December 30, 2016

 This morning was interesting at work because I was the only one in the department there until eleven o'clock. One librarian was taking a personal day, another was off because she works tomorrow, and neither assistant worked today, so my boss and the other librarian didn't come in until eleven because they were both closing. No offense to my coworkers but it was kind of a nice quiet morning. There wasn't a lot going on in the librarian so I was able to focus on my own stuff.

My friend asked me a reference question last night about the location of a couple towns that no longer exist because they were destroyed when a dam was built. I picture O Brother, Where Art Thou? but I could be wrong. We have county maps but the only thing older than the 1950s, when the towns disappeared, are plat maps, which are hard to read and not very helpful. I did some digging online and came across two really good resources. The first is the Department of Transportation, which has scanned images of state maps going back to 1863. The point is to show the highways I think, but they also show all the towns, including the ones my friend was looking for. There is also a website that has a bunch of scanned maps from around the state and I was able to find a few that also showed the towns my friend was looking for. It was a successful endeavor and I printed out the information and put it in our plat map books for future reference. I have had at least a few instances of people interested in the plat maps and I think the same people would have benefited from the information I found today, so now I'm ready for the future.

I also started coming up with a list of books for my second display next month. I didn't really want to but I am going to do it on New Year's resolutions. I have the main display and I figure that is the topic patrons will be most interested in next month. I'm putting my own twist on the sign, calling the display Lifelong Progress: One Year at a Time, and the background of the sign is a sheet of legal paper titled World Domination, with a big list of all the things needed to accomplish this, most of which are traditional resolutions. I was really close to finishing the sign but have a couple more things I want to add before it is printed.

I made two other signs today. I finished the In Memoriam display sign, getting the last of the celebrity photos and arranging them. There were several celebrities that I hadn't realized had died, so 2016 got a little bit worse in terms of celebrity deaths. I also made a small sign to go on my display that highlights a few of our online resources.

I helped several patrons throughout the day, in person, via chat, and on the phone. It wasn't an overwhelming amount by any means but it was enough to make me feel like I was serving a purpose.

This afternoon the PR lady gave me a quick lesson in how to edit the website. My pages have been set up so I can start adding in registration buttons and information for the first classes. It's going to be a decent amount of work but I am looking forward to it.

But yeah, I had a really good day at work.

On my way home I stopped by my sister's to get a couple things she got me at the grocery store, some empty egg cartons for safe storage of the ornaments she made this year, and some leftover homemade tortilla triangles. Then I went home and had the last of my leftover Christmas pizza for dinner. And the last piece of cake for dessert. Sad to see it go but it was delicious.

With the rest of my night I watched YouTube videos and played Terraria. I was going to watched Netflix but it wasn't working again. I can't remember what day it was when it wasn't working last time but it would surprised me if it was a Friday. Or at least a weekend. I'm wondering if it is a peak time in the neighborhood or just a peak time for Netflix in general. Either way, I ended up spending most of my night listening to music while playing Terraria.

In the game I collected a lot more presents but still didn't get the dog whistle for the puppy pet. I also beat one boss, tried to beat a second one, and crafted some armor and a really cool laser gun out of meteorite ore. The gun uses manna but when you have a full set of meteorite armor it doesn't use any manna, so it's like an unlimited automatic laser machine gun. It looks pretty sweet.

I tried multiple times to fight the dungeon boss. The first time I waited for night to fall (the only time it can be summoned) and a blood moon ended up rising. The second time I actually summoned it but I got on top of it with my slime mount, which just kept bouncing on it dealing damage, and it kept going higher and higher into the air until I fell off. It must have gone beyond its range because its hands fell back down to the ground and it despawned. This was super annoying because I had just taken a few different potions to get me through the fight, so that was a waste. I then tried going into the dungeon anyway but was eventually killed before I got to anything because you can't go too far before killing the boss. There was also a goblin invasion at one point. It was like a perfect storm of the world not wanting me to fight the boss. Maybe next time.

It's nearly one o'clock now but I want to get up early so I can get my laundry done before my coworker's party tomorrow night. We'll see how that goes. I might be taking naps while my laundry goes.