November 30, 2017

 It took me forever to get to sleep last night so I ended up only getting about six and a half hours of sleep. Six o'clock came really quick but I managed to get up without much problem, which was a pleasant surprise. And I ended up getting to work early because the traffic was favorable.

I did all the usual opening stuff and learned the elevator right by our desk was broken. Not long after we opened an elevator technician came to look at it. When he got there, he stepped in the elevator, hit a button, and as the doors closed I heard him say “Oh, no.” Not really the most reassuring response from the guy there to fix the elevator. I'm not sure what ended up being wrong with it but he did find a big book somewhere inside the shaft.

After he was done fixing it, we discovered it kept making a repeated series of high-pitched beeps. I narrowed it down to happening whenever someone or something was over the threshold of the elevator. So as people stepped in or out of the elevator it would beep. Or if you just held your arm over the threshold it wouldn't stop beeping. I also noticed that crossing the threshold when the door was closing would cause the door to open without it even touch you. Before you had to grab it and kind of pull it back open. Now it's like a garage door that will automatically open back up if you trip the sensor. So that's nice, but the beeping was really obnoxious. I thought the technician had left so I sent an email to the maintenance guy, the assistant director, and the rest of the department just to let them know the elevator would beep anytime it was used. Not long after that the assistant director came over with the technician and he was able to turn the beeping off. My main worry, other than being frequently annoyed by the beeping throughout the day, was that another book or something would get dropped in such away that we couldn't reach it but it would trigger non-stop beeping until a technician could get there. We would all go nuts, employees and patrons alike.

Today was a productive day. I edited and posted my notes for the leadership video I watched to the department blog, along with an appropriate GIF of a woman dance-stepping up a stair machine at the gym. I also edited and posted my notes from the virtual conference I watched a few sessions for awhile ago. The keynote was about net neutrality and I used a slow loading GIF that represented what the internet would be like if net neutrality went away.

This afternoon I spent awhile creating a mock-up of how I would change the tech training page. The main thing was just moving the tech class and workshop stuff to the bottom and adding buttons for each of the classes so that people could use those to either navigate to the class page and access the resources for the class, or open up the registration page and sign up for the class. The page I made was a combination of screenshots from the current page and Publisher elements. It's not that pretty but I think it gets the point across.

For the last two hours of work there was a woman at the computers who was talking loudly on her phone while she worked through signing up for college. It was pretty annoying but she was at least trying to improve her life, which is a lot more than most of the loud people at the computers. And, no other patrons complained and I think that is unprecedented given the length of time she was talking. Not even the old long-haired patrons who was constantly complaining about the teen siblings and the guy who got kicked out for a year and then arrested. Coincidentally, the lady today was white, and people he has complained about in the past were not. Coincidentally.

On my way home I stopped at Target. Among other things, I got frozen pizza. One of my fellow librarians said she was going to have cold pizza for lunch, which sounded really good. And then, the teen librarian had pizza delivered to our desk for her event this afternoon. It smelled so good. Like, best pizza I've ever smelled, good. I thought about ordering a pizza but decided to save money and get a frozen one. And I didn't have to wait for the delivery.

When I got home, I ate pizza, watched videos and clicked around the internet, and then played a few matches in CoD: WW2. My first game was Hardpoint and I went 35 and 21 with a sniper. That a ridiculous K/D for me in general, but with a sniper? Good grief. My next game, also Hardpoint, I went 17 and 13, so not as good, but I also had almost three and a half minutes on the harpoints, which was over two minutes longer than anyone else.

I also played a little bit of Tera tonight because they released a new character class today and they're doing another leveling event. I don't know that I'll go all the way to max level this time but we'll see.

Now I want to go to bed, so I'm going to record my audio journal. I'm glad tomorrow is Friday. This has felt like a really long week.

November 29, 2017

 I'm ready for bed and I'm not looking forward to opening tomorrow. But I get of at five o'clock, so we'll focus on that.

Today was kind of a weird day. On three occasions I kinda felt slightly attacked and/or made to feel kinda dumb by my coworkers, so that wasn't a good feeling. I assume most of that is on me and my interpretation of events and being unable to see things differently. I'm not sure why I ended up in that funk today. It would have been a good day if it wasn't for that, so I don't know what's up.

My morning was spent upstairs watching and taking notes on a Lynda.com video about leadership. It's the one I started to read the transcript for the other day but had to stop because the transcript was awful. Turns out the video was pretty good but the transcript was still pretty terrible. I'm interested how it was made. There were some misspellings, missed words, and what seemed like misinterpretations of other words. Aside from the transcript, the content was good and I think I got some useful things out of it.

This afternoon I was desk for a couple hours. I helped patrons, talked to my coworkers about a tech class, and tweaked my room schedule printout. And then, at five o'clock I went to the boardroom to show some of my coworkers the new room schedule program. My main focus was on printing out room schedules and they had a bunch of questions about actually reserving rooms, which I really wasn't capable of answering beyond the basics, so that was good. Hopefully they got something out of what I had to show them.

After work I forgot it was Wednesday, I think it kind of felt like a Tuesday all day, but luckily my Mom caught me before I left the parking lot. I headed to Qdoba and then to her house. We ate dinner, watched videos, and talked about random things until eight o'clock when I headed home.

At home I clicked around the internet, watched videos and livestreams, and now I'm writing this so I can then record my audio journal and go to bed. Sleep sounds really good right now.

November 28, 2017

 I got about nine and a half hours of sleep last night and it was amazing. And then on my way to work, the stoplights were acting like golights, which was a nice turn of events compared to my usual drive to work.

My first hour of work was spent dealing with email things mostly and then I was on desk for two hours. And I continued working on the room schedule printout. I came up with a complex formula, patched together from a few different formulas, in order to properly display the setup/takedown time with the regular time for a meeting, all of which are pulled from another sheet in the workbook. It's actually faster to just type in that information, rather than editing the formula, but it's cool that I figured it out.

I had a walkthrough and then I went down to help cover the youth services desk during their department meeting. Thankfully one of their assistants was also there because she was getting questions I wouldn't have been able to answer. I only got one question and then spent the rest of the time typing up my notes from the conference last month. It's taken me awhile to get around to that.

My drive back to the library after dinner was the same as my drive to work this morning. So many golights. It was nice.

I spent some time refilling my Mystery and audiobook displays, eventually had a couple walkthroughs, and spent the majority of the night on desk. I finished typing up my conference notes and got those posted to our department blog, and then I worked on turning my room schedule spreadsheet into more of a template with a bunch of comments to help my coworkers out when I'm not there. There are three sheets in the workbook: one to paste the information copied from the room schedule report, one for the printable version of the schedule that pulls information from the first sheet, and then an example of what the final schedule should look like. Tomorrow I will actually try to explain the whole thing to my coworkers, so we'll see if it actually makes sense to anyone. My fingers are crossed.

When I got home I played a couple games of Domination in CoD: WW2 so I could complete a daily order to get fifteen kills with a silenced SMG. It took a little longer than it should have because I kept forgetting to put the silencer on. Also, I'm not very good. But I eventually completed it. Then I clicked around the internet before starting this. And now, as always, I will record my audio journal and go to bed.

November 27, 2017

 Last night I got around six and a half hours of sleep, which was not enough. I also had a dream last night that I was helping a patron with the printer at the library. Gotta love dreaming about work. I did end up helping a patron with the printer today, a little foreshadowing I guess.

When I first got to work I had an hour off desk so I read news articles and things related to libraries. Since working on my fake news presentation I have been more inspired to read about the news. It makes sense to try and stay informed as an information professional.

I then had my monthly meeting with my boss and that went well. She commended me on how well I handled the last month with all of my big projects. Then I was on desk for what felt like the rest of the day. I talked to my coworkers about Thanksgiving and worked on figuring the printed room schedule using our new reservation system. It's a lot less user friendly than the old schedule, which is saying a lot because the old schedule was not user friendly at all. I think it's going to take a lot of fiddling just to make it look good, so we might just not have a schedule that looks good. I have enough downtime now that I can keep messing with it. I'm supposed to teach the other people in my department how to do it on Wednesday so hopefully I can come up with something tomorrow.

