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.
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