January 31, 2017

 I didn't sleep very well last night. I lost track of how many times I woke up and I think it was mostly due to my room being too hot. I like being cozy but not hot. It's apparently a fine line. It was warm outside today, not quite as warm as yesterday, but I think just to be safe I'm not going to turn my heater on tonight.

I started keeping track of my day but I stopped after writing down the first thing. So that happened. Or didn't happen. My main goal for the day was to come up with display things because the new month starts tomorrow. This morning I came up with a list of one hundred non-fiction either written by or written about African Americans. I don't foresee the display checking out more than ten books throughout the month, so my list is a bit overkill. I also made a sign for my display which looks pretty good if I do say so myself.

My other display is the DVD cart and one of my fellow librarians had the idea of Make War, Not Love, as an anti-Valentines Day theme. I liked it but my boss wasn't sold on the title. I'm still thinking about a new title and I have also decided to turn it into a his and her display, so I will have war/action movies and romantic comedies, the idea being a couple could check out two completely different movies and both be happy. We'll see how it goes. I just need some inspiration so I can make a sign. I played around with having a picture of a couple kissing in front of a sunset with a very transparent picture of an explosion on top of it. I'm not really feeling that though. I just had the idea of having action heroes saying nice things, like Valentine cards for kids. That might be a little too involved. I'll come up with something.

This afternoon I was on the desk for two hours, which was the only time I was on desk all day, and it was very uneventful. I had a couple chats and answered the phone a couple times but that was about it. I spent the most of my time working on the DVD display, with not much to show for it.

There just wasn't much going on today. Pretty much just working on displays, which doesn't leave much to write about.

I finally got around to eating my Chipotle leftovers tonight. That means I will be eating Chipotle three times this week, because tomorrow will be Chipotle night and then I'll have leftovers on Thursday. I'm okay with that.

After dinner I watched YouTube videos and played Tera. I log into Tera every day to get the small log in reward, but today I actually played. They updated the warrior character so I created one and tried it out. I'm still a fan of the brawler but I like the warrior better than whatever character I created last time. I didn't put much effort into that one. I really only tried the warrior tonight because if you get to level fifteen before a certain date you get a loot box that you can open when you hit level sixty-five, which is the max level. It takes so long to max-level a character and I don't know that I want to put that time in again. The leveling is the funnest part, however, because I really lost interest in my brawler once I maxed it out. It's the same with every game. I lost interest in one of the COD: Black Ops games after I stopped prestiging, and it's hard to stay interested in Battlefield because it takes so long to level, mostly because I suck. Leveling is obviously my motivation in games.

On Saturday I'm helping with an outreach thing at the mall so I have to take that time off before the weekend. So, tomorrow I am going in an hour and a half late, at 10:30AM, leaving an hour early, and taking an extra hour at lunch on Thursday. Easy.

Now I'm going to record my audio journal and then maybe consider going to bed. Or maybe I'll read for a bit. Who knows. I'll start with the audio journal and see what happens.

January 30, 2017

 Today started off pretty slow. I checked emails, weeded the last of my current section, started cutting things for our Harry Potter event, and did other things I have since forgotten. I really need to get better about writing things down as they happen.

After lunch I had my meeting with the Children's Department about the scheduling software. It went well. I learned how they use the software, and it sounded pretty much exactly like how we're supposed to use the software. So I'm not sure what's up with people in IT being so annoyed they won't even talk to them about it. The only thing they could think of was how they had been scheduling their staff meeting, which just came to light as being an issue, and they have since changed that. Who knows. I took notes and gathered their questions. This was actually the easiest part of this whole mediation thing. Following the meeting I emailed the IT people to see when they could get together with me and talk about things. That will be the more challenging meeting. At least on paper. We'll see.

When I got back to the desk the rest of the day flew by. I spent at least an hour helping a woman with one of our digital book services. This morphed conversations about other digital resources, watching things from her computer on her TV, watch she likes on Netflix, and our diets. It was an interesting spiral. And I liked it, it made the hour pass.

While that was happening I missed two phone calls and two chats came in. I answered the chats and returned one of the phone calls after the patron left and then composed my email to the IT people. I also helped a patron who was having printer issues on one of our computers. That involved restarting a bunch of stuff and I ended up printing her letter from my computer to save her the time of having to go downstairs because there weren't any available computers upstairs. It ended with another happy patron, so job done.

When I got home I had my leftover pasta and potatoes with a fake chicken sandwich. Delicious. Following dinner I clicked around the internet for awhile and then started watching Captain America: Civil War. I never got around to seeing it when it came out. I've got about thirty minutes left and I'm enjoying it so far. It has made it a bit difficult to process my day and write this, however, because I've been at it for far too long.

Now, I'm going to pause the movie so I can record my audio journal. Then I'll finish the movie and go to bed. Sounds like a solid plan.

January 29, 2017

 This morning my I slept in later than I planned because my bed was especially inviting. This turned my plan to eat pancakes and eggs for breakfast into a plan to eat pancakes and eggs for brunch. And that is what I did. It was my first time making scrambled eggs in quite awhile and I normally just whip up some eggs but today I went with the Betty Crocker recipe which included milk. They turned out delicious. The pancakes turned out better than last time but I'm still having an issue with heat. I had it a lot lower than last time but it was still too hot. I think maybe the pan I use retains too well and gets hotter and hotter as time goes on, rather than sticking at a constant temperature. But I'm getting better. And it is a wonderfully non-stick pan that works great for eggs.

I spent the rest of my day not doing much. I watched YouTube videos, washed dishes, clicked around the internet, and read a little bit. The day kind of disappeared.

Tonight I picked my sister up and we went over to my Dad's house for my brother's birthday. We then drove to a restaurant that I did not know existed until tonight. You learn something new every day. It was a Jamaican-themed restaurant, because the owner was Jamaican, and there wasn't a whole lot on the menu that was veggie friendly. I ended up getting a salad that was topped with salsa, sour cream, red beans, and rice. It was really good. I can't remember the last time I have felt stuffed after eating a salad, probably because it has never happened before, but the one tonight was very filling. Dinner was accompanied by two older women playing music. They mostly played older country songs but they threw in some originals, like one about being famous on YouTube and another about the Oxycontin blues. It was interesting to say the least.

The most entertaining moment of dinner was not the live music. It was my brother's twenty-first birthday so he ordered an alcoholic beverage. The server looked at my brother's ID and said: “Wow, you're new to the game. Life's about to get a lot more expensive for you, brother.” It was pretty funny.

After dinner we went back to my Dad's house so my brother could open his presents. He seemed genuinely interested in the books I got him, which may have been partially due to the alcohol, but I'll take it. We all sat around and talked for awhile and the night ended with myself, my Dad, and my step-mom sitting around my sister's phone watching the main event of the Royal Rumble. It was a definitely throwback to my childhood and as entertaining as I remember. My sister had been a little annoyed about the last minute dinner plans because of the event tonight but was able to watch most of it on her phone. And for once, she was the reason we left Dad's later than planned. Tonight it was 9:45PM.

Also, when my brother went out to move his truck in the garage he shut my trunk for me, because it opened at some point. I really need to disable the trunk button on my remote. I was worried it had been long enough to drain my battery but when I went out to check my car started just fine. Hopefully the same will happen tomorrow morning.

When I got home I ate the soft pretzel bites that my sister gave me from the leftovers that she made my brother. They were really good to begin with but she's getting better each time she makes them.

Now, I'm going to record my audio journal so I can go to bed. As per usual, I'm looking forward to bed.

January 28, 2017

 Last night I had a bunch of cool dreams and I can't remember any of them. Once again.

I slept in a little bit and then got up, got ready, and headed to my Mom's house to do laundry. While that was happening I looked through the five art books I checked out. The more I look through old art books, the more I think all these famous painters were a bunch of perverts. Of the books I looked at today, I would say Balthus was the biggest creep. Lots of naked young girls. Super creep.