And that was pretty much my day at work. I helped the occasional patron, including a perturbed lady on the phone, and worked on the schedule thing. It was a very laid back day, and that's not a bad way to start the week.

When I got home I ate dinner, watched YouTube videos and clicked around the internet, and then played some CoD: WW2. I played my first game of Capture The Flag in this CoD and it's definitely the best game of Capture The Flag I will ever play. By the end of it I had twelve kills, five deaths, three captures, and one return. I wish I was recording it. For one of my captures I made it back to our side but our flag was gone so I had to wait and defend the capture. I killed at least five or six people while holding the flag, which thankfully allows you to use your real gun, not your pistol, and I was nearly out of ammo when I heard that our flag was returned. As I rounded the corner, someone on the enemy team was running up the stairs with our flag, so I killed him, ran up and grabbed our flag, and then ran back to make the capture. For someone who is not very good at the game, it was epic. It helped that the other team wasn't very good and the only person who was good on the team was focused on getting kills, not actually playing.

Now I'm watching a livestream and taking forever to write this because of that. But I've got a headache so I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed. A full night of sleep sounds pretty great right now.

November 26, 2017

 Today was pretty boring. When I got up a played a round of War in CoD: WW2. Then I watched YouTube videos before eventually listening to the audiobook Gwendy's Button Box by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar. It's a novella so it only took about two and a half hours. It was alright. It was weird, which is not surprising considering Stephen King was involved, but I also think it could have been better. It might have been better as a more fleshed out short story rather than a novella.

I rearranged the monitors on my old computer today. There has been a hole where my forth monitor used to be before I moved it to my new computer. Today I finally moved one from the end and put it there and rearranged things a bit so the three monitors are more functional. It's much better now. I'm interested to see how the audio journal works out because I've moved where my laptop is as well. I think it's going to make starting and stopping the video recording a little difficult. But we'll see.

While I listened to the audiobook I played more Tracks and started making a legit project. I made a tunnel/cave area with buildings and trees and stuff, and now I'm out in a valley and there is a lot of potential. I hope I can stay interested because I think it will be pretty cool if I can finish it.

Other than that I paid over a thousand buck in bills/mortgage, occasionally ate food, and played more CoD: WW2. So yeah, it was a pretty boring day. But I'm okay with it. After I finish this I'm going to iron my pants for the week so I can feel a little better about the day as a whole.

November 25, 2017

 Today was an alright but uneventful day. The first thing I did when I got up was bring up all my Christmas stuff from the basement. I put my Christmas things on my mantel and I got my tree set up with the train and village around it. I wasn't able to put all the ornaments on my small tree so it is definitely time for a full-size upgrade. Maybe they'll go on sale after Christmas.

After that I did a bit of organizing in my basement. I moved a set of shelves and leftover carpet out of the way to make room for my washer and dryer, which I bought at 2:30AM this morning before going to bed. It'll be two weeks before they're delivered but I figured while I was downstairs getting Christmas stuff I might as well organize things. I also laid the carpet back down in the flood room. I still need to fix the window well and then I can get the carpet put back for real.

The rest of my day just kind of slowly happened and there isn't much to write about. I played Tracks, which is a wooden toy train simulator. It's very simple but also pretty fun. I also played more CoD: WW2 because obviously. I actually didn't play too much of it today but I still had fun. I also encountered my first overt aim-bot user. I don't get it, especially in a game like CoD where there is a kill cam and everyone you kill can see what you're doing. There's also a kill feed, so everyone in the match can see when you're a sniper and every shot you take is a headshot. I was killed by him multiple times and every time it was in the midst of a kill streak where he automatically snapped from head to head, even through smoke. What is the fun of 100% accuracy? I get super annoyed when I can hit a shot to save my literal virtual life, but when you completely take the challenge out of the game, what's the point in playing?

Tonight I watched Wheelman and Kingsman 2: The Golden Circle. Wheelman was vaguely interesting but I didn't really like it. I enjoyed the first Kingsman and I think the second one is better. Story-wise, it was a lot better. At least from what I can remember. I only vaguely remember it. Maybe I'll watch it again tomorrow. Or sometime. Or never. It does make me wish I had a nice suit, though. It would be cool to look really dapper every day. But, I don't get paid enough to devote that kind of money to tailored clothing.

Now, it is one o'clock in the morning and I have a headache, so I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed. Tomorrow, who knows what I'll get up to. Probably more of the same, minus all of the productive stuff I did today.

November 24, 2017

 Once again I got seven and a half hours of sleep last night. I'm shooting for eight hours tomorrow but we'll see.

I spent my morning watching The Punisher series and clicking around the internet. I spent a lot of time researching washers and dryers. I think I have a set picked out and after I finish this I will probably deliberate on it some more, and maybe pull the trigger tonight. It takes a lot of thought to spend almost a thousand dollars.

This afternoon I went over to my Mom's house. I started my laundry and then put up the Christmas lights outside. Every year it's freezing and it feels like my fingers are going to fall off. This year, however, it was 80 degrees outside and I was sweating because I still needed to wear a hoodie so I had a place to store all the light clips. Then, I carried up the Christmas tree from downstairs. It only took me two trips and one cut on my finger. After that I continued researching washers and dryers, watched a little bit of Star Trek: Next Generation, and took a nap. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon.

When I got home I ate too much for dinner, but that's to be expected with Thanksgiving leftovers. I then watched a little more of The Punisher before playing more CoD: WW2. I didn't play it at all earlier in the day, so I showed a little restraint. After a handful of matches tonight I max-leveled and decided to prestige. The early levels are really satisfying for leveling because it takes so few points. After a relatively boring round of War I made it to level five, which isn't bad. The annoying thing is that now I have to unlock all of my guns again. I might end up using my prestige token on the sniper rifle I was trying to unlock all of the camo for because it doesn't unlock until level forty-one I think. I was really close to unlocking another camo. I think all the other guns I used were pretty low level so it wouldn't be much of a loss to use it on the sniper.

November 23, 2017

 Today was a fairly uneventful day, and it was nice.

I got seven and a half hours of sleep last night and then spent most of the morning playing CoD: WW2 because it's my new minor obsession. My game crashed again when I played one particular War map so I did some digging. Two suggestions I saw were updating graphics drivers and verifying Steam files. I did both just to cover my bases and after I restarted my computer the problem seemed to be fixed. I eventually got that map again and was able to play through it without a problem. And I've played through it at least a few more times throughout the day without issue. I'm calling it good, at least for now.

While I ate lunch I watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and then some YouTube videos. I also started playing a new idle clicker because those are always a good time. I also started watching the new Punisher series on Netflix. I like the Punisher side of the story but the story with the lady obsessed with finding him is annoying.

For Thanksgiving dinner I went to my Mom's house. I ate green bean casserole, rolls, deviled eggs, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and chocolate pie. All of it delicious. And this year I managed to not eat to the point of pain, which was nice. After dinner we talked and watched YouTube videos until about eight o'clock. It was a good night.

When I got home I played more CoD: WW2 because that's my new minor obsession. I think I'm level fifty-three now. It helps that there was double XP running today, and I assume it will be all weekend. At this point, If I max out this weekend, I'll probably go ahead and prestige, because why not. The CoD player base on PC has a tendency to die out much quicker than it does on console, which means eventually it will take forever to find matches and certain gamemodes probably won't even be playable because no one will be around to play them. But, there will be a big influx of players after Christmas, so I'll have plenty of time to get back to a decent level before the game becomes unplayable. Or I move on to a different game. I've had a strong urge to play Farming Simulator 15 again. That is a nice game to zone out to.

It has now taken me far too long to write this because I've been watching The Punisher again. Good grief. It's after two o'clock in the morning. Tomorrow I'm going to go do laundry, because why not.

November 22, 2017

 Last night I got eight hours of sleep and it was great. Any day I can wake up without an alarm is welcome.

