May 31, 2017

I thought I was tired yesterday but today wiped me out.

I got up early and got around a little faster this morning so I could leave for work a little earlier and get to the library before the first meeting started. And that was a success. Also, the assistant director was not lying about the meeting being tight on time. Of the hour, fifty-five minutes were taken up with the first presentation. It was about all the things we have to do in order to accept credit cards at the library. Turns out there are a lot of things. It was pretty boring but they made a couple funny videos so that's something. I did the typical blackout thing and fell back on what I had practiced, with the occasional forgotten thing because I managed to get through it in the five minutes remaining. I think it went well. I don't know about my choice of going a bit serious with the verbal abuse stuff at the beginning. It's a serious topic, though, and I decided to forgo the humor for that portion of the presentation. And if I got at least one other person to think more seriously about the issue than I consider it a success.

With the rest of my morning I did other things. I think I spent most of my time working on my presentation for next week. I also helped the occasional patron and probably did other things that are slipping my mind at the moment because keeping my eyes open is becoming a chore.

During my lunch break I ran to the grocery store to buy more chocolate. It was still on sale so I saved like six bucks or something. Also, the chocolate started a conversation with the girl at the checkout and I threw in a bunch of plugs for summer reading and the library. She said Dove chocolate was the best so my main selling point was that she could get a piece just for signing up. I will probably never know if she signs up or not but I can pretend she does and I successfully upsold the summer reading program.

From the grocery store I ended up going back to my house for lunch because it was closer than my Mom's house. It was kind of nice but I couldn't do it regularly because it takes too long. With the extra time I added to my hour break due to the chocolate run I probably ended up with about the same amount of time at my house as I normally get at my Mom's house.

This afternoon I started writing down the transcript to my presentation. Rather than just posting the slides I thought I would include what I actually said because I know that some of them won't be very clear out of context. I also helped a lady find an article in an old newspaper. Someone at the paper was retiring and she wanted the first article he had written. She had a vague idea for the year but that was about it. I looked for stuff online but the year she gave me was before online records started so I mentioned several times that her best bet may be to just pick a year and a month and start looking through microfilm. She either didn't pick up on this hint or was entirely uninterested in looking herself. I think it was more of the latter. I eventually found a couple articles online and then we pulled out the microfilm. I set it up and ended up going through it to get the articles and we printed them. They probably aren't his first articles but they are nearly twenty years old, so that's not bad. In the end the lady was very appreciative. I think more than anything she's just very averse to technology and was out of her depth because she had been volunteered for the project. But hopefully we got something worthwhile.

And then it was time for the next meeting. I ended up sitting through the whole credit card presentation again, though I probably didn't have to. I'm not a fan of people walking in during the middle of presentations, so I sat there and tried to yawn as inconspicuously as possible. They actually went through their presentation faster than this morning, which gave me a little extra time. I don't know if I utilized that extra time. I added a bit about calling the police if someone feels a situation warrants it, regardless of what the policy says, but other than that I think everything else was about the same. Only only heard positive remarks but we'll see if more honesty comes out later.

After work I went to Qdoba, picked up food, and headed to my Mom's house. We ate, watched a bunch of YouTube videos, and then watched TV while we talked. I headed out at eight o'clock so I could come home and write this so I could go to bed. It is now after 11:30PM, so obviously I got sidetracked. And I regret that.

Now I'm going to record my audio journal so my head can be reunited with my pillow.

May 30, 2017

I'm tired. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night and today was a long day.

When I got to work this morning I did opening things, minus sharpening pencils. I figured we had a decent amount and maybe someone later this week will sharpen some. My normal pencil sharpening time was spent handling the emails we got over the holiday weekend.

My first hour on the desk flew by and then it was time for my presentation. I packed up the laptop, grabbed the projector, got the key to the car I reserved, and headed to the senior center. I set up in a small room and presented a large group of five people. I seemed to be competing with chair yoga, which is obviously very hard to compete with. Those that did attend my presentation seemed to appreciate me being there and asked several questions. Two of them even went straight from the presentation back to the library to sign up for summer reading. That may have been their plan all along but I can at least take credit for not scaring them off.

The rest of the day just kind of happened. I spent a lot of it hot, even without my jacket on. I'm not a fan of being hot and sweaty when I'm not engaged in activities that should result in me being hot and sweaty.

I added more books to my display and more audiobooks to my other display. I tweaked my presentation for tomorrow and put a little effort into my presentation for next week. I'll be able to focus more on that after tomorrow. The assistant director said that time is going to be tight and was wondering how long my presentation was going to be. I said it could be short. My first presentation at an all-staff meeting was delayed three months I think because we weren't added into the agenda and then there was a break or something. I don't know. I was a little worried he was going to cut my presentation, so telling me not to take too long was a bit of a relief. I've put too much effort into this presentation to have it delayed and have to worry about it for another month or more.

I also printed off more scavenger hunt brochures and used the folding machine to fold a different set of brochures. I had a minor printing mishap with the scavenger hunt brochures and they started spitting out upside down and it took me fifteen or so before I could figure out how to stop the copy machine. It was annoying. But I got it sorted out and all is well.

I had my evaluation today which went alright. I am not failing anything, which is nice, and I'm doing well enough that I got a tiny raise. I think it equals out to about $600 over the course of the year, which might not seem like much to a six-figure salary person but I'm definitely okay with it.

We signed a lot of people up for summer reading today. And we are running low on chocolate. The teen librarian was going to buy the next round but she wasn't going to have time this week and even with two-day delivery on Amazon it wouldn't get here in time. So I am going to take a long lunch tomorrow and pick some more up and give her the receipt so she can turn it in. Saving the day. Thank you.

I signed up a lady and three of her kids for summer reading. On the second kid when I was asking about birth date she said it was the same because they were twins. I replied “Oh, that's easy”, referring to already knowing the date to enter. And she replied “Oh, it wasn't easy.” I thought that was pretty funny.

Other things probably happened at work but then it was five o'clock and I got to go home. For dinner I made pasta and threw in fake hamburger, corn, diced tomatoes, beans, and a little bit of vegetable broth. This is similar to something I used to make but it is different because I also threw in fresh green onion, garlic, and cilantro. So it was kind of like cooking. And it tasted good, which is what's important.

Tonight I practiced my presentation, don't tell my boss. I'm consistently around six or seven minutes, which means it will probably be closed to five tomorrow when I get up there and blackout and have no idea of what's coming out of my mouth. There should be no worry of me taking too much time.

I also watched YouTube videos and when I made it through those I switched back to rewatching some of the Cali Roots festival. Right now I'm watching Jurassic Five's performance. I haven't though about them in years and they've still got it.

And now I'm going to record my audio journal so I can hopefully get to bed before eleven o'clock. Getting up in front of people to present twice tomorrow is going to be exhausting.

May 29, 2017

This morning I slept in, which was nice. I decided to try making an egg frittata for brunch and it ended up being more of a lunch because it took so long to make. I started the process a little after ten o'clock and it was well after eleven o'clock by the time I finished. I don't know if I just wasn't using a high enough heat or what. I do know that in the future I will probably just turn it into a scramble or an omelet, because that would have taken far less time. In the end, it was pretty tasty, so there's that. I ended up using the second half of the red bell pepper I used in my sweet potato chili, as well as a scallion, vegetable broth, and some cilantro. I started by sauteing the white part of the onion with some garlic. Then I added in the egg mixture and waited. It took so long, but I was able to do all of my dishes and look through a couple carpentry books, so I was at least productive with my time.

