March 30, 2018

I opened this morning. All the usual stuff happened, and I also shredded a bunch of raffle tickets from last year's summer reading program. They were put in a drawer and kind of forgotten about over the past several months. We have to shred them because they have patron information on them. It's a very tedious process. It would be much easier to just burn them all. And more fun. But I don't think that would go over very well.

I was on desk for two hours when we opened and handled several requests for room reservations. It was weird how many there were all of a sudden. When I was dealing with that, I read news articles, wrote an email and blog post about our new patron printer because it's got some weird stuff going on at the moment, like only printing in color even when a patron selects black and white, but charging them for black and white, not color. I also downloaded Dropbox so I could take screenshots of the different preference options. Then I had a walkthrough and read library-related articles until lunch.

When I got back from lunch I went and weeded my new section for an hour and a half. I got through the pet section and have nearly made it to vegetarian cookbooks. We have a surprisingly large vegetarian cookbook collection. And I will soon find out how popular it is. It's kind of nice that we are just inheriting other people's lists, so I don't actually have to go through and mark what needs to be weeded, because it's already been done. I just have to make the final judgment call.

I had enough time to withdraw all the books I pulled and get another empty cart from upstairs (because I nearly filled the other cart with the books I pulled) before going on a walkthrough. Following the walkthrough, I went upstairs and spent the last hour and a half in the cubicle. I zoned out with some music and worked on creating my informative sheet about the Dropbox preference options. I compiled all of my screenshots and used the explanation for the main options I found on the Dropbox website. I also had time to make a few edits to my presentation slides, namely, adding the links for the two videos under the videos. I turn the slides into a PDF to put on the website (because that's more universally accessible than a PowerPoint), but you can't watch the embedded videos when it is a PDF, so I added a hyperlink below the video, so now people can click on it and jump over to YouTube. After finishing it I replaced the old one on the class page. Then I sent an email to all of the patrons who came to the class with the questions and answers PDF I made, along with the preferences PDF. It was a productive time in the cubicle.

After work I got an oil change. I realized a couple days ago that I was a thousand miles over the mileage on my sticker. Whoops.

When I got home I roasted vegetables and made rice for dinner. I also had a baked potato with salsa. It was a pretty good dinner. While I ate I watched videos, and later on in the night I played CoD: WW2. And after that I finished listening to Panic by Lauren Oliver. I started listening to it on my trip to see my grandma, and made it through disc six yesterday, I believe, which ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, and then there wasn't a disc seven. So I checked it out again today and was able to listen to disc seven and the end of the book. Overall, I liked it. I kept expecting something more to happen, but it never really did. But other than that, it wasn't bad.

And now I'm really tired, but Mister Rogers is about it talk to an astronaut, so I'm going to try and stay awake for that, and then go to bed. Tomorrow I'm going to do my taxes. I'm excited. So excited.

March 29, 2018

To continue the theme of this week, I started the first two hours of work upstairs in the cubicle. I read news articles for awhile, listened to music, and spent most of the time working on finding answers to the Dropbox questions I got earlier in the week.

Then I had three walkthroughs in a row. I refilled the audiobook display, which took awhile because I made a long list of possible books before going to pull them. And then I spent the rest of the time working on the Dropbox thing.

After lunch I had another walkthrough and then went back to the Dropbox thing. Following that, two hours on desk, and I pretty much finished the Dropbox Q&A. I want to add screenshots, so I didn't email the patrons, but I might be able to do that tomorrow. Other than that, I wrote a comment on our department blog about the teen librarian librarian joining our department at some point in the coming months, and I helped the occasional patron. My day was very much singularly focused on the Dropbox thing. But it was productive. Tomorrow I might be able to go back to weeding.

After work I ate dinner, watched videos, and then played a little bit of CoD: WW2. I think the last time I played was last Thursday. Maybe. I could easily scroll up and check my entries from last week, but I'm going to forgo that and stick with Thursday. Either way, I had a pretty good time. I had one game of Domination on Shipment where I had fifteen caps and the next person on my team had four. I was obviously playing the objective, and my teammates were not.

Now I'm going to watch some more videos and go to bed. I'm still not doing the audio journals. I still need to set everything back up. I'll get that done this weekend. Along with my taxes. I've put my taxes off for so long this year, for no real reason. But it'll give me something to do this weekend.

March 28, 2018

Once again I spent the first two hours at work upstairs. I was going to get on the second computer at the reference desk but it wasn't connecting to my drives. So I grabbed my stuff, including a couple books I needed for one of my homebound patrons, and went upstairs.

The first thing I did was attempt to call my homebound patrons to remind them we were coming out today. I only got ahold of one of them, who I was the least worried about, so that wasn't great. After that I updated attendance stuff from the two classes yesterday and read a few articles. Then I had a walkthrough and went back upstairs so I could compose the Thank You note for the presenter of last night's class. I also sent out an email with the survey to the attendees of last night's class, because I usually forget to do that for a week or two.

After lunch we went out to deliver books. Once again we took the van and we were immediately blown away by how clean the van looked on the inside. It is always filthy inside but someone, after at least a year and a half, got the inside cleaned out. And then we noticed what appeared to be powdered sugar and crumbs on the seats. We swatted that stuff off the seat and the other librarian suspected donuts. And then when we got in, she looked down, and saw a piece of donut on the floor. Our theory is that someone was very excited that they finally cleaned the van so they celebrated with donuts, proceeding to get donut everywhere, negating the effort of cleaning the van.

My first patron wasn't home and the door was locked. I hadn't been able to get ahold of her this morning and I had left a voicemail for her last week. I can't remember if I spoke with her later week or if it was before that. I'm mildly concerned. The rest of delivering went as normal, minus one of my patrons who damaged one of her books by spilling juice on it. It just creates an awkward situation for everyone. I'm just hoping the cost of the book doesn't end up being prohibitive so I can keep taking books to her.

When we got back we processed our books and then I spent about a half an hour trying to get the second reference computer to work while talking to the husband of the librarian I delivered books with. I was basically just trying to kill time until I was on desk.

And then I was on desk for two hours. A decent chunk of that was spent updating my homebound spreadsheets. I spent the rest of the time researching answers to the extra Dropbox questions from the class yesterday, answering several phone calls, helping patrons, and talking to my coworker.

I picked up Chipotle after work and headed to my Mom's house for dinner. We ate food, talked, and watched some of the YouTube videos I had lined up. Unfortunately it was only some because the internet really tanked near the end so we went back to talking.

I got home around 9:30PM and after clicking around the internet for awhile I have been slowing working on this. And now I'm done. I'm still not recording my audio journal because I got home late and still haven't set up my microphone. It wouldn't really take much time to set everything back up but the motivation isn't there. But maybe tomorrow.

