October 12, 2016

 This morning I woke up early so I could go get my flu shot. I only had to wait about thirty seconds to get in and it took about that long to get the shot. When it was over she said “all done” and I looked down and saw she gave me a bandaid with The Flash on it so I replied “done in a flash.” She and the other lady giving shots both laughed at my bad joke, so it was worth it. Unfortunately, the lady was a bit of a butcher with the needle and my arm was hurting almost immediately. Maybe I'll sleep it off. Or maybe I'll wake up and be unable to move my arm.

I mailed a bill on my way home and then went and made my lunch and watched some more Luke Cage before going to work. I weeded when I got to work and then spent my time on the desk looking up the books that either weren't on my list or had discrepancies in their records. I also dealt with an angry customer who couldn't log into the computers. He's in every day and I checked his account for blocks but there weren't any, so my only explanation was that it was connected to the system upgrade we did this morning. That seemed to appease him a little bit but when we went to get him a guest pass someone took the last computer upstairs. I told him there were several downstairs but he wasn't interested in that, which he informed me about in an angry way. I then said I could reserve a computer for him but he didn't like that idea and told me the whole process was bullshit, but he excused his language, so I guess it doesn't count. He eventually calmed down and I saw him on the computers later. I just hope his account is working tomorrow.

This afternoon we had our staff meeting. The first hour was spent on our department stuff. We started by hearing from the lady in charge of ILL and the librarian in charge of purchasing (among other things). They told us what to do with patrons that reach or exceed their limits for ILLs or purchase requests and we talked about how to avoid those situations in the future. We then moved on to other things, like talking about communication and discussing our assignments for the next meeting.

For the second hour of our meeting we were joined by the children's department because they were having their meeting at the same time and it was decided that it would be a good job to work on our inter-departmental relationship. Our department is full of new blood and our role in the library is changing, which includes working more with other departments. This was a good first step. We went around and introduced ourselves, said what our main responsibilities were, and mentioned our work and education backgrounds. There is a lot of diversity in the backgrounds, which is something I noticed when I was in school, and I think that is cool. I also thought it was interesting that when everyone was talking about themselves, no one mentioned their significant others. It seems like a lot of times people tie their self to their relationship, especially when talking about their background. And that was never brought up. I'm sure it comes up in regular, casual conversation, but it was just interesting. Maybe it's a sign that we are all strong, independent professionals that don't connect their self-worth to their partner. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.

I only had about a half hour of work left after the meeting so I went and weeded a bit more. It wasn't a very fruitful outing because it turns out our section on Buddhism and meditation is super popular and/or too new to weed. It was obvious that it is a relatively new and fast growing section but the popularity was also surprising, with a lot of books checking out two or three times more than expected. That is pretty cool but it also meant I didn't have a lot to weed.

Tonight was Chipotle night and it turns out they are super busy around 5:30PM. I drove around the block twice before parking behind the building. I then had to wait in a line that went past the door. It's been awhile since I've had to do that. The food ended up tasting really good though, so we'll say it was worth the wait. I haven't been too impressed with the food lately but this was a good week.

After dinner I only had a few videos to show and then I spent the rest of the night relaxing. I watched the latest episode of Westworld because I kept forgetting about it. Then I switched over to Luke Cage. I'm currently on episode six, so about halfway through. I am still really enjoying the music. I also like this show better than Jessica Jones. It doesn't have David Tennant but I like the main actor better.

When I finish this episode, or maybe before, I'm going to go to bed. My lack of sleep this week, and I think my flu shot this morning, are catching up to me. I need rest. Thankfully tomorrow morning I'll be able to sleep in.