After I ate I got ready, loaded up my car, and headed to my Mom's house to do laundry. While that was happening I watched episodes of Star Trek: Voyager and read from the two library books I'm working on at the moment. My goal is to actually finish them, preferably without having to renew them, but I don't really think that will happen. I'll keep plugging away, though.

When my laundry was done I came home and ate dinner. For dessert I had a piece of the cinnamon roll cake my sister made and dropped off at my Mom's house for me. It was really good. And I have more to look forward to. While I ate dinner I caught up on YouTube videos.

After dinner I came down to the basement and played Borderlands: The Pre=Sequel. It's such an easy game to get sucked into. I keep wanting to do “just one more thing” and then “just one more thing” and so on and so forth. Now I'm watching the Mister Rogers livestream. I'm not sure but I think they're up to the 80s. Mr. Rogers is looking more like the guy I remember from my childhood. I am hoping that they continue to air episodes after the marathon, like they do with Bob Ross. It would be nice to duck in occasionally and visit the Neighborhood.

It is now eleven o'clock. I need to record my audio journal and then go to bed because I open in the morning. I also open on Wednesday. Then I close Thursday and Friday. Kind of a weird schedule. I also have a presentation tomorrow and technically two on Wednesday because I have to give the all-staff meeting one twice, because there is a meeting in the morning and one in the afternoon so that everyone can attend. And I need to work on the presentation I'm giving next week. I'm looking forward to all of these presentations being over.

May 28, 2017

This morning I woke up after maybe six hours of sleep. I went with it, though, and stayed in bed and read for about an hour before getting up. I spent the rest of the morning playing Viscera Cleanup Detail and listening to Ready Player One. The audiobook was a bit of a fail. Even though I had it arranged in order by disc, it was playing in order by title. So it went from the first track of disc one to the first track of disc two to the first track of disc three, and on and on. It took me awhile to figure that out. It seemed like it was moving a bit fast and the early bit was different from what I remembered reading (because I read the first chapter or so years ago). When I realized what was happening I tried fixing it but the same thing happened again. I ended up sorting it out eventually but I wasted so much time. I should be so much farther in the book. There were also some spoilers, which is annoying.

After lunch I played a bit of Tera, practiced my handwriting, listened to more of Ready Player One, and watched some of the Cali Roots festival. Then I took a nap because I was tired and bored. I'm a fan of naps but I don't get them that often anymore, which is a shame.

For dinner I went over to my Mom's house for a family dinner. She grilled hamburgers (I microwaved my fake ones) and we had all the other usual stuff, like deviled eggs and my sister's homemade coleslaw. Good times. After dinner we talked for awhile and watched American Ninja Warrior on TV. I think I made it home sometime after 8:30PM.

I played Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel tonight and I quickly remembered how funny the writing is for the Borderlands franchise is. I'm a fan. I have yet to finish the first or second games, and I probably won't finish this one, but I will enjoy playing it until I get distracted by something else. I think my main problem is that I get so distracted by side quests that I lose track of the main quest. It's a problem.

Now I'm watching the Dirty Heads' set at Cali Roots. It didn't start too hot but they have gotten better as the set has gone on. When it's over I'll record my audio journal and go to bed. I've had a headache most of the night and I am hoping that I can sleep it off.

May 27, 2017

This morning I got up and around earlier than expected and then eventually went to work. On my way to work I realized I hadn't watched the training videos on the new cash register and I wasn't entirely sure of the code to get into it (and it wasn't written down anywhere). I texted one of the other librarians to confirm I was remembering the code right, which I was, so that was reassuring.

When I got to the library I tried unsuccessfully at first to watch the training videos because they weren't loading correctly. I went back downstairs to check the instructions pinned on the wall but they are still for the old register, so that wasn't helpful. I went back upstairs and thankfully the videos worked the second time so I was able to quickly watch those and then go back downstairs to run the tapes on the register and count the drawer. I finished just as the first patrons were coming in. Cutting it a little close but I got it done.

The rest of my day was mostly spent working on presentations, broken up by the occasional walkthrough, email, or patron. I signed up several people for summer reading today, so that was cool. I also got a whole bunch of summer reading prizes left in my drawer yesterday. I need to figure out what to do with those because I think only one or two had been figured into the prizes already.

My two most memorable patrons today were a lady who kept yelling at me from the computers for help and a very talkative man doing family research with microfilm.

On my way home I stopped by my Mom's house because my new fountain pen arrived today. The one that is built using the original decking of the USS North Carolina. It looks pretty sweet in person. It also makes me want to make my own pen because there are some things I would do differently. I like the magnetic action that closes the cap or lets you post it on the back of the pen, but the cap is super heavy and can't be posted while writing without feeling like it is going to flip backwards out of my hand. The grip is also too small and smooth, so I can't really hold the pen using the grip, I have to hold is at the base near and on the body. And I'm a little worried that it is going to be a leaker because I have to keep cleaning where the nib goes into the pen and where that area makes contact inside the cap. I'm hoping I just dipped it a little too deep when I was filling it up with ink and that it will eventually stop. We'll see. Despite all that nitpicky stuff, I do like the pen. I filled it with Diamine's Oxblood ink, which is a dark red, and it complements the pen nicely.

When I got home I ate leftovers, watched YouTube videos, played a bit of Tera, and watched some of the Cali Roots livestream, including Iration's set. Twice. I've been a fan of Iration since I saw them open for Sublime at Red Rocks a few years ago.

It is now 12:50AM and the length of this entry does not justify the amount of time that has passes since I started writing it. I've been distracted by so many things while trying to write this. But now I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed. With a few distractions in between.

May 26, 2017

I did things today. I woke up before my alarm this morning and laid in bed and read for awhile. It was pretty nice. Then I took a shower and eventually left the house. My first stop was the library. I didn't even try accessing the evaluation form from the parking lot. I just ran in, quickly logged in, clicked the one button I needed to click to submit my evaluation, and left. I told the librarian at the desk that I was never there. It may have been obvious when my boss checked her email, but we'll deal with that next week.

After the library I went to the hardware store to gloves and weed killer, and then I went to get my car washed. I think it is supposed to rain tomorrow but I parked under a tree the other day and my car ended up covered in some weird tree mist stuff. I don't know what it is but it seems to happen every time I park under a tree at the library. So I'm going to stop doing that. I also don't know what it would do to my car so I didn't want to wait and hope the rain would take care of it.

On my way home I swung through Sonic and got a small order of fries and a diet cherry limeade. I think I like the diet cherry limeade better than the regular one. It's been awhile since I've had the regular one but I remember it being just a little too much.

When I got home, before going inside, I sprayed a bunch of weeds. I got the gloves so I could pull weeds but I didn't end up doing that. Maybe after the ones I sprayed have died.

While I ate lunch I think I watched YouTube videos. That seems like the most logical thing anyway. I may have done other things. After lunch I went down to the basement and played Viscera Cleanup Detail. The whole idea of the game is that you are a janitor that cleans up after all the action happens. It is one of those tedious games, kind of like Farming Simulator, where you just do very mundane things. I like it.

For dinner I made sweet potato chili with brown rice and cilantro. I got to use my food processor again, and the grater attachment for the first time, to cut up the sweet potato. It was so much easier than grating it by hand, especially because I don't have a grater. I was pretty worried about the outcome of the whole meal. I couldn't follow the recipe exactly because I think some things were lost in the British translation, so I had to make some things up. There was also a whole lot of sweet potato, and in general, I'm not a big fan of sweet potato. At least that's what I keep telling myself. I don't like sweet potato fries and the idea of sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving kind of grosses me out, but I apparently don't mind sweet potatoes in things. It all seemed to come together at the end and it plated very nicely. I even topped it with homemade tortilla strips that I baked in the oven. And it tasted pretty good, so it might be something I keep in the rotation.