March 27, 2018

This morning I got up a half an hour before my alarm, and then eventually did all the usual stuff before going to work at noon.

I spent the first hour and a half at work upstairs putting the finishing touches on my class presentation, and sending memes back and forth with the teen librarian related to the adulting class tonight and a new update to our staff laptop use.

Then I printed out handouts and got everything together for the class before heading down to the classroom. We had nine people show up, out of ten possible, so that's not bad. The class was slightly delayed because we had sound issues. I guess I'm the first person who needed sound since they remodeled the classroom, and it wasn't working. Three people worked on it and in the end they ended up just hooking up a Bluetooth speaker to the computer.

As for the class itself, I think it went alright. Not great, but it could have been worse. I think we got sidetracked quite a bit by questions, which might have added to the overall confusion. There were also a lot of more involved questions that didn't have immediate or clear answers, so that didn't help either. But we covered a lot of information and I think most of the patrons got at least something out of it.

The class went a little bit long, so I was a little late going to dinner, which made my dinner slightly shorter because I was supposed to be on desk when I got back from dinner. That hour on desk was uneventful. I talked to a coworker for a little bit, and then kind of got caught up on emails and other stuff I missed this weekend and yesterday.

Then I had a walkthrough, which ended in the childrens' room, talking to the person working until almost 6:30PM when the teen librarian showed up. I had another walkthrough at 6:30PM but instead of that I started setting up for the class tonight with the teen librarian.

We ended up having sixteen attendees, which was more than had signed up, so that was good. It would be nice if we had managed that sort of attendance for all the classes in the series. Maybe if we had, this wouldn't have been the last class in the series. Oh well. The class went well. The instructor brought several handouts and a big box of different seeds for people to pick through. He covered a lot of information and he had a very dry sense of humor which made it pretty entertaining.

I picked everything up after the class, returned the laptop and keys to the people in childrens, got stuff put away, and then went downstairs to close. I did the wandering around thing and I added a few more audiobooks to my display.

And that was my day at work. It went by incredibly fast. Tomorrow we're supposed to go deliver homebound books, so that will be another chunk of my day gone, but hopefully I can get some other things done as well.

After work I stopped by the grocery store. I only planned on getting bread and dryer sheets (after I lost mine to the washer yesterday), but I ended up getting other things. I was inspired by the apples and oranges I ate this weekend, so I picked up a few of each. I also got a few more potatoes so I can make more baked potatoes.

Now I'm going to wrap this up so I can actually go back and fill out my notes in my journal, because I didn't have time to do that throughout the day. Which kind of defeats the purpose, but it happens. And luckily there really wasn't much going on today. I won't be recording my audio journal today because I still need to get everything set up after this weekend, and make the recordings for the past few days. I might be able to get caught up tomorrow, but I don't it because it's Chipotle night. At the very least, there is always this weekend.

March 26, 2018

This morning I woke up, listened to music for a little bit, took a shower, and then packed up my stuff before going taking it all upstairs. Before breakfast I sat and watched a rabbit eating grass in the backyard, with the help of binoculars. It was surprisingly entertaining. From my perspective, all of the grass looked the same, but this rabbit seemed to be pretty particular about the blades of grass it was choosing to eat.

For breakfast we had scrambled eggs and rolls. And then we just sat and talked about random things, like my younger brother, her family growing up, my Dad when he was younger, and politics.

I eventually washed the dishes and then went to the airport to pick up my aunt and her friend. Luckily it is pretty much a straight shot to the airport, so I didn't have to worry about getting lost. But then the plane was delayed because they had to fly around storms. They were supposed to get in at 11:50AM, but I ended up sitting in my car until after 12:30PM before they were ready to be picked up. I was a little bit annoyed because I wanted to leave by one o'clock, but I was mostly annoyed because I could have been hanging out with my grandma for another half an hour. When we got back to the house we talked for a little bit and not too long after one o'clock I was able to leave.

I really had a good weekend. It was very relaxed and it was definitely a throwback to my childhood, when I was carefree and didn't have a worry in the world (to be redundant). I could also talk to my grandma for hours on end, which I got the chance to do this weekend, because she has so many interesting stories.

The drive home went well. I stopped on the way to get Spangles, because it has been forever since I've had Spangles. I'm glad to report that their fries are still my favorite. And their frozen orange juice is still very satisfying.

I made it home around 3:45PM, brought all my stuff in the house, and then ended up laying on my bed for half an hour, just because I could. I didn't take a nap but I did close my eyes and just enjoyed not sitting in a car. Then I started my laundry. I discovered when I went to start the second load, that I had knocked all of my dryer sheets into the washer and washed them. So that sucks. Luckily I had a little promotional package that had two dryer sheets in it, which is just what I needed to finish. I need to go to the grocery store tomorrow because I've been out of bread since Thursday or Friday when I discovered mold on my bread, so now I can add dryer sheets to the list.

With dinner I had a big orange that my grandma sent with me. I'm not a big fan of how sticky oranges can be, but they are very tasty.

After dinner I eventually got around to working on my presentation for the tech class tomorrow. The motivation for that was very much lacking, but I think I have ended up with something workable. I might add a few more videos to it, just in case people are interested, but other than that, I might call it good.

While working on that I continued watching the Mister Rogers marathon. The world would be a much better place if everyone would follow the example of Mister Rogers.

Now it's closing in on 12:30AM so I'm going to go to bed.

March 25, 2018

This morning I woke up at eight o'clock and laid in bed for a little while listening to music. After taking a shower I went upstairs.

My grandma made biscuits, and we eventually had those and scrambled eggs for lunch because the biscuits weren't ready before the livestream. The livestream was of the church service that my cousin sings at (and my aunt was attending) in New York. We were able to watch it on the TV and I left a note for my aunt on how to do that so she can get the right cable and hook her laptop up to the TV. Right now they huddle around her laptop, and my grandma said it was so much better being able to watch it on the big TV.

They had one camera devoted to the organ and it was really impressive. They have two different organists and I want to say they made it look easy because they're so good, but jumping between five keyboards, while also playing with your feet, still looks incredibly intimidating. It was also interesting how much and how bluntly they commented on current events, like gun safety and racism. At different points the main pastor (there were several different denominations represented) showed the protest sign she had made for the March For Life event on Saturday, and referenced the projected cost of Trump's military parade (while talking about an event in the Bible). I liked that they were acknowledging the present state of affairs, the reality in which we live, and not just making broad connections between the Bible and how people should act. I don't frequent church but I can't imagine most churches are that progressive.

When the livestream was over we ate our late brunch After that I ended up taking a nap in the living room with Mister Rogers on the TV while my grandma read the newspaper. There is something about this house that just makes me want to nap all the time.

