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.
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