When I was done with the art books, I read a little bit, watched Star Trek: Voyager, and created thumbnails for my audio journal videos. They're still private and I don't intend for anyone to ever see them, but I wanted the uniformity of thumbnails. And now I have that. I used Canva because I figured that would be the easiest thing to do. I lost my first effort because it said it was saving, and I saved it multiple times manually, but it wouldn't download and when I tried reloading it I got nada. But it is a simple design so I was able to redo it pretty quickly. Across the top I have the date, on the bottom it says “Audio Journal”, and in the middle there is a logo for the game I am playing in the video. I didn't have any problem finding logos for Farming Simulator 15 or Crashlands and I am hoping I won't have a problem with any games I may switch to in the future.

When I got home I started making dinner. I lost dinner tomorrow because we are going out for my brother's birthday, so instead of making pasta tomorrow, I made it tonight. I wanted to try out the pasta press/cutter I have and redeem my failed attempt at homemade pasta from years ago. After making the dough it had to sit for fifteen minutes, and while that was happening I cut up some red potatoes and tossed them in a bowl with olive oil, rosemary, thyme, and a little lemon pepper.

I had a bit of an issue when I first started using the pasta press so I cut the dough in half and started getting really liberal with the flour to keep it from getting sticky, which helped out considerably. I found that the cutter was more of a scorer and I ended up having to peel each piece of pasta off, but it was still easier than cutting it all by hand. I borrowed a couple little drying racks from my mom, and one of them ended up being too small so I laid half of the pasta across the drying rack I have for dishes that goes across sink. It worked pretty well.

The pasta had to dry out, which was supposed to take about thirty minutes, and the potatoes had to roast for about forty to forty-five minutes, so I did my best to time it all out so they got done at the same time. And I was close. I ended up pulling the potatoes out of the oven right as my pot of water for the pasta started to boil. That ended up working out pretty well because the pasta didn't take very long and it gave the potatoes a chance to cool down a bit. I thought about making a sauce for the pasta but, at least for this first attempt, I didn't want to bury all of my hard work under a sauce. Instead I just threw in some butter, garlic powder, onion powder, and lemon pepper. Both the pasta and the potatoes turned out very well. I was very happy. And I have leftovers.

After dinner I spent the rest of my night watching YouTube videos, playing Farming Simulator 15, and watching The Accountant when I ran out of YouTube videos. In Farming Simulator I bought a bigger tipper and a more powerful tractor that is able to pull it. I'm a big fan of both right now. I need to start selling some things though because it is becoming a bit of a hassle tabbing through all the tractors and combines trying to find the one I want. And then passing it and having to go all the way through the circuit again because as far as I know there isn't a way to go backward. It is still a very good time-sink.

I liked The Accountant. I liked that instead of being some sort of sociopath or psychopath, Ben Affleck's character had a more timely diagnosis. I also liked that he was a socially awkward badass. And I liked finding out who the lady on the phone was. The only thing I didn't like that much was the “reveal” that the antagonist was his brother, because it was obvious from the first time he came on-screen. It was very much a “no duh” kind of thing. I also would have liked to see the use of Ben Affleck's giant gun at the front of his house. That would have been cool.

I played Crashlands again for my audio journal. Still enjoying that game.

Now I'm going to go to bed because it is nearly two o'clock in the morning and I am tired. Fingers crossed for cool dreams tonight.

January 27, 2017

 Good grief. It's eleven o'clock and I'm just getting started with this. Thankfully I took notes today because I would have forgotten most of it by now.

My first priority at work today was to finish untangling the fishing line. It took over an hour but I did finally manage it. I only had to cheat a little bit by untying the knot in the middle of the line where it had broken previously. The line kept getting caught on it, making my task that much harder, so I said screw it and untied the knot. And not too long after that, everything was fixed. As an unnecessary Thank You the librarian I was untangling the line for got me a Chipotle gift card. I couldn't say 'No' because I didn't want to be rude but it really wasn't necessary.

While I worked on that I spoke with my fellow librarians. The boss was gone today and it was a slow morning so it was a little more relaxed. We were talking about work-related things, so it's not like we were screwing off, but we were having fun.

The email was back up and running so I was able to finally send the personalized reading list. It was my fifth one this month. I thought it was six but I finished the sixth one at the end of last month. Either way, five is still a lot.

I started weeding when I was off desk but only got fourteen books in when I got a call from downstairs. The one-on-one trainer had a patron with a backup hard drive and they had some questions. I have a basic understanding of that sort of stuff so I went down there and answered most of their questions. The patron was satisfied so I was happy. And by the time I was done with that it was time for me to leave for lunch.

I sent an email to the head of the Children's department and we set up a meeting on Monday to talk about the room reservation stuff. So that ball is now rolling.

When I got back from lunch I met the head IT guy and one of the other IT people in the tech classroom to get a rundown of how Minecraft works in the library. The hard drive of the computer that the server is on died today, so that was perfect timing. When I got there they were downloading it onto the computer next to it. After a few other issues and a third computer, Minecraft was finally up and running. I could definitely relate because I've had times where there was an update or a random mod that completely ruined things and it took forever to figure out. Depending on who shows up and their Minecraft experience, I think the plan is to start with the tutorial map to get everyone acquainted, and then switch to a regular one so they can play around. This, of course, assuming people will actually show up. After all the Minecraft stuff we sat and talked about video games and social media for awhile before I had to go back up to work the desk.

While on the desk I got a call from an old lady who was hosting her group in the auditorium sometime in the future and wanted to know how big the tables were so she could buy the right size tablecloth. I thought that was adorable. I told her I didn't know the size of the tables but I had a ruler and I would go measure them. She was willing to be put on hold so I ran over to the auditorium with a ruler. When I got back she was very thankful, which is always appreciated.

I helped a girl figure out the printer and while I was looking up her account she complimented the color of my jacket. I thanked her and said I had sheets that were the same color and it was fantastic. Afterward I thought about it and thought it was probably weird mentioning my green sheets, but I got a little excited about someone who had a similar appreciation for the color of my jacket.

I spent the last hour of my shift weeding a little bit. I added thirty-eight more books to my total today. I'm so close to finishing my latest section. It will be nice to get a section with normal size books. I'm tired of lifting all of the art books.

For dinner tonight I had the leftovers from the brown rice and roasted vegetables I made on Wednesday. Still tasty. I then spent the rest of my night watching YouTube videos, finishing the third season of The Librarians, and getting sucked into Farming Simulator 15. Which I continued to do even while writing this, which is why it is now almost 12:30AM. I bought a new field, a loading wagon so I could clean up the hay that was outside my fields, and the giant beet harvester because it was on sale. It looks so freaking cool and it allows me to hire a worker. The workers is kind of dumb and gets stuck a lot, and missed a bunch, but it is still better than not being able to hire a worker. And it controls much better than the lower tier stuff, so I can actually drive it without getting super frustrated.

Now I'm going to stop typing so I can record my audio journal and go to bed. It is late and I have to wake up so I can go do laundry in the morning. I should really save up for my own washer and dryer.

January 26, 2017

 Today is one of those days where I knew I should have been writing things down but then I didn't. So it was like most days.

I was only on desk for two hours today so I had a lot of time to do other random things. One of those things was weeding. I weeded a whole bunch. Somewhere around 150 books. That's a lot of books. And it was quite a bit more than that in pounds because they were all giant art books. I think I ended up taking three carts of books upstairs. I got my workout in today and my hands and wrists are a bit sore from lifting all the books. I had to take them off the shelf and put them on my cart, move them from my cart to a table so I could load up my cart again, move them from the table to the desk so I could withdraw them, and then move them to another cart so I could take them upstairs. I hurt a little.

I finished the latest personalized reading list but wasn't able to email it to the patron because at some point during the day our staff email stopped working. I started writing a help desk ticket for it but then got sidetracked before I could finish it, so that's on my list for tomorrow.

I printed out a copy of the instruction book for state taxes, put each page in clear sheet protector things, put them in a three-ring notebook, and then took it upstairs so that it could be cataloged. We'll keep it at the Reference desk and people will be able to check it out if they need to.

We finally got the 1040 instruction book, three big boxes of them, so I'm glad I brought a cart with me to the mail room. I believe that is the last tax-related thing we were waiting on so now we just have to worry about running out of them. Fingers crossed.