Later in the afternoon I got all my microphone and computer stuff set up and I interviewed my grandma. I used the questions from a book she had filled out years ago, which I think worked pretty well, and we had a few digressions. I wasn't paying attention to the time at all and I think we ended up talking for nearly two and a half hours. I haven't checked the recordings but I used two microphones so I hope I got something good out of it. And, I just checked the one of the recordings and it is pretty much unusable because there was a noise gate that cut off a lot of what was said, so that is frustrating. The other recording seems to be pretty quiet (and probably won't pick up a lot of what I said because it was the microphone in front of my grandma), but I'm hoping I can edit it to make it better.

It was 6:30PM by the time we finished so we moved right into dinner. I had leftover pizza (which was still good as leftovers), a toasted peanut butter sandwich, and apples. And then we had a little bit of vanilla ice cream and chocolate ice cream for dessert. It has been a long time since I've had just regular vanilla ice cream and it was really good.

After dinner we watched Bob Ross until 11:00PM, so we really did hit all the high points of my childhood memories this weekend. It was pretty great.

March 24, 2018

This morning I woke up at eight o'clock, took a shower, and then went up to feed the dogs. Then I changed all the batteries in my Mom's smoke detectors, loaded up my car, set up the GPS, and headed out. I made a brief stop to get gas and then was on my way a little before 10:30AM.

I didn't need the GPS for awhile because the first part of the trip is a pretty straight shot, but it was on and then the battery died about half an hour into the trip. It charges with a USB cord but my car only has one USB port (first world problem) and I had my thumb drive plugged in so I could listen to an audiobook. I used my printed directions to make sure I took the correct exit and then stopped at the first gas station to use the restroom and buy an over-priced cigarette lighter USB charger. I think I would have been just fine with my printed directions, but better safe than sorry. And maybe I'll need the charger in the future. The rest of the trip was uneventful and I only made one wrong turn, right at the end of the journey when I got into my aunt's neighborhood and turned too early. It wouldn't be a road trip if I didn't make at least one turn too early.

My Mom hung out for a little bit and then she left to go meet a friend for lunch. My grandma and I sat and talked for awhile before eating a late lunch or random things. My grandma steamed some small potatoes and made cauliflower with cheese. There was also a plate of grapes, apples, and oranges.

After lunch I showed her my Chromebook because she's in the market for a new computer. I'm an advocate of Chromebooks for a lot of people, who don't really need a computer beyond checking their emails and getting online. They get the job done and they're relatively inexpensive, at least if you get the simple ones. We spent a lot of time talking about it and she seems to like the idea of it.

While showing her the computer I pulled up the Mister Rogers marathon and we ended up watching that for awhile. One of my best memories as a child was going over to her house and watching Mister Rogers. It was really cool being able to watch it with her and laugh. We talked about a bunch of random things after that, including politics (which went well because we both share a lot of common sense, beyond just party lines).

For dinner we made a homemade pizza, which is another throwback to my childhood when we would make pizza at her house. It had a modern twist with the toppings, which included green peppers, mozzarella cheese, and tater tots. I think it turned out pretty well.

After dinner we talked for awhile and then she called my aunt to get the address for the live stream tomorrow of my cousin singing at a church. They website leaves the previous week's stream on the website so I was able to hook my Chromebook up to the TV and make sure we would be able to watch the livestream in the morning.

It is now almost midnight, and I've been distracted by more Mister Rogers. It's a good distraction. Despite being really tired, I will probably stay up for at least one more episode so I can see Mr. McFeely's birthday.

March 23, 2018

This morning I woke up, ran on the elliptical and headed to work. I arrived at work at nine o'clock and quickly learned that I wasn't supposed to come in until eleven o'clock. I was convinced I worked at nine o'clock so I didn't check the schedule last night, and I ignored the urge to check it this morning. Whoops.

I went home for about thirty minutes and played CoD: WW2 to get out my frustration on my day completely getting messed up. At ten o'clock I went to my Mom's house to let the dogs out before going back to work. I also ate an early lunch, even though I had eat breakfast two hours earlier, because I knew if I didn't I would be starving by four o'clock. I ate a lot of peanut butter today.

When I got to work, for the second time, it was a pretty uneventful day. I had five walkthroughs throughout the day, I was on desk for a couple, and I had some off desk time. When I wasn't helping patrons or talking to coworkers, I worked on the tech class for next week. That could have gone better. I got less than seven hours of sleep last night and that meant I was tired all day, which led to a lack of focus. It was frustrating, and very reminiscent of school projects. I got caught up in an overly complicated slideshow, also reminiscent of school, and eventually focused on an outline, so I would actually know what slides I needed to make, instead of just overly tweaking the slides I had. I nearly finished the outline, which means I'll need to do a decent amount of work this weekend. And hopefully I'll get back early enough Monday so I won't have to pull an all-nighter to get it done.

My best patron interaction today was with an older lady who called because she had tried three different numbers for her bank and kept getting a recorded message. I had the same numbers but I put her on hold and decided to try calling the number in the phonebook (which was the same as the one on Google). It rang for quite awhile but eventually a lady answered. I mentioned who I was and why I was calling and then she told me she was actually just a switchboard for all of the banks in the chain. She offered to connect me to the bank I needed and gave me their direct number, which was useful. I got through when she connected me and went through my spiel again. She said the phones were fine but she had been at lunch and there was a chance they had been busy enough that no one had been able to answer the phone. When I hung up with her I got back on with the patron and let her know what I had learned and gave her the number. I didn't hear from her again so I am hoping that means she was able to get through to the bank.

After work I went home to start packing. My sister stopped by to let me borrow a GPS unit for the trip. She also caught me up on what had gone on this week down there and what I needed to know about, like the alarm system. When she left I recorded my audio journal and then finished packing. I made it to my Mom's around eleven o'clock and now it is after midnight, but I'm about to go to bed, which I have been looking forward to all day.

March 22, 2018

I got eight and a half hours of sleep last night. I woke up after six hours, but there was no way that was happening, so I rolled over and went back to sleep until my alarm clock went off. Then I ran on the elliptical, got ready, and went to work.

I had two walkthroughs when I got to work. New security cameras were being installed in the atrium, which involved drilling through concrete. It was super loud and could be heard throughout the library. There was a patron sitting on the first floor that was basically shouting into her phone, trying to have a conversation. After the first walkthrough I moved all of the tax forms and instruction books down to the old mail room, because were clearing off the shelves that I had recently moved them to. And during my second walkthrough I refilled the DVDs and talked to one of the third grade teachers I used to work with.

I was on desk for two hours after that. I opened up the Mister Rogers marathon and made it as small as I could and kept that in the bottom corner of my screen most of the day. It was muted but whenever I glanced down and saw fun things happening on the show it made me happy.