I spent my morning watching YouTube videos and clicking around the internet. I went to work at noon and ended up taking an impromptu route through town because the normal road I take was closed and I had to detour right after leaving my house. The route ended up being quicker than my usual one but it involved sitting at a lot more red lights. I don't know if it's worth that annoyance. And, who know what the traffic is like on a normal day when it isn't right before a holiday where a bunch of people leave town. I might try it again. We'll see.

When I got to work I had two walkthroughs. On the second one I woke a sleeper up and ended up having to shake the table he was leaning on because he was completely out, snoring and all, and my raised voice was having no effect.

Then I was on desk for two hours. Most of that time was spent watching usability videos for our website. At the end of that two hours I got a real reference. An old lady called and said she had a cobalt blue glass dish in the shape of a bull's head and she wanted to know more about it. She prefaced that by saying she didn't think it was much of a question. I then got a little more information from her and told her I would do some research and call her back because it was going to take me a little bit.

When I got off desk I went upstairs and dug into the antique glass world. My best guess is that the dish was made from a mold by the LG Wright Glass Company in the 1960s. This mold was based on a pattern from Atterbury & Company which was patented in 1888. LG Wright, although a glass company, didn't actually make glass things, they just made molds, and they outsourced the making of stuff using those molds to other glass companies. The company began in 1937 and went out to business in 1999, at which point assets, including their molds, went to auction. And, fun fact, the original design of the bulls head had a spoon, and when placed in the dish, the handle came out of the bull's mouth and looked like a tongue. Kind of clever.

After dinner, I was on desk for another two hours, and really for the rest of the night because I didn't have any walkthroughs. In that time I finished watching usability videos. In total, I watched 200 videos today. Too many. I reformatted a long list of phone numbers that we got from the former PR person. It's a list of who you should call for various emergencies, concerns, and random things, like if you smell gas or your neighbor has a non-working car parked in their driveway. The original list was just a Word document and kind of hard to read because you had to trace your finger all the way across the page and hope you got the right number. I put it in Excel, shaded every other line, and made a few more tweaks, so it is much easier to tell at a glance which number you need to call.

I also went back to messing with a better layout for my homebound spreadsheets. It has been months since I worked on that project and it took me awhile to remember what I was doing. I had buttons that activated macros that showed or hid particular rows. Once I got that sorted out I worked on the formatting and I think I have something that I like. It's clean and simple. I'm going to get some feedback on it after the holiday, and see if I still like it after the holiday, and then maybe start reformatting all of my spreadsheets.

It was a really quiet night at the library. The ticking of the clock next to our desk became very apparent. There was a brief period of time where a patron came in to use the computers and would violently cough every few seconds (and he refused a cough drop from another patron), but he eventually left and we were back to silence.

When I got home I watched videos, looked at video game sales, because I think every site I look at is having a sale, and now I'm writing this. I am tired and have developed a headache, so I'm looking forward to going to bed. It's going to be nice.

November 21, 2017

 Last night I ended up getting six hours of sleep because I moved my alarm clock to 6:30AM. It was the right call. I was still tired throughout the day but six hours of sleep sounds a lot better than five and a half hours of sleep.

When I got to work I did all the normal opening stuff. And then right before we opened there was a fire alarm test. Thankfully it wasn't a drill, so we didn't have to leave the building, but I did have to sit there for several minutes listening to a fire alarm. It's not as loud as the one at the elementary school, however, so it could have been worse.

I was the only librarian until noon so I was on desk for the first two hours. In that time I was nearly able to finish my wi-fi tutorial. I finished the layout, added all the text, fixed the layout of the Table of Contents (because I decided to add another item to the list when I was halfway through), and started adding links. After lunch I was able to come back to it and get it all finished. One more thing done.

After that I needed to take a break from the computer so I recycled some batteries and then walked around and refilled empty stands on displays. That's one of the things our department looks for on our walkthroughs but I don't know if anyone else does it, even though they should.

I was on desk for another two hours after that and that seemed to drag on forever. I started reading the transcript of a class on leadership I'm supposed to watch but I couldn't make it very far because it is in the form of an interview and it is verbatim, so there was a lot of “yeah” and “you know”. I couldn't take it. I also read news articles, watched usability videos, and infrequently helped patrons. I actually helped another patron today with the law database, which is crazy because that's two people in two days and I haven't seen anyone use it in months.

My last hour started with a walkthrough, during which time I stopped by the teen anime party in the auditorium. The teen librarian called me in as I was walking by. There were only three teens but there was a lot of Japanese candy. I didn't eat any but it looked interesting. I then talked with my boss about her idea of getting someone to come talk to us about how to write book reviews, in order to help us improve our newspaper articles. I found a book in our collection but neither of us were really in the mood to do anything so we were really just confirming that neither of us knew anyone we could ask.

When I got home, it was the same old thing. I ate dinner, watched YouTube videos, clicked around the internet for awhile, and played more of CoD: WW2 multiplayer. I completed three orders tonight, which are daily challenges, and they required me to get kills with the sniper rifle, a suppressed SMG, and an LMG. So I had an interesting mix of gameplay. It is a little frustrating trying to use a gun that isn't really suited to a particular map just to finish the challenge, but it is also a nice excuse for when you play horribly. Just blame it on the gun.

Now I'm going to record my audio journal so I can go to bed, because that usually how these entries and my days end.

November 20, 2017

 I got seven hours of sleep last night but I think I needed eight because it was a struggle getting out of bed. Despite that, I got up and around and made it to work on time.

I spent the first couple hour at work researching and sending emails to potential instructors for next semester's adulting classes. Depending on the responses, I think we at least have options for all the classes we want to do. Fingers crossed.

I was on desk four two hours after that and my main accomplishment was composing a Thank You not for the gaming convention group that brought their tabletop games to the library for International Games Day this weekend. Later in the day I emailed him to get his address (I looked in the directory but there were two addresses and it wouldn't have been right to look up his account) and in his response he mentioned wanting to donate some games, which is great.

I also talked to my coworkers and the library director about Thanksgiving food. It made me hungry for Thanksgiving food. I'm really looking forward to green bean casserole and too many mashed potatoes.

After lunch I had a walkthrough and I pulled books for our Staff Picks display. On my second walkthrough I got in a fight with an audiobook. Turns out head-butting the edge of hard-case audiobook is not a good idea. I was pulling them to restock my audiobook display and as I reached for a book on the bottom shelf I slammed by head into a really big case on the stop shelf. I think it was a language set maybe because it was at least twice as long as a normal case. I now have a one inch scratch on my forehead but thankfully it didn't break the skin. I just had to put up with some crap from my coworkers. I was then on desk for an hour and accomplished nothing. And then I had another walkthrough. This time, I refilled the Mystery display and managed to not slam my head into anything. I preferred that to my previous walkthrough.

I ended the day working on my wi-fi tutorial. I still haven't added any text but I added more screenshots with the help of one of the other librarians who has an iPhone. Overall, it was a weird day. It went by quickly but it didn't really feel like I accomplished much.

When I got home I ate dinner, watched YouTube videos, and then played CoD: WW2 multiplayer. I busted out the sniper rifle for several games and it was a lot of fun. It is super satisfying getting one-shot kills. It is still really annoying when there are camping snipers but it is less annoying when you are one of them. I'm not sure how many kills it takes to get all of the camos on the rifle I'm using but that is my main motivation now for using the sniper.

Tomorrow is going to be rough because it is almost midnight and I have to wake up at six o'clock in the morning. I need to go back to listening to music while I write these, not watching livestreams that are incredibly distracting.

Oh, and one last thing. There was loud music coming from my neighbors house. The one no one currently lives in. I thought it was just going to be a game house but maybe not. And they must have the whole week off because it's Monday night, not a typical party night.

