August 16, 2017

 This morning I woke up and started ironing my pants. In the middle of that I thought I heard something, but it turned out to just be a plane. Then I thought I heard something again, but it was just a lawn mower. And then, the rain came plowing into the back of the house. I immediately went down to my basement, set a chair in front of the window, climbed up on said chair, and shined a flashlight out into the window well. Despite the sound of the rain, there were only a few drips of water coming off of the tarp covering the window well. A good sign. I checked again after getting ready for work when the rain had stopped and there still weren't any signs of water coming in. Victory. For now.

At work I came really close to taking notes. But I didn't. I called my homebound patrons not too long after getting to work. I sent an email to someone who working in the basement to see if they could teach our car class because he used to be a Driver's Ed instructor. Turns out that was a long time ago so he didn't feel like the best person for the job. I also thought about a craft project for the maker fair. I still really want to make a giant Jenga set. I had the thought today to make telephone wire bracelets. Many years ago when I was a kid we made them at a summer program. Several years ago I took apart an old ethernet cable that happened to have similar wires inside, and I was able to make the bracelet again. I don't know how that could be related to the library in any way, but it's an idea and I think it fits in well with the idea of a maker fair.

After lunch we went to deliver books. The forecasted rain never materialized but it was a little cloudy and there was a nice breeze, that kept the humidity at a more bearable level. The deliveries themselves went well and I think we got done in record time. When we got back we pulled out all the bookmarks and got the books ready for processing by circulation. Then I replaced my DVD display sign with the second one I made and I pulled more books for my large print romance display.

I was on desk for the next hour (and kind of the hour after that because I just stayed on the computer). I started inputting feedback from my homebound patrons into their spreadsheets but I spent most of the time showing the new assistant things at the desk. I was only supposed to show her phone stuff but that ended up spiraling into other things and I think I probably showed her way more stuff than I probably should. I told her that she was probably going to forget most of what I was telling her and it really wouldn't be relevant to her until she actually needed to do something, and she agreed. I figure it can't hurt to plant the seeds though, so maybe she'll pick up on something quick in the future when she is presented with an issue. At the very least she'll have an inkling of a memory that she has heard about such-and-such before.

I had a long reference phone call today from an old Vietnam vet. He immediately started off confused when I answered the phone and mentioned Adult Services. He was a little worried he had dialed the wrong number and called a risque establishment, not a library. Once we got that sorted out he got to his question, which was about books put out by the military, back when he was in the service, that gave brief histories of countries all over the world. We didn't really get anywhere with that because it was a fairly broad request and I couldn't track anything down. I should have gotten his name and number so I could keep looking. I did tell him about the World Factbook from the CIA and gave him the number to the university library because I thought he might have better luck with their collection and access to other academic libraries. I hope he finds what he's looking for.

I ended up working fifteen minutes past six o'clock because a patron came up with a question with about seven minutes to go and his question segued into other questions and everyone still working kind of disappeared on me. I got out of their eventually and I can take a longer lunch tomorrow or Friday to make up for it.

After work I picked up Qdoba and went to my Mom's house for dinner. We ate, talked, and watched YouTube videos. Same old family dinner night, same old good times. I'm okay with that. And when I got home, it was the same old thing. Watched YouTube videos, clicked around the internet, and eventually got around to writing this. It's taken awhile, as per usual, because distractions. But now it is almost midnight so I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed. I close tomorrow so I can sleep in if I get to bed soon enough.