A patron came up and told me her mom was suffering from dementia and that her ability to read was beginning to be affected. She thought maybe graphic novels would hold her interest, so I walked her downstairs to our collection. We had a bit of a mishap right off the bat when I showed her one book with a hard sleeve, and we quickly learned why it was in that sleeve. The whole book ended up being one long folded page, which made it very unwieldy. I kept almost dropping it because it was really squirrely, and then I lost the back half, which hit the floor, while the front half was still in my hands, leaving a long trail of paper to the floor. It was good comic relief, and we both agreed that maybe that wouldn't be the best option for her mom. I explained our collection a little bit so she would know what to expect, and said if she had any specific ideas or types of books she was looking for we could search for them. I suggested maybe going with Peanuts (because everyone likes Peanuts) or something like that, just as an introduction, and if her mom liked it than we could throw in other stuff. That's what she ended up going with and I really hope it works out for her.

Not long after returning to the desk I helped another patron look up information on the history of our local hospital. That left a little time to catch up on the news and start working on my tech class coming up next week.

After dinner went upstairs for an hour (because the computers at the desk were taken) and I continued gathering information for my tech class. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to do the class yet. I don't feel like there will be enough content to even come close to filling the whole two hours. But we'll see what I can come up with tomorrow. The class is on Tuesday and I just realized today that tomorrow is the last day I work until Tuesday, because I'm off on Monday. There's a decent chance I may be throwing some things together this weekend.

With the rest of the night I was on desk for an hour, then off for two, and spent most of that time working on the class. I also refilled the DVDs and audiobooks, and talked to some of the circulation people.

Not long before closing one of our regulars came up to use the phone because her coat had disappeared and it had her phone and keys in it. She called her friend, one of our other regulars, but she didn't answer. She she called the police to see about getting into her car, because her dog was in it. I didn't think about it until later but I think her dog had been in the car since I came back from dinner, because I had heard a dog barking when I was walking back to the library. The dog had sounded like it was outside though, so I didn't think much of it. We then had to wait on the patron because she came downstairs after the final closing announcement and went into the restroom.

When we were finally walking out there was a cop car and a van (either animal control or a locksmith, I wasn't really paying attention) in the parking lot. One of the circulation people (who was only with us because we had to wait on the patron and I sent everyone else home) commented on the scene and I told her what happened. She said they had a phone and set of keys turned in earlier and no one had claimed them, so I walked over and asked the patron what her phone and keys looked like. Her description seemed to match so I went back into the library and grabbed them. And they were hers. She had checked with circulation earlier about her coat but apparently hadn't mentioned the phone and keys. And I had assumed she had checked with circulation, so I didn't talk to them. I think the situation could have been handled better, but it had a happy ending.

After work I stopped by my Mom's house to chat about the next couple of days, because she's going down to stay with my grandma tomorrow and I'm staying at her house tomorrow night to take care of the dogs, before going down on Saturday to stay with my grandma. I'm mildly stressed about all of the unknown elements happening this weekend, but I'm looking forward to it.

I also picked up my new Chromebook, which I had delivered to my Mom's house today because I didn't want it sitting out in the open on my porch all night. They always place stuff at the top of the two stairs leading up to my porch, where packages can easily be seen from the street. It would be nice if they would put it around the corner of the stone wall along the front of the porch, which would basically take the same amount of effort and time. But alas. The Chromebook is even smaller than I was expecting but that makes it even better because I was wanting something small. I have only messed with a little bit but I think it will work out well.

Now I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed. I'm tired.

March 21, 2018

I got more sleep than last night but still less than seven hours, so that sucked a little bit but I survived. I also got to watch a little bit of the Mister Rogers marathon on Twitch before work, which they are doing again in honor of what would have been his 90^th birthday.

Today was a very uneventful but productive day at work. I had the first two hours off desk so I caught up on the news and then I went out to weed. I was working on my new section, which is in the 800s, because the shifting has started and we want to finish up the big numbers first and work our way down, because we're shifting away from the smaller numbers. If that makes any sense.

My next two hours were on desk and that disappeared. I withdrew all the books I had pulled, and put a note on several of them in the hopes of getting them after they are deleted. Then I looked through the rest of the cart and added notes on a few different woodworking books. I also handled emails and helped a few patrons, but luckily it was pretty quiet so I could do book things.

I had two walkthroughs in two hours when I got back from lunch, and after each I went back out to weed. I also talked to my coworkers about the remodeling, because that is an ever-present conversation these days. And after that I was on desk for an hour, giving me time to withdraw the weeded books, and read a few news articles.

In the last hour of work I was able to finish weeding my new section (it was pretty small). That took me less than thirty minutes so I had plenty of time to withdraw everything. And then I read articles and talked to my coworker until it was six o'clock.

When I got home I ate dinner and watched videos. Then I watched part of a tutorial for the painting software I have. And then I messed around with the painting software a little bit. Instead of trying to jump into something new I just tried making another sky with fluffy clouds. I definitely have a lot more to learn, and need to practice a lot more, but I want to say there was a slight improvement over last night, which is promising.

I played CoD: WW2, all but one game on Shipment, and only had one round where my team got completely spawn camped by the other team. The second round in that game turned around and I managed to go positive and we won the match. For the last game of the night I decided to try a melee class. It was a lot of fun but my K/D was horrible. In general, Shipment is ruining my K/D. I have some decent games, but the map is so small that when the other team destroys you, it is easy to have at least twice as many deaths as kills. In regular games I really don't pay that much attention to it, but I was becoming more aware of it as my overall K/D was slowly getting closer to one. I need to give up on that and just have fun. That's one of the reasons I like War so much, because K/D isn't counted, so in theory, people can just play the objective.

It is now nearly midnight. I close tomorrow, so I should be able to get a full night of sleep. That will be nice.

March 20, 2018

Last night I got less than six hours of sleep. I felt the lack of sleep immediately upon waking up, and then continued to feel it throughout the day. It was great.

When I got to work I did the usual opening thing, and then I had to call all of my homebound patrons, and all of the patrons of the librarian I deliver with, and tell them that we wouldn't be out today, but would deliver next week. We originally moved the delivery a day early because the other librarian is going to a conference tomorrow. Then they forecasted bad weather at the conference so the librarian moved her flight to today to try and get to the conference before all the snow hit. Which is why I had to call all the patrons. About a half an hour after calling everyone, my boss told me that the librarian's new flight had been canceled, so we would be able to deliver books today after all. But I suggested sticking with next week because we had already changed the date on everyone twice and I thought it would just add to the confusion is we switched it again. Plus, there will be more staff available next week (we would have been down to just one librarian and my boss if we went out today). So we're going out next week. I felt bad for the other librarian because she went from working today, to rescheduling her flight and assuming she would be flying, to having that flight canceled and having to come to work. A real roller coaster of a day.

