May 17, 2018

I had another good night of sleep last night. Tonight won't be as good because it's already almost eleven o'clock and I would like to at least start packing for tomorrow. But last night was good.

When I woke up I read in bed, finished Einstein's Dreams, looked at the travel book for this weekend, did a load of laundry, ran on the elliptical, got ready, ate lunch, and went to work.

I was on desk for two hours when I got to work. I updated my homebound spreadsheets with the feedback I got from the bookmarks yesterday. I also updated tech class attendee information for the off-site class yesterday, and I read some news.

Then I had a walkthrough and cut out 200 username/password slips for summer reading, so we can write down that information for people when we register them. Then I checked out a laptop and went up to the third floor. I set up shop outside tech services and started by reading a Library Journal article about podcasting. And then I spent the rest of the time looking up stuff related to the article.

After dinner I had a walkthrough and covered the tech desk. That time was mostly spent looking at news articles, and catching up on my written notes for my journal. And then I was on desk for an hour. I know I did some things but I can't remember any of it.

That hour was completely overshadowed by the rest of the night. Right before I got off desk I got an email from Alan Lightman, and he said he wouldn't mind signing a copy of his book. The catch is I need to get it to him by next Wednesday. So I spent the next hour figuring out how to get him a book. I wanted to get a first edition, and I found one, and thought it would be shipping from New York, so I paid for expedited shipping and had it sent to the address Lightman sent to me. But after I hit the order button I found out it was actually shipping from California and the estimated delivery date was May 30^th. I sent an email to the seller to see if I could expedite the shipping even more and get it there by next Wednesday.

In the meantime, I got on Amazon and ordered a normal book that way. I had it shipped to me so that I could ship it with a return envelope/postage, but then realized it would cost a ridiculous amount of money to ship it to Lightman. So I canceled that and ordered a another one (which was $0.34 cheaper two minutes later) and had that shipped directly to Lightman. It will be there on Saturday. Now I have to figure out how to get him the return envelope/postage. I'm going to go to the UPS Store tomorrow morning and see what my options are. My first thought was to sent one envelope with two return envelopes inside (because right now there are two books headed to his house). My second thought was that it would be really convenient if my UPS Store would be able to set something up with Lightman's UPS Store, so he could just drop off the books and they could get them to me.

This whole thing went from a long shot, to a reality, to slightly stress, really quickly. But I have confidence I can figure out the return shipping thing and everything will turn out well. Fingers crossed.

After work I stopped by my sister's house to borrow the GPS thing again and pick up a typewriter. We talked for awhile and then I headed home. And I have spent the last hour writing this. I want to go to bed now but I want to throw at least a few things in a suitcase, or maybe clean out my trunk. We'll see.

May 16, 2018

Last night I got nine hours of sleep. And it was a restful nine hours, I don't think I woke up a single time. That needs to happen more often. Then I read in bed for awhile before running on the elliptical, getting ready, eating lunch, and going to work.

I was off desk for an hour so I went upstairs to call my homebound patrons. Then I read emails, and worked on my newspaper article, editing it based on suggestions from two of the other librarians.

Then we went to deliver homebound books. Our first stop was to buy a newspaper, then we went to a new patron's house, which turned out to be an apartment inside of a house that was a little tricky to find, but the other librarian had to do all of the finding, and she found it, so it worked out.

My first patron wasn't home, but this is the patron who is hard of hearing and not very mobile, so she leaves her door unlocked and I let myself in. Which means I didn't realize she wasn't home until I was already in the house and had walked back to her room. It went from feeling normal, to feeling a tad awkward. I stood there for awhile thinking, and then looked around for her books from last month. I found the bags but six books were missing. I ended up taking them anyway and left the books for this month. I went back out to the van and told the other librarian what happened and asked if she thought I should leave this month's books or not. She thought maybe just one bag (this is also the patron that gets sixteen large print books each month), so I went back in, which was still awkward, and grabbed one of the bags.

