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.