When we opened I was on desk for two hours. I helped the occasional patron, including my favorite substitute teacher, but most of my time was spent working on the new homebound bookmark. I'm good with the design for now, so today was spent copying it into all of my patron spreadsheets and adjusting the formulas so they reference the spreadsheet I pasted them into, not the spreadsheet I copied them from.

In the last hour before lunch I had a walkthrough and refilled the DVD display. Then I went upstairs to call the one patron I hadn't been able to reach earlier. And after that I took the survey about our catalog that our IT put on the website because they are going to a conference about it at some point and want feedback. It gave me a chance to rant a little bit about the pointless pop-up that shows up when you hover over a search result and shows the exact same information that is right next to the result (but the pop-up covers it up, I guess creating a need for the information to be displayed in the pop-up). It's dumb. I think they need to make it like Goodreads or NoveList and show a brief description of the book and maybe some metadata describing the item, like the genre or themes). They could also put the information about where the item is so patrons could immediately see when an item is due back if it is checked out or if it is on a display. All useful information that could be shown without patrons having to click through to a different page or pop-up. I also suggesting ignoring punctuation, like colons and hyphens, because right now if you don't use them properly it completely messes up the search results. It felt good to rant about that stuff.

When I got back I had two hours off desk. That disappeared. I was going to go around and put signs up telling patrons that construction was happening, but that didn't happen. We recently gave all of our sign holders to the PR person because we had to clean out the closet we kept them in. This is good for storage purposes but now every time we need a sign holder we have to track down the PR person. I let her know I needed some, and she wrote it down, but she had a lot going on this afternoon, so I never saw any holders. Instead, I worked on my bookmarks.

I spent a decent amount of time tracking down formulas that would output the row height because I wanted to make a template for how to format the bookmarks. I was tired of having to constantly check what the row height was in one of the finished spreadsheets, in order to adjust the rows in an unfinished spreadsheet. I could have done it once and typed the numbers in manually, but where's the fun in that? I found one formula that worked, but the result was in points, not pixels, and I needed pixels. Somehow I managed to track down an equation for converting points to pixels (pixels = points * DPI / 72, in case you're curious). I had to look up the DPI of the monitor, but other than that it was pretty simple, once I found it, and it did just what I needed it to.

I was on desk for an hour after that. I helped one patron fill out requests for out-of-state ILLs for two religious books published in the 1920s and 1930s. I don't fancy his odds of those not only existing near us, but also being lendable. But we'll see. I also had to tell a nice grandma to move out of the quiet area if she wanted to keep reading to her grandkid, because my boss was super stressed out and her major pet peeve is any noise in the quiet area, even if no one else is in the quiet area. She had already asked someone to leave and she didn't want to do it again, so I had the unfortunate honor. I felt bad.

I had one final walkthrough and then continued to work on bookmark stuff until the end of the day. I think I may have finished. I can't remember. But I think I finished.

When I got home I set up my new drawing tablet on my newer computer, as well as installed the painting software. Once I confirmed it worked, I ate dinner and watched videos. After dinner I went back out to play with the drawing tablet. The software came with several Bob Ross-inpsired brushes so I decided to open up a tutorial of painting one of his paintings using the upgraded version of the software I have. I thought I could manage without some of the fancier features in the upgraded version, but it turns out not all the brushes were included in my version. I tried to fake my way through it but could only do about half of the painting and it didn't look great, mostly due to talent, but also because I was trying to substitute brushes. I didn't even get to fill out the happy little trees because there is a special brush for that and I didn't have it. I think I might try to find tutorials that use the resources I have, so I can build up a little confidence and not feel as defeated. Sounds like a good plan anyway.

After I gave up on that, I played a little CoD: WW2. I exclusively played on Shipment because that is the quickest way to rack up kills for the various daily contracts. And I was successful in that. I also mostly went positive with my K/D. It is really easy to go incredibly negative if you're playing against good players that have the spawns locked down.

And now I am going to record my audio journal and go to bed. I would save so much time each day if I didn't take notes about my day, write a journal entry based on those notes, and record an audio journal based on those notes. Oh well.

March 19, 2018

Last night I woke up at least a few times, which was annoying. Sleeping through the night is always preferred.

It was raining this morning and I finally got to use my new umbrella. By the time I got to work it wasn't a downpour or anything, but it was still a successful test of keeping me dry. I have talked to the teen librarian a couple times about it and she was actually hanging out by the reference desk when I got to work just to ask how it went.

My boss tried out the paper footprint for the desk this morning and her sons were there to help. At one point something wasn't going right and her old son, who came in to help on Friday with the curved pieces, said maybe they should wait for me to get there. My boss looked at him with mild frustration, and said “You know I'm his boss, right?” She thought it was pretty funny.

For the first two hours of work I went out an pulled books for homebound (as well as for my green display), and I was able to get all of them checked out. I was on desk for two hours after that and I was able to get all of the bookmarks printed, cut out, stuff in the books, and the books stuffed into bags. I also updated my spreadsheets and had a little bit of time to look at the news.

When I go back from lunch I had two walkthroughs, during which I refilled the DVD display and added books to empty book stands on several displays. Today was a popular day for displays.

After my walkthroughs it was a little crowded at the desk with two librarians and an assistant so I went up to the cubicle. On the way I stopped and talked to the teen librarian about the description I wrote for the next adulting class, and then we talked about summer reading books and the remodeling project. When I made it to the cubicle I worked on creating a more efficient homebound bookmark. At the moment I have to update my spreadsheet for each patron with the author, book title, date out, date due, and eventually comments. Then I open up Publisher for my bookmark template and type in the patron's name, book title, author, and due date for each book. It's very redundant and time consuming. My idea today was to create the bookmarks on a separate sheet in each of the Excel files for each patron. The idea is that I will update the spreadsheet, copy and paste that information onto a second sheet (that will make it easier to grab the information because it will always be located on the same rows), and then the information on the second sheet will be pulled onto the third sheet that has the bookmark template. The formulas were pretty easy to figure out (the trickiest involving separating the authors' first and last names (because they're listed last name first on the main sheet) and then putting them back together the correct way because that's how they're listed on the bookmark). The tedious part was formatting the bookmarks so that I could get four, evenly spaced, bookmarks on each page. It took awhile but I think I'm happy with it. I kind of want to redo the whole layout, rather than just recreating the old one, but I'll worry about that later. Now I just have to create all the blank templates for each patron. My thought is that I will create the same number of bookmarks for each patron as the number of books they currently get, so I won't have to worry about creating new ones each month. The annoying part of this is that when I create copies I have to adjust the formulas for each bookmark because they don't copy over correctly. There is a lot of tweaking, and it will take time, but in the long run it will save me a lot of time, and it will be less stress on my wrists and fingers.