I spent the last hour of work (and about fifteen minutes after work) trying to get giant knots out of fishing line. I ended up having to call it a night when I got to the last little bit because tonight was Chipotle night and I was already running late. It is part of a thing for an event next week and after they measured it out and tied intention knots in it, they just wrapped it around their hand or something so it was in a circle. This led to it turning into a tangled mess. It would have been much easier to just measure out a new length of fishing line but I like a challenge and it had already been a long and productive day. I got really close to getting it all sorted out and I wanted to stay until I finished it but I figured it would give me something to do while I'm on desk tomorrow.

I had to drive around the block before getting a parking spot and there was a line past the door at Chipotle by the time I got there. But that is kind of what I was expecting. As for the food, it tasted like Chipotle. I was hungry but the taste was nothing to write home about. The YouTube videos I showed after dinner went over pretty well and then we sat at the table and talked until 9:00PM when I called it a night so I could get home and write this. It has been a tad slow going because it is 10:30PM at the moment and I still need to record my audio journal.

I also just checked the work schedule. No one is scheduled to open tomorrow and the boss is off because she works the weekend. I just texted one of the other librarians to see if she knows of any schedule changes that didn't get updated on the online schedule. Haven't heard back so we'll see. If I don't hear back tonight I'll just plan on waking up early and going in at eight o'clock instead of nine o'clock. It will at least mean I'll get off at five o'clock.

Now I'm going to record my audio journal while playing Crashlands and then go to bed. I'm not all that tired at the moment (although I just yawned as I said that). I'm looking forward to the weekend because I can use a little break. I've also got some more art books to look through. And some food to cook.

January 25, 2017

 Waking up this morning was rough. I got about six hours of sleep and I am not a six hours of sleep kind of person. It took a lot of effort to just sit up after ignoring my alarm clock for awhile.

Work today was fairly uneventful. And I'm not just saying that because it's almost 10:30PM and I still need to record my audio journal before I can go to sleep.

I opened and did all the normal opening stuff. We got another personalized reading list request and I think it had been there since Monday, so I took it because I felt like I needed something to do. I think it is my sixth or seventh reading list I have done this month. Possibly a new record for me. I nearly finished it today, and I basically did because I have all the books, I'm just trying to decide between two books for the last book in the list.

I got the tax posters from the IRS today so I put those up down by our tax forms. Twice. For the first go I went down to the basement and got two foam board things, used binder clips to lock them together so I could stand it on the table, and pinned the posters on both sides. Not too long after I got it set up my boss got to work and went to take a look at it. She said her favorite part was the posters, which is great but I had nothing to do with the posters. When I came back from lunch she had found another version of foam board thing that she liked better because it didn't need to be binder-clipped together. I think mine was more stable but whatever. I also printed out more of the tax help handouts because those are going out left and right.

I came up with a list and pulled more books for the Inspirational display because it was looking a little low. I should now be set on both of my displays through the end of the month.

And I think that was pretty much my day at work. I know there were other things that I am now forgetting but we have learned that is what happens when I don't take notes while things are happening.

After work I went to Target to get a few things. I basically needed to restock on lunch stuff. I'm good on dinner stuff for a bit. Then I stopped by my Mom's house to pick up the books I had delivered today. I got a few books for my brother's upcoming birthday and I got the Betty Crocker cookbook that we recently got at the library. I went through the library copy before it was added into the collection and took a bunch of pictures. I ended up using one of those pictures to make pancakes on Monday. It has so much good information so I decided I should probably get it for myself. It would be much easier than scrolling through pictures on my phone.

When I got home I cooked dinner. I recreated the roasted vegetables with brown rice recipe I made with my Hello Fresh box. The only differences were me using dried herbs and vegetable broth instead of vegetable concentrate. Despite that, it turned out pretty tasty. I'm not a fan of making the sauce for it because as it simmers it spits everywhere and that means oil gets all over the stovetop. Not a fan. But the food was good and I pretty much nailed the proportions because I had a big bowl tonight and I have a big bowl of leftovers. This weekend maybe I want to make the roasted red potatoes with a sour cream sauce. Or come up with something for an acorn squash. My Dad and sister went down to see my grandma and aunt today and came back with a hot pad for me and an acorn squash. There are basic preparation instructions in my new cookbook, so I might just do that, but I'm going to look around and see if it is good in something, like chili or something.

With the rest of my night I watched YouTube videos and played Farming Simulator 15. I ended up getting an increased demand for canola the freight yard twice. I recently sold my giant stash of canola, which is unfortunate, but I had a decent amount saved up and was able to get back up to $400,000 with the first demand. Right now I'm harvesting my crops again to get in on the second demand. Raking in the big bucks.

Now I'm going to stop writing this because it is almost 11:30PM and I need to record my audio journal so I can go to sleep.

January 24, 2017

 This morning I slept in a little bit, got ready, and then watched YouTube videos for awhile before eating lunch and going to work.

My first project when I got to work was updating the class website. Turns out the class was this afternoon, not Thursday, so I spent two hours adding links and resources to the page. It took that long because I needed to come up with what I wanted on the page and then spent most of the time trying to format it. The formatting is kind of a pain in the butt. I'm not a fan. I also made a half-sheet handout. It was a productive two hours.

And then we had the class. Five people showed up and they all enjoyed the class. I ended up talking about one of our digital resources, which I hadn't planned on, but I basically gave a very broad overview and compared and contrasted it to the first resource we talked about. It went alright. Before we could get everyone logged into the first website I had to go out and unblock, update, and reset passwords for three of the patrons so they could actually use the website. But that was the only hiccup.

Before the class my boss volunteered me to make a sign for the small bookstore in the library. I was okay with that because I like being creative. When I got back from the class I found out my boss had volunteered me for something else. It involves our room scheduling software. I was volunteered to be in charge of training the staff. This apparently instantly pissed off one of the IT people because I guess she wanted to do the training. My boss told me that for the past fifteen years every time someone wanted to be trained on something, like the room scheduling software, she would always say that wasn't part of her job. But now when I have been put in charge of it, she has become very interested. So that will create a fun tension.

I guess one of the annoyances that IT has about the software is that the Children's department tends to use the Event scheduling option when reserving a room for a meeting instead of using the Room Reserve option. Rather than find out why they're doing this, or even just talking to them about it at all, they just sit and stew about it. At least that is what I was told. So my first task was to find out why the Children's department favors the one option over the other and convey that information to the IT people and hopefully find some common ground. I started by emailing the lady I kind of worked with for the tutorial videos a little while ago and the teen librarian. I am hoping they can point me in the right direction.

Tonight I made the sign for the little bookstore, came up with a list of books for one of my displays, went and grabbed those books, and put them on my display. I also watched a hundred usability videos because I hadn't done that at all this month. But now I'm caught up.

When I got home I recorded my audio journal while playing Crashlands and then continued watching the third season of The Librarians. I'm nearly done with the season and that makes me a little sad. I might have to restart from the first season again. It is such a good show.

Now I'm going to call it a day because it is late and I have to open in the morning. Not a fan of having to close at 9:00PM and then be back at 8:00AM the next morning. Such is life. At least I will get off at 5:00PM tomorrow.

January 23, 2017

 This morning I did not set my alarm clock and it was fantastic. I only slept in until 8:30AM but it is always nice not waking up to an alarm. Once I was fully awake I went and grabbed my phone and got back in bed. I had the urge for pancakes so I scrolled through my phone until I found the picture of the recipe I took from the Betty Crocker cookbook. It took me a little bit to talk myself into it but I eventually got up and went to the kitchen.

I followed the recipe except for the addition of vanilla extract because that is a thing I have seen in other recipes. It was surprisingly easy to make the batter, though I wasn't really expecting it to be too terribly hard. The recipe did say it was supposed to make nine pancakes but I only got four. Guess I should have been making much smaller pancakes. Regardless, it was a mostly successful first attempt at pancakes from scratch. My only problem came from a pan that was too hot. I got a tad confused with the knob for the burner (thinking it was set up like the double burner which uses half the knob for each burner, when it was a single burner using the whole knob) so instead of medium high I was much closer to high. That left some undercooked spots in a couple of the pancakes but other than that they were very tasty. And for the rest of the day my house smelled like pancakes. Still does. I'm okay with that.

