August 5, 2016

Today was a long day at work. In terms of helping patrons it was a slow day. I helped a patron on the phone get logged into something that wouldn't let her because her account was blocked. I also helped a patron use the microfilm machine. And I helped a patron find a book. But that was about it. Most of my day was probably spent find information about budgeting and financial responsibility. Research for the class I want to teach. I found a lot of good information, a lot of it from Mint's blog, which ended up being a bit of a rabbit hole. I also did a little research at the end of the day about presentation websites, because I'll be teaching a class about PowerPoint alternatives in October. I should probably be focusing on developing my class on digitizing family photos. And that was pretty much my day at work.

The friend I ran into the other day in the nursing home while delivering books was in the library today. He stopped by the reference desk and we ended up having a long conversation. Part of it was about a kid that I graduated high school with who went missing three days ago. I was never friends with him but one of my friends has gotten into it a couple times on Facebook in the last year or two because this guy will go on long political rants. The other day my friend showed me that the guy was on the missing person list, after apparently walking out of a hospital without telling anyone. The friend I was talking to today said he had grown up with this guy and always knew something was a little off. He also said that the guy had a Twitter account, which is family didn't know about. I thought the rants on Facebook were bad but it was apparently even worse on Twitter because he was under an alias. I guess he was recently self-diagnosing his own schizophrenia and he had replaced his meds with alcohol and marijuana. Not a great decision. When my friend told me the other day he was missing my first guess was that he had gone off his meds (which I didn't know about at the time) just based on what I had heard about his social media presence. It's all sad to hear about because even though I wasn't friends with him in high school he always seemed like a nice guy.

During my break I made the scavenger hunt for my practicum in Google Forms and then used an add-on to turn it into a mobile app. That was pretty cool but I think my practicum supervisor will have to recreate it and be the owner because if I make it I will be the only one with access to the data. Which would be inconvenient.

I got a card at work that my coworkers all signed and it had a $25 gift card to Jo-Ann's, so that was really cool. Unexpected but very much appreciated. I'm excited to buy crafty things.

For dinner my mom got Pizza Hut. I can not remember the last time I had pizza from Pizza Hut. It has been several years, if not more. And it tasted amazing. Pizza Hut pizza can be a little overwhelming and I wouldn't want to eat it regularly because it is so greasy, but once every several years or so is a good idea.

After dinner I did a load of laundry and gave my mom the two books I got her as a small thank you for helping me with graduate school. Those books were Baa Baa Smart Sheep and the sequel I Love Lemonde, which are funny, potty-humored, kid books. She liked them.

I turned in my self-evaluation for my practicum tonight, which was the last thing I needed to do in my graduate education (minus the course evaluations). Immediately following that I unboxed my skateboard. It looks so cool. The first thing I did was take the orange wheels off and put the green wheels on. Which makes it look even better.

I'm pretty sure looking at it as a work of art will be it's main purpose, however. It rolls so freaking smoothly that stepping on it feels like stepping on ice. I just expect it to shoot out from under me going one way with me going the other. It is even more terrifying than I thought it would be. I need to find carpet or something that is thick enough to let me go slow but not too thick to prevent me from moving. I also might try taking the 1/2” riser pads off because I think they might be unnecessary and getting the board lower to the ground will help with my stability. I tightened the trucks up quite a bit to make the board more stable and even if I hadn't, I don't plan on doing a lot of carving, so I'm not that worried about wheel-bite. But we'll see. I'm going to keep trying.

After all that, I watched YouTube videos, flipped through the jelly roll small quilt book I checked out today, and started reading Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. There are just so many things I want to do that I am a little overwhelmed by the choices. I should make a To-Do list of all the things I want to do and haven't been able to because of school, and then start checking things off.

Tomorrow afternoon I've got a wedding to go to, which will probably take awhile because it's a Catholic wedding. And it's late now so I'll hopefully sleep through most of the morning. So who knows what I'll get done tomorrow.