April 23, 2018

Today just kind of happened. It was particularly exciting, and I'm in one of those places between things where it feels like I don't have enough to do. I need to remember these times when I am feeling overwhelmed.

I was off desk for the first two hours of work. I updated a patron's account so she could get on the computers, and then her kid cried quite a bit because the mom wouldn't let her run around. I helped another lady, whose first language was not English, print off paystubs, and that was a bit of a challenge, but her English was way better than my Spanish, so kudos to her. She also had a little kid that was running around and occasionally crying. So it was a loud morning upstairs. I also made signs to put up near our old desk to let patrons know we had moved. The librarian who worked this weekend sent out an email to the department asking if we should do that, and I just did it because I didn't feel like it was something that needed a group consensus, it was something that should just be done. And to round out the two hours I put out a new jigsaw puzzle and read a few news articles.

I was on desk for the next two hours. I caught up on reference emails and then went through and added descriptions for all of the tech classes and drop-ins next semester. That was the last thing I needed to do and now I don't have to worry about it any longer. And after that I caught up on the local paper.

I had a walkthrough after lunch and that involved talking to an annoyed patron in the tech center who was being annoying. He kept talking into his phone and the phone kept chiming. This would have been acceptable behavior at the second floor computers (still annoying), but the tech center is a quiet area. He apparently has a history of being confrontational and rude, and he lived up to that. Even though I was told this, I wasn't quite prepared for it, so the interaction didn't go very well. He started pointing out everyone that was wearing headphones, which doesn't mean he's allowed to talk but he thought that was a justification. He also complained about the knitters in the classroom behind him because he could hear them talking. I reiterated that he was in a quiet area and that if he wanted to make noise he could go upstairs. I also told him I would talk to the knitters. And then I went in and told the knitters that I was pretending to tell them to be quiet but that they were actually fine and could carry on with there conversation. Later on in the day the annoyed patron came up to borrow a law dictionary and he acted completely normal, like nothing had happened earlier. There are some mental health issues there, and he's apparently working on a child custody thing, which is a little disturbing and I think adds to his anger.

Following the angry patron I helped another patron in the tech center with a question about email pictures, and then another patron out at a catalog computer who was trying to find books for his wife. And I refilled the DVD display.

Our assistant was sick, so the other morning librarian did a split shift, which mean I covered another two hours on the desk. It was really slow. I wanted to knock out the usability videos for the month but the sight was being blocked by the firewall, which happens from time-to-time. If it is still blocked tomorrow I'll put in a ticket. Instead, I helped a few patrons, finished looking through the local Sunday paper, looked up information for an upcoming tech class, looked up information about augmented reality apps, and looked up information on how to model books in Blender. There is apparently an add-on that makes it easy to create a row of books for a shelf. I need to start playing around with that because I want to make 3D and VR environments involving books. I've had Blender on my computer for years probably at this point, but I've never gotten around to actually doing anything with it. Now may be the time.

I talked with one of the other librarians about her experience with racism in small Kansas towns back in the early 1960s. She had one friend that couldn't eat at certain restaurants, could only use the drive-thru at others, and couldn't sit at the counter at the drugstore. She had another friend who was charged double for food at a restaurant on a class trip just because he was black. When the professors found out they went back in and tore the people at the restaurant a new one and said they wouldn't be coming back, which seemed like it was kind of a big deal because it was a small down and they stopped every time they passed through with their classes. The restaurant charged double because they were assholes, and in return lost out on quite a bit of business in the long run. Sometimes it takes awhile for your action to come back and bite you, other times it's almost immediate.

I spent the rest of my last hour upstairs in the cubicle. I read some news articles and then looked into our latest personalized reading list request. They only want audiobooks and everything I looked up wasn't in our collection. So I'm hoping someone else takes it. And if not, I'll just include a lot of interlibrary loan books.

When I got home I ate dinner and then watched videos for awhile before playing CoD: WW2. I had one game where I needed to get three throwing knife kills and just managed it at the end of the first round. I was in last place, with I think two or three deaths for each kill I got, but I managed to get featured in the kill cam when I got a throwing knife kill immediately followed by three regular knife kills. It was pretty great, and just the sort of thing that is annoying as hell to the other person, because it is really hard to kill someone charging you with a knife. And despite my horrible first half K/D and being in second to last place, I switched to a gun for the second half of the game, nearly went positive with my K/D, and got first place. Quite the comeback.

Now I'm going to bed because I open in the morning and I'm going to end up getting around six hours of sleep. That's going to suck.