November 19, 2017

 I got seven hours of sleep last night and woke up sometime after nine o'clock. I thought it would be much later. Most of my morning was spent watching YouTube videos and the second season of The Good Place, and playing Starbound. I confirmed my vague recollection that the map in Starbound loops, so if you keep going in one direction you'll eventually come back around to where you started. So I have circumnavigated my first planet. I'm still liking the game but I need to upgrade my stuff so I don't feel so vulnerable every time I see a mob. It would also be nice if the bow and arrow mechanic worked better.

After lunch I mixed my own trail mix. It has: almonds, pistachios, cashews, peanuts, raisins, and dark chocolate chips. I was only going to mix half of what I bought but the container I used was big enough so I said screw it and made it all. I now have 115oz of trail mix. That's a ridiculous amount of trail mix. I might need to freeze some. But, I just did the math and I saved a decent amount of money. Overall, compared to the trail mix I was buying before, I saved $23.19, and that comes out to $0.20 per ounce, which I think is pretty good.

I moved four bookcases into my house today. I put two in my bedroom and two in my office. I still have three in the garage but I'm not sure where I want them yet. Now I need to start bringing books over from my Mom's house. I still don't have nearly enough shelf space for all of my books but it's a start. I managed the bookcases alright but I could feel it in my back when I moved my small routing table. I'm hoping I wake up tomorrow morning and I'm not in pain when I go to sit up in bed.

For dinner I made my stir fry recipe, substituting the brown rice with pad thai noodles. I think I needed to at least break the pad thai noodles in half because in the pan they just created a big rats nest of noodles. Everything turned out alright though and my dinner was tasty.

While I ate I finished catching up on season two of The Good Place and after that I played more CoD: WW2 multiplayer. I prestiged my Infantry division again and I'm still not entirely sure of the purpose other than being able to level it up again and getting a new calling card or something. But I do it because I like leveling. My actual level is forty-one, out of fifty-five, but each level takes progressively more XP to complete. I just looked up a leveling table and it looks like I'm just over halfway to max level. If things continue and I maintain interest in the game, this might be my first time prestiging in years. The problem with prestiging is that you start from scratch and have to unlock everything all over again. And if you're kind of over the game at that point, I don't know that it's worth resetting everything because it would be more fun to jump back into it later if you still had the loadouts you like. I don't know. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

It has now once again taken me far too long to write this because I keep getting distracted by a livestream. But now I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed. I'm looking forward to a

November 18, 2017

 Last night I got eight hours of sleep and then stayed in bed a little longer because my room was cold and it was warm under the covers.

I got out of bed around 8:45AM and then watched YouTube videos, clicked around the internet, and played a little bit of Starbound. I have wanted to play that game for years and just recently picked it up in a Humble Bundle. I feel like the controls are overly complicated when it comes to the hotbar, but other than that I am liking it.

This afternoon I went to my Mom's to do laundry. While that happened, I watched Tommy Boy and a little bit of Happy Gilmore. I haven't seen either in years and Tommy Boy reminded me of how funny Chris Farley was. It's such a shame he passed away so young.

I did a little research on washers and dryers because at some point I need to get my own. Turns out they're still expensive. Affordable, but still expensive. I also made a grocery list. I went through the local grocery store's website, adding stuff to my cart, and when I got to the end they said pickup wasn't available at that store (because I thought I would try the curbside pickup thing). It is available at the store across town but it wasn't available today. One of the other grocery stores in town also has it but I wasn't going to go through the process again just to find out it wasn't going to work. So instead, I went with the old fashion paper and pen list.

And on my way home, I went to the grocery store. It was six o'clock, which is earlier than I would normally go, but they actually had produce, so that was nice. Among other things, I got Cheerios (Honey Nut and original) because I was have a craving, pad thai noodles to change up my stir fry recipe, and the individual ingredients for trail mix. I'm pretty excited about the trail mix. Hopefully it turns out alright.

Following the grocery store, I stopped and got gas, and then headed home. While I ate dinner I started watching the second season of The Good Place. I wasn't sure how I felt about the beginning of the second season but I'm back on board now. I enjoy the show.

Later on I played more CoD: WW2 multiplayer. I really like the addition of the War game mode. It's a nice change of pace from the other games. This CoD also doesn't have Demolition, which I really liked, but War has some of those elements. Plus, it doesn't count deaths, so there is more incentive to actually play the objective for people who are usually more concerned with their K/D than the objective. I played several different game modes tonight, had one match where I didn't have the most points but did have the most kills (which is a first), and had a match where I had the final play of the game. There is probably some algorithm for figuring that out (I think it used to just be the final kill cam) but more often than not it is a sniper play. But the stars aligned and somehow I got it, even if it wasn't the best thing I've ever done.

Tomorrow, I'm going to sleep in, maybe make trail mix, and probably make stir fry for dinner. I've also been playing with the idea of finally moving some of the bookcases from my aunt into my house. They've been in my garage for months now. It would be a better two-person job, however, so we'll see how ambitious I'm feeling. My left knee has been bothering me today and who knows how my wrists

November 17, 2017

 I have put this off far too long. It is after midnight and I'm struggling to keep my eyes open.

I got seven hours of sleep, woke up at seven o'clock, got ready, and went to work. It was kind of a weird day at work. I worked on a lot of random things and struggled to find motivation. I have been so focused on doing presentations for the last month or two that it feels weird not having that at the forefront of my mind anymore. Now I'm back to all the random projects I'm working on.

I compiled a list of all the articles and resources I used to make my fake news presentation. That went pretty fast but it involved a lot of typing. And right after I sent it I found another good article. That's just how it goes. I also posted the PDF version of my presentation and my article list to our department blog in case anyone is interested.

I actually took both of my breaks today, which might be the first time ever. Or at least the first time in over a year. I spent both of them working on the perler bead project I started yesterday. By the end of my second break I was able to finish it. And I wasn't even really interested in it because it was for the tech center guy's band. Now I want to make something cool.

I compiled a list of the recommended tabletop games I got from the game convention guy. He sent me a long list with an explanation for why he recommended them. It was pretty cool. I compiled it into a spreadsheet that includes the number of players, type, age recommendation, and price. It should come in handy when we start buying games and building our collection.

After lunch I updated my homebound spreadsheets with the comments I received on the books I delivered last month. I also helped a patron with our law database computers. One wasn't working and the other one was incredibly slow but he was eventually able to get what he needed. I put in a help desk ticket for the broken one, and it has apparently been acting up for awhile, so hopefully that can get sorted out.

On one of my walkthroughs I refilled the Mystery display. It's still one of the best/easiest displays because I just wander through through the stacks and pick books labeled Mystery. I could probably do a better job and look up top Mystery lists, but I'm not. After that I was on desk yet again. I was on desk four hours today. That's a lot. Anyway, I started working on my Wi-Fi tutorial again, which I don't think I have worked on since September. I made a little progress adding screencaps, one of which I ended up just recreating because the text was so blurry. I think now I just need to add the text and call it good.

I also counted the number of links I added to my fake news presentation. The final total was 931. That's a lot of links.

When I got home I ate dinner, watched YouTube videos, and caught up on internet things. Around nine o'clock I played more CoD: WWII multiplayer. Once again, I'm still enjoying it. I had a couple really good games. There was one point in of the the matches where I was just pegging bad guy after bad guy halfway across the map and it was pretty great. It would be nice if I could play like that more often. The game would definitely be more fun.

November 16, 2017

 Last night I got eight hours of sleep, which was great, and I woke up at 8:45AM, before my alarm went off. I then spent the rest of the morning trying to catch up on YouTube videos, clicking around the internet, and sending a couple emails. It was a nice morning.

I went to work at noon and had two walkthroughs, one at noon and another at 12:30PM. Between the walkthroughs and then afterward I went upstairs so I could listen to music and focus on adding links to my presentation. And it worked because I was able to finish adding links to the Table of Contents.

I was on desk for an hour at three o'clock and used that time to add navigation buttons to each slide. That went much quicker than the other link stuff and I was able to email the final PDF version of the presentation before I left for dinner. I just remembered that I was going to create a reference list for the articles I read. Maybe tomorrow.