While I ate dinner, and then for awhile after dinner, I watched Crazy, Stupid, Love. I stumbled across GIFs from that movie while working on my presentation and it got stuck in my head. I haven't seen the movie in years so it was fun to watch it again. When the movie was over I went back to playing Viscera Cleanup Detail on my wall while I had friends going on my laptop screen in front of me.

And now it is 11:30PM and I have to record my audio journal because I have to wake up early for work. I'm not looking forward to the waking up part but work should be productive. Hopefully.

May 25, 2017

This morning I woke up after a full night of sleep, read a book in bed for awhile, took a shower, looked up a recipe, made a shopping list, ate lunch, and then went to work. Not a bad morning.

At one point today at work I came very close to grabbing a piece of paper to take notes about my day, but then I didn't. I think most of my day was spent working on two of my presentations. I took pictures of our new large print area and added those into my presentation for the senior center. I then focused on my presentation for the all-staff meeting. Most of it was avoidance. I remade my title slide because I was on a different computer than yesterday and the layout was screwed up. I fixed it but later on when I was back on the original computer it was screwed up again, but it looked fine on the other computer. I am assuming there is something differing in the PowerPoint settings on the two computers, but I didn't want to worry about it screwing up for the presentation so I went back to the second computer, saved the title slide as a PNG, and then put that on top of the title slide. Now it won't matter what computer I'm on. I also spent a long time looks for GIFs. I think I found some good ones. And tonight I finally got around to adding a couple slides about hate speech. It is slightly off topic because hate speech isn't mentioned in our policy, but I think it fits into the topic of the presentation.

My boss wanted me to do my personal evaluation today, which I did, but then I forgot to submit it. Whoops. I just tried to submit it from home but it's apparently internal so it can't be done outside the building. That's annoying. I think it is officially due Monday, so I can submit it when I'm at work on Saturday, but she won't be able to comment on it because we aren't open Monday. Whoops. I might see if I can park in the parking lot tomorrow and submit it while on the library wifi. If not, I might go in and see if I can log in and click submit if I tell my boss I'll take an extra five minutes at lunch on Saturday or something. If anything it will give me an excuse to wake up tomorrow morning instead of sleeping through the whole thing. We'll see.

This afternoon I went out with one of the assistants to drop off a box of books. Normally she goes out with the other assistant but he wasn't working today. And normally I think they go to multiple places but we only went to one place today. But it was a nice drive and a nice break from staring at a computer.

And that was my day. Presentation stuff, evaluation stuff, and a brief field trip. At least as far as I can remember.

After work I went to the grocery store. It's been awhile since I've shopped for groceries because I had the Blue Apron box. This morning I picked out a recipe for sweet potato chili that goes on top of a bed of rice. It had a good picture. I didn't get the red chili because they didn't have any generic red chilies and the only red colored chili they had was hot. I'm not a fan of hot. I also couldn't find cumin seeds or smoked paprika, so I'm going with ground cumin and regular paprika. I think it will be fine. When I went to look at the seasoning there was a lady there and after waiting a little bit she didn't move so I went to get eggs. And right as I was coming up to the eggs a couple walked up to them. I go to the store late at night so I can avoid people but apparently I need to go even later.

When I got home I put my groceries away, ate a rice crispy treat and some popcorn, and watched YouTube videos. And it is now nearly two o'clock in the morning and I am ridiculously tired, so I am going to record my audio journal and go to bed. I think my plan with my evaluation is to go to the library around noon because my boss goes to lunch at noon, so if I end up having to go inside maybe I can avoid having to make up time later. Fingers crossed.

May 24, 2017

I technically got to sleep in this morning but I went to bed late, so that was canceled out. But I made it through the day just fine, except for the last few hours when the lack of sleep set it.

At work I mostly just worked on my presentations and helped the occasional patron. The summer reading presentation is happening first so I spent most of my time on that. And I finished it. I covered summer reading, some of our readers advisory resources, and mentioned the times that the other librarians will stop by throughout the summer. And I just heard from one of the librarians with an idea for showing pictures of the new large print area. A solid idea, so it looks like I'm not quite finished with the presentation.

I changed the title slide on my staff meeting presentation. I rearranged all the minced oaths, which left room for several more and it took me awhile to find those. And to arrange them in just the right way so it looked right and took up all the space. I think it looks a lot better than the original version. As for the rest of the presentation, I still need to add in the hate speech stuff. I added in the Orbitz commercial but I might try to add in a bit more levity to make up for the heavier topics.

I saw two of the people I used to work with at the school because there was an all-day meeting for teachers at the library. Seemed a little weird considering it was the last full day of school but they didn't appear to be classroom teachers. At least the ones I knew were resource teachers, and that stuff wouldn't be happening today. My Mom said a lot of classes just watched movies and had parties.

And we will say that was my day at work. It was fairly quiet.

After work I went to Qdoba and then to my Mom's house. We ate, watched YouTube videos, and talked until about nine o'clock when I came home. It was a pretty good night.

And now, audio journal time, because I'm freaking tired.

May 23, 2017

This morning I slept in and I feel like I could have laid there the rest of the day. But I like my job so I got up and eventually went to work.

Today at work is kind of a blur. I was on desk for two hours, off for two, went to dinner, then on desk for two hours, and off desk for two hours. My main focus for the day was to work on my presentation for the staff meeting next week. And I made decent progress on that. The stuff I am supposed to cover is covered but I still want to add a slide in about hate speech. I also want to add the Orbitz commercial that involves the line “Who are you calling a cootie queen, you lint licker?” The verbal abuse stuff gets a little dark so I need some stuff in there to lighten the mood a little.

Tonight I got the briefest start on the summer reading presentation I am giving next week at the senior center. All I made was the title slide. But it's better than nothing. I talked with my boss today about the presentation because talking about summer reading doesn't really require a dedicated presentation. Unless you want a five minute presentation. I also kind of feel the presentation is pointless because two other librarians will be going there two days after me to sign people up for summer reading. I think the summer reading program is somewhat self-explanatory and even if it weren't, the other librarians could easily spend five minutes explaining it before signing people up. I didn't mention my feelings of the pointlessness of the presentation with my boss but I did say it was going to take about five minutes. She suggested also mentioning some readers advisory stuff, like the resources we have for finding new books and our personalized reading list service. So maybe I can get the presentation up to ten minutes.

I helped the teen librarian move one of the small tables from behind our desk over to the unfinished part of the library so that she will have room for the big cart of books that are a reward for teens who read for five hours during summer reading. I also went with her down to the basement with a couple empty boxes so she could show me where all the reward books are being kept for both children and teens. They have a bunch of boxes on their side so they can be used like little shelves to keep things organized. Pretty clever.

I helped patrons throughout the day. I helped one lady with our digital library resources, helped people with the computers and printing, and helped other people find books. There was never a rush of people but I did seem to help patrons throughout the day, which is always good.

I had a new idea for our homebound service today. Previously, I have wanted to switch to taking out a bunch of books each month and allowing the patrons to pick out the books they wanted. So basically a mobile library. My new idea is to get a grant or find money to buy a Kindle for each patron (not personally but enough to cover the patrons we have). They could adjust the font size so that it is to their liking, whether they like regular print or large print books, and they would potentially have access to a greater selection of books, especially the large print patrons. The tricky part would be figuring out the books. At the moment our ebooks can't be checked out for a month, which is how long the physical books are checked out for when we deliver them. It would be great to just load each Kindle with hundreds of books but that is easier said than done. I think there is potential in the idea though so I need to talk with some more people about it.