My second patron was home, and she's the one I end up talking with awhile because she used to work at the library at the university and she's just fun to talk to. We talked for quite awhile today. Following that, the rest of the deliveries were pretty usual. When we were done I drove right by the library toward the public parking lot. I was talking to the other librarian and was just on auto-pilot, because I usually drive by the library and park in the public lot. So we drove through the lot and then turned around and went back to the library. It was actually kind of funny.

I had about a half an hour after we unloaded all of the books, so I refilled my audiobook display and then talked to my coworkers. Instead of going to dinner at four o'clock (which is the normal time when closing), I was on the desk at four o'clock and had dinner at five o'clock. A decent chunk of that hour was spent talking with one of the other librarians about my article, and making several tweaks that were made more difficult because I was so close to the 750 word limit, and all of my changes involved adding words, but then also having to get rid of words to get me back down to 750 words. It's like a puzzle. I finally got it sorted and sent it off to the newspaper so I could stop thinking about it.

When I got back from dinner I was on desk for two hours. I had one phone call almost immediately, and the line immediately went dead. Later on I had another call that sounded like whoever dialed the number somehow managed to call two people at one. I would swear there were two people on the line that hadn't started a conversation yet but sounded surprised that I was there. It was weird. With the rest of my time on desk I caught up on the local paper and signed a teen up for the summer reading program.

Today was the first day to register for the program but when I got to work at noon and checked our website I couldn't find anything about it. It should have been featured prominently on the homepage but there wasn't anything. And there wasn't anything until almost five o'clock because apparently there was a lot of miscommunication. But the information is there now, and the world didn't end, so we will carry on.

The last hour was spent off desk, which means I was just sitting at the second computer. I caught up on my written notes for the day and registered my Mom and sister for summer reading. It was a really slow, quiet night at the library. Usually when I say that I just mean upstairs, because back where our old desk used to be we really couldn't hear anything outside of a small radius from our desk. Now we can hear everything on the second floor and pretty much everything on the first floor, too, and that's usually where the action happens. But tonight it was silent, and it was nice.

The weather had cooled off quite a bit so I drove home with the windows down. I'm a little worried I'm going to wake up and my left eye is going to be messed up from allergies or something, but we'll hope that doesn't happen.

When I got home I ate a snack (cold cheeseburger pie is very tasty) and then watched the first four episodes of the first season of Santa Clarita Diet because I had forgotten most of the first season. While watching that I worked on typing this. And now I'm listening to music while typing this because watching things while typing things is very distracting.

Now it is after midnight and I am going to go to bed because I'm tired. I close again tomorrow. Can't wait. But then it will be Friday. The plan is still to head out of town after work on Friday and meet up with the academic librarian and her friends. I'm excited to see the academic librarian, but I'm also mildly anxious about driving two hours away to a town I haven't been to since I was a kid and certainly never drove to. And I don't know exactly where I'll be going or what the parking situation will be like or the environment, and I'll be meeting new people and I'm awkward when meeting new people, and when I'm around someone I like in front of new people. So I'm stressed a little bit, and I have a couple more days to be stressed about it, but then I'll be thrust into the situation and life will go on. I'm going to bed now.

May 15, 2018

Today was an interesting day. It started with maybe five and a half hours of sleep. That nap yesterday really screwed me over. And then I woke up several time throughout the night after short naps, which took me forever to fall back to sleep after. Not a great night.

When I got to work I did the usual opening things and then I was on desk for two hours. I caught up on emails, read through my newspaper article one more time before sending it to the tech. services manager for her opinion, filled out my timesheet, and helped several patrons find books. I don't think I've ever walked so many patrons out to the stacks to find books. It felt good. I also sent an email to Alan Lightman at MIT to see if I can get him to autograph a copy of Einstein's Dreams. I don't foresee getting a response but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask.

After my desk shift I went up to the high school with one of the children's staff members for summer reading outreach. We were there from 11:30AM to 1:00PM, covering their two lunch periods, and I think it went pretty well. It took a bit of work to figure out where we were supposed to set up, but after asking someone in the library, we got it all sorted, and got our table set up. We talked to seventy-one teens, two adults, and gave away a lot of books, candy, and earbuds. And we ended the trip with the children's staff member backing into a curb, which was really jarring, but thankfully we managed to just miss the concrete posts.

