September 2, 2017

This morning I set my alarm clock for 6:00AM. It went off, I ignored it, and when I looked at the clock again it said 7:23AM. Whoops. That lead to some rushing around but I still made it to work about five minutes early. Thankfully we're scheduled for 8:30AM on Saturdays not 8:00AM.

Counting the drawer went well, so that was a nice start to the day, and then the day stagnated. I spent way too much time trying to figure out the new copier. I made a new display sign and then I couldn't print it. I tried just shy of a million different things and none of them worked. Then I tried printing to the new copier on the third floor but, turns out, it's only black and white. Kind of frustrating. In the end it was all just a waste of time. The sign looks cool, though.

The rest of my day was spent working on a tutorial. Took so many screenshots, did a bunch of editing in Paint, because that's what I have to work with, and then threw them into Publisher. This tutorial is such a cobbled together process. And it's taking forever.

I had to ask a teenager to finish her phone call away from the computers today. She was going on and on forever, occasionally getting loud and using inappropriate language. I sent a message to her computer asking her to lower her voice and watch her language. That lasted for about five minutes and then she was calling her friend a ho again. I went over, asked her to take her conversation outside, she said okay and gave me an evil stare, I said thank you and went back to the desk. She waited an appropriate amount of time to make it look like she was making the decision herself, and then walked away. I'm really tired of the teenagers using the computers upstairs. I have nothing against the teenagers really, they're just acting like teenagers. They are social technology users and oblivious to the world around them. But it creates stress in my life trying to keep them in line with the expectations of the adults trying to use the computers upstairs. Much like every other segment of people, the vast majority of the teenagers are good kids, there are just the handful that give the rest a bad name. I'm tired of dreading the inevitable confrontations. It's draining.

Speaking of stress, my conference proposal was accepted, so I'll be going to a conference in October. The university librarian had the idea for a proposal but I finalized it and wrote it because she was on vacation when the due date came around, so I'm listed as the lead presenter. It's just supposed to be a relaxed discussion with at least a few of us talking about our experiences as new librarians, but I'm already stressed out. And two weeks after that I have to give the keynote presentation for a small conference or something for our library system. I need a vacation but my plate is piled high at least until December. If I wasn't already losing my hair this would definitely make it start. At the moment I'm not sure how I'm supposed to enjoy my free time because most of my time off work is spent trying to decompress from the stress of work. It's not necessarily overwhelming, it's just very persistent.

After work I came home for a little bit and then headed back across town for dinner. Yesterday we had a birthday breakfast for my Dad and tonight was a birthday dinner. Tonight we were also joined by my brother, his girlfriend, and one of my Dad's friends. It was at a kind of fancy restaurant that was only fancy because their food was overpriced and presented in small portions. I had macaroni and cheese with steamed broccoli that was good but it cost eleven dollars when it should have cost five dollars, and that's being generous. I'm apparently just not a fan of spending money on food. The dinner as a whole was nice, though. I'm still too stressed out to really enjoy anything, especially social situations, but I could appreciate it.

When I got home I tried a piece of my wheat bread. It is so freaking dense. But like the Italian bread, it tastes alright, so something is going right. I still have one package of yeast left and the ingredients for white bread, so that is going to happen next.

With the rest of my night I continued watching season six of New Girl and I got distracted by things on the internet. My friend is supposed to be in town tomorrow so I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed, not only because I'm tired, but so I can be up at a decent time in case he wants to grab lunch or something.