Saturday, May 6, 2017

May 5, 2017

 This morning I woke up two minutes before my alarm went off. Not quite as good as yesterday when I woke up one minute before my alarm, but still not bad.

Today should have been a note taking day. I know I did things but I'm going to forget a lot of things. It was just another one of those days, which seems to be the theme for the week.

The teen librarian and I made the final decision on our prize tickets for summer reading so I printed out 800 of them and we went down to the basement to use the giant industrial paper cutter. She has nicknamed it PCOD, which is short for the Paper Cutter Of Death, and now that I have used it, I would have to agree. It is very intimidating and it feels like there should be some sort of rule about the amount of training and supervision required in order to use it. But there isn't any of that. I watched the teen librarian make a few cuts and then she had me do the rest.

She started by showing me how it cuts using a piece of cardboard. You spin this wheel in front which moves the fence in the back, and that determines where your material lines up under the blade. Then you step on a pedal on the floor that slowly lowers this thing that holds the material in place. And lastly, you simultaneously push a button on either side of the machine, which makes the blade slide down at an angle to cut the material. It's crazy. And when we moved to the tickets, it cut through eighty sheets of paper like it wasn't even there.

We also had an impromptu summer reading meeting today to look at the online component and clarify some things. I'm still meeting with the IT lady next week to set up the adult's site but today's meeting was useful.

I helped interesting patrons find books today. There was a ninety-two year old gentleman who wanted Western large print books. I tried asking him multiple times if there was a particular author he wanted, almost yelling at him by the end of it but he still couldn't hear my voice so I got a piece of paper and wrote “Author?” and that helped. But he didn't have a particular author in mind so I just showed him that the Western books have a sticker on them and that seemed to work.

Another patron was a mom with her three kids. The little boy was hard to understand but asked me what my name was. I told him and asked what his name was. I couldn't understand what he said but I nodded with a smile on my face. Then his little sister also wanted to ask me what my name was. I replied and asked what her name was but her mom said she couldn't say it yet. I later found out what their names were, at least I think this is what I heard. The little boy's name was Judacon and the little girl's name was Forgiveness. Interesting. She was at a midwife's meeting and I believe I heard her talking about home births earlier, so I guess the unique names fit. They were super nice kids, though, so she's obviously doing something right.

I compiled a list of facts about the Oregon Trail today. I figured I should include a little education in the workshop next week. I also pulled a book from the shelf that has most of the landmarks from the trail listed in it. Tonight I rushed through the game to get a list of all the locations mentioned and then put a marker in the book. It took me two tries to beat the game to get all the locations. The first time I made it almost to the end, where I had to decide between rafting down the river or the toll road. I had the money for the toll road and so I took it and right after that my last player died. The second time I didn't have the money so I had to raft down the river. That ended up being much easier than it was when I was a kid. And I got super lucky because I was again down to one player and he was sick. But I won.

Just now, as I was writing that, I had a game of Oregon Trail going and decided to ford all of the rivers, because it never goes well. I think it was last night where I lost two members of my wagon on the very first river by fording it. Tonight I made decent progress but the game ended when I forded the Green River and not only lost the remaining three members of my party but also 13 oxen. Talk about insult to injury. I thought it was bad when I was playing one of the games at work and a thief stole 19 oxen, leaving me stranded because the only oxen I had left was sick or something, so I had to trade until I could get enough oxen to move on. Good times.

We had a few college kids show up for our study event today. That's a few better than yesterday. And some of them actually took advantage of the snacks, so that was cool. Tonight I was once again responsible for dumping out the coffee. I'm really impressed by the container we put it in because I believe it was the same coffee they had put out before I got there at eleven o'clock this morning and it was still hot. Curiosity got the better of me and I tried a few sips of it. Admittedly, it was probably far from the best example of coffee, especially given how old it was. I will say that it wasn't that bad. It also wasn't that good. Water is far better. I think I'm good for another three decades or so.

And I just set a new record for fording a river in Oregon Trail. On the very first river, the Kansas River, 102 miles into my journey, my wagon sank, drowning all five members of my party, and I lost all twenty oxen. Zing.

When I got home tonight I played Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 3D. I was immediately disappointed with it because the controls with a mouse and keyboard were completely screwed up. I couldn't control my ship for crap and the whole point of the game is being able to control your ship. I eventually realized my controller wasn't plugged in, which is why I hadn't been able to use it, but once I plugged it in and was able to use it, the game was way more fun. Still not perfect, but certainly more playable. I doubt I'll ever be able to get decent scores on any of the levels, though, because they count accuracy and I can be shooting right at an enemy and not land a single shot. Oh well.


The rest of the night I watched YouTube videos and eventually played some Oregon Trail, obviously. And it is now after one o'clock in the morning, which is far too late. I still need to record my audio journal, so I'm going to go do that.

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