I got back from lunch around 2:30PM, caught up on emails, talked to my boss and fellow librarian, and started drawing a bike in Paint. Then I was on desk for an hour. I continued talking to one of the other librarians, got my article back with editing suggestions that got me up to exactly 750 words (previously it was 749), and looked at the news.

I had a walkthrough for the last hour of the day. After which I had to talk to some teens about running in the library, but that went smoothly. Then I finished the drawing of the bike and added it to a post on our staff blog. For several days now there has been an unchained purple bike in the bike rack in the staff only area. It hasn't moved so my boss wanted to know if it belonged to a staff member or if a random patron put it there. She took a picture and was going to use that for a post. I figured if the bike belonged to a staff member, asking about a purple bike would be enough to jog their memory, so using a crude drawing would be fine. We'll see how it goes over. After the post I had a little bit of time to look at the news before the hour struck five.

When I got home I watched a few videos and then had leftover cheeseburger pie for dinner, with strawberry ice cream and peanuts for dessert. And then I played CoD: WW2. It was a mix of a bad connection night along with a night of playing against a bunch of really high max levels. Thankfully they were typical max levels that are only focused on killing, not playing the objective, so my team generally came out on to, usually thanks to me. Not to brag, but when my domination caps are in the double digits and the rest of my team may have two or three at most and they're maybe breaking even on kills and deaths, I'm going to take some credit. I think I'm somewhere in the mid-40s of my ninth prestige, drawing ever closer to level fifty-five and then tenth prestige. And then I just have to get through that one and I'll max out. And then I can move on with my life.

I spent the rest of the night trying to write this while falling down a rabbit whole of music videos on YouTube for cover songs. That is a deep, very distracting hole. And now it's 11:30PM, so I'm going to go read in bed for awhile before going to bed. I close tomorrow and Thursday. I'm looking forward to sleeping in, but it would be nice if I would stop closing on so many Wednesdays because it really messes with Chipotle night.

May 14, 2018

This morning I woke up, read in bed for awhile, and then spent the rest of the morning clicking around the internet, watching videos, and kind of starting on my article. While I ate lunch I continued watching Santa Clarita Diet.

After lunch I went to my room with my Chromebook, crawled into bed, and started working on my article in earnest... after I took a nap. Sometimes naps just happen. But then I really started working on my article. I had planned on writing about random books in different genres that I typically don't read, but things took a turn and I ended up writing about two books I have read instead. I'm going to have people proofread it tomorrow and we'll see if it makes sense.

I put the finishing touches on the article by 6:30PM and then ate dinner and finished the last couple episodes of the second season of Santa Clarita Diet. I want to go back and rewatch the first season, because I don't remember most of it, and I'm just enjoying being in that world right now. The writing is how I would want to write a show or even a story, quick and witty back and forth dialogue. They nail it.

I played a little bit of CoD: WW2 and had a few decent games. Then I took a shower and ironed my pants for the week. Future me will really appreciate past me for doing that. Now I think I'm going to read for a little bit before going to bed. It's eleven o'clock and I open tomorrow, but thanks to that nap this afternoon I don't think I'll be able to fall asleep for awhile.

May 13, 2018

This morning I woke up, read in bed for awhile, and then fell back to sleep for a little bit. It was pretty nice. Then I ran on the elliptical, got ready, ate lunch, watched part of an episode of Santa Clarita Diet, and went to work.

After counting money and sharpening pencils and all the other opening stuff, I was on desk for two hours. I worked on my newspaper article and spent a lot of time talking to the other librarian, because that is inevitably what happens when we work together. We have similar interests, so that doesn't help. But I enjoy our conversations, and never turn down an opportunity to procrastinate.

In that conversation, Flowers In The Attic came up. We both remember being mildly traumatized by the move when we were kids, but couldn't actually remember what actually happens in the movie. I looked it up, and it turns out it is completely awful. And it's part of a series, each subsequent book is just as awful, if not worse. There's abuse, rape, incest, torture, poisoned donuts, and a lot of other things. Good grief. Somehow it was a really success book. I thought Fifty Shades Of Grey was bad but it doesn't even come close to the demented plots of the Flowers series.

