December 17, 2016

 This morning started off well. I got up and was ready to leave the house early enough to give myself a little extra time to get to work. And then I noticed the trunk of my car was open. I hadn't touched my keys since I parked my car Thursday night, which means my trunk had been open for more than a day. And the little light in the trunk had been on that entire time. That meant that when I tried to start my car, nothing happened. Son of a duck.

I tried calling my sister because she is the closest but got her voicemail. I called my Mom and woke her up and she said she could take me to work if my Dad couldn't. I tried my dad and also got voicemail so I called my Mom back. More than twenty minutes later she showed up, slightly delayed by being woken up by a phone call and having to deal with three dogs.

I got to work fifteen minutes late and the cash drawer wasn't on my side so I didn't finish getting that ready until about five minutes after we opened. But I got it. My coworker also ended up being a little late because the stairs outside her apartment were covered in ice, which slowed her down, and then she couldn't find her ice scraper so she had to wait for her windshield to defrost. It sounded like kind of a bad start for everyone today.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. As the day progressed there was some discussion of closing early because it kept getting colder and colder and the snow got heavier and heavier. We probably only got a couple inches but it was coming down a thin layer of ice and with the wind the temperature was below zero. I would have been the person to make the call about closing. And that call would have been to the assistant director. It was looking pretty bad outside by the afternoon but a lot of that was the wind making it look like a blizzard outside. Eventually my thought was that if we held out, eventually the city trucks would clear the roads so it would be slightly safer to to drive home if we waited. We'll say that was the right call.

As for work, I helped some patrons, sent some emails, finished adding descriptions for my classes on the event calendar (minus the genealogy and resume classes), researched Sphero and Minecraft stuff, pulled books for all but one of my homebound patrons, checked the books out, and made the comment slips for them. A productive, snowy day. Tomorrow I'll have to pull books for the final patron. Not sure what I'll do after that but I'll come up with something.

After work my Dad picked me up because my mom didn't want to go out in the snow. Can't blame her there. I think it actually worked out better that my car died because my dad's truck was better suited for the snow. Speaking of, while I was at work my Dad, sister, and brother went over to my house and charged my car battery. They left the charger just in case but I'm hoping I won't need it. I didn't try to turn my car on when I got home because I didn't want to deal with it if it had died again, but I'm going to try it before I go to bed. And I'm going to wake up early enough that if it doesn't work I can get a ride and not be late.

Tonight I wanted to finish watching The OA but Netflix wasn't working. Good grief. Instead I watched the new Magnificent Seven. I can't remember the previous iterations so I didn't have that to sway my judgment. I liked the movie. It was filled with comedic lines, making me want to watch it again because I know there is probably a lot of stuff I missed. The last battle was also pretty epic. I would have liked a slightly happier ending but it was a more realistic ending, and the one I was expecting, so I'm not mad about it.

While I was watching the movie a crew of people showed up to clean the snow off the driveways. My HOA money is slowly starting to pay for itself. Not that it will ever pay for itself, but at least I know I'm getting something out of it. The snow guys had a skid loader with a plow, at least one guy with a snow blower, and guys with shovels and brooms. Quite the operation. I wouldn't have known about it but the skid loader beeped every time it backed up and it's method for clearing snow involved a lot of backing up.

It is now midnight and the plan for tomorrow is to wake up early enough so I can make sure my car starts before work. Thankfully I don't until 12:30PM. I should be able to manage that.