August 17, 2016

 This morning at work I got a call from the wife of one of our homebound patrons. Her husband had finished all of his books and she was wanting to know if she could bring them back to the library and get new ones. He isn't my patron and the librarian who has him wasn't coming in until noon so I went ahead and agreed to it because she said she wasn't going to come in until tomorrow. About an hour later she called back and asked if she could come in this afternoon instead because her husband kept bugging her. I said that would be fine and then freaked out a little bit because that meant I needed to come up with a list of ten books, pull them, and process them before she showed up. I managed to do all of that with time to spare, which is surprising. I even included an extra book because he is apparently a fast reader.

This afternoon I went out with another librarian for our own homebound deliveries. I still don't understand why it was decided that we should be going out in the middle of the afternoon, during the hottest part of the day. It was only 95 degrees today, so not as bad as previous trips, but still sweat-inducing. My first stop in the nursing home was a lady who had only been able to start one of her books because she had fallen and hit her head on her nightstand and was still recovering. I met her in the lobby and we ended up walking back to her room so we could swap out some of her books with the new ones I brought. It turns out she wasn't really interested in any of the books I had brought last time. That kind of sucks because the whole idea is to pick books that she would like to read. And last month was a fail. Almost entirely. I'll need to do better next time.

At the last nursing home it was really hot in the hallway as usual but they were also in the process of cleaning the carpets, which made it not only humid but also stinky. I ended up having to wait in the hallway for a long time while the other librarian took books to her talkative patron and I was sweating just standing there. I had already visited my patron, who fell asleep while I was showing her a book last time but was awake the whole time today. She still seemed a bit out of it though. I swapped her books out for her, or at least most of them. I took her seven and when I got back to the library I saw that she had eleven currently checked out. One of them was one I had to renew last month when I got back and saw she still had it. So, the lesson here is that I need to go out with a list of how many books each patron has so I know that I'm getting all of them back. And not too many, because I had another patron today who ended up having two of her own books in the bag, but I caught that before we left.

When we got back to the library, and after we got all the books sorted and given to circulation, I went up to the third floor to update my patron spreadsheets. That took awhile. I still had time after that before I got off work so I caught up with emails and the staff blog. One email was from the librarian I went out with today for homebound and it was about different display ideas she learned about in a webinar. One of the ideas was to use a quote as the theme of a display. The first thought that popped into my head was using “Et tu, Brute?” for a display of books involving deceit and betrayal. Trying to come up with a display sign for that one is going to be a pain. I thought about a shocked facial expression but I didn't come across any good ones that were free to use. Just as a placeholder I ended up using a picture of a three-pronged power outlet that looks like a face with a shocked expression. I think it is pretty funny.

Tonight I did a load of laundry and then spent the rest of the night watching YouTube videos and playing No Man's Sky. I apparently hit the max limit of inventory space. That is disappointing but it also makes sense because whatever my current limit is barely fits on the screen. I discovered a few new planets but none of them were that exciting. I found one with trees, which is a first for me, so that was neat, but I still want one with trees, grass, and water. Something that just looks nice and hospitable so I can turn it into my library planet. I think now that my suit inventory limit is maxed I need to turn my money toward buying a bigger ship. Because you can never have too much inventory space. Oh, I also got attacked by space pirates tonight but managed to fight them both off. The space combat isn't that exciting because flying the ships isn't that exciting. They don't handle well and it kind of feels like the ships are on-rails most of the time, not allowing you to fly too close to the ground or too near objects on a planet. You are allowed to crash into asteroids, though. I'm sure there is logic there somewhere.

Now I'm going to go to bed because I'm freaking tired. I don't work until noon tomorrow so I get to sleep in, which I am looking forward to. Sleeping in is the best.