On my way home I stopped by my sister's house to get air in my tire. I need to get my own air compressor with how often I have to fill my tires. I also need new tires. That might help. But I could also use an air compressor for shop things, if I ever get around to setting up a shop in my garage.

While I was there my sister told me that my Dad had torn a tendon in his finger and wasn't planning on getting it fixed because it would cost too much money. This would also leave him with a permanently bent finger. When I got home I ate a delicious Rice Crispy treat with Fruity Pebbles on a stick that my sister made, and texted my Dad, saying that we should get his finger fixed. I told him I got a decent tax return and that I really only spent money on bills, food, and cheap video games. And that I already had more video games than I could ever play and that fingers were cooler than video games. I haven't heard back yet but hopefully he will change his mind and let us help out.

And it is once again audio journal time. I've got quite the backlog of videos because I haven't uploaded in forever. I need to do that at some point.

May 22, 2017

As assumed, waking up this morning sucked, but I managed it and I didn't end up yawning all day long, so that was nice. When I got to work I sharpened pencils until the sharpener died, because that's what I do.

Once we opened I was on desk and I used that time to finish my latest personalized reading list. That took me a decent amount of time to do and then I spent the last little bit of my time on desk looking up more books to put on my display. I got tired of just looking for books with “flower” in the title so I have switched to searching for specific flowers. Today I found several with “dandelion” and “daisy” in the title. And when I was off I did a walkthrough and then pulled all the books I found and added them to my display.

Going back to when I was on desk, I modified our kudos sheet (which is what we give to people at our department meetings to recognize something they have done) and wrote kudos for two people in other departments. The first was for the assistant manager in circulation for handling things really well during the tornado warning last week and hooking her phone up to the Bluetooth speaker so we listen to the radio. The modification I made was changing the picture on the kudos to a cool cucumber (one holding a boombox and wearing sunglasses) because I said she had remained “calm, cool, and collected.” The second was for one of the girls who works in the children's department for going to get things to entertain the younger kids while we were all stuck in the basement. I referred to it as a “storm-cation”, trying to do a play on “stay-cation”. I thought it was funny. For the modified picture I kept it simple and just went with a tornado.

After lunch I had a free hour. The other librarian working asked for some help brainstorming because she wants to make a social media post about the fax machine but doesn't know how to make it interesting. My first thought was to go retro with it, because fax machines seem really dated at this point (even though the one at the library gets a pretty decent amount of use). I jumped into Publisher and came up with a 90s-inspired design. The background consists of two of those multi-pointed shapes that kind of look like a cartoon explosion (for lack of a better description), one of them bright pink and the other yellow, both with a bright blue boarder. In the center of that I put a picture of a fax machine. And lastly, in Broadway font, I added the words “FAX MACHINES' on top and “STILL EXIST” on the bottom. The letters are bright green with a bright blue border and a bright pink glow. It's fantastic. I don't think she is going to go with that exact design, and the idea itself may be shot down higher up the chain, but I still like it.

I spent my next two hours on desk helping patrons and kind of working on my presentation for the all-staff meeting, which is next week. I mostly just came up with the title slide for it, which is covered in minced oaths, like “golly gee willickers” and “dagnabbit”. But I also came up with a better idea of how I wanted to lay out the presentation as a whole. I'm still not quite there yet but I'm closer.

When I got home tonight I made the second spinach and egg flatbread with asparagus, popped it all in the oven, and read for awhile until it was done. I think it was better on day two. After dinner I didn't do much. Clicked around the internet, watched YouTube videos, wrote with my new pen, and then started watching Friends again. I'm still enjoying it.

And this is the part where I stop typing so I can record my audio journal.

May 21, 2017

 This morning I woke up and read in bed. I like that with my queen-size bed I am able to sleep with books in my bed. The last two days I also had my Bluetooth speaker next to my pillow. It's pretty convenient. Anyway, this morning I finished reading Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire. I liked it. It got pretty dark, which I wasn't necessarily a fan of, but it was an interesting story. It is apparently going to be a trilogy and the next book comes out in June, which I have already put on hold. One of my favorite things about the book is that it is so short. I was able to read it fairly quickly and it is nice to finally finish a book that I have checked out.

After I finished the book I ironed my pants for the coming week, ran on the elliptical for a little bit, and then took a shower. While I ate lunch I watched Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children. Every Heart A Doorway kind of reminded me of Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children, probably because of the group home for kids thing. I hadn't seen the movie yet and it was pretty good. It has been awhile since I've read the book and I feel like the ending went farther than they did in the first book. I've only read the first book and the last thing I remember is Miss Peregrine being taken and the kids setting out in the boat. But again, it's been years since I read the book so I could be wrong. I do want to read the other books, so maybe that will happen soon.

When the movie was over I ran over to my Mom's house because my ceiling mount for my projector came in the mail today. When I got home got that all set up. It took awhile but I got it done and it hasn't fallen down yet, so I'll take that as a success. Now I just need to sort out the cable management thing. For the HDMI cable I thought about putting an HDMI outlet for the wall and running the cables from the projector down behind the wall. I'm not sure how I will get them over to the wall yet. And the power cable is too short at the moment, so I need to look into a longer one. Or coming up with a way to plug it in up in the ceiling. Things to think about.

Once I got the projector set up I played Little Nightmares for a little bit before going upstairs to make dinner. Tonight I made baked spinach and egg flatbread with roasted asparagus and lemon aioli. Fancy stuff. I was glad I had a food processor for the spinach because that would have taken forever to chop up. I decided to roast the roast the asparagus instead of saute it like the recipe said because roasted asparagus tastes better and I didn't want to deal with the oily mess that sauteing makes. And in the end I would say it all turned out pretty well. I cooked the egg a little longer so it came out more like a hard boiled egg than an over easy egg. Taste-wise, I think the asparagus with lemon aioli was the best part. The spinach and egg flatbread was alright but not as tasty as I thought it would be. I noticed the heat from the red chili flakes but other than that it seemed fairly bland, which was surprising considering all the stuff I put in it.

While I ate dinner I watched YouTube videos and eventually went back downstairs. I had planned on playing Tales From The Borderlands but it kept crashing on the title screen. It allowed me to hit a button to continue from the title screen but right after it said checking for DLC it would crash. Who knows. Maybe it's a Windows 10 thing. I'll have to try it on my desktop and hope it works. Instead I played Little Nightmares. I played longer than I had planned on playing but it felt like I was near the end so I kept going. And I was able to finish it. It got super creepy near the end. I also have no idea what was really going on during the game. Like who my character was or why the creepy things were after me.

And now it is after midnight and I still need to record my audio journal. I checked after finishing Little Nightmares and I open tomorrow, so it is going to be a long day, filled with yawning. Can't wait.

May 20, 2017

 Last night I got a full eight hours of sleep. After I got up I went out to the living room and read for awhile. My couch is so comfortable. I need to use it more. Then I think I clicked around the internet for awhile before getting ready, loading up my car, and heading to my Mom's house to do laundry.

While my laundry got clean I wrote with my pen and watched the movie Legend. The movie was about twin British gangsters in the 1960s, both played by Tom Hardy. It was interesting. I liked the narrative choice and I think they did a really good job making it look like they cloned Tom Hardy, especially when they fight. As for the pen, I wrote a couple quotes and then I just rambled on a piece of paper for the sake of writing. It was fun.

I decided I was going to try Five Guys fries tonight, and drove all the way across town for it, only to find out they didn't have a drive-thru. My desire to try the fries was overshadowed by my desire not to get out of my car. So I went home with just a car full of clean laundry.