For the last hour of the day I was on the desk but ten or fifteen minutes of that was spent running around. A patron called and asked for a book. We had a copy available and he asked if we could pull it because he was on his way. I said we could and I headed downstairs to grab it so I could give it to Circulation and have them put it on the 1-day holds cart. The book was listed as a new book but I couldn't find it in the new book area. I went to tell someone in Circulation that if the patron came in to let him know I couldn't find the book but that I was going to put a hold on it for him. Right after explaining that I turned around and the patron was walking up to the desk. I explained the same thing to him and he was appreciative that I put in that much effort. As almost an afterthought I went back up to the desk via the stairs that would take me by the area the book would be if it weren't new. And I found the book on the shelf, sans New sticker, which is why it was shelved up there, even though it is still listed as new in the catalog. So I went back downstairs and walked back and forth a couple times looking for the patron before finally catching him coming down from upstairs. He was really happy that I had found the book. As was I.

On my way home I stopped and got gas, and then ate dinner and watched videos when I got home. After dinner I got everything set up to play with my new drawing tablet. Everything worked beautifully for maybe fifteen minutes, and then I decided to install a color set from a Bob Ross painting. I don't think the version of the software I have supports adding color sets because I couldn't find an option in the program. So I decided to drop it directly into the color sets folder. And that broke the software. It would immediately crash after flashing the opening screen. When I took the color set out of the folder, everything was fine. I tried it one more time just to make sure and the same thing happened, but this time the color set I added completely disappeared and the software was still crashing. I tried repairing the files and well as uninstalling and reinstalling a couple times, but nothing worked. Online I have found a number of solutions for different versions of the software but nothing that has been helpful for my version. It's frustrating.

I ended up playing CoD: WW2 but had trouble enjoying it because I was still annoyed with the software issue. I had planned on spending my night drawing. But nope.

And now it is late and I have to open tomorrow, so it will be another long day after a lack of sleep. Hooray.

March 18, 2018

I only got six and a half hours of sleep last night but after spending most of the afternoon in bed yesterday, I woke up feeling pretty rested.

I spent most of my morning doing laundry and watching tutorials for the new painting program I got yesterday. I wasn't really able to follow any of them because I don't have my drawing tablet yet (it should be here tomorrow), but the tutorials were pretty informative.

This afternoon I messed with an audio program that I got for a dollar in a Humble Bundle today. It came with an EDM loop pack, so I worked on creating the beginning of an EDM song. I'll never finish it but it was fun to play around with.

Later in the afternoon I played a little CoD: WW2. I had a couple games of War where I obviously had a team that had very little experience. It was mildly frustrating but I played well and had a good time. I also got a robot charm for my guns in one of my loot boxes. The charms came out with the St. Patrick's Day event and I like the idea of them. But I think I really only see them at the beginning of the match. Once the game actually starts I'm so focused on looking around for bad guys that I don't really pay any attention to my gun. But they're still fun.

I ate a late dinner because I had to roast vegetables and make rice, and then spent the rest of the night watching videos and livestreams. Overall, I felt better about today than yesterday. Yesterday just wasn't a good day. Today was more of a typical weekend day. That's not to say it was great, because I need to be better with my free time, but it was a definite improvement over yesterday. Baby steps.

And now, once again, I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed. I could have easily taken a nap this afternoon but I didn't, so my eyelids are feeling pretty heavy.

March 17, 2018

Today could have been better. I woke up this morning after about seven hours of sleep and spent the morning watching videos and clicking around the internet. I also ate dry Cheerios using chopsticks. That's a bit more challenging than popcorn or Cheetos.

At two o'clock, I was bored, unmotivated, had a haircut, and nothing sounded interesting, so I crawled back into bed. For the next four hours I laid there, listening to music, napping off and on, and occasionally playing a game on my phone. There were a few different times where I thought about getting up but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Instead I just rolled over and went back to sleep.

I did finally get up around six o'clock, mostly just so I could make dinner. This included making cornbread. The last time I made it I did it from scratch, and forgot the sugar (even though I got the sugar out and had it sitting right in front of me. Tonight I used a box mix, so no need to worry about forgetting something. It tasted pretty good but I think I over-mixed it because it was very crumbly. Live and learn. I'm just glad it tasted good.

After dinner I played CoD: WW2, took a break to take a shower, and then played some more. I discovered the Shipment playlist tonight, which is just random gamemodes on the updated Shipment map, which is a classic CoD map. It is super tiny and when you get twelve people on it, it makes for some chaotic gameplay. I had a lot of fun with it, as long as the teams weren't horribly balanced. There were a couple games like that, and it definitely takes the fun out of it when you can't take two steps without getting shot from three different angles.

It is now late, and I'm not exactly tired after laying in bed all afternoon, but laying in bed does sound like the most appealing thing to do, so I'm going to record my audio journal and go back to bed.

March 16, 2018

Last night I woke up to the sound of heavy rain. It took a lot not to get up and check my basement. I did in the morning however, and the window well was bone dry. I still need to get a window well cover.

My day at work didn't go exactly as planned. Pretty much my entire morning was spent working on creating a paper “footprint” for our new reference desk. We want to get an idea of what kind of space it will actually take up in the new area. The main issue was that two pieces of the desk are curved, and there weren't specific measurement for those pieces in the specification catalog we had access to. And those pieces would need to be drawn at an angle to get them to fit on the butcher paper we were using. My boss ended up calling her teenage son to bring a protractor (and she also needed him to bring some papers she needed) because he is currently taking geometry. Early in the process one of the librarian's suggested projecting the drawing of the desk on the wall to scale, taping the butcher paper on the wall, and tracing it. She also offered to call her husband, who's really good at math (and who later on quickly wrote down the equation needed to figure out the actual dimensions of the curved desk when we only knew the degree of the curve and an assumed depth). After an hour or two my boss's son also suggested projecting the drawing on the wall, so I said screw it and that's what we did. With the help of the teen librarian we got it traced, cut out, and laid out across three tables in one of our meeting rooms. I'm not convinces the drawing were entirely accurate because our paper desk didn't quite come out the size I think it should have. But it should be close enough to at leave give us an idea.

In the brief period I was on desk before going to lunch a patron asked if we had headphones to loan out. I said we didn't and she pointed out the headphones we had for our computers, and I explained those her just for our computers and we didn't have extra to lend out. She then asked where the restrooms were and I directed her to them. Not too long after that I got a call from the director and she asked if we had headphones to lend out. I told her that we didn't and that I assumed it was due to them having a tendency to walk off, but said she could call the tech desk and see if they had a different explanation. She said my explanation sounded about right and thanked me for the information. The admin office is right next to the restrooms. I kind of feel like the patron detoured to the admin office and ended up talking to the director about headphones. It could be a complete coincidence but it doesn't seem very likely.

