June 18, 2017

 This morning I slept as long as I needed to and woke up without an alarm. It was great. Every day should be like that.

I got to work about ten minutes early because I crushed the drive across town. I didn't hit a single stoplight and for the most part I was able to drive the speed I wanted.

I was done counting the money five minutes after I was supposed to be there, which gave me a whole bunch of time before we opened. I used that to get a start on my homebound stuff. Over the course of the day I was able to pull books for my last two patrons, make bookmarks and put them in the books, pack up all the books, and update spreadsheets. I ended my day by starting to cut out shapes I printed out on cardstock for one of my homebound patrons. She has macular degeneration and it has gotten to the point where she can't write comments to let me know what she thought of the books. My idea was to come up with two shapes, a plus-sign and a circle, and she can put a plus sign in the audiobook cases that she likes and a circle in the ones she doesn't. This way she doesn't need to worry about writing. I'm still not sure about the best method for delivering/holding the shapes. They need to be easily accessible but also contained so they don't get lost. I'm going to ask my coworkers to see what they think.

I played with my test spreadsheet a little bit and think I settled on the icons for hiding and unhiding rows. And I haven't tried it yet but I imagine it can also be used to hide and unhide columns. I don't need to do that at the moment but it may come in handy as I figured out a better way to layout my homebound spreadsheets.

Yesterday I printed out three hundred more grand prize drawing tickets and today I cut them out. I wasn't able to use the big industrial cutter in the basement so I did it with a regular paper cutter. That was super tedious after experiencing the efficiency of the cutter in the basement. But I survived and we're good on tickets for at least a little bit.

There was a man over in the new seating area today that was having a conversation with himself while doing something on his phone or tablet. It occasionally dipped into argument territory. After listening to that for an hour or two I came up with this: “The Public Library: The interesting characters aren't just in the books.” It is very accurate. Another example is the bible study group that had a Father's Day party for the Heavenly Father. They went all out with balloons and everything.

On my way home I got gas, stopped at Target, and stopped at my Mom's house. At Target I did self-check because the only register open had a lady with a cart overflowing with tiny items. She might still be there. I ended up annoying the machine by not placing the items in a satisfactory way into the bagging area on two occasions. Both times the girl supervising the area had to come over and push a bunch of buttons to get it sorted out. I started to feel bad. At my Mom's house I picked up the books I got my Dad for Father's Day (which he'll get whenever I see him again) and talked to my Mom for a little bit.

When I got home I unloaded my groceries and heated up some pizza for dinner. While I ate I watched YouTube videos and after dinner I made a picture based on the phrase I came up with about characters in public libraries. It's just the words on a background of green-tinted wood, but I think it looks pretty cool.

I played one race in Ridge Racer Unbounded but couldn't play another because I was too lazy to go down to the basement to get my controller. The only keyboard option for driving was the arrow keys and space bar. That is not the ideal for racing. I did horribly. And then I switched over to Elite Dangerous because that is my new obsession. I made a decent amount of credits transporting stuff and I unintentionally stumbled upon the Leonard Nimoy space station, which orbits Vulcan. I took a bunch of screenshots.

I also became the victim of a bug that has apparently been a thing for a least a year or two. I took a mission to deliver to one place but when I got there they changed the location and offered a bonus for the inconvenience. I couldn't reach the new location because it was too far away and my ship couldn't make the jump. I eventually decided to buy a new ship that could jump farther because I've been looking to upgrade anyway and I would be make more than enough on the mission to cover the cost. Well, I got to the new location and there wasn't anyone there accepting the delivery. So I traveled all the way there for nothing. I got a couple more missions after that that changed the location of the delivery at the last minute but thankfully those actually worked out.

It is not way too late. I think I set a record with the number of distractions and rabbit holes I went down while writing this entry. Good grief.