After breakfast I eventually got ready, packed up, and headed to my Mom's house to do a load of laundry. While that was going I looked through the other three art books I checked out. I am impressed by Renaissance art but it's not something I would hang on my wall. There's a lot of creepy stuff, and clothes were obviously hard to come by back then. I also read more of Sphere and watched Star Trek: Voyager.

When I got home I spent the rest of my day, watching YouTube videos, playing Farming Simulator 15, and finishing the second season of The Librarians. In Farming Simulator 15 I sold all my stockpiled canola and went on a spending spree. I bought a new combine, a header, a tractor, a combination cultivator/sower, and the topper and harvester for beets. The combine is great because the internal storage is about twice as much and the header for it is about twice as wide as my old combine and header. It harvests a field so quickly. As does the combination cultivator/sower. It is wider than my cultivator and sower and it does both jobs at the same time. I also like the new tractor because it is more powerful and, among other things, goes faster than six miles an hour when I'm pulling my tipper up a slight incline.

The only thing I'm not a fan of is the beet harvesting. It is a huge pain in the butt and it can't be hired out. The harvester has a wonky connection which allows for tight turns but it is incredibly hard to back up without jack-knifing it. Also, with the topper on the front, it can't make tight turns. And the harvester has a very small capacity. The beets are so densely planted that I can get about two or three rows before I have to unload into the tipper. This requires me to switch to my tractor with the tipper, unload, get back into the tractor with the beet stuff, turn on the harvester, switch to the topper, lower the topper, and turn the topper on. It is a very convoluted, inefficient process that can't be hired out. The most annoying part is really the turning radius, though. I can't cleanly harvest the field and that's annoying.

For my audio journal tonight I played Crashlands again. Still enjoying that game.

January 22, 2017

 Today I wrote things down so I would remember what to write at the end of the day. A habit I should get into more often.

I slept in a little bit this morning, then I got up, got ready, and went to pick my sister up so we could go to the grocery store. I was armed with the list I made last night and we slowly worked our way through the store, starting in produce. When I was making my list I didn't really separate things out by recipe, or even make a note of what recipes I was pulling from. So hopefully I got everything for at least a recipe or two. It was all a bit overwhelming so I am glad my sister was there to point things out and kind of explain the ins and outs of grocery shopping like an adult. It did feel very grown up and I am looking forward to actually cooking something from a recipe. Also, while in the produce section I ran into one of my fellow librarians.

When I got home I unpacked all my stuff, making my kitchen look more like a kitchen, and then I ate lunch and watched YouTube videos before going to work.

At work I got a lot of stuff done. I started by counting money and thankfully it wasn't one of the confusing money days. We recently added a larger beginning balance and maybe that has made it easier. Or I just got lucky two days in a row.

I refilled the tax instruction books because those are moving like hot cakes. People are still interested in the 1040 instruction books but they're in the mail. I would imagine they'll be in sometime this week. Hopefully.

I finally cleaned out and organized my big drawer. I tried to have sections but it was really just random piles of papers that eventually started to overlap and turn into one big pile. So, I pulled everything out, went through it, threw out stuff I didn't need, and divided everything else among several labeled folders which were then put into a holder. There is so much room for activities now. We'll see how long it lasts.

I updated all my homebound spreadsheets with the comments I got on the last round of bookmarks. That is usually done when we get back or the day after but I apparently got distracted. Or maybe forgot until I started cleaning out my drawer.

I formatted the new ILL book kit spreadsheet and posted it on the website. It's nothing spectacular but it does look better than the previous version. I also wrote and posted my incident report from yesterday. And I updated the Facebook class webpage. And updated class attendance records and collected feedback. Lots of updating and posting.

I caught up with chat statistics, which I haven't done since the beginning of the month. I still need to watch the website usability videos for the month but I should be able to get that done this week sometime.

The church group that overstayed their welcome the last Sunday I worked actually left early today, which was considerate because I spent at least a couple hours trying to work up the nerve to confront them at the end of the day again. I'm not a fan of confrontation. But I'm also not a fan of people are inconsiderate of other people's time.

January 21, 2017

 Today wasn't quite the quiet day I had hoped for. This morning I had to write an incident report and my coworker had to write one. Mine was related to an incident in the technology center when a patron was singing to himself, the patron next to him asked him to stop, and the singer replied as he stormed out of the library: “Next time don't be so fucking rude. That's like me asking you to stop being you.” A great response but not something that should be shouted in the library. Afterward the patron who was yelled at went and talked to one of the ladies in circulation because she was shaken up and said the person working in the tech center wasn't doing his job. She wanted to talk to me (because I was in charge of the building) but I had stepped away from the desk for a minute and by the time I got downstairs she had gone to lunch but said she would be back. She never came back. I went and spoke with the person working in the tech center and he said he had followed the man after he shouted to make sure he actually left and he asked the woman if she was alright. She said she was (before going to complain about him to the lady in circulation). He also said she had been a little blunt when asking the other patron to stop singing. She didn't deserve the reaction she got but she also wasn't entirely innocent.

My coworker had to write an incident report about a patron in the reading room who was talking on his cell phone and then became a tad belligerent when someone asked him to stop. He is one of our regular patrons and generally a very quiet person, usually just falling asleep, but today he must have been a little more drunk than usual. My coworker spoke with him about it and said he would be asked to leave if there were anymore disturbances. Not too much later he did have to go talk to the patron again because he was falling asleep. Technically a separate offense so he got to spend the rest of the day in the library. All this happened during my lunch break so I got to field a few phone calls while eating my Cheez-Its.

Things calmed down this afternoon, thankfully. I would say it took a positive turn when a small boy came and gave me a flower. His mom was there with his other young siblings, giving them flowers to give to the other patrons while telling them to have a nice day. Simple acts of kindness. Our belligerent morning patrons could have used a flower and a kind word.

Today I finished the personalized reading list I started yesterday. I also noticed that the librarian who is currently on vacation had signed up for a personalized reading list that is due on Monday but had never marked that it was completed. I texted her to see if she had finished it before she left, and she hadn't, so I tracked down the original request and spent a decent amount of time creating a list. It was for a teen and when I later showed it to the teen librarian she said I did a pretty good job, so that's pretty cool. Hopefully the patron likes it.

I also made some changes to the personalized reading list notebook. I made a sheet to go on the outside of it where we could mark down how many lists are pending and, more importantly, the due dates for the current outstanding requests. The idea being that we will hopefully not encounter another instance of finding out a list has been sitting in the notebook, unclaimed, for nearly two weeks, and it is due in two days. I originally put the sheet in a plastic sleeve and taped it to the front of the notebook but then realized the notebook with the old lists had the plastic sleeve cover thing going on, so I swapped out notebooks. It looked a lot better and I figured it would last longer. I also printed out a label to slide into the spine so people would know the old list notebook was now the new list notebook. I think the front sheet can be improved, so the current one is just a rough draft, but it is a start.

And we'll say that was pretty much my day at work. I also helped patrons find books and another patron use the computers. And I spent the last little bit of work winding down a little bit and talking to my coworker about a bunch of random things. It had been a long day.

There was a teen event tonight after the library closed and for the last thirty minutes before we closed I had to smell the pizza they had ordered for the event. So my dinner plans changed and I stopped by Little Caesar's on my way home. The pizza had obviously been sitting there for a little while but it was still delicious.

I spent the rest of my night watching YouTube videos and making a grocery list. Now I'm watching season two of The Librarians. I also played a tiny bit of Crashlands and I am going to jump back into it as soon as I finish this so I can record my audio journal and go to bed. My sister and I are going to the grocery store tomorrow at ten o'clock, which means I can sleep in a little bit. It will also hopefully be my first of many trips to the grocery store because I will start to cook for myself more often. Fingers crossed.

January 20, 2017

 This morning I woke up at eight o'clock, which is earlier than I like on days where I don't have to work but I had a haircut this morning. Which I scheduled as incentive to actually get up and not sleep through the morning, so it worked.