I was just amused at the idea of this lady not getting the answer she wanted, going all the way up to the director, and then the director referred back to me. I appreciate that. At the movie theater we were always the ones on the front line, explaining and enforcing policy. But as soon as a patron got annoyed they could go to a manager and without missing a beat, the manager would throw us under the bus and bend over backward for the patron. It was incredibly frustrating. At the library, I'm pretty high up, so that helps, but there is still the atmosphere of respecting other people's knowledge and opinions, whether they're a volunteer, page, or higher up on the ladder. It's just nice feeling respected.

Most of my afternoon was spent working on my homebound lists. I had a couple moments of working on the paper desk project, and a walthrough, and helping the closing librarian with printing off the room schedule for the weekend. But other than that, as a few news articles, it was all homebound stuff. I pretty much finished the lists, but I didn't have a chance to go out and pull books. I should have plenty of time to do that on Monday, my only fear is that too many of the books will have been checked out. For the most part I pick books based on their current availability, but that information is no longer current as soon as I put it down on paper, and especially if it takes awhile to actually go out and look for the books.

On my way home I stopped by the grocery store. There were still a lot of cars in the parking lot but it wasn't nearly as busy as it was yesterday. I picked up all the stuff I needed, and I also ran into one of my Mom's old friends and one of my old daycare teachers (same person). I haven't seen her in at least a decade probably, and it took a few seconds for us to recognize each other, which was weird, but it was cool to see her.

When I got home I ate dinner (which included a baked potato with salsa because that has sounded good for awhile). After dinner I continued watching videos for awhile before playing CoD: WW2. All of my mojo from last night had definitely worn out. And I would say that was mostly the internet connection not being in my favor. I was back to riddling players with bullets and then they turn and take me down with one or two. It's annoying but back to normal, so I'm used to it. And I had fun, mostly.

Tomorrow, who knows what I'll do. Probably read a little and play video games. I also think I have all the ingredients for cornbread, so that might be a thing that happens. I need some redemption after the last time I made it when I forgot to put the sugar in. We'll see what my motivation is like tomorrow.

March 15, 2018

All the usual morning stuff happened and then I went to work. Yesterday it was in the twenties when I went to work and it was seventy when I left. Today it was in the mid-forties when I went to work, which is much more pleasant. And to skip ahead for a moment, it was eight degrees when I left. I'm really hoping we don't jump from Winter right into Summer. A slow transition would be nice.

Anyway, when I got to work I did the opening things, refilled audiobooks and tax instruction books, and sharpened a few pencils. And then I was on desk for two hours. A busy two hours. I got a call from a substitute teacher (who is the husband of a third grade teacher I used to work with) and I pulled a book for him, which he picked up a few minutes later. I also helped out one of my old scout leaders who was conducting interviews at the library today. He had forgotten a few documents so he called someone and they emailed them to our reference email address, and then I printed them off. He gave me money for them and I was able to give him change thanks to the money I was given the other day by the older patron who wanted me to buy a Coca Cola. I also talked to the teen librarian about book ideas for summer reading prizes, and the one-on-one tech trainer about part of our schedule for the Fall semester. And when all of that wasn't happening, I dealt with emails, answered phone calls, and read some library-related articles. I got a voicemail from one patron (because I was working with another patron and couldn't answer the phone) and he wanted to request that we borrow a book. I called him back to let him know that we already had it, but it was checked out, so I had put him on hold for it. He was pretty happy about it. But yeah, it was a very full two hours.

I had a walkthrough after that and then spent some time coming up with a longer list of possible book prizes. The hard part is trying to find books that only cost around five dollars.

I was off desk for two hours after lunch and that time kind of disappeared. I talked to one of my fellow librarians for awhile because we were both trying to avoid doing other things. To that end, I also went down to the basement to dig out some giant coloring pages, to be used as a potential time filler for the craft class tonight. And I read more of the pre-release Supergirl comic. There was some actual work stuff in there as well, but nothing memorable enough for me to write in my notebook.

Then I was on desk for an hour, which also went by fast. I started reading a long article about misinformation but didn't finish it because I was distracted by other work stuff. Like helping a lady find books about the Civil War.

For the last hour of the day I had a walkthrough, which involved refilling tax forms, rearranging my green display, and refilling my audiobook display. While working on the audiobook display I got a call from the assistant on desk who said there was a patron at the desk who wanted to file a report, so I went upstairs.

The patron said she had come to the library last night and was stopped outside by a man. He struck up a conversation and kept asking progressively more personal questions that made the patron feel uncomfortable, including constantly bringing up how young she looked. When she was finally able to get away from him and walk into the library, she noticed that he had followed her in. She went toward the young adult area and he didn't follow so she headed up the stairs in that area to put more distance between her and the guy. But then she saw him come up one of the other sets of stairs, so she quickly headed back downstairs and left the library before he could bother her again. We told her that next time she should head to our desk so we could deal with it, but it was pretty awful hearing what she had to deal with at the library. People shouldn't have to question whether or not it is safe to come to the library. I feel bad for her and I'm kind of angry at the dude for behaving that way, not only just in life, but also at the library. Some people suck, and it would be nice if they would just keep that to themselves.

When the patron left I started writing the incident report but was then sidetracked by another patron who was interested in books about plastic canvas doll furniture. It took me a little bit to figure out that the plastic canvas was that plastic grid stuff that you can weave yarn through and make Kleenex box covers, or apparently doll furniture. I had some success finding out that the books exist but no luck tracking any of them down. “Plastic canvas” is a broad enough term that it leads to a lot of other results, as well, which doesn't help. It's like when a band picks a super generic name and they aren't popular enough to be recognized anywhere near the top of a Google search. But I gave it a decent effort, spending at least fifteen minutes with her trying to find anything of use, to no avail.

That took me up to a few minutes before five o'clock, so I quickly went back to the incident report. And then one of the librarians came back from dinner with her husband, who wanted to talk to me, so I was trying to carry on that conversation while also trying to finish the report, because now it was five o'clock and I was supposed to be leaving. But I had to finish the report, so I wrapped that up, had the one librarian proofread it because I had been so distracted while writing it that I had no idea if it was coherent. Then we posted it, she left the message on all the phones about it, and I wrote it down in the log. I finally left the library at 5:13PM. And hopefully no one tells the boss tomorrow.

Oh, and I got to take home ten weeded books today. I apparently sent up seven yesterday, and today one of the other librarians wanted to weed three of the books on my cart (which all need to be weeded but I put them on my cart so I could read them first). So she took those three upstairs to tell the lady processing all of the books that I wanted them, and she came back with the seven that went up yesterday. And later in the day the other three came back. I wasn't expect that, so it's pretty cool.

I was going to stop at the grocery store on the way home but the parking lot was almost completely full, and I wasn't going to deal with that, so I just kept driving. When I got home I ate dinner, watched videos, and then had the best CoD: WW2 session ever. I definitely peaked, and of course I wasn't recording it.

