December 1, 2017

 It's December already. Good grief.

This morning at work I restocked three displays. I completely restocked the Bestsellers, which is my display this month, by adding 40 books to the backup cart. I also restocked the audiobooks and DVDs because they were getting low. I also started making a list for the parent cart, because that is my other display this month. I haven't had it since June, so I need to try and get back into the mindset of a mother who takes her kid(s) to the library. We'll see how I do.

I spent at least twenty minutes helping an older patron get back into his Hotmail account by creating a Gmail account so we could reset his password. This is the same patron who came to the last few tech drop-ins and classes. I have also helped him get back into his Hotmail account before. I may have even done it twice before. And at least one of those times I created a Gmail account for him. I am hoping this time he won't misplace the information with his Gmail address and password. Or that he won't lose track of the paper with his new Hotmail password on it.

This afternoon I finished my list of books for the parent cart and had just enough time to pull books and get them on the display. I probably put too many books on it to start out but I'm going with it. A couple hours later two books had already checked out so hopefully that will be a sign of things to come. It probably won't be, but I can hope. I decided to go completely with nonfiction and I'm interested to see if that will work or if I should throw in some fiction books.

For the last two hours of my shift I was on desk and it was relatively uneventful. I made a quick printout for some of the holiday events happening around town. I also read a lot of news articles and talked a little bit with my coworkers. The loud phone-talking lady wasn't back today but the long haired older patron was and he came over to complain about two of the teen siblings after a very minor outburst, that remained under control, so it wasn't really even an outburst. I didn't have a problem with the teens' behavior because I thought they were doing a really good job of controlling themselves. I once again suggested to the patron that the tech center was a quiet area and that people were allowed to talk at the computers upstairs. He didn't seem to appreciate that. He went back to the computers for a little while and then left, either down to the tech center or possibly left the library. I don't know, and I don't really care. It may not have anything to do with race but his almost immediate reaction today compared to putting up with the white lady on the phone yesterday for over two hours seems to favor a different conclusion. He also brought up the fact that he had been assaulted at the library. I assume he is referring to when the patron who we later banned and was then arrested, lunged at him after he wouldn't stop staring at the other patron. It seems like he's looking for a fight, but not an actual physical altercation (I don't think he'd do well in one of those), he just wants to insert himself into situations and cause trouble. It's annoying.

After work I stopped at my Mom's house to set up her new TV in the basement. It's not too heavy but it is awkwardly big and hard to hold onto. I was pretty proud of my genius idea to open up the bottom of the box, as well as the top, so I could just lift the box off the TV, instead of trying to pull the TV out of the box, which was never going to work out. After getting it out of the box it didn't take too long to get the feet installed and get it set up.

I got home a little after seven o'clock and then ate dinner and started watched the recording for the earlier Yogscast livestream. Today was the first day of their Jingle Jam, which they do every December. It's a livestream that lasts all month long and all the money they raise goes to charity. It won't keep the same pace all month long but by the end of the day they had already raised $1.3 million. That's kinda crazy.