I got a decent amount of sleep last night, which was a nice change.
The past two days my alarm was set for six o'clock, yesterday because
I opened, and today because I had a haircut. Yesterday I woke up at
5:53AM and today I woke up at 5:54AM. It would have been more
interesting if it was the same time both days, but I still think it's
kind of interesting.
My haircut was at eight o'clock and it went well. My hair is shorter
now, so mission accomplished. When I got home I watched videos,
finished reading Guardian Angels and Other Monsters (a
collection of short stories by Daniel H. Williams), and started the
e-course on app development. Mr. Williams might be one of my new
favorite authors, at the very least one of my new favorite short
story authors. He had a lot of interesting ideas and the
narrator/protagonist in All Kinds of Proof, one of the short
stories in the collection, was great. There were lines that I had to
read over just because they were so entertaining. At one point he
even breaks the fourth wall a little bit and gets antagonistic toward
the reader, which I thought was pretty cool. As for the e-course, I
only had time for the introductory stuff and, downloading the
software, and making the first Hello World output using Java. But
I'm looking forward to whatever happens next.
I went to work at 1:30PM and I was off desk until 4:00PM. I spent
that time at the second computer, so it was kind of like I was on
desk, and I helped the occasional patron and may have answered the
phone once or twice. I also talked to my coworkers a little bit, but
most of my time was spent writing a letter (email) of reference for
one of our former assistants. He is apparently one of the final
candidates for an assistant librarian position and he put me down as
a professional reference. That is the first time that has happened
and I think it's pretty cool. And, not to toot my own horn too much,
but I think I nailed it. It helped that he was a genuinely nice
human being and a really good worker, so all I had to do was tell the
truth and try my best to accurately convey how good he would be as an
assistant librarian. When I got back from dinner I was on desk for
an hour and that gave me time to put the finishing touches on my
reference letter (email) and get that sent off.
I also learned when I got back from dinner that a few of our regular
teens (who actually haven't been to the library as a group in quite a
while) and one of our regular patrons (who is probably a racist) were
asked to leave for the day. When the teens came in the were a tad
noisy and one of the other librarians had to go over and ask them to
calm down, but by the time I left for dinner they had quieted down.
At some point after that the old guy came in, and he inevitably came
over to the desk to complain that the teens were being too loud, even
though they weren't at that time. The librarian on desk went over to
talk to them, however, because one of them had smacked one of the
other ones to get his attention, and the librarian wanted to tell her
she couldn't do that in the library. The old patron stood there
during this exchange, as he does because he likes to put his nose in
places where he shouldn't, and that led to exchanges between him and
the teens. And at one point he used the phrase “you people”,
which one of the teens took as being racist (and in this instance,
given the history we have had with that patron, I would agree with
the teen). This heated things up and finally the librarian just told
everyone to leave for the day. I'll be interested to see if the
older patron goes and talks to the assistant director tomorrow. He
has a tendency now of bypassing us and going straight to the
assistant director because he feels that is more effective. But it's
not, because the assistant director trusts our judgment and supports
the decisions we make, which is greatly appreciated, especially when
dealing with rude patrons.
My night was pretty uneventful, until the end. I had a couple
walkthroughs but most of my night was spent at the desk because no
one signed up for my video game discussion. During one of my
walkthroughs I ran into one of my old Scout leaders (who I have seen
several times recently). He thought he had a room reserved, and
didn't, but we were able to get him set up in a room and everything
worked out. After that I read news articles, set out a new jigsaw
puzzle, and worked on my homebound list. And then my computer froze
and I had to turn it off. When it came back on it took around twenty
minutes to get to the point where I could log in because it decided
it needed to install updates. Slowly. While I waited I finished a
library magazine, so I was at least productive. And then I had to
redo the work I had done on my homebound list because that hadn't
auto-saved before the computer crapped out on me. A little annoying
but thankfully it was fairly easy stuff to recreate.
Near the end of the night I had to go in and kick a couple hundred
people out of the auditorium because closing time was quickly
approaching and they were still giving speeches. It also looked like
they had plans of moving in because they had there crap strewn all
over the place and the walls were covered in giant pieces of paper.
They accomplished quite a bit in a relatively short period of time in
terms of picking up and putting things back in place, but then it
petered out and it was a struggle to get the last of them out. I got
the last of them out of the auditorium a few minutes after nine
o'clock, and then still had to do the walkthrough upstairs, lock the
keys up, and get all of my crap together. It was definitely to the
point of needing to make up some time later, but I'm not going to say
anything. The tricky part will be that the assistant director closed
with us tonight, so hopefully he doesn't say anything either.
It was close to 90 degrees outside today and when I got home it was
79 degrees in my house. That's warm. But I don't want to turn the
air conditioning on because we're still supposed to get snow on
Saturday. Because apparently that's how Spring works now. I'm not
really holding my breath on the snow thing, because the forecasted
temperature keeps creeping up each day, but either way, having the AC
on when we're still getting into the 30s and 40s at night, if not
colder, seems unnecessary. I set up a box fan under my desk, which
has been effective, and I've got a ceiling fan in my bedroom, so I
should be good tonight.
And it's now almost midnight, far later than my average of a ten
o'clock bedtime this week, so I'm going to go to bed.
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