For dinner I ate leftovers in the basement while watching movies on the projector. I watched Beauty and the Beast and Get Out. In Beauty and the Beast they did a good job of making Gaston look like a dick. My favorite part of Get Out was the best friend. I have a tendency to like sidekicks more than the main characters. As for the movie itself, very interesting. And very creepy. It took me longer than it probably should have to figure out everything that was going on, but I got there eventually.

While I watched those movies I read reviews and started a list on Amazon of tools I want to get after I make my workbench for the garage. At some point I would like a small drill press, miter saw, and table saw. And a pocket hole jig, because those things look awesome.

Now I need to go upstairs so I can record my audio journal. After that I'll probably go to bed because I'm tired.

May 19, 2017

 It is midnight. Good grief.

I opened this morning so I sharpened pencils until the sharpener died. I also found out where the small scrap paper is in the basement, because we were running low.

My main goal for the day was to finish the personalized reading list I started this week. That ended up not happening. I got distracted by other things. I did add a few books to it, though, so I only have a few more to go. I should be able to knock that out on Monday, which is good because it's due on Tuesday.

One of my distractions was from my boss, who is wanting to update our work schedule formatting. It can be confusing keeping track of hours so I suggested using a formula to count the number of hours each person works each day, and those can be added together to get the number of hours worked each week. It seems like a relatively simple task but the layout of the schedule makes it a little more difficult. Each cell equals an hour and I found a way to count cells if they have text in them, this way it would ignore the cells when we weren't at work. The first problem was that off-desk hours were just marked with a color and didn't have any text. That was an easy fix, I just up an “O” in each cell, and text in any other cell that was blank but still during work hours. Or got rid of text that denoted a vacation or other indications that weren't us working, like class or lunch. After that, all working hours had text in the cell and all hours when we weren't at work had blank cells.

The really tricky part was figuring out how to calculate the times where people came in on a half hour instead of a full hour. I wanted to do all the math in one cell but after trying several different things I couldn't get it to work. I was finally able to do it using two cells. The first counted cells with text in them. The next looked to see if any cells had “30” written in them (which would indicate the person came in on a half hour) and subtracted .5 from the total in the cell counting text. And if it didn't find a “30” then it would just show the total for cells with text. It's a bit convoluted but it works. Now the only problem will be if people are trying to make up time, like if they have to stay late one day and need to make it up later. But we'll worry about that later.

Another distraction was helping a patron for about an hour with ebooks on his phone and iPad. In the end it should have taken about ten minutes if I had just started with having him uninstall and then reinstall the two different apps he had questions about. But I didn't so we muddled through it and eventually got the same result. He left being able to access both apps and was able to download content on both his phone and his iPad. A success.

I signed a couple people up for summer reading, which could have gone more smoothly but I'll get better at it. I also printed out twenty brochures for the scavenger hunt in case people are interested in that. We decided to offer a prize drawing ticket for anyone who completes it, two if they get all the answers right. So that might increase the popularity a bit.

And that was pretty much my day at work. At least as far as I can remember.

On my way home I stopped at Target to get a few things and then stopped by my Mom's house because my new pens arrived. The estimated delivery date was next Wednesday, so today was a pleasant surprise. I tried them out tonight and I like the Pilot Plumix with the medium stub nib. I'm not really a fan of the blue ink that it came with but I can get a converter for it later and put my own ink in it. I also got medium nib and a fine nib Platinum Preppy. I write too small for those but I'm going to keep messing with them. I was really impressed with my extra fin Platinum Preppy and I still have an affinity for the pen. It's super cheap and I like the way it writes.

When I got home I made dinner. On the menu tonight was fregola sarda pasta salad with sugar snap peas, fried leeks, and spicy ricotta. It also included tiny cucumbers, almonds, rice vinegar, mint, and scallions. Never in a million years would I have picked this recipe out of a cookbook. And I really started to question myself as I tore up the mint leaves at the end. But it ended up working out. I'm not sure about it as a main dish but it worked pretty well as an elaborate dip for my leftover chips.

I spent the rest of the night watching YouTube videos and the Mister Rogers livestream, starting the second season of Friends, and writing with my new pens.

And it is now after one o'clock in the morning because I got a little distracted while writing this. But now it is time to record my audio journal so I can go to bed. Hopefully I can sleep in.

May 18, 2017

 I always appreciate a day where I can wake up without an alarm. I beat my alarm by an hour today, but to be fair I set it for nine hours. I didn't think I would actually sleep that long but I set it just in case.

I took a shower and then went to the basement to play Little Nightmares for awhile. I haven't made it very far but the game is definitely creepy. I like it. And it looks even better projected on my wall.

I went to work at noon and I did things. The first part of my day is escaping me. I was on desk for a couple hours and I think I spent that entire time updating the scavenger hunt brochure. It looked very dated so I changed the fonts, made a better cover, and tried to make it resemble our current brochures. I also updated a couple of the businesses featured in the scavenger hunt with the current business in the building, not the one that was there when the scavenger hunt was originally made.

I went upstairs to the cubicle for the hour before my dinner break so I could finish the scavenger hunt thing and then worked on coming up with a better layout for my homebound spreadsheets. I ended up getting so wrapped up with that project that I went on break ten minutes late because forty-minutes completely disappeared.

Tonight was different. The weather was bad and a little before seven o'clock I had to get on the PA system and ask everyone to go to the basement because the tornado sirens started going off. We had to be there for about thirty minutes until the tornado warning expired. It wasn't too bad but it was hot and loud. I'm just glad people were cool about it and that nothing ended up actually happening. I'm also glad we had a backup to the weather radio, because the person in charge of that couldn't get it working. Instead we used a phone to connect to the Bluetooth speaker and stream a local radio station covering the storm.

With the rest of the night kept an eye on the weather and streamed the radio on the computer to make sure there weren't any updates on the storm. We got some pretty intense rain for a little bit but by the time we left it was only sprinkling. I also got a start on a personalized reading list but only got two books in.

When I got home I watched YouTube videos and looked at couches. I like the idea of putting a sectional downstairs for the projector area but it turns out sectionals are expensive. So that probably won't happen. And I already have one couch I barely use, I don't need another one.

Now I'm going to record my audio journal because it is getting late and I open again tomorrow morning. That means I'm going to be tired tomorrow because I've already missed the window on getting a full night of sleep. Good times.

May 17, 2017

 Getting out of bed this morning sucked quite a bit. I'm not entirely sure why but it was definitely a thing.

When I got to work I did something for a little bit and then I went upstairs to call my homebound patrons. That went well but I did find out I needed to pull three more books for one of my patrons, who went from seven books two months ago, twelve books last month, and now fifteen books this month. I hope it doesn't continue to go up because she only reads large print non-fiction, and our large print non-fiction collection is not that big. But she's super nice and generally likes what I pick, so I'm rolling with it.

I was on desk for two hours before lunch and I worked on something but I can't remember what. Again with the lack of note-taking.

On my way back from lunch it started raining. It was quite the little downpour. It was still going as I got out of my car but by the time I got to the library it had stopped. It was quite odd. And I was thankful for that because we went out shortly after that to deliver books. We haven't had to deliver books in the rain yet but I imagine it is a pain in the butt.

The deliveries went well and we made record time. Which is surprising because we had to stop at the grocery store to buy chocolate. Sign-up for summer reading started today and one of the sign-up prizes is chocolate, which I was in charge of buying, and which I had forgotten about. So to kill two birds with one stone we decided to pick up the chocolate while we were already out and about. And it went all the more faster because the librarian I was with knew where the candy aisle was in the grocery store. I have no use for that aisle so I've never really paid much attention to it before. And on top of that, we also stopped and got gas for the van. It was a buy delivery day.