When I was off desk I went down and covered the tech desk so the tech person could take a break. I caught up on my daily notes in my notebook and looked through the tech center handbook. And then I went to pull my homebound books. I got really lucky and didn't have to go back and look up extra books, because I had added enough extra to my list before heading out to the stacks. Then I checked them all out, updated my spreadsheets, and printed out bookmarks before I was back on desk for the last hour.

That hour was spent cutting the bookmarks, stuffing the bookmarks in books, stuffing the books in bags, and labeling the bags. A successful day. Except for the fact that I didn't get anywhere close to finishing my newspaper article. I'm going to write it tomorrow, which I'm not supposed to do because I don't work tomorrow, but I'm not going to have enough time on Tuesday or Wednesday and it is due Wednesday. I just won't tell anyone. It'll also be easier to write at home, without all of the distractions at work.

Before closing I changed my shirt because my Mom was picking me up to go the visitation for one of the kindergarten teacher's father, and I don't like wearing shirts that tuck in without my jacket because I think they look frumpy. So I changed into a shirt that I don't tuck in. The visitation was nice and I only had one accidental glimpse of her father in the coffin. Whenever possible I try not to look at people in coffins. I got to talk to several people from the school, which was nice, but it's always unfortunate when your only chance to catch up with people is when someone has died.

After the visitation I ran home to grab my Mom's presents for Mother's Day, as well as some trash and recycling. I got to my Mom's house around 7:30PM and we at cheeseburger pie for dinner that my sister made. Mine was made with fake hamburger, but it was pretty spot-on. For desert we had homemade strawberry shortcake, which my sister also made from scratch. I'm not really a dessert person but it was really good. It wasn't too tart or too sweet, it was just good. After dinner, my Mom opened her gifts, and then we talked until after 9:30PM.

When I got home I played a little CoD: WW2. Things went better than last night but I've had better days. And better teammates. But I had fun, and I never felt the need to resort to racial slurs, like people tend to do in the chat, so that's always something.

Now it's late, and I can't afford to sleep through half the day tomorrow, so I'm going to go to bed.

May 12, 2018

This morning the power blinked out and it really did a number on my old desktop. It seems that it can't find Windows all of a sudden. Or maybe it's a motherboard issue, because it doesn't seem to have any interest in going into the BIOS. I didn't have time to mess with it this morning, and haven't had any luck in my brief time spent on it tonight. It's frustrating.

I am working with another librarian this weekend, and that made opening go a lot faster. No offense to the assistants, we just seemed to get a lot done. After we counted the money, I printed out the room schedules (because that wasn't done last night). And after we opened, I went around and put up the weekly staff newsletter. Then I had a walkthrough and put more audiobooks on my display.

After that I was on desk for two hours and worked on my evaluation. I only ended up adding one thing to it and eventually just submitted it so I could move on to other things. Like my homebound lists, which I worked on on and off throughout the day. I also answered several phone calls, one of which was from a dorm on campus that had found a set of keys with a library card on them. I was able to look up the patron and gave them a call to let them know their keys had been found and where they could go to pick them up. It's been awhile since I've had one of those calls but it makes me glad I have a library card on my keychain.

I ate lunch upstairs in the meeting room because our cubicle is no more and the cubicle computer is now in the meeting room. I read a little bit but spent most of the time watching videos and catching up on my daily notes because I hadn't written anything in my notebook all morning.

When I got back from lunch I went to find the tape dispenser I had misplaced while putting up the newsletters earlier. It ended up being in the kitchenette off of the tech center. I also retrieved one of the newsletters I had put in the wrong place, and moved it up to the third floor breakroom, which was the correct place. And I restocked my audiobooks again.

Then I was on desk for two hours. I spent a decent amount of time talking to the other librarian because we were both trying to avoid stuff. But I eventually went back to my homebound lists and I think I pretty much finished them. Tomorrow I'll go pull books and we'll see if I need to add more. I'm a little worried for my patron who gets sixteen non-fiction large print books every month, because we may have finally reached the point of her having read our entire collection. I'll find out tomorrow.