I had at least five games in a row where my team not only won, but I came in first place. It may have been a lot more than that, actually, but I'm feeling safe by saying five. The best part, and the reason I know I peaked, is because, for the first time ever, I was accused of cheating. That is basically the ultimate compliment in CoD. Way above being called horribly offensive things. Unless of course you are cheating, then it's just calling a spade a spade. But I wasn't cheating, so it was awesome. He was accusing me throughout all the matches we were in together (always on opposite teams) and my favorite exchange was when he once again said I was using an aimbot. I said my aim was awful, to which he said that's why I was using an aimbot, and I replied, no, that's why I was using extended mags. My goal on any gun is to unlock extended mags because there is a lot of spraying and praying. Tonight, however, was just a perfect storm of good luck. The other teams weren't that great, including the kid complaining, and my connection must have been the best it's ever been. My best game, which I'm pretty sure is a new record for me, I got forty kills and only had twelve deaths. The only downside is that I'll never have that string of luck again. I've tasted what it's like to be good, so hopefully that doesn't mess with my expectations.

And now it is getting late so I'm going to wrap this up so I can record my audio journal and go to bed. I'm afraid I have too much to ramble about in my audio journal and it will take forever. We'll see.

March 14, 2018

Today was uneventful, which is nice, because it is getting late and I want this to go quickly, because I open tomorrow.

This morning I woke up, did the usual stuff, and went to work. I was on desk for the first two hours and that was dominated by phone calls. There weren't an overwhelming amount of calls but it was just a constant stream. When I wasn't taking on the phone I caught up on emails, and read a bit of news, most notably, the death of Stephen Hawking. He was such a common, odds-defying, figure and it seemed like he would always be around. It's weird.

I was off desk for two hours after that and I went back to weeding. It has been awhile since I weeded and it took me a little while to get back into it. But I found my groove and made it through about thirty pages of my list, which brought me to the halfway point of my 426-page list. Slow and steady progress. I weeded up until my lunch break, and when I got back from work I withdrew all the books I had weeded. There were several from the ones I pulled, and a couple from what the other librarian pulled, that looked interesting so I requested them after they had been withdrawn. More often than not I have gotten the ones I request but not all the time. I'm not really sure of the system. I offer to buy them but so far the ones I have gotten just showed up in my mail tray. I'm thinking that maybe the ones I don't get are chosen to go to the library system maybe, in order to be sent out to other libraries. Just a guess. But we'll see what happens this time around. After I finished withdrawing books I talked to my coworkers for a little bit and then we had our department meeting.

Our meeting started with a tabletop active shooter exercise, where the assistant director presented us with different scenarios and we had to talk through how we would handle them. I brought up the idea of having a specific location to meet up after we made it out of the library. We have that in the event of a fire but that is much too close for an active shooter situation. The elementary school I worked at had a location two or three blocks away, and we would practice going there, so that everyone would know where they needed to go if we had to evacuate the school. Parents also knew the location. I think this would make it easier to quickly get back together, do a headcount, and hopefully make sure everyone made it out. It sounds like it might be something we discuss further. After that, we talked about communication, went over the latest details concerning the construction, and then gave out kudos.

I had to do a bit of running around after the meeting, but then spent the rest of the day (less than an hour) looking through a library magazine. I pretty much finished it but was slowed down by a list of recommended games for building a library game collection. That is something we still need to do.

After work I picked up Chipotle and headed to my Mom's for dinner. We ate, talked, and watched videos, as per usual. And it was good times, as per usual. It seemed like it had been a long time since I had seen them. I saw my Mom earlier today but other than that it was sometime last week.

When I got home I played a little CoD: WW2. It was not the best of sessions, but I had a couple good games. In one of my loot boxes I got a shamrock uniform, but my main goal is the green hat, even though it is something I'll only ever see in menu screens and in the headquarters. And it will probably make me an easy target in the game, but I still want it.

March 13, 2018

This morning I woke up before my alarm went off and watched videos for awhile before running on the elliptical, taking a shower, eating lunch, and going to work. The first thing I did when I got to work was go upstairs so I could call one of my homebound patrons, who had called and left a message for me. On my way to our cubicle I stopped to talk to the teen librarian about the adulting class tonight. One person had registered, so we decided to cancel it. No offense to that person, but one person isn't enough to warrant police officers, firefighters, and a fire truck (unless there's an actual emergency, obviously). Later on I learned that the one patron who had registered was only coming because they needed to watch and write about a presentation for a class assignment, so in my mind it was less for us and more for her class. I did, however, recommend a presentation on Thursday happening at the library, trying to be helpful because I did actually feel bad that we had to cancel.

When I made it to the cubicle I called my homebound patron, and then I worked on updating the webpage for today's tech class. And then I was on desk for two hours. After emailing the patron about the canceled class I made a post on the staff blog letting everyone know the class had been canceled. I didn't get any responses to my earlier post about the class, so I was fairly confident no one was interested, but just in case anyone planned on stopping by at the last minutes. I ended up including a GIF of David Tennant as the Doctor, looking sad, standing in the rain. I thought about using one of Charlie Brown saying “I don't think anyone likes me” or one of Bill Murray saying “Well, I want to die”, but I thought that would be a little too dark. Funny, but dark. I also resisted being super snarky. I have my moments of restraint in writing. When I was done with that I updated my homebound list for this month with requests sent by one of my patrons, and I formatted the new interlibrary loan book kit list and updated the link for it on our website.

I was off desk for an hour before my dinner break and spent most of that time reading a library article about VR and talking to my coworkers. After dinner I was on desk for an hour and was able to finish the VR article, which just makes me want to dive back into my idea for creating an augmented reality app for the library. I also spent that hour helping patrons, talking to my coworkers, and sending an email.

I had two walkthroughs after that and then the rest of the night was open due to the canceled class. Most of that time was spent trying to catch up on attendance and feedback information for tech classes. I didn't make it very far on the feedback front but I made decent progress. I also read some news articles, because I hadn't really looked at the news today. Oh, and I wrote a post on our department blog about finding the old articles this weekend using the Wayback Machine.

When I got home I logged into CoD: WW2 just to get my daily log in reward, and there was an update. The new theme for the rest of the month is St. Patrick's Day, and it's awesome. There is a giant golden mug in the middle of the Headquarters, pots of gold, clovers, and other random decorations all over the place. There are also new uniforms, emblems, and weapon camos with green and clover themes to unlock. I'm a big fan of green, and love St. Patrick's Day just because it gets people to wear green, so this event is awesome. And I have even more incentive to play now, trying to unlock all of the cool green stuff.

Following that, I ate a snack, watched videos, and got distracted by the internet for awhile. And now I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed.