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.