I was on desk when we got back and I spent that time updating my spreadsheets with the comments I got from my patrons on the bookmarks. Along with helping the occasional patron, the recording of the comments took up the whole hour. I had another hour of work after that and it went by really fast. I did a walkthrough, wrapped up homebound stuff, and did other things I can't remember, because again, no notes.

After work it was Chipotle night. And for the second week, I picked up Qdoba. There was ample parking and only one person in front of me. It was great. And the food wasn't too bad, either. After eating we watched YouTube videos, watched TV, and talked about random things until close to nine o'clock when I called it a night.

When I got home I weeded my driveway, front walk, and a bit in the back. I still need to get weed spray or something, because most of what I did tonight is going to just grow back, but I'm at least good for a day or two.

I spent the rest of the night watching YouTube videos and the Mister Rogers marathon on Twitch. When I watched him growing up he was an old man and they're still on young Mister Rogers. It is interesting to see him so young. It's actually a pretty awkward show, especially the interactions between people, but it's still enjoyable. Good, wholesome fun, which is much better than a lot of the obnoxious educational kids stuff that is on TV today.

It is now almost midnight and I need to record my audio journal so I can go to bed.

May 16, 2017

 I may or may not be going through a writing funk. Or I may just need to go back to taking notes throughout the day.

I opened at work today, which means I sharpened pencils until the pencil sharpener died. We are apparently close to getting a new sharpener, which is more exciting than it probably should be. That excitement will die as soon as I use it and it disappoints me, but until then, the excitement lives.

I finished updating spreadsheets and printing bookmarks, then cut all the bookmarks out and stuffed them in the appropriate books. I was also able to pull books for my final patron, so I'm all ready for tomorrow.

One of our frequent callers was on a roll today. She called several times throughout the day asking for the numbers of individuals, businesses, and churches in one particular town. On her first call she wanted the number of an individual so I had to go downstairs to get the right phone book. At one point later on one of the other librarians wanted to take it back downstairs but I decided to hold onto it, which was good because we ended up needing it a couple more times.

This afternoon we had our last tech drop-in until August and it went surprisingly well. Throughout the two hour period we had six people and we were constantly helping someone. It actually required all three of us (me, another librarian, and the volunteer), which hasn't happened before. We helped people with mobile printing, Facebook, Apple iCloud, ebooks, email, and annotating PDFs. Quite a mix. We even had a city commissioner and the president of our library board, who used to be the head of the all the libraries in the school district. And we were able to help both of them, mostly, so we are proving that our services are useful. And at least one of the patrons that stopped by said they came because they saw the whiteboard sign I put up in the atrium this morning. I'm glad I actually remembered to do it before the actual drop-in time.

In my last hour of work I quickly edited some information about the summer reading program because it needs to go up on the website tomorrow. At the meeting we had the other day the IT lady volunteered one of the other IT people to make an instructional video and come up with the information. She then forgot to tell him about it. Nothing ever came of it because we all thought other people were doing things, but no one was. And the IT lady was gone today, so that left it to me, to throw together in an hour, because it goes live tomorrow. Good grief. But I got it done, at exactly five o'clock.

After work I ran home, got the packages I needed to return, and dropped them off at the UPS Store. I also got an email from the seller of the component cables that broke, so maybe I can get that replaced. I won't hold my breath but we'll see.

Tonight I read from one of the books I have checked out, played Burnout Paradise, watched YouTube videos, and now I'm watching Friends. I've got one episode left in the first season (after the current one) but I'm going to have to save that for later because it is eleven o'clock and I need to record my audio journal and go to bed.

May 15, 2017

 Waking up this morning was a little rough, and there were a lot of yawns after getting to work, but I survived.

My only real goal for the day was to make progress on my homebound stuff, and boy did I. I worked on my lists this morning and finished after lunch. Then I was able to pull all of the books and get them checked out. I got about halfway through updating spreadsheets and printing bookmarks and should easily be able to finish that tomorrow. That is a big weight off my shoulders.

Other things I did today. Pulled books for my flower display, helped patrons, and came up with a broad description for our adulting classes. The teen librarian is going to add a more specific description for each class.

And I think that was pretty much my day. It was fairly uneventful, which was good because that allowed me to be fairly productive.

When I got home I had leftover stir fry for dinner and finally finished my birthday cake. After I finished up with the YouTube videos for the day I started watching Friends. I also may have taken a brief nap while listening to music. I'm tired. I want to read one of the books I checked out today but I also want to sleep. We'll see how I'm feeling after I record my audio journal.

May 14, 2017

 This morning I didn't really sleep in. I don't know what's going on with me. I miss sleeping in.

Today I played a couple different video games and moved one of my bookcases in from the garage. I chose one of the heaviest ones and it was a bit of a bitch. But I did it, and now I have a place for my cookbooks. I don't know if I will keep it where I put it if I ever get a dinner table, but it works for now.

I tried setting up my PS2 and that kind of worked and then didn't at all. The component cables I got worked when I plugged it into my TV but when I tried the converter, which was supposed to allow me to use my PS2 with HDMI, nothing happened. It didn't work on my TV and it didn't work on my projector, which is the reason I got it in the first place. I tried everything I could think of but nothing worked. And then, one of the plug things on the component cables broke off inside the converter. So the one thing that worked, broke. I ended up having to take apart the converter in order to get the broken piece out of it. I am able to return the converter but I'm out six bucks on the cable because that apparently can't be returned. That sucks but at least I can return the more expensive item.

Before the PS2 plan died I got to play a little bit of Burnout Revenge. I want Burnout Paradise to be more like Burnout Revenge. Later on I played the original Burnout on XBOX 360 (although the game itself came out on the original XBOX). My favorite thing about the original Burnout is that when there is a turn in the track, the corresponding blinker on your car turns on. I don't think I ever recognized that when I originally played the game.

Tonight I went over to my Mom's house for dinner. My sister made a chicken salad thing (fake chicken for me), green beans, cheesy garlic bread, and haystack cookies for dessert. Delicious. After dinner my mom opened her gifts and we spent the rest of the night talking and watching TV. Good times.

I got back to my house sometime after nine o'clock and started writing my journal. Around ten o'clock my friend came over and we ended up playing Portal 2 for a couple hours. Today I moved my projector and my green chair into the basement. When I went to my Mom's today I grabbed a bean bag chair and a relaxing camping chair with an attached foot rest, which was great timing because I needed a second seat tonight. I have yet to make it all the way through the co-op for Portal 2 because I never have anyone to play with, but I enjoy it whenever I get to play it. And even though my friend really isn't into video games, he said he had fun playing tonight.

It is now 12:41AM and I need to make up for work in the morning. That means it's time for my audio journal and then bed. It'll be an interesting week at work but my first goal is to finish my homebound lists so I can get all the books ready by Wednesday. It'll be close.

May 13, 2017

 I went from having the most glorious plans of sleeping in this morning to getting a massive cramp in my right calf muscle at 8:00AM on the dot. Talk about a “good” way to be instantly woken up. And I was reminded of it throughout the day every time I took a step. It was pretty great.

I made a private Facebook group today and invited the librarian who just left, the librarian I do homebound with, and the teen librarian. I thought it would be the best way for all of us to keep in touch as a group. Granted, three of us still work at the library, but I think the group is important for all of us. So I made it. I also had fun making the cover image, which has a picture that says “Sarcasm: Now Served All Day”, on top of a background that is a picture of a card catalog. I like it.

