January 31, 2018

 This morning I woke up and my leg was still bothering me from yesterday so I didn't run on the elliptical. I think I pulled something and it is annoying. I am glad it's not s knee issue, though. And this is only the second day I have missed on the elliptical since I started at the end of December. Hopefully I'm feeling better tomorrow morning. Instead of running I played Staxel for awhile and then got ready and went to work.

When I got to work I read a few news articles and then reviewed my article. I ended up having to add the word “Tuesday” to meet the appropriate date format, and that put me one word over the max limit. I looked at it for awhile trying to find a word I could remove but didn't have much luck.

And then I had a half hour monthly meeting with my boss. With other people the meetings seem to last close to an hour and mine usually last maybe ten or fifteen minutes, so a half hour is a new record. We went off on several random tangents, so that helped.

After the meeting I went back to my article and finally found an “I am” that I could turn into “I'm,” brilliant. And then I emailed it to the paper so I didn't have to worry about it anymore. Then I had a couple walkthroughs and looked at possible games for the video game discussion. I think I found one but we'll see how I feel about it in the morning.

The closing librarian came in for like two minutes today. Last night she started feeling sick and this morning she woke up feeling worse. She came to work because she though maybe she would feel better when she got to the library, but that didn't happen. The craziest thing was her voice. At some point in her life she took a medication for something (super descriptive) and it messed with her vocal cords, so now her voice isn't necessarily raspy but it isn't as full. It's hard to explain. But today, due to whatever was happening with her illness, her voice was more full and deep. She sounded a little congested but it wasn't like when someone else is sick. Her voice sounded like a “regular” voice and it was crazy. It makes me wonder if that is close to what her voice used to sound like. It was just really interesting.

I got to shut off a constantly running toilet today because circulation couldn't get ahold of maintenance. The power of a screwdriver.

I was on desk for an hour and it flew by because there was just a constant flow of things. I helped a patron find a book and then spent awhile researching other books for him and requesting them through interlibrary loan. I also had several phone calls and chats that were perfectly spaced to completely interfere with anything else I was going to work on. Mildly frustrating.

One of our unfortunately regular patrons had another minor incident at the computers today. It was a confrontation with three young men about their talking at the computers. The upstairs computers aren't a quiet area, and this patron knows this, but he feels the need to confront patrons about their talking. But, only when they're African American. White people can talk all day and he won't say a thing. Black people, on the other hand, laugh once and they're going to get stared at. And if they open their mouth he's going to confront them. For awhile he would come over to the desk and complain, which he still does if they don't stop talking after he tells them to, but I think he tries to avoid talking to us because we've stopped taking him at his word and often tell him that he can go to the tech center if he wants and actual quiet environment. That's when he started going directly to the assistant director. Anyway, he was at it again today and the young men weren't being overly loud. When my boss got back she went over and reminded him that if he had an issue he needed to come talk to us and he wasn't allowed to confront other patrons. Maybe it will work this time. Probably not.

I went to lunch at two o'clock today so I could cover the desk for the librarian who went home sick. It was a little weird going that late, but it also made my afternoon shorter.

I was on desk for two hours when I got back and it was one of those simultaneously fast and slow periods of time. I talked to my coworkers, helped a patron use the scanner, answered phone calls, and made a small adjustment to my DVD display sign for next month before sending it to the printer.

When I got off desk I went and printed my display sign along with some brochures. I went upstairs to use the folding machine for the brochures and that took awhile because I started tweaking the settings trying to get the brochure folded better. That ended up being pointless because I basically ended up where I began. But at least I tried. And then I pulled DVDs for a patron to end my day.

For the last hour of work I didn't have my phone because I let the one-on-one tech trainer borrow it to show two of the other people in the department around an Android phone (as part of the tech training thing, like the copier yesterday). I'm a big fan of not having my phone because then I'm not always checking it, but it is inconvenient when I want to check the time.

After work I picked up Chipotle and headed to my Mom's for dinner. We ate, talked, and watched videos. Good times as always.

I got home around nine o'clock and got lost in watching videos for a podcast on YouTube and clicking around the internet. And we're now approaching midnight and I have to open in the morning, so that's going to suck. Such is life.