I had a walkthrough during the last hour, worked on my lists, talked to the other librarian, and helped one of our regular patrons with Google Slides again. And then the day was over.

When I got home I ate dinner and watched Black Panther. I really enjoyed it. There were badass women with shaved heads, cool fights, and a decent story. I liked how they made choosing sides difficult. You want to go with the “good” guys, but it's easy to see, and empathize with, the “bad” guy. The only thing I didn't like was when the Black Panther and Killmonger were fighting in their suits as they fell into the mine. The special effects weren't quite there and it looked like they were on par with the end of the Neo and Mr. Smith fight scene in The Matrix: Reloaded when they went full CGI. But other than that, I liked it.

I played a little bit of CoD: WW2 but pretty much all of the games involved a horrible connection and I was left emptying clips to no effect before getting shot and killed. Or going up against teams that spent the whole game laying in the grass or standing in corners staring at spawn points. Oh well.

I also texted with the academic librarian. In that exchange we decided to go to a music festival next month. It's something I've heard about but I've never been, so it should be fun. Once I get past the anxiety of getting out of my comfort zone.

After that frustration, I messed with my old desktop again, but that just piled on more frustration. It might involve just reinstalling Windows, which is probably the easiest route to take, but I can survive without it for a little bit, so I'll do a little more digging and see if I can find a better solution.

And now it's midnight and I want to sleep. So I'm going to go ahead and do that.

May 11, 2018

I got six hours of sleep last night. It was not enough but the reason for my lack of sleep was totally worth it.

I met my Dad for lunch at eleven o'clock. I picked a restaurant that I know he's a fan of, and it's on this side of town, which means I could get a little bit more sleep because I didn't have to drive across town. The restaurant was packed, and even though my Dad had already gotten a table, it took awhile for a waitress to acknowledge us. We talked about all sorts of things until about 2:30PM and it was nice catching up and just talking.

I should have gone out and completed my errands after that but instead I went home and ended up taking a nap. A much needed nap. And then it was five o'clock and I didn't want to go out at that time because I knew traffic and parking would be annoying.

It turns out parking was still annoying at six o'clock. I needed to go to the mall to get a gift card for my Mom and drove all over looking for a spot that was reasonably close. I ended up getting gas to kill a little time, and then still had to park on a different side of the mall. Then I went to Target. I got some food, an ice cream scoop and tongs (because I needed them), a gift and card for my brother's graduation, and a gift and card for Mother's Day.

When I got home I ate dinner and watched videos, before playing a little CoD: WW2. The latest DLC is out. I only played the new War map and I don't know how I feel about it. I do know that the third stage involves dogfighting (with planes, not dogs), and it was awful. The controls are so sluggish and it doesn't seem like they got any input from developers who actually know how to make a flying game. I might see if I can use a controller, but even with that I don't know that it can make that section fun.

Now I'm going to go to bed, so I can wake up and go to work. I need to submit my employee evaluation, work on homebound stuff, and hopefully work on my next article which is due on Wednesday. It needs to be a productive weekend.

May 10, 2018

I woke up early, but still got a full night of rest, and then watched videos and played Minecraft for the first time is a really long time. I need to get back into Minecraft. I miss it.

I went to work at 12:30PM to make up for the weekend, and that made it much easier to find a parking spot. When I have to be there at noon, no one has left for lunch yet, and that is annoying. When I got in I had half an hour to kill before being on desk. I went down the the childrens workroom to plug in the Spheros for the workshop tonight and then I went up to the third floor. Our cubicle has been taken away so that computer is now in the meeting room. I had enough time to take a quick personality test.

I was on desk for two hours and spent a portion of that time helping one of our regular patrons (the one from across the street), with a PowerPoint presentation, and suggested Google Slides after she lost her first PowerPoint because she didn't save it. I also answered phone calls and chats, worked on my employee evaluation, and talked to the academic librarian a little bit because she stopped by to work on stuff. Then I was off desk for an hour, continued to work on my evaluation, and helped a patron find fashion books.