The rest of the morning and early afternoon kind of got away from me. I spent more time trying to figure out how to get up to twenty-five dollars on my JetPens order to get free shipping. I keep picking stuff and then changing my mind. Maybe by June I'll have it sorted out.

I ran on the elliptical for awhile, took a nap, and eventually got ready, made lunch, loaded up my car, and headed out. My first stop was the mall so I could buy a book and a gift card for my Mom. They have such a long checkout spiel at the bookstore. Thankfully I was close enough to the guy in front of me that the lady knew I had heard it all and gave me the abridged version.

On my way to my Mom's house I stopped to get gas and finally cleaned the bugs off my windshield. When I got to my Mom's house I realized I forgot to bring my laptop, so I started a load of laundry and ran back to my house to grab my laptop.

The first thing I did when I got back to my Mom's house was eat lunch. I think it was like three o'clock at this point, probably after. I was hungry. Then I printed off a return label for the date stamp. It showed up last night, instead of on Thursday like it was supposed to, forcing me to buy another one. Now I just need to find the time to drop it off at UPS.

I finally finished watching Young Guns and I've gotta say, I'm not a fan. It may be because I watched it over the course of a week on my lunch breaks, but it just didn't do anything for me. The flow of the movie and the storyline seemed off. And the peyote scene lasted way too long. I'm cool never watching it again.

I also watched the last half of The Avengers and the first bit of Olympus Has Fallen. Both are more entertaining than Young Guns.

My laundry was finally done around 7:30PM and I was able to head home to make dinner. I made my first Blue Apron meal, which was stir fried wonton noodles with bok choy and radishes. It came with shiitake mushrooms but I gave those to my Mom because I generally not a fan of mushrooms and I wasn't feeling that adventurous tonight. I was a little bit though because I never would have thought to use bok choy or radishes. The radishes were marinated in rice vinegar, another thing that I doubt I would have ever tried, but it worked out. And to finish it off I added cashews and furikake seasoning, which is a combination of sesame seeds and seaweed, among other things. And surprisingly, it was pretty tasty. I would make it again. And thankfully I would eat it again because I have leftovers.

Right after I got home my friend and his dad stopped by for a little bit. As I was finishing the dishes and cleaning up after dinner my friend came back over and we watched several episodes of Master of None. We inadvertently watched the first episode of the first season but then switched to the second season and watched the first three episodes. I had only ever seen the last ten minutes or so of the first episode of the first season but want to actually watch the show at some point because I like Aziz Ansari.

It is now somehow two o'clock in the morning. Good grief. I need to record my audio journal. And then, hopefully, I will go to bed and sleep in a little bit.

May 12, 2017

 It is eleven o'clock and I am tired. I will definitely be sleeping in tomorrow.

This morning I woke up earlier than normal so I could go to Staples before work. I got there at almost the exact time I predicted. I found the time stamp fairly quickly and had some time to kill so I looked at all their different pens and pencils. They had the auto-rotating mechanical pencil I've been looking at but not the color I wanted. It was nice getting to see the size of it in real life. They didn't have the fountain pens I was interested in, which was unfortunate, but I wasn't going to buy any so it wasn't much of a loss. When I got back out to my car I wrapped the stamp and ink pad in one of the many grocery store ads I have gotten in the mail, and then headed to the library.

This morning it was just me and the librarian who's leaving until eleven o'clock. And it was relatively busy, not so much in person but the phone seemed like it was ringing on a regular basis. I was eventually able to give her the stamp, which she was really excited about, which made me glad I decided to go buy one this morning. I also had her sign my autograph book.

Throughout the day I worked on my homebound stuff, and made some decent progress, but I'll be honest, I spent most of my day talking to the librarian who's leaving. One of my favorite things about working at the library is talking with this librarian. We cover so many varying topics and even when we dip into serious things there are always a lot of laughs. She also has a lot more library experience than I do and gave me a lot of good advice, insight, and perspective. So it's going to suck not having that to look forward to every day. But we at least got to end on a high note because we talked for so long and went on so many tangents today. It was pretty great.

This afternoon we had her going away party in the boardroom. I was there for the first twenty minutes and the last twenty minutes because I had to cover the desk during the middle twenty minutes. People from various departments popped in throughout to say their goodbyes and just hangout and talk. It was pretty fun. I also liked that it wasn't depressing. The mood stayed light which made it easier to deal with.

For the last hour of the day I was on desk and worked on homebound stuff and talked with my boss, because we were the only two people there. I also actually had my one year evaluation when I got back from lunch, which I just remembered. It was uneventful.

After work I went home and the Blue Apron box was on my porch. I wanted to finish the last of my leftovers so I didn't cook any of the meals tonight but I did pull everything out and put it in my fridge. I'm pretty excited to try them To go along with my leftover rice/quinoa and roasted vegetables I also scrambled the last of my eggs and mixed them in, which I think was a wise choice. (I just tried to spell wise with a 'z'. I'm tired).

With the rest of my night I watched YouTube videos, clicked around the internet, and continued to work on my JetPens order. I want to get some more Platinum Preppy fountain pens, try out some bigger than fine nibs, and I want to spend twenty-five dollars so I can get free shipping. With my original order I can close and found out that shipping would be around five dollars. So I could spent twenty dollars and five dollars on shipping, or I could spend five more dollars and not may anything for shipping. I was going to be spending that five dollars either way but I thought it made more sense to get something out of it. I just haven't been able to find something else to add. I've also taken a couple things out of my order, and I don't know that I want the mechanical pencil, so now I'm up to needing to spend ten dollars. By the end of the night I was thinking about a new color of ink but haven't been able to settle on one. The search continues.

Now I'm going to record my audio journal so I can go to sleep. I'm looking forward to the second part of that sentence.

May 11, 2017

 This morning my main accomplishment was waking up before my alarm. That gave me about thirty minutes to to figure out DOSbox before getting ready for my day. I decided I didn't want to trust the browser-based version with all the issues I had the other day, so I looked to see if there was a way I could run DOSbox from a USB drive because I didn't want to install anything on the computers in the lab. Turns out there is a portable version that can be installed on a USB drive, so I downloaded that. Then I figured out how to navigate to the game using DOS prompts. Many years ago I played around with DOSbox but far too long along to actually remember anything.

The idea was to have this ready to go on the computers before people got there and navigating through DOS over and over again didn't sound very fun so later on at work I found out how to edit a shortcut so that it would automatically open the game. I then copied and pasted the files onto twelve USB drives, just to be safe, and edited the shortcuts so they would link to the right thing. It was a bit tedious but it saved me a lot of time later on.

By the time I finished that it was time to go to a presentation about books. It was for a book fair thing at the library and the head of the technical services department talked about several books she has read recently. I was only interested in a few of them but I could have listened to her talk about books all day because she was very entertaining.

I went from the presentation immediately into a meeting about summer reading. I still feel a bit like I'm running behind the train trying to catch up. I'm just kind of there, hoping they don't ask too many questions. I also think everything will be alright once summer reading actually starts. I'm almost to the point now where it feels like an election, where it is talked about and dissected beyond any recognition, only because too much time is given to the topic. If that makes any sense. We need to just do it. But this is just my perspective. I know there are a lot of details to figure out but when it comes down to my role I don't feel like there is much else to do other than wait for the program to start. We're almost there.