While talking with the lady who cuts my hair, I mentioned how popular the jigsaws at the library were and she asked if we needed any more. I said we did because we were having to put the same puzzles out over and over again. She said she had a box of ten puzzles that she got for her mom but the pieces were too small for her. I figured she would bring the box in and I would pick it up next month when I got my hair cut again. But she ended up having the box with her because she was going to give it to one of her other clients, who was going to take it to the senior center. She told me that would also be a good place to go for puzzles because they apparently sell them for $0.25 a puzzle. That is really good to know. We could go buy a bunch, use them one or twice, and take them back so they could be sold to someone else. It was a very informative haircut.

I left there shortly before ten o'clock so I took the long way to my back because they don't open until ten o'clock, because they're a great bank. When I got there I was finally able to deposit my Christmas check and the check my friend gave me to repay the loan I gave him several years ago. From there I picked up a breakfast toaster from Sonic because I hadn't had time for breakfast and I was starving. Then I headed to my Mom's to do laundry.

While my laundry was going I looked through all the art books I checked out and watched the presidential inauguration. My interest in watching was similar to the interest of those who watch NASCAR for the crashes. Regardless of party affiliation it still seems unbelievable. It's not because he is a Republican (at least at the moment), it's because he is Donald Trump. I texted my friend and sister during his speech that he needed to learn how to inhale through his mouth because his really loud nose breathing was really distracting. And my initial impression of his speech, as texted to my friend, was: “His speech was basically a paint-by-numbers, hodge podge of word salad, out of place in our time period.” It seemed like he was just saying words to say that he said them, regardless of whether or not they were in the right order. And his insular view of the United States, seemingly ignorant of the fact that we aren't capable of being a self-sustaining country in this modern world of global economics and politics, was astonishing. It sounds like he basically wants to model our economy and existence on North Korea. I don't think that's working too well for them so I'm not sure where the inspiration comes from.

When all the inauguration stuff got boring I switched over to Star Trek: The Next Generation because it is a great show and it makes me happy, which I needed after the inauguration. I needed to see people acting logically and with compassion for others, regardless of their appearance or who they were. I shouldn't have to abandon the real world and turn to science fiction to find that.

I also read more of Sphere by Michael Crichton, which I have been trying to get through for quite awhile. It's not because it's a bad book, I am actually enjoying it, I am just highly distractable. And I keep checking out other books.

After my laundry was done I packed up and headed home. I spent the rest of the afternoon watching YouTube videos and playing Farming Simulator 15. I didn't make any accidental $100,000 purchases today so I would say it was a success. I also got pretty good at efficiency, often having my combine, cultivator, and sower all working on the same field at one time, occasionally rushing in with my sprayer, so there wasn't any downtime. Like a fine oiled machine. I think after my next round of harvesting I want to dip into beets. This time I will actually buy the appropriate machinery to harvest them.

I don't know if I'm going through a really late growth spurt or what but after being really hungry this morning and having to get Sonic, and then really hungry two hours later for lunch, I was also really hungry when dinner rolled around. Normally I'm eating just because it is the time when I should be eating, but today my decisions were definitely based on hunger. It was interesting.

I changed up the game I played while recording my audio journal, this time going with Crashlands, and in the process of making sure the game audio was low enough, I discovered that my microphone wasn't working in OBS. I unplugged my microphone yesterday and it apparently wasn't automatically detected when I plugged it back in. When I checked the video I made yesterday, there was only low game sounds, none of my talking. Kind of annoying. Thankfully, Audacity is smarter than OBS and the actual audio recording was fine. In the future I will be more observant.

Crashlands was fun. I haven't played it in quite awhile, so I had basically forgotten all the missions I was in the middle of and what everything was called. But it slowly started coming back to me, thanks to the Wiki. And even without knowing exactly what I needed to be doing, it is a great game to just zone out and play. I love being able to just run around and collect things without having to worry about inventory management. Having to manage my inventory is the worst feature in any video game. I hate it and I love that I can carry all the things in Crashlands and not worry about having to decide to drop something in order to pick something else up. It's great.

Now I'm going to go to bed because it is after midnight and I have to wake up early to go to work tomorrow. I have a personalized reading list to look forward to and formatting a spreadsheet of ILL book kits. Hopefully it will be a nice, quiet day.

January 19, 2017

 It is nearly midnight and I have to wake up for a haircut in the morning, so let's make this quick.

Today went by very slowly. I'm not sure why that was because I was fairly busy all day. I learned how to use the folding machine upstairs, which allowed me to fold ninety-nine brochures in less than five minutes instead of five hours. I'm definitely okay with that.

I finalized my blog post about the tax forms and assistants programs and got that posted to the library's blog. I don't know how many people actually look at that but if they do, they now know more about our tax situation.

I finished a personalized reading list, which I had kind of forgotten about. It was the one that was mostly interested in non-fiction Christian books. Surprisingly that is not my wheelhouse but I think I did a pretty decent job. I put a lot of thought into it and hopefully the patron finds it useful.

I also started another personalized reading list because when I opened up the binder to add my list I noticed that one of the two pending requests is due on Saturday. Why it has been sitting there for two weeks without being claimed, I do not know. I'm pretty sure I've done two in that time. I think this weekend I'm going to make a sheet to put on the outside of the binder where we can write down the due dates of pending requests. At the moment we just put a sticky note on the front with the number of pending requests. This is important but not terribly informative. I would like to avoid situations where a request goes unnoticed because no one checks the due date. It will be much harder to miss if it is on the outside of the binder.

Speaking of the list, I managed to get six of the ten books picked out. It's kind of an annoying list the patron was not very helpful. They ticked nearly all the boxes under Fiction and close to all of them for Non-Fiction. So apparently they like everything and aren't particularly interested in anything specific. Thanks for narrowing it down for me. A lot of that has to do with the questions we ask, which allow patrons to be way too broad. The patrons do have an option though to be more specific, listing favorite books and authors. So not all the blame falls on us. In this case, given the tight deadline, it might be for the best that the patron wasn't specific. I was a bit overwhelmed by it at first but then I just started picking popular books from various genres that I thought looked interesting. I'm doing five Fiction and five Non-Fiction because they couldn't even indicate a preference there, either, so we'll see how it goes. And really, I'll never know how it goes because I have yet to hear back from any of the patrons I have spent hours creating lists for. I'm not sure that patrons realize how much work goes into stuff like this.

An older lady came in today and wanted books on surgical instruments because she was going to be tested on them and she wanted to make sure she remembered them all. She seemed at least a decade past retirement so I'm not sure what kind of situation would require this sort of test but whatever. The only books we had were on the history of surgery, which were interesting but none of them had pictures of surgical instruments.

I managed to find some pretty good guides online but the lady said she didn't use computers. That was her only option though so I talked her into it. I got her logged into a computer, opened the browser, did a searched and opened up a few different tabs, and then spent a decent amount of time showing her how to use the mouse. It was very reminiscent of helping kindergarteners when they first came to the computer lab. I only had to help her one other time with the mouse, and one of the other librarians had to help her switch tabs when I was at lunch, but she managed to get all the information she needed, so I would say it was a success.

I refilled the Inspirational display today and withing ten minutes two or three books had already checked out. Not bad. I'm not going to win any checkout awards this month but both of my displays are doing alright. I can't complain.

And we'll say that was my day at work. At least what I can remember of it. Or feel like writing about.

When I got home I had my leftover Chipotle and watched YouTube videos. I also playing Farming Simulator 15. I got tired of constantly having to switch out implements on tractors so I broke down and bought another tractor. I was tempted to get the same one I already have but I decided to go with the one that I could get the front-loader attachment for. So I did, and I also bought the front-loader and pallet fork so I can now do missions that require it. I also accidentally bought two solar panels. I only wanted one but got confused on the placement screen and clicked, which apparently committed me to a second panel. But they were on sale so it was only a $100,000 mistake. Good grief. Live and learn.

Now I'm going to go to bed because I've been tired for at least a few hours and I have to wake up early for a haircut. Following the haircut I want to go to the bank and then I'm going to my Mom's house to do laundry. While that does it's thing I want to watch Star Trek, if it's on TV, and look through the art books I checked out tonight. It should be a fairly boring day. I'm okay with that.

January 18, 2017

 When I got to work I was on desk for two hours. I spent that time helping the occasional patron and writing a blog post about taxes. A blog post that no one will probably read because it is long and boring.