I was back on desk for an hour after dinner and that time was mostly spent talking to one of my coworkers and catching up on emails. Then I was supposed to have two walkthroughs but I skipped both because I had to set up for my workshop. The schedule didn't really allow any time for that, going from on desk, to two walkthroughs in an hour, to covering the tech desk for fifteen minutes.

I was all over the place trying to get things set up. I went upstairs to get a cart of books, then down to the basement (after getting the custodian to turn the elevator back on) where I pushed two tables together and set up the little arena for the Spheros with books and book stands and highlighters (which I had to got to the second and third floors to collect). Then I lost a lot of time trying to get the Spheros working. Three out of the four wouldn't connect. That was frustrating. Then I went all over the building trying to find our Sphero. It wasn't in any of the locations it used to be. It may be in the basement art room but I only just thought of that.

All of that running around took me up to 6:45PM when I had to cover the tech desk so that person could take a break. Almost immediately a patron walked in and wanted to use the creation station. We haven't really had any training on how to cover the tech desk yet, and it turns out the creation station is a bit of a thing. Thankfully the patron had used it before and was able to tell me the basic process, how I needed to use a guest pass and do something on my computer to unlock the computer (after I had gone over and tried to log into the creation station and it wouldn't let me). I was able to get it figured out and we were all good after that.

The tech guy got back a little late so I was a little late getting back down to the basement. The two patrons who had signed up, a husband and wife, were already there waiting for me. And it turns out they weren't actually interested in playing with the Sphero, especially the husband because his wife just dragged him along. She's a high school teacher and just wanted to know more about the Sphero and if it would be interesting to her students. I walked them through it all and we talked for about a half an hour. I tried multiple time to get them to play with it but they weren't having it. So I spent forty-five minutes running all over the place to get things ready, just to talk to patrons for half an hour, and not actually use any of the things I set up. I ended up playing with the Sphero myself for a couple minutes just so it wasn't all entirely for naught. Then I tore it all down, put the tables back, and got everything put away.

After work I went over to the academic librarian's house. She was sitting out on the porch with her friend so we all talked for a little while before her friend had to leave. Then we went inside and talked about all sorts of things until almost three o'clock in the morning. It started with talking about her bike, because that is her primary (only) means of transportation, and I have been out of the bike game since I was a kid, and there are so many different types of bikes, so I was interested. At some point after that we got onto webcomics and she showed me a couple books she had. I recognized one by the illustrations but had never read it. The other, A Softer World, I had completely forgotten existed but was instantly reminded and ended up looking through a lot of the book because it's pretty great.

And at some point in there she said she was attracted to me, which led to a lot more conversation about the nature of attraction, past relationships, more life story anecdotes, family history things, our own perceptions of each other, and how her attempt at asking me on a date turned into us just hanging out last Friday. And then we hugged and it was really nice. Now, I no longer have to worry about whether or not she likes me. But I do have to worry about her figuring out that maybe she doesn't like me. My head can be a very annoying place.

Now it is four o'clock in the morning, and I need to go to bed because I have to wake up for an early lunch with my Dad tomorrow.

May 9, 2018

I slept well last night. That was a nice change.

When I got to work I had the entire morning off the desk. I spent those four hours up in the cubicle. I read a few news articles, and sent a Thank You email to my department for the birthday recipe, but most of the time was spent working on my yearly evaluation. There aren't a lot of questions but they are involved, wanting me to fill in information for everything I've done in the past year. It's very tedious and a bit of a pain. And I probably only got about halfway done. It is due on Monday, but I'll have to finish it by Sunday because I don't work Monday. I feel like maybe the same thing happened last year and I had to come in on my day off and submit it. I remember that happening with something, but I can't remember if it was the evaluation or something else. Either way, we'll hope it doesn't come to that this year.

After lunch I pulled a bunch of books for my biography display and a bunch of audiobooks for the audiobook display, because they were both looking a little low. Then I went up to the meeting room, where we were having our department meeting, ten minutes early because there wasn't any room at the desk or in the cubicle. I told my boss to pretend I was just punctual. The meeting lasted almost the entire two hours, and it will be the last one like that. Next month the meetings will be cut back to an hour and will also involved the tech center staff, because they are now part of our department.