Today I was volunteered to make instructions on how to sign up for the online part of summer reading and coming up with an FAQ. And the idea was that it would be done today. It seemed a bit much, especially considering I've been shown the program a couple times but haven't actually used it myself. Thankfully at the meeting, the IT lady said she would have one of the other IT people make that stuff. I thought that should have been the idea from the beginning because they have more experience with it. Our department is supposed to be in charge of training the rest of the staff in various things, so it makes sense that we should do the training for this, I guess, but when it comes to something like this I don't think we should be responsible for it. And thankfully, now we're not, because I don't think I would have been able to finish it today.

When I was on desk today I missed a call because I went over to help someone with printing. The person on the phone left a message so I called them back and it was an old lady. She sounded very surprised when I told her I was calling from the library and she jokingly said she didn't think they let men work at the library because she had never spoken to one before. It was pretty funny.

Tonight I think the Oregon Trail workshop went pretty well. There were five attendees, two librarians, the ILL person, a husband, and a boyfriend. I'll take it. Rather than playing one big game together I played mine up on the projector and everyone else had their own thing going on. Every time someone died I wrote the name of the person and how they died up on the whiteboard, including an initial by the name so we could keep track of how many people each person lost. I also kept track of ending scores on the board. Once everyone had made it through once a few people used the online spinner I created to randomly select the next occupation they would use to travel the trail, so we got some use out of that. As everyone was playing I also created certificates for them, for things like getting the highest score, killing the most people, and being the opposite of a snake charmer (because the one librarian's husband had someone in their wagon that was bitten by a snake at least five or six time before finally dying from a snakebite). In the end, everyone seemed to have a good time and I think it went well. I really want video games (whether it's discussions or old games or tournaments) to become a thing for adults at the library. I think the problem at the moment is making people aware that these things are happening. And I think it would help if I could do them more regularly, rather than just once or twice a semester, so people could come to expect this activity at the library. Next semester we only have one video game discussion scheduled, but maybe I can do better next Spring.

I checked with my Mom after work to see if I had received anything in the mail and I hadn't. I was supposed to get the date stamp I got as a going away gift for the librarian who's last day is tomorrow. I thought my timing was perfect. But someone it went from a two-day delivery to a possibly five day delivery, which sucks because I only had two days. That is kind of annoying. Now I have to wake up early so I can go to Staples before work, which I guess is what I should have done in the first place. Now I get to deal with the fun of returning the stamp when it finally shows up, because as far as I know I don't need a date stamp.

When I got home I ate birthday cake and ice cream because I still have both and I was a little bummed by the stamp thing. While I ate that stuff I watched YouTube videos and clicked around the internet. That included finding out that Staples had a date stamp and that it would take me twelve minutes to drive to the store in the morning. Good times.

It is now midnight and I have to get up in the morning, so I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed.

May 10, 2017

 I did things today, I'm sure of it, but this day really seemed to disappear. It's weird.

I spent the first two hours of my shift on desk doing who knows what. And then I had a walkthrough followed by a meeting with the IT lady to set up the adult summer reading page. That was a productive meeting and I am feeling better about the whole summer reading thing.

In my hour before lunch and the hour after I read the chapter from the book we've been discussing in our department meeting. It was an interesting chapter, talking about the stories we tell ourselves that lead to the emotions we feel in various situations. Which is maybe hard to explain. An example would be, are you mad at the act of someone cutting you off in traffic or are you mad at the story you just created in your head to explain why they cut you off? In any given situation, are you upset by what actually happens or the story you have created about why it is happening? And are you creating a story where you are the victim, someone else is the villain, or where you are helpless? It was interesting to think about. I also liked that they brought up humanizing people, don't put them into these small generalizations in your stories. I keep relatively calm in most situations because I make a conscious effort to humanize people and put myself in their shoes. My stories are often coming up with reasons why they have done what they have done, trying to explain it away as an accident or because they have a lot going on in their life. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. I'm not perfect at it but I try. In general, I want to believe most people are good and have good intentions. There are plenty of inconsiderate assholes out there, but they are in the minority.

The department meeting went well. We talked about the book chapter, the policy for the month (which I forgot the review), handed out kudos, and figured out our personality color. My kudos went over well. I gave a couple to the librarian who is leaving, one of which was for putting up with all of us for almost a year before making up all this “Japan” business just to get away from us. I also wrote one for the librarian I do homebound deliveries with for checking to make sure I hadn't been killed by an old lady with severe macular degeneration during our last delivery when I had been in the house for over half an hour. The last part of our meeting was spent figuring out our personality color. Coincidentally, I'm a green. In general I view most personality tests as being in the same realm as horoscopes, but they're still fun.

After work it was Chipotle night, but I minused the Chipotle, so that may just become a Kleenex or Xerox term, just meaning dinner regardless of where it comes from. I spent twenty minutes trying to find a parking spot within walking distance before saying screw it. That is way too much time trying to get food that I haven't really enjoyed in quite some time. To at least stay in the same realm I decided to go to Qdoba. There was ample parking and barely any line, which was instantly an improvement. There are also more food options, so maybe it will stay interesting longer. With all the college kids being gone next week, and for the rest of the summer, Chipotle should be fine for a few months, but I think I am going to extend the break for at least a little while.

After dinner we watched videos and sat around and talked until around 9:30PM when I finally called it a night. When I got home I watched a bunch of YouTube videos, clicked around the internet, and now I am finally coming to the end of this entry. At 12:38AM. To say I got distracted by other things while writing this is an understatement. But now I'm going to record my audio journal so I can go to bed.

May 9, 2017

 Today happened. Kind of in a blur apparently because it feels like I blinked and now it's over.

This morning was very early. I'm not a fan of early. And then I went to work and sharpened pencils until the sharpener died, along with all the other opening stuff. Then I was on desk for two hours, which gave me enough time to catch up on email. At least I think that's what I did the whole time. Along with other stuff probably. I can't really remember.

This afternoon it was eventually time for the resume workshop. I didn't have to teach it so I just stood in the back and sweated most of the time because it was very hot and stagnant in the classroom today. Which made me glad I wasn't up front teaching. We had a good turnout with ten people showing up and the evaluations were very positive with some good feedback. I'll take it.

After the class I was on desk again. That hour flew by as I did all the after class stuff, like updated my attendees list, and compiled all the feedback before sending it to the lady who taught the class. Exciting stuff.

Oh, going back to this morning, while I was on desk I also figured out how to transpose rows and columns in Google Sheets. Turns out it's just a formula, that starts with “=transpose”. So it's pretty obvious. I used it to change the rows from the tech competency survey into columns and vice versa, because that arrangement made more sense. Then I used Find and Replace All to shorten some of the responses. And lastly, conditional formatting, to highlight the responses where people said they weren't quite sure about something or needed help. Hooray for learning and organization.

On my way home I went to Target to get some stuff. I avoided one construction zone by going through another. It took me about fifteen minutes to go the same distance that usually takes me about three minutes. Road construction is like death and taxes. I like the final product but getting there is annoying.

When I got home I broke down and turn the air conditioning on. It was eighty-four degrees in my house and I was tired of sweating after doing it all day at work. It is now seventy-four degrees in my house and it's amazing.

After dinner I washed my dishes and then put the barrister bookcase together. It's not in the best shape but it is mostly cosmetic and it still looks pretty cool. It also kind of makes me want to make my own version. But first I need to make a workbench. I want that to be my summer project. Or really any season project because I don't get summers off anymore.

I spent the rest of my night practicing my handwriting, looking at pens, watching YouTube videos, and I am now six episodes into the first season of Friends. I don't know how many years it has been since I've seen the show but it is still good. I don't think I'll make it through all ten seasons but I wouldn't mind trying.

But not tonight because it after eleven o'clock and I need to record my audio journal so I can go to bed.