Following my desk time I tried to be productive. I took three small carts of books upstairs. I took the first one up and then when I brought the next two I told the lady responsible for processing them that it looked like she wanted more books. She responded that looks can be deceiving. Pretty funny. I also called my homebound patrons and put out some tax handouts. There might have been something else in there but the morning really flew by.

On my way back from lunch there was a school bus up ahead of me. I am quite certain that it was a bus full of kids from the school I worked at. And one of the kids in the back, who I recognized, ended up having a dance-off with the passenger in the car immediately behind them. I didn't see how old the people in the car were but they were definitely participating and they waved goodbye to each other when the car had to turn off. It was pretty great.

After lunch we went out to deliver books. My first patron ended up not being home. I walked back to the van but the other librarian was still in talking to her patron and she had the key so I was left standing by the van for at least ten minutes. Thankfully it was in the low 50s today but I was in the shade and the breeze was a tad chilly. My jacket isn't made for breezes. I gave her crap about that for the rest of the day. Frost bite and the loss of a toe were involved.

We skipped my second patron because he had moved from rehab back into the hospital, which is unfortunate.

In the first nursing home one of my patrons was in bed when I knocked on the door. I needed to find one book that she's had out for at least a few months now but I couldn't dig around her room. And when we got back I found out another book was missing from her bag. So that's another one to worry about.

My last patron had some friends over and they were cooking. This is the patron that doesn't see very well and when I walked in she was wearing a headlamp, I presume to help her see whatever she was working on. I told her it looked like she was ready to go spelunking which she thought was pretty funny.

When we got back from delivering books we went through all of the old books and left them for circulation. Then we eventually set up for the small birthday party as soon as the librarian whose birthday we were celebrating went to dinner. I was in charge of covering her assigned cabinet drawer in wrapping paper. I took that job seriously and was very precise about it. It turned out well. When the librarian got back from dinner she was really surprised, mostly because her birthday isn't until next week so she wasn't expecting it. We did it today, however, because she is taking next week off and today was the only day everyone could be at work at the same time. My sister's peanut butter bars topped with chocolate were a big hit. Everyone had at least two and some had more, so I would say that is a plus. They also all wanted the recipe.

The party happened when I was supposed to get off so I hung around for a little bit and then went to pick up Chipotle. My mom had other plans so my sister came over to my house and we ate Chipotle and watched The Big Fat Quiz of 2016. I always enjoy those. It has also gotten me in the mood for 8 Out of Ten Cats does Countdown. It has been far too long since I've seen that show.

The rest of the night I watched some more YouTube and then started writing this. Now I'm going to record my audio journal. I will once again be playing Farming Simulator 15. Tomorrow I have to open and I'm not looking forward to that. Getting off at five o'clock is nice but getting there at eight o'clock is less desirable.

January 17, 2017

 Today was another fast day. I spent a decent chunk of my day weeding. I don't know how many books I looked at but I ended up weeding over one hundred books, moving out of the how-to paint books and into the books about painters. We have a lot of painting books. They are often big and heavy, which is a pretty good reason for why they don't check out as often as they should. The instructional books are often thin, which means a lot get crammed onto the shelves, making everything look cluttered and overwhelming. The shelves are slowly starting to look better.

I wasn't on desk that much today and when I was I kept getting sidetracked by other things, like helping patrons, so I didn't get through scanning all my weeded books until six o'clock, which is when I got off from work. I filled up three of the small carts with books so it's not surprising. It was also mildly exhausting because of how big all the books were. I feel a little bit better about not getting a chance to weed in quite awhile. I still have more to go but I'm closer to getting done.

This afternoon we had our first tech drop-in and I was a little nervous that no one would show up. That ended up being unnecessary because we had three people that were there for the first hour and a half and a fourth person showed up for the last half hour. And I think it went really well. I spent most of my time helping one of the ladies with her laptop. Most of her problems ended up being related to her laptop being in tablet mode, which took me forever to stumble across. That ended up fixing her problem with things opening in side-by-side view and her calculator being humongous. I feel like that was an issue on one of the computers in the lab during our Windows 10 class. For the longest time I thought she had a version of Windows 8 because everything looked and behaved so weirdly. It was like night and day turning tablet mode off. The other librarian and the volunteer helped the other patrons with their phones and Facebook. I think at the beginning the patrons were all uncertain about what to expect from the drop-in thing, and we were too, but they all walked away really happy. Which made me happy because I wasn't sure how it was all going to work out. Hopefully next month goes just as well.

And that was pretty much my day. Weeding and helping patrons as the tech drop-in. I also got my first business cards today. That was kind of cool. I've never had a business card before and I've always wanted one. They aren't as cool I would have made but we're still kind of uptight at the library when it comes to certain things. A second example being the small picture of a puppy I put next to the tax forms. It apparently wasn't professional. I don't understand that, and I think the patrons probably liked it, but you've got to pick your battles.

Tonight I had the last of the homemade pizza. This was exciting because I had completely forgotten I had pizza left. I had planned on having a fake chicken sandwich. I was also going to have rice but both boxes I had required twenty-five minutes to cook. That seems a bit crazy but I'll end up making them at some point, just not tonight.

After dinner I watched YouTube videos and looked through a couple art books I brought home from my weeding today. I also finished reading In Real Life by Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang. I liked it. It definitely simplified the issue of gold farming in video games and was very idealistic, but it's a graphic novel for teens and had a positive message, so I'm not going to judge it too harshly. I also liked the art style.

My sister stopped by with the treats she made for the birthday thing we're doing tomorrow at work. They are a peanut butter thing with a thick layer of chocolate on top. And they are really good. Not surprising.

Now I'm going to stop typing this so I can record my audio journal. And then go to bed because sleep is nice.

January 16, 2017

 Last night I slept better than I have slept in a really long time. It was fantastic and I'm not entirely sure why, which is unfortunate because I would like to recreate the perfect storm of variables every night. I also had a lot of cool dreams. But I don't remember a single one, which is also unfortunate.

I went to work at noon and the day went by really fast. My main goal was to finish the personalized reading list that was due on Wednesday. I succeeded. I was on desk four hours today and there wasn't a lot of patron interaction so I had plenty of time to work on stuff. And to continue the recent popularity of personalized reading lists, we got two more over the weekend. So after I finished the one, I started a second. They wanted primarily non-fiction so I decided to take it because I think I read the most non-fiction in the department. They also wanted primarily religious stuff, which really isn't my thing, but it has been interesting coming up with the list.

I helped move a heavy table to the area where the short shelves used to be upstairs. They moved a couch and two stuffed chairs over there and then we moved the table that was kind of just hanging out in the middle of the floor. The table looks better where it is now and as a whole, the new area looks way better than it did with the short shelves. I like it.

Tonight I finished pulling homebound books. The assistant over the weekend was able to pull books for five of my patrons and got all the processing done, so that made my job much easier. It took me about forty-five minutes to get the books pulled and I spent the rest of the night checking them out, updating spreadsheets, and making bookmarks. Tomorrow I can get them bagged up and I'll be all set.

I finished making the tax handout today and just need to print it out. I was also asked to write a blog post about the tax stuff in general. That made me feel a bit anxious because I don't really feel that informed about the tax stuff. I was told I would be taking over it, and was shown how to order the forms, but that was about it. I think I'm just going to restate the information that is on the handout.

And I think that was pretty much my day. There really wasn't a lot going on and I spent most my time on only a few different things. Not a very exciting day when it comes to writing about it. Or talking about it. My audio journal was particularly short tonight. There just wasn't much to talk about. I played Farming Simulator 15 as I recorded it. I was going to play Galaga but it was a little difficult to do that and talk at the same time. There is also a lot of keyboard clicking which probably gets picked up on the microphone. I might figure it out in the future.

Now I'm going to go to bed. Fingers crossed for another night of great sleep.

January 15, 2017

 This morning I woke up around nine o'clock and then spent the rest of the morning reading books in bed. It would be nice if I could do that every day.