After dinner I had a walkthrough, ran into a couple kids from the school I used to work at, and I restocked my audiobook display. And eventually I was on desk for two hours. During that time I helped patrons and worked on creating a mock-up of what it would look like if we had a video display sign in different locations outside of one of our meeting rooms.

At eight o'clock I tagged out with the other librarian to hang out with the patrons who came for the perler beads craft night, including my Mom and sister. I spent my time trying to create a better band name design than the other librarian, for the tech. center guy's band. I didn't have time to finish it but I got close. And it was better than the other librarian's attempt, so I'm counting it as a win.

The last patron was walking out of the room as we closed so I scrambled around to do all the closing stuff (and thankfully the other librarian had done most of the upstairs closing stuff). And we got out pretty much on time. I was surprised, but I also didn't have time to put anything away. I'll have to do that tomorrow morning.

When I got home I ate a little bit and then tried to catch up on YouTube videos from yesterday. I nearly succeeded. I should be able to do that this weekend. Maybe.

November 15, 2017

 Last night I only got six and a half hours of sleep. It was not enough.

I opened with another librarian today so all the opening stuff went pretty fast. I took upstairs and she did the downstairs stuff. When we opened I was on desk for two hours and my main reference question was from a grandma helping find books for her grandson who was working on his final merit badge. She came in yesterday or the day before looking for books as well. The grandson is apparently working on his Eagle project, and yet it seems like his grandma is doing his merit badge for him. It could be completely innocent, and she could just be getting the books for him, but I'm the one picking out the books and I have a sneaking suspicion she's the one doing the reading. I know there were parents when I was in Scouts that did stuff like that for their kids. Even some who did the vast majority of the work for the Eagle project. That takes away from the kid's experience and I don't really think it sets them up for success later in life. It's kind of frustrating to watch.

The rest of my time on desk, and then after my walkthrough, I added links to the table of contents in my presentation. I remembered that I needed to add the links in Publisher, which would allow me to link to pages in the document, and those would save in PDF form. I also remembered that I had to add the links on each slide, I couldn't copy and paste them because for some reason the links don't carry over. So it has turned into a very long, tedious process.

This afternoon we went out to deliver books. I picked up books from one patron and delivered books to three others. It was a slow month for homebound. The other librarian didn't have much to deliver either and I think she had three or four patrons that didn't want anything. After delivering books we went to Hobby Lobby to pick up a few things for tomorrow's program. I haven't been to Hobby Lobby in close to a year. I need to get back into making stuff.

When we got back to the library we dropped our books off at circulation and then I went upstairs to continue working on adding links to my presentation. I made it to slide fifty, out of one-hundred and twenty or so. It would be sweet if I could finish tomorrow but that might be unrealistic. We'll see how distracted I get.

After work I picked up Qdoba and then went to my Mom's house for dinner. We ate, talked, and watched videos. I was also able to finish replacing smoke detector batteries because my Mom bought more batteries.

When I got home I checked internet things and then played CoD: WW2 multiplayer. I played several different gamemodes and had a good time. I'm close to prestiging my Infantry division, and the last thing I did tonight was prestige one of my guns. I can't remember all the benefits of prestiging a weapon but I do know I have to unlock all of the attachments again, which will be a little bit of a pain. But I like unlocking things and leveling up, so all is well.

Now, audio journal, and then sleep.

November 14, 2017

 Right as I was about to go to bed last night I remembered that I had once again forgotten to apply for health insurance. Today was the last day and I didn't want to worry about forgetting again, so I stayed up and applied for insurance. Despite that, I managed to get eight and a half hours of sleep last night. Not bad.

When I got to work I spent the first five minutes or so fixing my umbrella. The button was broken and then umbrella wouldn't open. That kind of defeats the purpose of an umbrella. After a lot of fiddling I finally sorted the button out so we're back in business now. Unfortunately, I missed the rain today.

I had the first two hours free so I went up to the cubicle and continued working on adding subtitles to my presentation. And I read a few articles. Then I was on desk for two hours. I labeled my homebound bags and ignored two of them because the patron called and said she didn't want books until after Christmas. So this month I'm down to three patrons and maybe twenty-five books. I think I used to be in the sixties for books.

After lunch I was the backup person for our tech class, which took two hours, and then I went back upstairs. I was able to finish adding subtitles and now I want to figure out how to add links in a PDF. I feel like I already figured that out but I can't remember.

When I got home I made dinner. I roasted vegetables and mixed them with garlic flavored brown rice and fake meat. It turned out way better than I was expecting. While I ate I finished watching the first season of The Good Place. Now I need to start watching the second season. I'm interested to see if they can keep it interesting.

After I washed my dishes I played a few matches of CoD: WW2. Still enjoying the game.

Now it's audio journal time so I can go to bed. I have to open again tomorrow. Not looking forward to it but I get off at five o'clock, so there's that.

November 13, 2017

 Last night I slept maybe five hours. I think I had a nightmare and at one point I was too hot. Overall, I slept terribly, and it made for a long day.

Despite that, I got to work on time, and did all the opening stuff. And then I was on desk for two hours. I worked on a perler bead handout, caught up on emails, found books for a patrons, and got a chat from a school librarian from a neighboring town. A student returned one of our books to the school library and they wanted to let us know. I looked up who checked it out (and at the same time learned how to do that) and then called that patron (or rather the father of the patron) and let them know what was up.

The majority of the rest of my day was spent working on adding subtitles to my presentation. It's a tedious process but I made a lot of progress today, so that was nice. Other than that, I finished printing bookmarks for homebound and put them in the books (still need to label the bags), replaced the finished jigsaw puzzle with an unfinished one, refilled the DVD and new audiobook displays. A surprisingly productive day for being on the verge of a nap all day.

When I got home I spent a long time looking over restaurant menus on a food delivery site because I had no interest in cooking. It also turned out I had no interest in food, because nothing sounded good. Nor did paying a lot of money for food I could make myself for far less money. Instead I had peanut butter on a tortilla and other random things. Kind of like last night.

I really wanted to play CoD: WW2 but again with the motivation. I ended up watching a few YouTube videos and then started watching The Good Place. It is such a good show. I want to stay up and finish watching it but I also want to sleep. So I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed.

November 12, 2017

 This morning I woke up at eight o'clock after only six and a half hours of sleep. That kind of sucked but I survived. I posted to my group on Facebook and sent a text to my friend to let them know I was going on a date and if they didn't hear from me than the woman was probably a fifty-nine year old man and it had turned into a Silence of the Lambs situation. And then I got ready and headed out.

I made it to the restaurant in almost exactly an hour and got there about ten minutes early. I stayed in my car and started my notes for the day because I hadn't had time to do that before I left. I then got a text from my date letting me know she had gotten there and was standing outside. And then we met.

She was in fact a she, not an old he, and looked just like her pictures. That was an instant relief. We went in, waited a little bit, and then got seated in a booth. We talked for a little bit, ordered food, and then continued to talk. We talked about all the random things until a little before three o'clock because that is when they closed and they had already vacuumed and we were the last people there. And then we stood outside and said goodbye for over two hours. It was cold and my feet froze, and I think my legs partially fell asleep while we stood there, but we just kept talking. I think we both tried to end it several times but then our conversation would sidestep into a random thought and just keep going. During the meal and then while outside we probably talked about all the taboo date topics, like religion and politics, but it ended up working out pretty well. About ten minutes after five o'clock we finally put a fork in it after agreeing we would continue to text and we'd figure out a second date.

The drive home went quickly and when I got home I had random stuff for dinner. I didn't want to cook or pick anything up so I basically just had my typical lunch. I then watched YouTube videos and eventually played CoD: WW2 multiplayer. It was fun. I ended on my best match so far in this version of the game. I got twenty kills, only had seven deaths, and I was the top scorer. It was definitely more of a fluke than skill, but I'll take it. I then spent a lot of time in the headquarters trying to retrieve three balls hidden on the map. I got two of them, the one in the bunker was a struggle, and I only have the watchtower one left. That one will take awhile because I did try for a little while but had to call it a night because it was getting frustrating.

