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.