursed Child today at work because they were talking about it upstairs while I was taking the reference course. The book doesn't come out until the 31^st but we got it today and they were trying to decide how to catalog it. It is written by Jack Thorne but cataloging it under his name in the play section would probably be confusing to patrons. Cataloging it under J.K. Rowling in the fiction section with the rest of the Harry Potter books isn't necessarily correct but it would make more sense and make it easier to find. Not that finding it will be much of an issue for awhile because it has thirty-seven holds on it already. So yeah, I pre-ordered it and I will be able to read it this year instead of next.

This morning I woke up shortly before eight o'clock and only stayed in bed for a little while before forcing myself to get up and work on stuff. I spent the rest of my day working on my capstone portfolio. It is a big project but a lot of the time was actually spent waiting for the site to save and load and just do its thing. It is such a slow process, which makes it a frustrating process because I know what I want to do but I have to wait for the site to catch up with me. Despite that, I made a lot of progress. I added in my artifacts for each program outcome and professional value, and I have nearly finished adding in all my other assignments that I liked but couldn't use in the main part of the portfolio for various reasons.

One of my artifacts was a poster presentation for a grant proposal. I could have just posted a crappy picture of the poster but I didn't want something that looked crappy in my portfolio. My solution was to recreate the poster in Prezi, so you can move around the poster in a digital space. I liked the idea, and the final product, but it took awhile to put together. I would say it was worth it.

I still need to finish adding in the rest of my assignments and write short reflections for each of the main artifacts. That is going to take awhile. I also need to figure out how I want to do my video. We have to do a screencast and reflect on the program in general while walking through our portfolio. It has to be between five and ten minutes and it seems like it will be hard trying to get it under ten minutes. I will definitely have to edit out all of the page loading times because those would easily take up half of my time. It might just be enough time to talk about each of the main artifacts but that wouldn't leave much time to talk about the other assignments that I like or the program itself. I've still got time to think.

I wanted to also work on the group website today but I had tunnel vision for my capstone and didn't get around to it. We have until Sunday to get that finished and I don't work this weekend so I can commit all of Saturday and Sunday to it, if I can get my capstone portfolio done by then. I also need to put in time for my practicum. It is hard to find the motivation to grade assessment responses. But I'll get there. I'm going to get my hours and when I have all my other assignments finished I can knock out the assessment project.

Tomorrow I go to work at nine o'clock. And then when I get home I will probably be working on capstone stuff. It would be sweet if I could get everything done tomorrow but that isn't going to happen. Way too much writing. But maybe I can make decent enough progress and then wake up early enough on Thursday to get it done. We'll see.

July 25, 2016

 I'm tired.

The morning happened and then I went to work at at noon. I wasn't on the desk at all for the first half of my shift so I did a walkthrough and then went up to the cubicle. I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do but then I remembered I needed to take a course on the reference interview and write about it on the staff blog. Had I just listened to the course recording and taken the quizzes it would have taken me an hour and a half. It took me three hours and a half, however, because I was also taking notes as I went. I started off listening to the recording but I could read faster than the lady was speaking so I turned off sound and went at my own pace. Which was great until I started taking a bunch of notes because then my pace became super slow. By the end of it I had a bunch of notes and I now have to somehow turn them into a blog post. I might condense things quite a bit and then put my notes on the shared drive for people that are interested.

That took me up to my dinner break. When I got back to the library I was on the desk for a couple uneventful hours, and then off the desk for a couple uneventful hours. I can't complain though because right before I got back from dinner the librarian hired with me had to ask a patron to leave because he was cursing and being loud. And then she and my boss had to ask him to leave the parking lot because he was doing the same out there. So a quiet night was okay with me.

While I was on the desk I had time to finish typing my conference journal and got that sent to my boss. I'll also be able to put it in my capstone portfolio now. I also talked a lot with my fellow librarian, and briefly with her husband when he stopped by. I have a lot of similar interests with this librarian so when we close together we end up getting distracted easily. It looks like in the near future when I go to a regular schedule instead of one suited to my practicum, I won't be closing on Monday anymore.

I closed downstairs tonight and while doing one of my walkthroughs I found a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in a secluded corner of the teen section. I'm assuming whoever took it out of the reading room just wanted a quiet place to read the articles. They probably just didn't realize the reading room is the quietest place in the library. Oh to be young again.

Tonight I think I decided on the skateboard I want. I have gone from originally wanting a Penny board, to wanting a cruiser board, to now wanting something in between a cruiser and a longboard. It seems that the bigger the board, the easier it is to ride, at least in terms of stability. Because I don't know how to ride a skateboard I figure stability is a good thing. I would have never figured out how to ride a tiny Penny board. So I decided to go bigger. I really like the look of Sector 9's Rhythm but at 38” it seems a little too big. Instead, I think I'm going to get Sector 9's Ft. Point, which is 34” long and 8.75” long, and I like the overall look of it. I also found a promo code for $20 off which means I can get a set of green wheels for only about $8. Not bad. Maybe if I can get a decent amount of work done tomorrow I'll buy it. Then I can stop thinking about it and focus on the rest of my schoolwork.

Speaking of, I need to go to bed now because it is late and I would like to not sleep through half of my day. I've got so much crap to do and I need to take advantage of this day off from work.

July 24, 2016

 Today was a productive day at work but not so much before or after work.

I woke up early and stayed in bed until I needed to get up and take a shower. I had grand plans to get some work done this morning but I just needed a few hours. It is much easier to not feel guilty about not doing work if I haven't gotten out of bed yet.

At work today I finished and edited both of my round table blog entries. I also had time to start messing around with the gaming website I am making with my roommate. It is my first time using Wix so most of the time was spent just trying to figure it out. By the end of the day I was able to add a few pictures and a bit of content, so progress was made. It isn't due until Sunday but it would be nice to get it done before that.

I also did work things at work. I made another personalized reading list for a patron who likes fantasy, romantic suspense, Twilight, and 50 Shades of Grey. I don't read any of that stuff so it took a bit of time to find books that seemed to tick the boxes. I don't really have any interest in romantic novels but I am really tempted to read an Amish romance novel, just out of curiosity.

Tonight I did laundry and nearly forgot to post my blog entries. I knew they were due today but it just didn't feel like a Sunday tonight. Thankfully I remembered shortly after ten o'clock and got them posted. I also started my website portfolio for my capstone, which is due next Sunday, along with the gaming website for my conference class. There is a bit of a learning curve with the creator we're using for the capstone site but it is much easier than Wix. Tonight I messed with the formatting, adding a background and header image, and pasted in my introduction, which was just the reflection we wrote at the beginning of the semester. Baby steps.

And now I am going to go to bed because it is after one o'clock in the morning and I would like to actually get up and get some work done in the morning before I have to go to work. Sure I do. I keep getting distracted tonight. I looked at DIY bed frames, tiny houses, longboarding videos and longboards, washers and dryers, and I just had an idea for my capstone site so I spent the last fifteen or twenty minutes editing the dwarf librarian drawing. I think I want to put it in the bottom corner of my page. I'll have to edit some of the CSS to get it in there along with the background I want, but I can mess with that in the morning, maybe. Now It's bedtime. No more distractions.

July 23, 2016

 I woke up early this morning and went to work. I had a productive morning. I made another personalized reading list, which takes a surprisingly long time when the person I'm making the list for reads a lot of genres I do not. I still hope one of these people will return their feedback sheet so I can see how I'm doing. I also put my September tech classes on the official event calendar. So they're official now. I had to come up with titles and descriptions that will hopefully sound appealing to at least a few people. Although I wouldn't mind if my first classes didn't have much attendance so I could work up to that. I sent an email to my fellow librarians to see if any of them wanted to teach one of the online resources class, because my boss doesn't necessarily want me to teach all of the classes, just come up with the ideas and the content. That will take some of the pressure off of me. And hopefully I'll be able to participate in some of the non-tech adult programming.

During lunch I worked on my blog posts. I can't remember the timing of everything but at some point, I think after lunch, I managed to finish my blog post on LIRT and I came really close to finishing my post on GAMERT. I was technically doing schoolwork at work but I was also technically doing work at work. I joined both of these round tables after the conference because they both will make me a better librarian and help me do better at my role of teaching tech classes and trying to get younger adults to come into the library. So, I'm doing research in order to write my blog entries but I am also learning a lot about each round table and getting ideas for things I want to try. I would consider it professional development.

I also helped patrons throughout the day, because that's kind of my job, too. One of them was writing a paper about our reference services for class. After talking to her I learned that she is in her second semester of her MLS degree and the professor she is writing the paper for is one of the professors that went to the conference with us. I'm assuming it is his research class but now that he is a full-time faculty member he may be teaching some other ones. I also learned that this girl was also at the conference because she got won a scholarship to cover her costs. Small world.

I did not accomplish much after work. I had dinner and then felt exhausted the rest of the night. I should have done laundry but that thought occurred to me after ten o'clock. I had some thoughts about finishing my GAMERT blog but I think I am going to save that for the morning. It would be nice to have it finished before work so I can read over both of them after work before posting them. Then I can spend tomorrow night working on the conference website that my roommate and I are supposed to make.

In a perfect world the website, or at least my part of it, could be finished by tomorrow, so I could have the rest of the week to work on my capstone website. That obviously won't happen considering we only have a basic idea for the site and haven't really divided up the work yet, but I'll see what I can do. I also need to put in some time for my practicum. I'm getting closer.

July 22, 2016

Yesterday I felt like a librarian for the first time and I completely forgot to mention it. A girl came in and said she needed a book about the government. That was a fairly broad statement so I tried to get her to narrow it down a little bit. I eventually got her to say that she needed a book somewhere in the time frame from the beginning of the United States up to the Civil War and she was kind of thinking about Abraham Lincoln. Up to that point I was getting ready to type in some keywords to look for books in our catalog. But, the light bulb went on as soon as she said Lincoln because earlier in the day when I was doing a walkthrough I had walked down a different aisle than I normally do and had noticed the large number of Lincoln books we have. So, instead of typing stuff into the computer I was able to walk her right to the section in the stacks where the Lincoln books were. It felt like such a librarian move, knowing exactly where something was located. I left her to browse, she found a book, thanked me, and it felt pretty good. It has inspired me to start memorizing the Dewey Decimal System so I have a better idea of where things will be on the shelves. I also want to start memorizing where particular books are on the shelves, like where the Lincoln books are or quilting books or whatever else. I think I can do it when I'm done with school and I'm not trying to keep so many different plates spinning in my mind.

This morning I woke up earlier than I would have liked, got ready, and headed to work slightly earlier than normal to compensate for the construction. That ended up not being a thing because not many people were on the road yet so I got to work almost ten minutes early. I still think getting to work one hour before we open is too early, at least during the week when we're not counting money, which is ironic because when we do have to count money on the weekend we get to work thirty minutes early, but whatever.

It was a pretty slow day. I printed off the reading list I finished yesterday and emailed the patron that it was ready to pick up (because he wanted to pick it up) and I started and finished another personalized reading list. I might do another one tomorrow. I like them because some of them are requiring me to go outside of my normal genres. From reading numerous summaries I have learned that romance and urban lit probably aren't my thing. I also like the chance to throw in books that I really like and think the patron would like to based on the interests they put down. We include a feedback sheet with each list that the patron is supposed to fill out and return before they can get another list. That is apparently a pretty rare occurrence but I am hoping to get at least one back so I can see if I'm at least in the ballpark.

Tomorrow is my boss' birthday so today we celebrated it. There was a long email chain between the adult services staff talking about it and I completely forgot until it was mentioned today. My mind is a little distracted. So I did not really participate, and I feel bad about that, but I will do better in the near future. The other librarians decorated her office door, brought in cheese/crackers/grapes/strawberries/nuts/cookies, and made cupcakes. I went to lunch at the same time as my boss, which is when everyone else set everything up. The boss beat me back so everyone was already standing around and having a good time and it was nice to join in. I didn't eat any of the food but I was required to a cookie for the road, so I obliged.

This afternoon I almost finished typing my conference journal, learned about web analytics for the web pages our department is concerned with, and shut off a toilet in the women's restroom that wouldn't stop running. I think it was just last week that we were taken on a tour around the building and shown how to shut various things off, including toilets, so I got to use my new skills. As I was heading to the restroom with the screwdriver I told my boss and the other librarian that if they heard screams it was because I didn't knock loud enough. It has always felt weird going into the women's restroom, ever since I had to at the movie theater to replace toilet paper and paper towels. But that was before we opened. It is even weirder going in when we are open. Thankfully no one was in the restroom and I left the door propped open while I was in there just to decrease the chance of accidentally surprising someone if they came in. I figured they would be a little more alert walking into a bathroom with an open door, or possibly avoid it altogether.

Tonight was Chipotle night because my mom was unavailable on the regular day. My burrito bowl was pretty good. It seems like it has been a long time but it's only been a week and a half. After dinner I didn't show videos because I had a lot of homework to do. And then I didn't really do any of it. I eventually started writing one of my blog entries, and made decent progress but did come anywhere close to finishing it, let alone finishing both of them. My new goal is to finish both of them tomorrow. Then I can start working on the website for the class on Sunday. It would be great if that all works out. I'm coming up on the final two weeks and things are going to be hectic. Can't wait.

July 21, 2016

This morning I woke up early so I could get to campus for a meeting at 8:30AM. We talked about our calibrated data and made it through about half of our results before the other librarian had to leave to go to another meeting. I think on all of them that we did together at least two of us picked the same number each time, so that was a good sign that we were on the same page. For the ones where our answers differed it was either because the other person missed something or they had a different way of interpreting the rubric. To help with that we took the time to write out a detailed description for what each score on each part of the rubric meant. That way we don't have to try and interpret the rubric and the students' answers, we just match it up and move on.

When I got home from the meeting I did the math and figured out how many responses each of us would have to grade and which ones we would be grading. Overall we each have to grade 163 responses. For the first set my supervisor and the other librarian will grade 95 and I'll grade 94. For the second set they will grade 68 and I'll grade 69. It worked out really nicely that we can all grade the same amount. It is, however, going to take forever to grade all of those responses. Can't wait.

I went in to work at noon today. And I did things. I finished making a personalized reading list, I updated my homebound spreadsheets with the comments I got back from a couple of my patrons, I answered a couple chat questions, responded to a couple emails, typed up more of my conference journal, and used my stern voice to talk to a teenager who was bugging another kid.

She came over and told us he was shooting rubber bands at her. I went to talk to him and asked if he was doing that and he said he had rubber bands but he wasn't shooting them so she was a liar. I asked if he had been shooting anything and he admitted to shooting paper at her, so there's that. I asked if he was going to stop and his smart remark was “that's why you came over here isn't it?” So I responded with “is it?” I asked if he was going to stop and he made another smart remark so I just asked him if that was a “yes” and stood there until he said it was. I had to go over one more time when the girl's sister came over to say the boy and his friend were now taking pictures of them. They claimed they weren't and showed me their phones, which doesn't really mean much because I didn't want to see their phones and it doesn't take that long to delete pictures.

Other events of the evening. One of the elevators briefly broke. I don't know how it happened but the door was stuck open on the first floor and there was a high pitched buzzing noise. The library director was there tonight for some reason so she and I and the assistant manager of circulation all tried to figure out. We eventually had the maintenance guy turn off the power to it and when it was turned back on, everything seemed to work. Just like when a computer is acting up. Also, at the very end of the evening I checked the men's room and found a stack of paperback books in the corner of the handicap stall. A stack at least two feet tall. That's a lot of books to just be hanging out in the bathroom. Kids are idiots. Maybe they should try reading a book rather than stacking them.

There is construction on the main road I take to and from work. It is a split four lane road and one of the lanes is closed. This has led to decent delays with lines backing up at the stoplight at least a half a mile. Maybe more. I'm not good with judging distances like that. Either way, cars are getting backed up. On my way home for dinner there was a six car fender-bender on the one-lane side. Two cars were a little bit ahead but the other four were all stuck together. It looked like the cops had only just arrived because they hadn't figured out how to direct traffic yet so the line of cars on that side of the road had to have been backed up close to a mile (I just looked at a map and did some math so that is accurate). I doubted that would be cleared up any time soon so when I left to go back to work I decided to go through town instead. A great idea in theory but it seemed like the cops were either now directing people that way or they were choosing it on their own to go around the accident. I ended up get stuck at the top of an off ramp and I have never seem that many cars on that off ramp. That alone made me a couple minutes late getting back to work, which was annoying.

Now I'm going to go to bed because it is late and I have to open in the morning, which means I have to wake up early. Hooray. The only good thing is that I'll get off at five o'clock. But then I have to spend the rest of the night writing blog posts because I have not done that yet. I doubt I finish either of them but if I could at least get a decent start I would be happy.

July 20, 2016

This morning I woke up early to work on practicum stuff. I'm tired of waking up early to work on practicum stuff. But we're nearing the end so it won't be for too much longer. This morning I actually ended up taking a brief nap during the middle of working. It will be nice only having a job to worry about again. I've forgotten what that is like.

I went in to work at noon, didn't do much for the first hour, worked the desk the second hour, and then we went out for our homebound deliveries. That was almost successful. We were making really good time and would have been done not too long after four o'clock, even earlier if one of the patrons wasn't a big talker. And we should have been done at that time, but we realized at the first nursing home that I was missing the bag of books for one of my patrons. She happened to be in the room with one of my other patrons and I told her that I had forgotten her bag but I would go back and get it and bring it to her. After making the rest of our deliveries we went back to the library and discovered that I had somehow forgotten to make a list for this patron, which would explain why the assistant who pulled my books hadn't pulled books for her. Whoops. I quickly ran and grabbed some, we got them checked out, and then drove back across town to drop them off. Because of that we didn't get back to the library until almost five o'clock, which is when I was supposed to get off work. I went and dropped the van key off, went through the books we brought back to pull slips out, moved the books over to the circulation desk to be checked in, put the book wagon back, and was only about ten minutes late. We're going to pretend I wasn't though because I'm tired of having to make up time. If I work slightly more than forty hours in a week, I don't really give a shit, and trying to hit it exactly every week is a pain in the ass.

Anyway. One of my homebound patrons in one of the nursing homes was asleep when I went to her room so I went to get a staff member. I the door was open but I didn't want to just walk in so the staff member went in first and somewhat roused the patron. I say somewhat because I pulled her old books off her shelf and after putting in the new ones I asked her if she wanted the rather large bird book I had brought. I held it up for her and started flipping through it so she could see it and while doing that she fell asleep again. Just in case I left the book and let myself out.

While I was delivering to that patron the other librarian was delivering to her patron in the next room over. It was quite the dichotomy between the two patrons. Mine fell asleep and her patron was the talker. I probably stood in the hall at least ten minutes looking through a book on small quilting projects. I'm probably going to check the book out when I'm done with school because there were a few different projects that I want to try. But, I was standing there so long that at one point I thought maybe the other librarian had left without me. I knew that wasn't the case because I had the keys, and I knew she wouldn't be waiting outside, because even though it was really warm in the nursing home it was over 100 degrees outside. So I continued to wait and she eventually came out of the room.

In that same nursing home I ran into an old friend from Boy Scouts. He was my tentmate at Philmont and I'm pretty sure I haven't seen him since high school. I saw his dad and brother not too long ago at the funeral for another old friend from Scouts. He looks exactly the same as I remember, and despite the fact that I have changed quite a bit in the last twelve or thirteen years he immediately recognized me and called out my name. That doesn't happen very often so it is odd when I'm actually remembered. We only spoke briefly because he was in the middle of a job, it looked like fixing an AC unit, but it was good to see him.

I did not really accomplish anything tonight. My motivation was lacking, as always, but I also think delivering books for nearly three hours in the 100+ degree weather took it out of me. At one point I dozed off sitting at my desk and I never got around to working on school stuff. This is going to be a stressful weekend because I've got my last two blog posts due on Sunday, which I haven't started yet. I also need to hopefully do something with the website because that is due the weekend after this, on July 31^st. My partner set one up on Wix yesterday or the day before but neither of us have actually done anything yet. My capstone portfolio is also due on July 31^st. I am further along on that in terms of content but I haven't actually put anything into my portfolio yet. On August 5^th, the last day of class I have to turn in a video recording of me talking about my portfolio. I work every day that week so it would be nice if I could get it done the weekend before, when I'm not working. But this weekend I am working, so getting back to the point, getting the two blog posts done is going to be stressful.

Now I'm going to try and go to bed because I've got a meeting on campus at 8:30AM to discuss the assessment project. We should have all graded the ten responses for calibration so we'll go over that and get on the same page as far as grading goes, and then we'll divide up our sample size. So we can add the assessment grading to the list of things I need to work on in the next couple of weeks. I don't think they have a goal of getting it done by the end of my school semester, and I don't know that it will actually be possible for me to be done with my part by that time, so I'm going to try and not stress about that too much. I'll be able to get my hours in with the grading, even if I don't finish it by the end of the semester. I don't want to prioritize that beyond getting 120 hours, over the stuff that is actually due by July 31^st or August 5^th, and I told my adviser yesterday that I didn't think that project would actually be wrapped up in time for the semester. But I still plan on finishing the project after the semester, and it will be easier because at that point I won't have other schoolwork to worry about. So I've got loose plans for things. I just need to do them.

And now I'm going to bed. Good grief. No more typing.

July 19, 2016

This morning I woke up at 7:00AM but I didn't actually get out of bed until 8:00AM. I just couldn't do it. I thought about school stuff but I just couldn't get out of bed.

I was productive once I got up. I spent my morning working on my capstone. I wanted to finish picking out the assignments I wanted to use and it became a bit of a struggle. Then I had the idea to visualize it using a spreadsheet instead of having to constantly click into different folders to see if I had anything in it yet and then try and keep that information straight while clicking into other folders. So, I made a spreadsheet with the program outcomes and professional values along the the top. Beneath each one I put in the class number of any assignments I had picked that met that particular outcome or value. I also made a list of all of my classes so I could check them off. Because of the semester when I had to take three classes, I had thirteen classes to work with instead of just twelve, which came in handy. After I had all of the example assignments typed in I could see which outcomes and values didn't have an example yet and I was able to go back and find examples. Then it was like Sudoku selecting the single example for each outcome and value while making sure twelve different classes were represented. It still took a bit of work to get it figured out, and in the end I don't think the best examples were always used because I had to use that class for other outcomes or values, but whatever. I got there in the end.

This afternoon I went to the campus library to meet my adviser for my site visit. I got there early just in case and worked on some other stuff until my adviser got there. We sat at the entrance and talked about the ALA conference and the library and town and other random things. Then we walked back and met with my supervisor in her office. It went well. They both talked about things for awhile and my supervisor occasionally asked me questions, like my favorite part of the practicum and questions about the library program in general because I am nearing the end of it and the new dean is starting soon. I was building it up to be a much more serious thing but it was conversational and very laid back. I also learned a lot more about the campus library, my supervisor, and my adviser.

We talked for a little over an hour and then parted ways. I headed up to the third floor and my supervisor took my adviser down to the first floor because my adviser was going to meet with a former student, who graduated last year, I think, and got a job at the library.

I worked on my capstone stuff for about an hour before deciding to head home. While I was sitting there my adviser and the other librarian walked by and we said hello. Then I ran into them again while I was leaving. I stopped and spoke with them for a little bit before heading to the parking garage.

I didn't really accomplish much when I got home but after dinner I went through and wrote a brief summary for each of my program outcome examples and turned in that assignment. Then I responded to a discussion post comment and wrote another discussion post about social media. So I was productive. I also put in about an hour and a half for my practicum, adding to my Twine story and updating a spreadsheet with my calibration data and formatting it.

Now I'm going to go to bed so I can wake up early and work on my practicum before going to work. Because of still making up time for the conference and for working nine and a half hours this coming Saturday, I am going in at noon tomorrow instead of eight o'clock. That is fine with me. Delivering homebound books in what I'm assuming will be very warm temperatures tomorrow afternoon is not so fine with me.

July 18, 2016

This morning I woke up early even though I didn't want to. I then spent three hours working on my Twine story for my practicum. It took awhile for my mind to actually wake up and for things to happen. I have said it before, it is hard to be clever when you're tired and your mind is exhausted. At least I think I've said it before. With the story I am not only trying to be clever, I'm also trying to tie everything together in a sequence that makes sense. It's a challenge. I think it has potential though, and it is the one thing that I actually look forward to working on at the moment because it allows me to be creative. And I think the final product will be fun, so that's motivation. Right now I have somehow managed to stay focused on the story and not the aesthetics but it is really tempting to start messing with CSS and make it look more appealing. But that will come in time.

I went to work at noon and it was a fairly productive day. I finished the last homebound book list, which I had saved for last because I needed to find twelve books for this patron, and that sounded daunting. But it ended up going fairly quick. Maybe I am finally getting the hang of picking out books. Slowly. Because I won't be there tomorrow and we go out for the delivery on Wednesday, my boss is having one of the assistants pull my books for me and do all the processing. That is part of their job but I still kind of feel like an ass for not doing the work myself, because it feels like it should be my job. To ease my conscience a little bit I pulled the books for two of my patrons, checked them out, and added the feedback bookmarks. They were the two patrons who get the least amount of books but it still counts.

I also helped patrons with various computer and book-related questions. And did other things. I'm sure there was more stuff because I remember feeling productive. But I'm tired right now and my memory is failing me.

Tomorrow I've got a lot to do. My adviser is coming for a site visit so I need to meet her at the campus library for an hour at two o'clock. I'm hoping that goes well. There is no reason it shouldn't but I'm a little worried about how many hours I'm putting in outside of the library. I don't know if it is necessary but my fingers will be crossed.

I also need to make my final selections for my capstone artifacts, at least the eight for the program outcomes (although I also need the four for the professional values so I know I'm covering all my classes). For those eight I need to write a short summary about them. By midnight tomorrow. That will be my main priority but I also need to put hours in for my practicum, beyond the site visit. I thought about going to the library an hour before the visit and staying for awhile afterward but that will depend on what kind of progress I can make on my capstone.

My roommate from the conference emailed me today about our website, so that is also on the playing field now. Neither of us have created any content for it yet but he at least set up the Wix page today so we can start working on stuff. And I have my two blog posts on round tables for that class due Sunday. There are not enough hours in the day.

July 17, 2016

This morning I woke up early and spent the entire morning working on practicum stuff. Minus the time it took me to feed the dogs and put out bird feeders. I made decent progress on the Twine story I'm making based on the scavenger hunt. I also now have a better idea of how I'm going to construct it. I start by giving them four directions to start in. My idea to fully complete one direction and then go back and copy the same order of events for the other directions but start it from where that direction starts. Which I think sounds confusing as I type it out. Let's do an example. One direction will have them start on the first floor and then they will work their way through the library. I am kind of picturing this as a big circuit, where they will end up back at the library entrance. So the second direction will start at a different part of the circuit but they will still be completing the same circuit. I don't know, it makes sense in my head. I think there is potential. And it is giving me something to do while I wait for the assessment project to progress.

The rest of my day was spent working on stuff for my capstone. I finally managed to go through all of my classes and copy assignments into the folders I made for the program outcomes. I've got at least one assignment in each folder and most have multiple assignments, which will give me some options. By Tuesday I need to have the final eight picked out and have summaries of each written. I was going to start that tonight but I also need to figure out the four assignments I am going to use for the professional values. That is twelve assignments/artifacts all together and each one has to be from a different class. That is the tricky part. It would be hard enough picking the assignments but it makes it way harder knowing that I have to have an assignment from twelve different classes. There are some classes where it is a stretch. And the professional values are a little vague when it comes to matching them up with assignments. But I'll get it figured out. Because I have to.

My productivity really fell off after dinner. I continued to work on capstone stuff but it was really half-hearted and I was easily distracted. Story of my life.

The plan for tomorrow is to wake up early so I can get in a few practicum hours before I go to work. Then at work I need to finish my last homebound list and hopefully start pulling books. That doesn't really leave any time for capstone stuff but maybe after work. Although not likely because there isn't a lot of motivation after nine o'clock at night. We'll see.

July 16, 2016

Today was pretty boring. And not as productive as I would have liked but that is not surprising.

The biggest chunk of my day was spent working on practicum stuff. I started by grading the ten responses that we are using to calibrate the data for the assessment project. For the actual project I'm going to have to grade well over 100 responses and I'm going to need to step up my game. It took me way to long to look at those first ten. They weren't nearly as cut-and-dry as I would have hoped and there is the worry about whether my grading will match with my supervisor and the other librarian. But that is the whole point of the exercise. I think it will go a little faster after we meet and discuss our results because I will have a better idea of how they're grading and whether or not I'm being too hard or two easy in my grading. It's still going to take forever. It was multiple hours just for ten. I don't know if I'll be able to finish the actual assessment before the semester is over but I should easily get my hours just on grading alone.

It isn't evident by the current product but I also spent several hours creating a project based on the scavenger hunt using Twine, the open source program, not the string. I think I have a solid beginning narrative and I give the user five directions to choose. The fifth is the option to exit but the following screen just says “Booooo! That's boring. Try again.” The idea is that it doesn't really matter where they start because eventually they will go through all the questions, just not in the same order. I am hoping to string it all together so they progress through the library in a somewhat straight line without a bunch of zig-zagging or doubling back. I know that I would be annoyed if I had to go up to the fifth floor, then down to the first floor, then back up to the fourth floor, then all the way to one side of the building, before going down two floors and all the way to the other side of the building. They will have to go all over the library but hopefully there will be some order to it.

I spent the last part of the day getting a start on capstone stuff. I'm trying to divide all my assignments up based on what program outcomes they satisfy. By Tuesday I need to have one example, each from a different class, for each program outcome. I also have to write a brief paragraph about the example. I am a little disappointed with how little effort I have been able to devote to this whole project so far because it is supposed to be a portfolio of my work throughout the program and it should be well thought out and attractive looking. I just have so much other crap going on.

The goals for tomorrow are to finish dividing up assignments and hopefully have at least one example for each outcome from different classes. I also want to have the descriptions written. And despite how long it took me to write the first two blog posts for my conference class, I want to get the second two written tomorrow. I also need to put some serious hours into my practicum, while somehow getting everything else done. Even if I put in five hours tomorrow and five more on Tuesday, I still have to get three hours every other. That is a tall order when I'm at work for nine hours a day. And it doesn't really leave any room for all the other schoolwork I need to do. My adviser is coming for a site visit on Tuesday so I'll be able to talk with her about everything. Hopefully that will be a load off my mind rather than add more stress to my life.

It's now after 1:30AM and I plan on waking up really early so I can get the maximum number of hours out of my day. That will either end up working exactly as planned or it will fail miserably and I'll spend the entire day fighting drowsiness and getting nothing done. Let's cross our fingers for the first outcome.

July 15, 2016

I can't really remember this morning. I think I slept in a little bit and then eventually had breakfast, got ready for work, and then ate lunch before going to work. I felt like a senior citizen in high school today. I ate lunch before 10:30AM and had dinner at 4:15PM. My meal schedule is probably the biggest downside of the job right now.

At work I did things. I spent a lot of time working on my homebound lists and I'm down to the last patron. Unfortunately that patron gets twelve books. The goal is to get those picked out on Monday and then go and pull the books for all of my patrons.

I also added a couple more authors to my local authors list. I'm getting closer to ten authors.

We're thinking about getting some tablets that have games for adults, like brain game kind of things, and we have one to try it out. I tried it tonight and I'm not that impressed. Two or three of the games were broken, I don't think one was compatible with the tablet, and a couple games just sucked. I think there is potential but not with the current game lineup.

The major event of the night was a guy's backpack being stolen while he was in the children's section with his kids. He did kind of blame himself because he said he had dozed off because he's been up late working on a project every night for the last week. The staff member in the children's section brought him up to talk to me, because technically I was in charge of the library, and he wanted to file a police report so I called the police department. I ended up passing the phone off to him because that made more sense and he was told that he would have to file the report online. I asked him to leave his contact information with circulation in case his backpack was found.

When he left I called my boss to let her know what was happening and she said I had done the right thing. She then explained that after he filed the police report the police would be able to get a search warrant which would allow them to review our security footage on Monday when the administration is back in the building.

While she was explaining this the staff member and the patron came back to the desk. Apparently the backpack had been found in the women's restroom but his laptop was missing. That really sucks. He said there was at least the positive that the library items he had checked out were still in the backpack. So at least he won't be charged for those.

I wanted to work on things when I got home but that didn't happen. All day tomorrow and Sunday will have to be devoted to work. I need to get in a lot of practicum hours and I need to work on stuff for my other classes. I have a lot of work to do for my capstone, which I have neglected. I'm behind on the discussion posts and haven't picked out any of my artifacts yet, which is kind of the point of the whole course.

It's midnight now and hopefully I can wake up relatively early so I can get started. And hopefully I won't be too easily distracted tomorrow. That will be the key. I'm so close to the end I just need to buckle down and finish things up.

July 14, 2016

My day started too early. Most days feel like that lately. I got up a little earlier that I would have normally because my mom was leaving on a trip to Colorado this morning and I thought it would be nice to say goodbye. Then I had a haircut at eight o'clock to make up for missing it on Monday.

After my haircut I had a meeting on campus at nine o'clock. My haircut went faster than expected and I was left with not enough time to go home and too much time to go to campus, so I drove around for awhile. And then I went to campus.

I met my supervisor in her office, where she was entertaining her officemate's two kids. We then headed downstairs for our meeting with the other librarian about the assessment. It was a productive meeting. We decided we were all going to grade the first ten responses in the data in order to calibrate ourselves. Then we talked about how we would actually calibrate, which is good because I was a little lost on that. Turns out there is a rubric and we are going to look at the responses in the data that align with the rubric and grade it as to how well they met each goal. There was a little worry at first that there wasn't a rubric and that we would have to create one. I think they still want to tweak the rubric but that is for another day.

There was time before the next meeting so I wandered around the library for a little while before heading up to the fourth floor. Going up the stairs I was behind a girl playing Pokemon Go. I was a good distance behind her but she was walking slowly and staring intently at her phone. I paused on one of the landings to check my phone to see if I had heard back from my adviser yet and by the time I got upstairs the girl was slowly walking toward the stacks. The are moveable stacks and she slowly walked up to one of the closed sections, and then cautiously pushed the button to make the stacks open. And then she headed in. It was pretty entertaining to watch. It was like she was an animal stalking its prey.

The second meeting was a departmental meeting for the academic services department. We were joined by the three newest librarians because they work in a different department and the meeting started with all of the academic services librarians introducing themselves and saying what their areas of focus were so the new librarians knew who to send referrals to. They were going around the table and it got to me and I paused because I didn't think I was part of it, but apparently I was, so I said “I'm just hanging out,” which ended up getting a pretty good laugh. The best laugh however was when the other librarian on the assessment project introduced herself because she said “I'm so-and-so and I'm an ASS.” Turns out her title is Academic Services Specialist. That's pretty funny.

The new librarians briefly introduced themselves after that and the second one was a little too brief because as soon as the third one said his name the second one realized she had forgotten to say her name. And without skipping a beat the third librarian said “and that's so-and-so.” Another good laugh.

Following the introductions there were a few announcements and one was asking if there was interest in having a get together at the beginning of the semester where new faculty could come and meet the librarians. I guess they did it last year and it went pretty well so they want to keep it going and even invite non-new faculty. I think that's a great way to do outreach and put a face to the library to hopefully entice professor's to utilize the resources of the library more often.

The last half of the meeting was one of the librarians I interviewed for class getting the opinion of the group on changes to the website/catalog that he wanted to propose to the committee in charge of that. He had already brought up the ideas to the committee but they told him he needed the opinions of more people. So we went through them. The first was to change the “A-Z” link because no one really knows what that means. At least people who haven't gone to library school or aren't that familiar with library websites. One of the proposed changes is to have it say “eJournal List”, which gets right to the point, because it is an alphabetical list of all the electronic journals the library has access to. It also lists electronic periodicals and something else but the title would be much too long to say all of that. For me “A-Z” seems obvious but I also know what it is referring to, so I think it makes sense to change it.

The second proposed change was to hide the book and journal tabs in the Citation Linker, or at least reordered them so that the article tab was first since that is what most people would use it for. There was also a problem with the book tab only showing a single result. And that result was the first result in the catalog, which isn't that helpful. The librarian likened it to Google's “I'm Feeling Lucky” option. In the case of Moby Dick you would not be lucky because the first result is for a graphic novel adaption, so you wouldn't see the 127 copies of the actual book that the library has in its collection.

There is also a citation tracker that the librarian was curious about. When you click on one of the citation tracker links for a search result it will take you to a list of either a list of all the items referenced in the article or how many times that item has been referenced. The only problem is it isn't a comprehensive list for either. The feature is provided by a particular vendor I believe, and one thought is that it only shows the items in the lists that it has access to. Makes sense. The other librarians agreed that even if it wasn't a comprehensive list it was still a good feature. There was also a little note below the title of the lists saying that it may not contain all of the citations and it was suggested that the message be moved above the title and that it be made more noticeable.

And the last proposed change was doing something about all the items from HathiTrust showing up as available online even when they weren't. Almost all of the librarians raised their hands that they had received a question while working on the reference desk of someone being unable to access an item online from HathiTrust when it said it was available online. So it's an obvious issue. And there are no easy solutions. They only know of one other university who has solved the problem and it is suspected that it would take a lot of work to replicate. Other solutions involve taking all of the HathiTrust records out of the catalog so they won't show up in results and confuse people, figuring out how to turn off the little “Available Online” message on each record, and probably a couple other things that I'm spacing on at the moment.

After the meeting I went home, had lunch, and then went to work. It was a long day but it wasn't too bad. I got sidetracked a lot but I also did things. I finally finished the personalized reading list I started yesterday or the day before. I also briefly started working on compiling lists for my homebound patrons because we go out again on Wednesday and I don't work this weekend or next Tuesday, so time is running out. I helped patrons throughout the day, including several who were looking for books on a broad topic and didn't have a particular book in mind. And I took on a project of finding local, living authors in the county. That is a tall order. I lost too much time researching that tonight. And I wasn't that successful. But I did find more than I thought I would. That project will continue.

The patron who came in a few weeks ago, multiple times, getting different librarians, including myself, to print off information about a car he was trying to sell, was back in the library tonight. I assume with his wife. This time he wanted help with the actual sale of the vehicle. Like the forms needed and figuring out how to add in an 'as-is' portion to protect himself after the sale. I've never tried to sell a car before so I don't know anything about it but I tried to help them out. I probably helped them a little more than I should but also not as much as I wanted to. It was so tempting to just do it all for them. I think the guy has a problem with silence because he'd ask me to look for something, which required reading through a bunch of stuff, but as soon as I would start to read he would start talking to me and then just ramble on and on, which made it really hard to focus on what I was reading. He also had no idea what he needed and wasn't convinced by what I was telling him half the time, which just made the process even longer. The wife was also fed up and they ended up rushing to print things before we closed, so I'm almost certain he'll be back looking for more help.

A guy who briefly worked at the theater came in to use one of the rooms at the library tonight. He's a unique dude, to put it one way. He thought I looked familiar and I asked if he ever worked at the movie theater. His eyes got real big and said “You worked at the movie theater!” Then he gave me a very awkward hug. I obliged with a pat or two on the back but he just kept holding on. For at least five seconds after I stopped. It was better than his old hugs where he would go in cheek-to-cheek. I never need to find out a dude hasn't shaved by feeling his stubble on my cheek. Anyway, he also remembered my friend because when he came out to borrow and dry erase marker he said “Remember Levi? Levi, 501 blue jeans!” The memories.

When I got home from work my sister was there taking care of the cats so we talked for awhile. I also showed her my new fountain pens because those arrived today. They get here really fast to begin with but I managed to order than early enough that they shipped out the same day. I got a Jinhao x750 and a Jinhao x450, both matte black, the x450 with gold trim and the x750 with silver. They both look really nice and hopefully they write well. I wasn't very impressed with the big yellow Jinhao 150 I got so I hope these are better. I'm not expecting greatness out of pens that ended up costing me about five bucks a piece but it would be nice if I didn't have to put a fifteen dollar nib on them to get any use out of them.

Good grief, it is one o'clock in the morning and I've been tired since I woke up this morning.

July 13, 2016

This morning I was scheduled to work at eight o'clock, which originally annoyed me. Then, sometime between eight o'clock and nine o'clock, there was a torrential downpour. The giant atrium windows looked like a car wash and the view out of another large window was just blowing trees and horizontal rain. It also looked like the middle of the night outside. It was crazy. Some of the surrounding neighborhoods lost power but thankfully we did not. It seemed like losing power would be a big hassle. And I am glad I was there at eight o'clock and not nine o'clock is because the librarian that came in at nine o'clock got soaking wet. She spent the first few hours of her shift just trying to get dry. That would have sucked.

I worked on a personalized reading list for awhile, talked with my coworkers, transcribed some of the notes I took on an article because I took too many the first time, and helped the occasional patron. I had a couple wins with patrons today which is always a plus. It sucks getting a question I can't find an answer to. Or an answer that satisfies the patron. But today was good.

This afternoon we had a departmental meeting. It started with a tour of the building by the head custodian, showing us how to turn off the water in the bathrooms, how to shut the water off in the entire building, how to turn alarms off and reset them, where to guide firefighters if alarms or elevators need to be turned off, and probably some other things. Then we went to the boardroom to talk about weeding and displays. We each talked about the article we read about weeding and then we had a group discussion about displays because those are currently in a state of transition and we are trying to make them better.

The tour and the meeting lasted almost exactly two hours, which took me right up to the time I had to leave. It is kind of nice getting off at five o'clock but I don't know if it is worth going to work at eight o'clock. But it is also kind of nice being there at eight o'clock because we don't open until nine o'clock and after doing all the opening stuff you can just sit there in the quiet. And during the week you don't have to deal with the money, which is nice.

Tonight I put an hour into my practicum by learning more about Twine and envisioning how I can use it for the scavenger hunt. There is an overwhelming amount of potential and I would really like to make something with it. I feel like even if I don't have time to do it within the scope of the practicum I will work on it as a side project. If I can find the inspiration. And if I don't get completely sucked into No Man's Sky.

Tomorrow morning I've got a haircut at 8:00AM, a meeting with my practicum supervisor and the other librarian about the assessment project, I get to sit in on another academic services meeting, and at 12:30PM I go to work. It's going to be a long day. I thought today was going to be long but it wasn't actually that bad. Tomorrow I will be doing things between 8:00AM and 9:00PM, when I finally get off from work. I think it will live up to being a long day.

July 12, 2016

It's 12:30AM and I regret being awake.

Today was fairly boring. I slept in a little bit because it was needed, and then I got up and worked on my practicum. I started by working on the assessment data. I did a couple more formatting things, including setting up the random numbers for both data sets, and then sent it off to my practicum supervisor.

After that I switched over to the scavenger hunt which took me most of the day. I came up with the rest of the clues to match my questions and then I made an answer sheet that not only included the answers but also the pictures I took that match the pictures the students are supposed to take throughout the scavenger hunt. All of this took a surprising amount of time. It is hard to force clever and I think I probably only had marginal success. When I had finished I sent it to my practicum supervisor and she will hopefully get back to me with some feedback. I still consider it a rough draft because it could definitely use some polishing. Now that the bulk of it is done, however, my mind keeps wandering to how I can turn it into a choose-your-own-adventure game using Twine. I've still got plenty of hours to fill so I might be able to make that happen.

This afternoon I remembered that today was the last day to sign up for a free health screening for work so I logged in and got that set up. We have to have it done by sometime or we get charged $25 a month. It was the same way with the school district but that wasn't going to affect me until this coming school year and I eventually knew I wasn't going to be there so I didn't worry about it. And now I have to worry about it. My screening is near the end of the month. Just one more thing on the list.

Tonight was Chipotle night and the guy took me at my word when I asked for extra rice and beans. I was actually able to divide it into two meals, which I am excited about, though I will probably forget I have it tomorrow and make something else for dinner. For dessert I had Canadian candy that my sister's husband got when he was up there recently. I don't technically eat candy anymore but I'm telling myself I never specified a country, so maybe I don't eat American candy but I do eat Canadian candy. Ignoring that Canada is part of America in real life but in the United States we have kind of adopted the word 'America' for ourselves. Anyway, I had candy for dessert.

After dinner I continued working on practicum stuff. When I had finished I wanted to do some schoolwork but that didn't happen. My brain was kind of over it at that point. Story of my life recently.

So now it is one o'clock in the morning and my previously mentioned regret stems from the fact that I work at eight o'clock in the morning. Good grief. It is going to be a long day.

July 11, 2016

This morning I woke up early, laid in bed for awhile, and then got up and put in a few hours for my practicum. I started cleaning up all the data for the assessment project. That involved combining the two data sets into one file but different pages in Excel, just so they're easier to work with. Then I did some basic formatting stuff so it was easier to read. Lastly, I went through and hid all the things that seemed irrelevant. There might be some other stuff that my practicum supervisor wants to hide, because I'm not entirely sure what all we're going to be looking at, but I think I made a decent start. I only had a little bit of time left to look into coming up with how big our sample size needs to be so that is on my list for tomorrow. Once that is determined I can use a random number generator to pick the responses for the sample and then divide those up between myself, my practicum supervisor, and the other librarian working with us. It looks like I can do the random number thing in Excel. Then I can just sort by those numbers and we can pick the first, second, and third however many rather than having to scroll through and find our numbers. I'll save that for tomorrow, though.

I was feeling pretty good about my productivity this morning and then I went and checked my phone. I had received three texts from the lady who cuts my hair, wondering if I was coming in. Dang it. For some reason I had the 13^th in my head, which I think is the date it was last month. I also kind of felt like it was next week. Basically I blew it. I went years, if not decades, without missing an appointment, and now it seems to happen far too regularly. Granted it has been a really long time since it has happened. But still. I feel like an asshole, as I should. Thankfully, she is very understanding about my stressful existence and my scattered brain at the moment and we were able to reschedule for Thursday morning. I went with eight o'clock, which sucks, but I figured that would force me to get up and around and I might be able to get some things done when I get home before going to work. I will regret the decision when I'm stuck at work until nine o'clock at night.

Today at work I had my first month review and that went well. Considering I was gone for about half of the time since I was hired. I was able to bring up my idea for ESL classes, which would take a lot of work to get set up, but it's a goal to work toward. We also talked about a bunch of other things and then it was over and I was able to go eat dinner. At four o'clock in the afternoon.

Tonight I had a long conversation with one of my coworker's husband. He is a nerdy guy and apparently my coworker thinks we should be best friends. This is now the second person at the library that thinks I need to hang out with their husband, following the PR coordinator basically trying to set up a play date with her husband, which was pretty funny. At some point, when I'm done with school, I should start pursuing these opportunities because I don't have any friends in town and that is something that I should work on.

The old men in the carving group were back in the library tonight. I think when I looked it up they come in every other Monday. I spoke with them briefly tonight as they were cleaning up and one of them said they've been coming in for the past four or five years. I'm slowly working up the courage to ask them more questions about their group and learn more about them. I think it's a cool hobby and they make me nostalgic for grandpas. I don't want to interrupt their time hanging out together but I really want to be a fly on the wall and take in the grandpa-vibes.

The night as a whole went well. I worked on a personalized reading list, pulled some more books for my historical fiction display, helped a few people, and had random conversations with my coworker. We closed at nine o'clock and tonight was the first time it really seemed dark outside when we left the building. It was still light outside because it's the summer, but it seemed noticeably darker than the last time I closed. Just an observation.

Now I'm going to go to bed so I can wake up early-ish and work on practicum and school stuff. My days off from work are going to be my savior for this practicum. It's still going to be close but I should be able to make up for lost time if I put in enough hours on those days. I'll need to do the math. I also need to leave time for schoolwork. I've been dropping the ball with my capstone and I need to get a lot of work done on that by the nineteenth, like have all of my artifacts chosen. Yikes.

July 10, 2016

My alarm went off at six o'clock this morning. And I stayed in bed until seven o'clock but then I got up and worked on my blog entries. I managed to finish my first entry and started to think about the second one but that's when I stalled out again. It was about the time I had planned on stopping, however, so I took a shower and ate lunch before getting ready for work.

It was a slow Sunday at work. Although I don't know if there are fast Sundays, so maybe it was just a Sunday. This worked out in my favor because I was able to work on my second blog. And I nearly finished it, so that took some stress off of me.

While at work I also did work. The counting of the drawer went better this morning but I think that was mostly because I didn't have to make a deposit. A lady came in looking for books by a certain author but she can't walk very so circulation called up and asked if I could grab a few and bring them down for her. It turned out we had a lot of books by that author so I grabbed a bunch and went downstairs and sat down with her while she picked out the ones she wanted. Then I took the rest back upstairs and re-shelved them. I helped the “new” school teacher at the school find books on Colorado. I helped another lady find books on a couple different things. I thought about signage in the library, focusing on how we can do a better job at labeling the shelves. At least for the non-fiction books I would like if the numbers were bigger. You've got to be pretty close to them to see them and there is plenty of room to make them bigger. I'll bring it up and see what happens. I probably did some other things as well but apparently nothing worth mentioning.

Right before closing an alarm started going off. The custodian went and shut it off. It turns out a dad and his two kids accidentally rode the elevator to the basement instead of the first floor. And instead of taking the big staircase back to the first floor they chose to take the stairwell. And the door to the stairwell has an alarm on it even though it isn't labeled. Or maybe it is but it isn't labeled very well. Either way, it happened. Thankfully the sound of the alarm is more of a nuisance than an ear-shattering annoyance.

When I got home I did laundry and my sister came over for a family dinner. My mom grilled burgers and made pasta salad. My veggie burgers got a little toasted and they were a different type of burger, a garden burger I think, that didn't really go well with the grill. Normally they taste way better on the grill but that was not the case this time around. They were still edible though, so life goes on.

After dinner I continued doing laundry and I worked on my blogs. I got both of them posted around nine o'clock. I only made minor edits to my PLA blog and added a sentence or two to the LITA blog. Posting took a little bit because I had to go through and add in all of the links to my sources and the other things I mentioned. I also had to come up with unique titles. Everyone else was kind of going with boring stuff and I am slightly sleep deprived and in the mood for clever, so I went with “Nice to Meet Ya, LITA” and “A Brief Foray with PLA”. Not overly clever but I'm happy with them.

The rest of my night was spent finishing my laundry and putting a few hours into the scavenger hunt for my practicum. It is hard coming up with clever clues. And some of them have to be straight-forward, not clever. My goal is to get that finished in the morning before work. Or maybe I will work on cleaning up the survey data for the assessment project and save the scavenger hunt for work, when I can think about clues in between doing other stuff.

Now I'm going to go to bed because it is creeping up on one o'clock and I need to wake up earlier than I would like so I can work on my practicum stuff.

July 9, 2016

This semester, my last semester of graduate school, I believe I have finally flown too close to the Sun. There are just barely enough hours in the day to meet all my obligations and that's only if I don't do anything else, like get a full night of rest, or eat food. And of course I'm doing everything but the things I need to because I am in full shutdown mode. The stress has broken my will. It is overwhelming and oppressive and obnoxious. All I can do is focus on how little time I have, which means I have even less time because I have wasted it calculating my time rather than using it wisely. Classes are over on August 5^th, which is great, but also terrible because I need more time. I will definitely make it to the 5^th but I don't know if all of my assignments will make it there with me. I feel like I need to just start drinking caffeine again and pull all-nighters every night until this is over. I would say this is when I start regretting all that time I spent earlier in the semester doing nothing but I also kind of feel like this was an inevitability. All of my years of procrastination and just skating by have finally caught up with my in my last semester of school. I feel miserable but physically and mentally. Or maybe just as a human being in general. All I want to do is focus and get shit done but I can't. I can't focus on any one thing because as soon as I try I start thinking about all the other stuff I need to do. I am exhausted and completely drained and it is becoming increasingly harder to try and hide that fact. I don't even know anymore.

But let's continue avoiding the things I need to be doing and talk about my day. When I got to work this morning my main responsibility was counting the register money and making a deposit. It got super confusing because when I was trained the drawer worked out perfectly and this morning that was not the case. It took me way too long to figure it out and I'm not entirely sure I did. And no one else could help me because the only people trained in doing that are the adult services librarians, of which I was the only one today. It doesn't seem like the best business strategy to keep the knowledge base so small.

I took down two displays today and put up new ones. The first was my Hamilton Read Alike display. One book was checked out from it shortly after I put it up, so that's a good start. Although my Classics DVD display also had a few checkouts shortly after I made it and now it has slowed down. I blame the location and the presentation of the tiny cart the DVDs are on. Anyway, I also took down all the books on the Historical Fiction display and replaced them with my own. I don't have a lot of faith in that one because it also has a horrible location. But we'll see.

I also helped a couple people with the printer, an old man find a bunch of hotels for an upcoming trip, read through some of the operations manual, and I finished reading the article on weeding that I think I have to talk about next week. So I did things.

The end of the evening announcements were working tonight, although the volume fluctuated a few times so I was worried. It did make my life a little better as soon as they came on and I realized I wouldn't have to make the announcements over the phone.

During lunch I wasn't able to leave the library because I was in charge of the place, which is ridiculous, but I spent the time working on one of my blog entries. I made progress but haven't made any since I've been home. Which is unacceptable at this point. I am completely behind the wheel of my own self-destruction right now and I can't seem to do anything to correct it. I would really like to stop sounding like an emo kid and go back to enjoying life a little more.

Now the question is, do I go to bed now and wake up early to work on my blog posts before work, or do I stay up late to work on them and then wake up early to work on them some more. I think I'm going with sleep but I'm worried it's one of those times where even though I am drained I will just lay in bed, unable to turn my brain off. I guess we'll find out. I should be able to get in at least four hours tomorrow before work. And possibly some time at work because I don't know that I have anything pressing that I need to work on. Ideally I would be done before work or at least before I leave work so I can get them posted and then spend the rest of the night putting in hours for my practicum. It all sounds good now but I know it won't go that smoothly. My brain won't allow it.