Now I'm going to record my audio journal because I'm tired and want to go to bed. I open tomorrow so I'm already looking at six hours of sleep at most, which means tomorrow will be a long day. Hooray.

November 11, 2017

 Today was pretty uneventful. I got eight hours of sleep last night and when I woke up I played some CoD: WW2 multiplayer. This afternoon I went to my Mom's house to do laundry. While there I replaced the batteries in the basement smoke detectors, watched Hannibal Rising and an episode of Monk, and maybe took a short nap.

On my way home I stopped at Target to get peanut butter, picked up a Jimmy John's sandwich for dinner (using a free sandwich card), and I got gas. When I got home I ate dinner, watched YouTube videos and livestreams, and played more CoD: WW2 multiplayer. I am really enjoying the multiplayer. I'm still not good but for the most part I'm having fun. When lag happens or I go up against a team that is really good, then it's not very fun.

I also hashed out the details for tomorrow. We're going to go to a random cafe I found on Trip Adviser that had good ratings and breakfast food. We're meeting at eleven o'clock, so that's either a late brunch or an early lunch, I'm not sure what the time frame is for brunch. If things go well, then we're going to go to a big antique store. And if things don't go well, then we can make up believable excuses and duck out after the food, but hopefully not during the food.

And now, once again, I need to record my audio journal because it's becoming a struggle to keep my eyes open.

November 10, 2017

 I got less that six hours of sleep last night and it felt like it for the rest of the day.

On my way to work I got behind the public transit bus for the third time this week. I get behind it on the last half of my journey, it is going to the library, and it drives twenty-five miles per hour. It's rough.

I was on desk for two hours when I got to work and spent that time doing things. I got a start on my homebound lists, I compiled the attendance and feedback information from my workshop last night, I helped a patron find information about the Coast Guard, and I engaged in a long email conversation with a patron about a purchase request. When she filled out the form she didn't put a specific book and I thought maybe she just wanted help with our digital library services and used the wrong form to ask us. Over the course of an hour and several emails, I figured out she had actually meant to request a specific book but had forgotten to put it on the form. That would have been maybe a ten second conversation if we had been face-to-face. A technology fail.

When I got off desk I had a walkthrough and then went up to the cubicle to continue working on my homebound lists. After lunch I was able to finish my lists and I pulled about half of the books before I was on desk again for an hour. In that hour, among other things, I checked out the books I pulled, updated my spreadsheets, and started making bookmarks for the books.

In my last two hours I was off desk and I was able to finish pulling books. I got them all checked out, updated my spreadsheets, continued but didn't finish making bookmarks, and I got them bagged up and stored in our closet so they are out of the way.

I would have been able to finish the bookmarks but I ended up helping a patron figure out how to use Excel for a budget. I ended up just finding a template for that because it would have taken me forever to actually build one from scratch and explain the process to her. Once I had it pulled up she wanted to send it to herself so she could work with it on her computer. This required her remembering her email password (which she had reset two hours previously) but she didn't remember it. So we went through the process to reset the password again. To be fair to her, I get screwed over frequently when I have to change a password I've become used to typing in every day. She's not alone.

I also explained the events project to the assistant so she could get a start on it if she got bored. We are getting rid of a bunch of even types and changing some things with age groups with our new events program. This means before we can import the old events into the new system, we have to change the event type and age group so it aligns with the new system. Super tedious. But hopefully the assistant will be able to make some progress on it.

After work I picked up Sonic for dinner because I was feeling too tired and unmotivated to cook. I also stopped by my sister's house because she got some pumpkin pie Pop Tarts and brown rice for me. And then I spent the rest of the night watching YouTube videos and livestreams. It was a super uneventful night.

November 9, 2017

 I got seven and a half hours of sleep last night night and woke up feeling pretty good. It helped that I woke up at seven o'clock and just laid in bed until 7:30AM.

When I got to work I went over to the auditorium to find out how many people were supposed to be at my presentation. With that number in mind I went to make enough copies of the news audit handout, but the copier wasn't sucking in my paper at the top and that annoyed me enough that I wasn't going to put it inside on the glass. Instead I decided to log into one of the computers and just print off what I needed. And then the computer wouldn't connect to the network drives so I couldn't access the file. I tried logging out and back in a couple times but it didn't work so I restarted the computer, which took way longer than usual. I did finally manage to get the handout printed and there was a little less stress in my life.

The presentation went well. At least I think it went well. Along with the question portion I ended up taking the full hour, which was good. I warned them at the beginning that depending on how much I rambled or forgot to say it was either going to last ten minutes or forty-five minutes, and I'm glad it didn't take ten minutes. For the most part I read from my script with a little bit of improve and speaking from memory. I had to use a microphone, which worked great because had I been reading from my script without a microphone I would have been talking into the podium and my voice wouldn't have carried to the back of the auditorium. It was also nice because I wasn't having to project, which saved my voice. At the end they were a little slow to ask questions but I ended up getting quite a few, which was a pleasant surprise.

After the presentation I went downstairs to the childrens' workroom so I could make sure the Spheros were ready. I charged a couple just to be safe. I also played with the Little Bits, a little bit. After that, in my remaining time before my four hour break, I started adding my script into my presentation as subtitles so that I can eventually get it sent off to all of the attendees.

And then I had a four hour break. When I got home I ate lunch, watched YouTube videos, started playing a new idle clicker game called Idle Champions which is set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, and played a little more of the CoD: WW2 campaign. There was a weird glitch in the cutscenes where I could hear the random background noises but the dialogue was inaudible. I'm just glad I had subtitles turned on. I'm also even more convinced that I'll never be able to play this game on the hardest difficulty. There have been more than a couple times now where I have completely had my ass handed to me, repeatedly, and it has taken me multiple tries to get past certain parts. I can't imagine the hardest difficulty.

When I got back to work I was on desk for an hour and, among other things, I spent that time creating a perler bead egg wearing glasses as an example for the craft night next week that one of the other librarians and myself are leading. I haven't made anything with perler beads since I was a kid but I have been tempted to the last few years. I like all the 8-bit stuff you can create. That's also one of the reasons I like cross stitch.

When I got off desk I had a walkthrough and then I started setting up for my workshop. I pulled a few tables together and set up a little maze thing like I did last time. I made little gates to drive the Sphero through but a couple people pointed out they looked more like a croquet setup, and they were right. I also had one of the iPads hooked up to the projector, just in case we had a lot of and they couldn't all see the iPad screen. That ended up not being an issue but it was still a good idea.

The first people to show up were women. One looked really familiar and she ended up being the mom of a kid at the school I used to work at. She was looking for robotics-related activities for her Girl Scouts, so that was pretty cool. About forty-five minutes into it they transitioned over to the Little Bits and a couple came in and I got them going on the Spheros. The husband ended up being an engineer and he was super methodical about figuring out the Sphero, which was a lot of fun to watch. He also really liked it. Later on he played with the Little Bits and also really like those. So overall, I would say it was a successful workshop.

I got everything picked up fairly quickly and then headed downstairs to close. When I got home I watched YouTube videos, clicked around the internet, and now I'm writing this. And now, I'm going to record my audio journal because It is after midnight and I want to go to bed. Due to distractions it has taken far too long to write this. Will I never learn?

November 8, 2017

 This morning was much like yesterday, woke up, got ready, went to work. I was on desk for the first two hours and answered the phone, email and chat. When I wasn't doing that stuff I read through my script and tweaked a few things.

I was off desk for an hour and then had two walkthroughs before lunch. I spent that time reading a couple articles and one of them aligned perfectly with one of my slides so I added a quote from it to my presentation. The article came out on Monday so I like that I am able to include something so recent in a presentation about news.

After lunch I was on desk for an uneventful hour, just chat and phone calls. I was able to mess with the formatting of my script and I got that printed out. I have already had to make a few tweaks to the printed version, which is the problem with hard copies.