After lunch I watched YouTube videos for awhile and then finally got around to taking down my Christmas stuff. I don't know how long it took but I packed up all the ornaments, my tree, the Christmas houses, train set, and everything on the mantel. I took all of it downstairs, moved the table the tree was on back into my office, and set up the round table I used to do my ironing on. For the time being I have it set up outside my kitchen. Eventually I would like to get a rectangular table to sit there, possibly swapping out one of my desk tables if I get a longer desk.

The library ended up being closed today but I don't think the weather was half as bad as predicted. It looked like there was a thin layer of ice on everything and I think it may have rained a bit off and on throughout the day. It seemed like it ended up just being a wet day rather than an icy day, but it was projected to be bad throughout the entire day so I understand why the library was closed. It looks like there may be more coming so we'll see.

I played Mandagon because I was interested in it for a possible video game discussion. It took maybe forty-five minutes to beat and I'm not sure that it has enough content. There are little bits of text throughout that hint at what is happening but I'm not sure if that is enough. Forty-five minutes isn't bad for the time frame of the discussion but that would leave a lot of actual discussion time to fill. It might be good if I could find a game with a similar theme so we could play parts of both. I don't know, I still need to think about it.

Along with the pizza I was going to have potato soup for dinner because I have two different bags of potato soup mix. Unfortunately, both of them have natural chicken flavor in them. It's pretty far down the ingredients list, and the odds are good I've eaten it before, but I don't plan on knowingly eating it. So it looks like if I want to eat potato soup I'll need to make it myself. Instead I just had pizza, which was still delicious.

I watched The Revenant tonight because of watching part of Jeremiah Johnson the other day and this morning I read a story about Daniel Boone, which got me in an old-timey kind of mood. It was a brutal movie, just one thing after another. Very intense. I liked it but I don't know that I will watch it again any time soon. Now I just need to watch Jeremiah Johnson all the way through again.

Following the movie I started watching the first season of Beyond. It's got me intrigued. I think I like it but I'm not entirely sure yet. It will really depend on the mystery. I do like that it is more face-paced than The OA.

Now I'm going to record my audio journal and play Farming Simulator 15. I think it was yesterday that I bought another field, bringing me up to five. Today I got caught up waiting on my sower so I bought a second one. I wanted to get one of the big ones that are a sower and a cultivator at the same time but it requires a tractor that costs over $200k, so that's going to have to wait. Anyway, I'm going to stop writing this so I can record my audio journal and go to bed.

January 14, 2017

 This morning woke up kind of early but then went back to sleep because I could and it was great. When I did wake up I stayed in bed and red until lunch. For lunch I had the second flatbread thing I made on Tuesday. I think it was better than it was the first night. Maybe the flavors had mingled and mellowed a bit. I still don't know that I would make the exact recipe again but I like the idea.

Throughout the day I watched YouTube videos, played Farming Simulator 15, and read. Not a bad way to spend the day. I could have gone over to my Mom's and done laundry because the weather never turned bad. I thought about it but really didn't want to leave the house. I have enough clothes to get me through Thursday, and I'm off Friday because I work next weekend, so I can do laundry then.

In Farming Simulator 15 I bought an inexpensive tractor, the same one I already have two of, so I can speed up the process a little bit. Now I can be doing one thing and have three hired-hands doing other things. At some point I need to get better tractors and bigger implements so I can work even faster, but growth takes time. One thing I have learned is that the AI hired workers suck at harvesting corn. They might suck at harvesting everything but it is really obviously when they miss corn. They also aren't great using the sprayer. They miss patches of land and get caught on things. But it's still faster than me having to do everything.

Tonight I set up shop in the living room with my projector and ate pizza while starting to watch the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. There was such an upgrade in quality from the pilot to the next episodes. So far I don't recall any of the episodes. I'm not sure when I first started watching the show but I have learned it wasn't in the beginning of season one. When I was done eating dinner I continued watching the show and started working on a jigsaw puzzle. I nearly got the entire outside edge put together.

The ice storm hasn't come yet but the future radar shows it coming around three or four o'clock in the morning. We'll see if that actually happens because it seems like it keeps getting pushed back. Not that I have a problem with that. Just in case horrible things happen I filled up a few extra water bottles. I figure losing power would be much more likely than losing water but you never know. I also have a small backup battery thing for my phone in case I do lose power. But again, we'll see what happens.

Now I'm going to record my audio journal and then probably go to bed because it's 11:30PM. I would like to wake up at a decent time tomorrow so I can go to bed at a decent time tomorrow night and hopefully avoid another week of a horrible sleep schedule.

January 13, 2017

 Today happened. I feel like I spent a lot of the day feeling a constant, underlying layer of stress. That made the day less than enjoyable.

My main focus was to finish my homebound lists. I think, and have always thought, that I may put too much thought into my lists. It takes so much time to pick out books for eight people, month after month. And it gets harder each month because you are working with an ever-decreasing pool of books because you don't want to take the same book twice. It may be a little less stressful if all of my patrons told me whether or not they liked the books I picked, so I could make changes, but most do not, so I am forever striving to pick books that I think they will like. It took me nearly all day, off and on, but I did manage to mostly finish my list. I still have the one patron who I have to walk the stacks for to make sure I'm pulling old books, but that goes relatively quick.

I took a break from homebound lists before lunch to pull some more books for my displays. This month would have been a good one to have displays that didn't check out. I do like pulling books for displays though because it is cool to see people checking out books that you have picked.

I may have finalized the class brochure today. It's gone through a bunch of tweaks but I think we've got it now. I should be able to print it next week, or have one of the assistants do it more likely, and make them available. Exciting times.

Adding to the stress was the arrival of our first box of tax forms. When I finally finished the homebound lists I spent some time coming up with a sign to put next to the tax forms. Originally I was going to make the background a picture of tax forms or a calculator but nothing looked good. Then I thought about making it just a giant picture of a puppy. That was mostly meant as a joke but I thought it was pretty funny. In the end I went with a normal sign, with a solid color background. But I also made a tiny sign that was just a picture of a puppy to put next to the forms because I figured tax forms stress people out and maybe the puppy would make them smile and they could think back on it while they are up to their neck in taxes.

I think that is basically everything I did at work today. Minus helping the occasional patron and answering emails.

After work I stopped at my Mom's house to set up her new printer. On my way over I realized that things might be different with a Chromebook than a Windows computer. I was correct. Instead of downloading drivers, you register the printer through Google cloud printing. It ended up being easier than having to mess with drivers. I was also glad that it worked the first time because it was past my dinner time and I was hungry.

Speaking of, on my way home I stopped by my sister's house and she brought out the pizza she made me. She already baked it so when I got home I just had to pop a few slices in the microwave. Just as delicious as always. It was real tempting to eat the whole thing but that would have been physically impossible and a sad mistake. And now I get to enjoy it over multiple days. I'm looking forward to it.

Tonight I just watched YouTube videos and clicked around the internet. At the moment I am also automating my fields in Farming Simulator 15. I figure I might as well make some money while I sit here and type this.

Tomorrow I'm going to sleep in. Screw the trying to stick to the same wake-up schedule. I need a day to not wake up to an alarm, and then ignore that alarm. Even if I wake up early I will enjoy just laying in bed without the need to get up.

Now I'm going to record my audio journal because it is 11:30PM and I need to get to bed so I can sleep in.

January 12, 2017

 Today I slept in a little later than I would have liked. But I also did not sleep in as late as I would have liked. Such is life.

When I was up and ready I through my laundry in my car and headed to my Mom's house. I only needed to do one load, thankfully, because I only had time for one. After getting it started I went out and took down the Christmas lights. It was in the teens temperature-wise outside but there's supposed to be an ice storm over the weekend, which sounds like a much worse time to take down Christmas lights.

Following the lights, I ate an early lunch and watched the last hour of Jeremiah Johnson. I missed my two favorite parts, the guy being buried up to his neck and the guy being chased by the bear into the cabin. I haven't seen the movie since I was a kid and now I think I need to watch the whole thing again. I didn't remember all the montage fights. I actually don't think I ever really knew what the story was, so it would probably be a good idea to watch it as an adult. I also saw just the very beginning of Cliffhanger as I was folding my laundry. I also have not seen that movie in years and had forgotten how tragic the opening sequence is. Now I also want to watch that movie again.