We had our department meeting this afternoon. I was nearly ten minutes late because I was on desk and had to wait for the teen librarian to come cover out desk. It ended up being alright because we were scheduled for a two hour meeting but it only took an hour. We did all the usual stuff, talked about a policy and the book chapter we read. Did kudos and covered random announcements. And then we talked about our personality test results. I had the same result as our assistant director and our new assistant. Just a fun fact.

To end out the day I had two walkthroughs. On the second one I refilled the Mystery display, which I love because I just have to wander the stacks and look for the Mystery sticker on the spine. Earlier in the day I refilled the audiobook display and it was still looking good, so I'm probably set until next week.

After work I picked up Qdoba and went to my Mom's for dinner. I didn't show any videos because I wanted to get home early so we just ate and talked and watched TV. And then I headed home.

When I got home I slowly got around to reading through my presentation script. And about halfway through it I began to worry my voice wouldn't survive through the real presentation tomorrow, so I lowered my voice quite a bit and switched to more of a mumble/whisper. It came out around half and hour, which is perfectly fine by me. I decided to do the news audit handout, so that will add at least five minutes and then there will be time for questions at the end. I know it will come out a lot shorter because I'll probably go off-script and forget a lot of what I want to say. But it won't be the end of the world. Life will go on and I will be able to shift my focus to tomorrow night's tech workshop. It's never ending.

I tried a spoonful of honey for my throat and I was glad to find out honey still isn't my thing. Whatever it does in the sauce I use for stir fry is good times, but on it's own, it still tastes like honey. With the rest of my night I watched YouTube videos and now I'm watching a livestream. But it's time to record my audio journal so I can go to bed. I'm tired.

November 7, 2017

I got seven hours of sleep last night, got up, got ready, and went to work. When I got to work I quickly made a whiteboard sign for the tech drop-in today and had another librarian take it down to the atrium because I was on desk for two hours. It was a very active two hours. Seven or eight purchase requests came in since last night, one of them couldn't be purchased but one library in our ILL network had it so I suggested that but never heard back. And we already owned two of the other requested books. I also had a number of phone calls throughout. I only got hung up on once by our regular patron who is always calling and asking for random phone numbers and addresses. I had gotten a few words into my sentence when she hung up, immediately called back, and said she was waiting for me but was conserving her minutes. So she used more minutes to hang up and call me back and explain why she hung up on me, rather than just letting me finish my sentence.

In between all of that stuff I worked on my presentation. I started exporting the slides I had made in Publisher as PNGs and importing them into PowerPoint. It's a convoluted system but I have more options to tweak things in Publisher so that's that.

When I got off desk I went to a meeting for the upcoming updated room reservation and event program. It's better and worse depending on how you look at it. Overall, though, I think it will be for the best. We'll get used to it.

After that I had two walkthroughs and then went to lunch.

Immediately following lunch we had our tech drop-in and it was a big success. One person showed up early and over the course of two hours we had six people, four of whom were there most of the time. Thankfully we had our volunteer today and we had to pull in another librarian and there was still a bit of a wait for people to be helped. We helped patrons with: saving camera phone pictures to an SD card instead of internal storage, syncing mail between an iPhone and an iPad, our ebook and audiobook resources, paying bills online, setting up a printer (which the patron actually brought in), and a Kindle Paperwhite that started out in German. Quite the range of questions.

I spent the rest of my day finishing my presentation. I threw in some GIFs at the end and rewrote my conclusion and I think I'm good. Hopefully. I also had a walkthrough, which was uneventful except I saw one of the sister's of the teenager we banned for a week. None of the siblings have been in for the past week and I thought seeing the sister might be a sign that the brother was also back. Today was the last day of his ban, however, so when he did show up upstairs I went over with one of the other librarians and gave him his ban letter and let him know that he was welcome back tomorrow but he would have to leave today. The best part was that he said he hadn't been to the library in two weeks and that he had never been disrespectful to library staff. Hilariously false on both counts.

I checked out a book with an eggplant parmesan recipe in today and when I got home I made it. It looked really good but it turns out I don't really like eggplant. I couldn't even finish the portion I put on my plate. It wasn't overtly bad but there was just something a little bit off about the flavor that wasn't for me. Luckily I also made mashed red potatoes with parmesan and garlic. They were pretty tasty and they ended up being the majority of my dinner. I ate way to much.

After dinner I put air in my tires and the air compressor was far less scary this time. I only jumped when it kicked on halfway through filling my tires. It helped that I was wearing earplugs, because it is uncomfortably loud. I meant to grab my protective earmuffs from my Mom's house today but forgot but I still had earplugs from the Fourth of July, and those worked well.

Then I washed my dishes and played a couple matches of CoD: WW2 multiplayer. I wasn't too bad. I wasn't great, but for not having a lot of practice, I wasn't too bad. I even got in the top three in one of the matches.

And it is now eleven o'clock. I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed. That sounds like a really good plan.

November 6, 2017

This morning I got to sleep in and that is always nice. I ended up not playing CoD: WW2 because I figured by the time I got into a match I'd only be able to play one before having to get ready. Instead, I just clicked around the internet for awhile, then got ready and ate lunch before heading to work.

I was on desk for the first two hours and spent that time working on my presentation. I ended up adding several slides about the CRAAP test and added to my script to cover those slides. That should get me closer to thirty minutes. I then had a walkthrough and an hour off desk, and all the time not doing a walkthrough was spent working on my presentation.

When I got back from dinner I took a personality test because we're doing something with that for our department meeting on Wednesday. I got INFJ. In grad school I got ISTJ. The middle two letters were fairly middle of the road both times so it's not surprising. I still feel like personality tests are a bit like horoscopes, but they're interesting to look at. After taking it I talked to my coworkers about my results as well as theirs.

When I got off desk I went up to the third floor to read a chapter of a book for the meeting on Wednesday. And I couldn't figure out how to turn the lights on. I tried each switch individually and was still in the dark. I think maybe I needed to turn all of the switches on, instead of just one, but I had that thought later on. Instead I just went to the cubicle and figured I could log in, pull up a blank Word document on both computer monitors (because they're bright white), and use that light to read by. But then it took me at least eight tries to type my password in. I couldn't see the keyboard and unfortunately my password is one that requires me to see the keyboard. I eventually turned my phone screen on to get some light but I couldn't type with the phone in my hand. It was a mess, but I eventually got logged in and was able to read the chapter.

With the rest of my night I worked on my presentation and looked up GIFs to add to my presentation. I also helped a patron with cloud storage, which is a question I've gotten regularly since I've been at the library.

On my way home I stopped at the grocery store. Among other things I got an eggplant, because why not, and fresh shredded Parmesan cheese for a mashed potatoes recipe. I think I might try eggplant Parmesan because I own a lot of Parmesan now.

When I got home I put my groceries away, got distracted by the internet, and now I'm writing this while watching GoldGlove play the CoD: WW2 campaign. I think he's finishing the last mission I played, which is perfect timing because I need to record my audio journal and I don't want spoilers.

November 5, 2017

This morning I woke up at eight o'clock and thanks to Daylight Savings, even though I went to bed at two o'clock in the morning, I got seven hours of sleep. That worked out pretty well for me. When I first got up I read through my presentation script. Surprisingly there were only a couple small changes that I needed to make. It took me about twenty-five minutes to read through it, which isn't too bad. I think there's still one more slide I want to add and I can do the news audit handout activity if I decide I need to fill time. I'm feeling good about it. And I'll feel better about it when it's over.

For brunch I made pancakes and eggs. I haven't made pancakes in months and I was out of practice, so they weren't the best I've ever made, but they weren't bad. I also should have used a different pan for the eggs or let it cool down more after the pancakes because they cooked way too fast. They weren't pretty, but like the pancakes, they weren't bad.

After I ate I played Wolfenstein 2 and managed to finish the main story. There are still a bunch of side quests, going around and killing Nazi commanders, but the main game is over, until the DLC stuff comes out. It was a really fun and satisfying game. It also had a happy ending and set things up for the third game. That's going to take awhile to come out, probably, and in the mean time I want to go back and play the previous two games, which include the first game in the trilogy and the prequel to the trilogy. I look forward to it.