When my laundry was done I packed up and headed to Target. I thought I had plenty of time but apparently the perception of time is slower in Target. I got the few things I needed, paid for it with a brief hiccup with self-checkout, and when I got back in my car and back on the road, it was like four or five minutes before I would normally leave my house for work. Not good times. I raced home, following the speed limit, put the groceries that needed to be refrigerated in the refrigerator, quickly changed into my work clothes, and headed out the door eleven minutes later than normal.

I ended up being almost ten minutes late. It would have been a minute or two less than that but there weren't any parking spots along the street on my first pass so I had to go around the block. I would like to work at a place with reserved parking spots. Even if it's a crappy one I would at least know I always had one.

I spent the first hour and a half or so at work creating a survey for the video game discussion, the sign-in sheet, responded to a couple emails, and watched the cultural insight videos for Never Alone. I did that upstairs and when I came back down to the desk one of the other librarians was helping an older patron get audiobooks on his iPad. She asked me to help out because it is a lot easier helping patrons when there is more than one person. It gives you more time to think and one person can be talking to the patron while the other person looks something up. I'm glad I got to help out because the patron was really funny. When we started talking about the Hoopla app the other librarian said that she wasn't making any judgments but that older patrons usually really liked Hoopla because of its easy interface and the fact that you get the item immediately. The patron paused for a moment and then said “I qualify, if that's what you're getting at,” obviously admitting he was old. A little while later another patron came up and asked for a paperclip and the older patron looked over and said “Why couldn't I have that question?” I also brought up Lynda.com when he mentioned basic computer classes and he shook his had saying his wife wouldn't want him to have Lynda on his computer. In the end we were able to get the audiobook his wife wanted through Hoopla (there were wait lists on the other apps) and he was excited because he thought maybe that would make her happy and she would make him dinner. And then he took it back and said she would probably be too busy listening to the book to cook. Hopefully he comes back with more questions.

When I was finally on the desk it was another one of those overwhelming ones where I had a long list of emails to get to and ended up doing almost everything but that. The thing that really got me was a patron interested in a particular DVD in a PBS series that we didn't seem to have. For the life of me I couldn't figure out the system for how they were cataloged, which made it really hard to search for. It got me a bit flustered, I'll admit it, and even after we were able to find the DVDs through interlibrary loan I wasn't really happy with the experience.

After dinner I came back, probably did some things, and then it was time for my video game discussion. I got my laptop hooked up to the projector, got the sound system working, and then waited. We ended up having four people show up and three of them were there for the majority of the time. One was the husband of my coworker, another was the patron that calls all the time asking for books and phones number and other random things, and the third was an Anthropology student that is actually studying video games and Never Alone was one of the things that changed his focus from social work to anthropology. The one patron and her friend were about fifteen minutes late and immediately left to go to the restroom after coming in and taking off their coats. Little rude but I spoke with the two guys about a bunch of different video game related things. It was kind of cool to actually talk with someone in real life about video games and have an actual have a discussion because they knew just as much, if not more, than I do.

We eventually got started without the one patrons friend, which is good because he didn't come back until the end. I started with a couple of the cultural insight videos just to introduce the actual people being portrayed in the game. And then we played the game. The one patron, who is older, had never played a video game before but we got her using the controller and the keyboard and she really seemed to enjoy it. As we talked more about the game, and video games in general, she was really interested to learn that not all video games involve violence and inappropriate things. She also checked out one of the books I set out on video games. I didn't get a chance to read the surveys but they all told me they had a good time and would be interested in future discussions. The Anthropology major said if we did it again he would talk to some of the other guys in the Anthropology department and get them to come along. Sounds promising. This is something I want to turn into a series, monthly would be preferable, so we'll see what I can do.

It is now getting late and I am going to end this so I can record my audio journal. Hopefully I don't ramble as much tonight so I can get to bed before midnight.

January 11, 2017

 Waking up in the mornings this week has been exceptionally rough. I'm not a fan.

This morning at work was a little hectic. I had plans to do things, which I no longer remember because there was so much else going on. It started by opening up the department email and being greeted by a whole bunch of emails. With everything else going on it took me the entire two hours I was on desk to get through them all.

One of those emails became a day-long affair because the patron was very determined. It was a purchase request for The Young Pope which doesn't even begin to air in the US until the 15^th. It apparently aired in Italy back in October, which is the main reason for all the confusion. She saw it listed on Amazon and wanted us to purchase it. I wrote her back and said we wouldn't be able to do that because it was sold by Amazon and the show hadn't aired yet so the DVD probably wouldn't be out for awhile. When one of the other librarians was on the desk the patron wrote back that she, used some big words about doing research, and said she found it on Amazon. The librarian wrote back and explained the different region codes on DVDs and that the patron would not be able to play it on her DVD player because it didn't have our region code. The patron wrote back later quoting the price of the DVD on Amazon. Good grief. I then wrote her back, trying to be as clear as possible, that we would not be able to purchase the DVD until it was released in the US. I explained our policy about only buying new DVDs directly from Amazon, not third party sellers. I mentioned again that the show had not aired over here yet and that the DVD would not be released until sometime in the future. I don't know that I could have been more clear that we would not be purchasing the DVD she found. But I also thought we had been clear in the previous emails. We'll see if she responds tomorrow.

This morning I also spent a decent amount of time looking for instructions for the 940 tax form. Or something like that. She seemed to have a good idea of what she wanted and everything I was finding wasn't it. She kept telling me her friend had something with the right information but she couldn't tell me what it was called so we weren't getting very far. I ended up printing out the instructions for her but she didn't actually need those. It was very confusing and I was at a loss. I'm now in charge of tax forms but I'm a librarian, not an accountant.

One of my former homebound patrons came into the library to use the computer and we talked for awhile. It was nice to see her out and about. I helped her get logged into the computer using a guest pass because she said her card number never worked. Later she was talking to one of the other librarians, who is now in charge of taking her homebound books, and it came out that the patron thinks she is being hacked by her former employers and that they have access to her computer and phone, which is really the reason she wanted a guest pass. Who knows.

I briefly helped another patron who had tried the wrong password too many times and gotten locked out of her laptop. She had contacted Microsoft and gotten instructions on how to get back in but couldn't understand them. She needed to create a disc to boot from but she needed administrative privileges on the computer to do that and patrons don't have that. I don't even have that on a staff computer. Because of that I wasn't really able to do anything but I did try and explain the instructions for her. It was weird because the ones they gave her were backwards, which probably didn't help. I tried to sort that out for her so hopefully that was slightly helpful.

Speaking of help, I helped a few different grade school kids find books for a school project. Kind of made me miss working with kids. They have a better excuse for not knowing exactly what they want or need. It is more annoying when adults can't ask what they actually want and I spend time finding what they ask for only to have them tell me they needed something different.

I managed to print my homebound letters and got a start on my homebound lists. It is nice that I didn't deliver the books I picked out for one of my patrons last month because I can just reuse that list. That saves me twelve books. I got a decent start but I still feel a little overwhelmed by trying to get it all done by next Wednesday.

This afternoon we had our staff meeting. It went well. I think this was the second month in a row I forgot to read the policy we were going to talk about. I have read through all the policies at least a couple times, so I wasn't completely lost, but I need to start keeping track of these things better.

I brought my laptop to work today to make sure I could get the video game working before the discussion tomorrow night. Even when I was connected to the internet I wasn't able to log into Steam but I could play the game in offline mode, so we're good.

I think that's basically everything I did at work today. Minus a few little things. It was kind of a non-stop day.

Tonight was Chipotle night so I picked that up and headed to my Mom's house. After dinner I showed videos and then we sat around and talked for awhile. Always good times.

It is now 10:30PM and I'm tired. I still need to record my audio journal, though, so it's going to still be a little bit before I can go to bed. I might sleep in a tiny bit tomorrow but I want to run to the bank before work so I can deposit a couple checks. I also want to stop by Target and pick up some things. We're supposed to get some bad weather this weekend so I thought I might get some things now so I didn't have to worry about them later. I think next week I'm going to go to the grocery store with my sister and get some real food. She was able to go tomorrow morning but I want time to go through some receipts and come up with a proper shopping list.

Now I'm going to stop typing so I can record my audio journal and go to bed.