Following that I started playing the CoD: WWII campaign. I think I played the first three missions. It's nice going back to the WWII setting and getting out of the future. It's also got an interesting health system, where your health doesn't regenerate. You have to use a health pack, and if you don't have one, you can either find them in the level or request one from one of your squadmates. That kind of makes me not want to play it on the the highest difficulty level because I think that would just be beyond frustrating.

After playing the campaign I did the prologue zombie level and got to see David Tennant's character, which was pretty cool. I'm an awful zombie player, and I wish I wasn't because it seems like it could be fun if I could survive more than a few waves. I think I'll probably try it again, just to see if I can get more of the story, but I imagine I'll probably end up just watching YouTube videos or Twitch streams.

I played one multiplayer match and went even, because thankfully the other team wasn't that great. It allowed me to get a taste of the game without getting completely frustrated with it. We'll see how my hands hold up but there is potential for it to be pretty fun. One issue I have discovered is with my mouse, which is an MMO mouse and has twelve buttons on the side. In the game, hitting the number 1 cycles your weapon. I have discovered that I keep inadvertently hitting that button in the middle of gunfights and switching to my pistol. This has yet to work out in my favor. I need to figure out a better system.

Throughout the day I watched The Race livestream because today was the last day for it and by the afternoon all the guys were there. It was a lot of fun to watch. In the last couple of hours they had a couple crazy donation trains that let them hit their goal of $100,000, and then in the last few minutes they managed to pass $125,000. It was intense. And then, to top it off, Activision donated $125,000, because they said they would match whatever was raised during the stream up to a certain amount. I don't think any of the guys were expecting Activision to actually do it during the stream because they all momentarily lost their minds. It was pretty cool.

Tonight I played a few more multiplayer matches in CoD: WW2 and I was reminded of how bad I am at the game. But I'm still trying to figure things out. And I can use that excuse for at least a little while. One of the coolest things about this new game is the headquarters, which kind of reminds me of the safe houses in The Division, where you're in a 3D environment and you can go to various people and interact with them. They also have a shooting range, so you can try out your weapons. I haven't figured out yet how to change weapons. They also have an area where you can try out killstreaks, which is a lot of fun because I'll never earn some of the cooler ones. But at least now I can play with them a little bit.

It is now late and I'm going to record my audio journal so I can go to bed. I close tomorrow so I'm looking forward to sleeping in, and maybe playing a little more CoD: WW2 if I can talk myself into getting out of bed.

November 4, 2017

 This morning I woke up a little before nine o'clock. Once I convinced myself to get out of bed I watched more of The Race livestream and clicked around the internet. I also played a little GTA V because I saw that they were giving away in-game money to anyone who played within a certain window. I haven't really played the game in awhile but if they want to give me free money, sign me up.

At one o'clock I went to my Mom's to do laundry. I ate lunch, watched Night Court, watched The Race livestream, and avoided working on my presentation script for awhile. But I eventually started on the script and made decent progress. Before leaving I put together my Mom's new elliptical thing. It only required screwing the foot things on, but I nailed it.

When I got home I ate leftover Qdoba for dinner and spent the rest of the night texting, watching even more of The Race livestream, and working on my presentation script. It took me until one o'clock in the morning but I finished all but the conclusion for my script. I figure I will write that once I read through the script and see what makes sense for the conclusion. Overall, it's a six page script. I haven't actually read through it but I am hoping it is someone close to 45-minutes. I also have a handout activity if I find myself coming up super short.

And that was my day. It was incredibly productive. I was really tempted to pause on the script and finish it up tomorrow but I knew I would end up dragging it out over the whole day, so I buckled down (minus the conclusion). Now, other than reading through the script, tweaking it, and writing a short conclusion, my Sunday is open. And I plan to play video games and kill Nazis. I've been watching so much of CoD: WWII that I really want to jump into the campaign, but I'm also really into Wolfenstein 2, so I'll probably keep playing that.

November 3, 2017

 Last night I got nearly nine hours of sleep and it was fantastic. When I got up I watched more of The Race livestream before getting ready, eating lunch, and going to work.

When I got to work I was on desk for two hours. My main accomplishment was tracking down a primary source for the Ben Franklin fake news things I was reading about yesterday. Previously I was just finding articles talking about it, which at most linked to other articles talking about it. Today I found a full, typed version of the newspaper supplement that Franklin made up, and a scanned copy of the original newspaper. And it will be featured for less than thirty seconds probably in my presentation. Worth it.

There was an insurance meeting at the library first thing this morning but my boss didn't want me to have to come in at 7:00AM when I didn't work until 11:00AM. Instead, I went to the meeting this afternoon at the fire station. It was an insurance meeting, so of course it was boring, but then it ended with a fifteen or twenty minute walkthrough of how to enroll on the website. It's literally just filling out boxes, and we had already been given a packet of step-by-step screenshots. Then the internet connection crapped out halfway through, so the lady pulled up the Word document of the screenshots and showed that on the screen. But she didn't zoom in properly so you couldn't really see anything. It was a great use of my time.

I got back to the library shortly after 3:30PM and spent the short time I had before dinner reading magazines. And then I went and ate dinner at 4:00PM. Not as bad as my lunch at 10:00AM.

When I got back from dinner I was on desk for an hour and continued working on my presentation. Which is what I pretty much what I did the rest of the night when I wasn't doing other things. Because that's how that works. By the end of the night I had come pretty close to finishing it. I might have one more slide to add, plus the conclusion, which I think is just going to be a recap of the objectives. And I might add a list of references but probably not because I found so many freaking articles. I might just make a list and offer to email it people if they're interested.

When I was working on my presentation I told a group of teens to keep their voices down because the entire library could hear them, I found a book for a patron, I did a walkthrough, and I refilled three displays (DVDs, Mystery, and new audiobooks). It was a relatively quiet night (minus the teens) and I was productive.

When I got home I spent the rest of my night watching The Race livestream, clicking around the internet, and texting. And it is now after 1:30AM. Good grief.

November 2, 2017

 Six o'clock came way too early this morning. I had planned on getting at least close to seven hours of sleep but then I decided to ask out the woman I've been texting and that led to a logistics conversation, which took awhile and I didn't get to bed until after midnight.

I ended up parking my car at eight o'clock, because I left the house a few minutes late, traffic sucked, and I think I hit every single stoplight. So I was a couple minutes late, but my boss was several minutes late, so it was all good. The opening stuff was the same as usual but I only got to sharpen a few pencils because we're out of unsharpened ones (minus the box in the workroom that I'm leaving in case we need unsharpened pencils to hand out.

I brought my flex nib pen so that the teen librarian could try it out because she has one on her Christmas list. I also brought some Rhodia paper because it handles the ink a lot better. Regular copy paper looked awful with the flex nib and all the ink it lays down.

I found out the year-long banning of the patron last night went well. The police arrived, they handed him the letter, and he calmly walked out with them. He's very unpredictable so I'm glad it went smoothly.

When we opened I went upstairs for two hours to work on my presentation. I accomplished some things but not a lot. I'll admit I zoned out a little bit. After that I had an uneventful and continued working on my presentation. Once again that was pretty much my day, working on my presentation and occasionally helping patrons or talking to my coworkers.

Over the last two hours at work I helped a family print a form and then scan and email it. It took so long because they were trying to print from their phone and that can be tricky. I eventually had them log onto one of our computers, helped them reset their email password (which is a common thing because so many people only access their email on their phone and never have to log in), and printing was so much easier. And scanning was a piece of cake.

When I got home I ate spaghetti and spent the evening watching YouTube videos, and now I'm watching The Race livestream that they do every year when a new Call of Duty comes out. It's got GoldGlove, Vern, TmarTn, Hutch, and Tucker and it's usually pretty entertaining.

It's only 9:30PM now and I'm tired, but I close tomorrow so I'll get to sleep in tomorrow morning. I'm looking forward to that.