I was on desk the last hour. I updated my attendance spreadsheet and collected the survey feedback for the class yesterday. I also took down the last Reference sign in the construction area with the help of my boss. It involved screws, but luckily I had a screwdriver on my mini multi-tool. It was a bit of a pain getting it down but we managed it. I also talked to my coworker about random things.

Chipotle night was canceled tonight because my Mom wasn't feeling well. Instead I ate leftovers, watched videos, and played a little CoD: WW2. Every game I got into had a horrible connection, which meant I was able to empty a full clip into people before getting turned on and killed instantly. That takes the fun out of it, so I completed a few contracts and orders and called it a night. I also talked on the phone with my friend, who just recently got back from his final deployment, because he's getting out of the Navy in July, which is pretty exciting.

Tomorrow I close, so I get to sleep in, and I'm looking forward to that.

May 8, 2018

Another night of not sleeping very well. I think it is directly related to the heat. It's fine without a blanket over me but I can't sleep without something over me, so it doesn't work out.

I had two hours off desk when I got to work. My main focus was updating the webpage for this afternoon's tech class. It was pretty simple because it is a class we have done before so I just copied and pasted the old information onto the new page. I also messed with the classes on the calendar a little bit, because for some reason every time I update the maximum number of attendees to ten, it resets back to the old limit, which was fourteen. I've lost track of how many times I have reset it, maybe it will stick this time. While messing with that I overrode the descriptions for today's class and the next class. For today's class I just copied it from a previous class, the other one, however, hasn't been done before, and it has been so long since I wrote the description, I couldn't remember it, so I had to make up a new one.

I also finished tweaking the tornado button design and printed it out, added a book to the audiobook display, and ran upstairs to put away the personalized reading list I finished yesterday. And then I was on desk for two hours.

I started by cutting out one of the button patterns and making a button. This took a little while because the button machine wasn't working. I ended up figuring out that if the first little holder wasn't rotated in the correct position, then the press wouldn't go down all the way. Good to know. I also printed out the handouts and sign-in sheet for the tech class, helped the occasional patron, and probably did some other stuff.

When I got back from lunch I was the backup for the tech class. I threw in a few tidbits of information but I think the main benefit of me being there was troubleshooting the random monitors that kept going black. I think it happened to five or six different computers and it happened multiple times on those computers. I'm not sure what was causing it but I put in a help ticket so hopefully it can be figured out by the next class. The same thing happens to our staff computers from time to time, almost like we're trying to do too much at once and they just freak out and go black. I'm sure there's a technical explanation for that.

The class lasted the full two hours, after which I was on desk for an hour. My friend's sister and her little son stopped by the desk for a little bit because she had never been upstairs. I explained the giant plastic sheet hiding the construction and we talked for a little bit before she went and wandered around. I also talked to one of our regular patrons for a little bit. At one point it got onto hoarders and I said they were just waiting for trends to come back around so they could make money. He summed it up beautifully by saying hoarders are just antique speculators. Other than that, I helped a couple patrons and messed around with another button idea (a cow wearing ruby slippers in front of a tornado).

For the last hour I was off desk and spent that whole time talking to one of the other librarians. Literally the whole time. I didn't even log into the second computer at the desk. It might be a new record. But there was some library-related stuff in there so I don't feel too bad.

When I got home I made the sweet potato and black bean enchiladas recipe. I've also been referring to it as Mexican lasagna. That's gotta be a thing already. Anyway, it took about two hours to make, which seemed excessive, but I think it turned out pretty tasty. It involves an unhealthy amount of cheese, and took two hours, so I don't foresee myself making it too often, but I can see it happening again at some point in the future.

After dinner, which didn't leave too much time, I watched videos and clicked around the internet for awhile. I also briefly talked to the academic librarian on the phone, because we had been texting and she was going to go to bed and wanted to end the conversation we had been having via text. And now I'm writing this so I can go to bed.

I am hoping I sleep better tonight because I finally turned the air conditioning on. For the first however long it sounded like there was someone in the basement banging on the air ducts. When I finally went down to check because it wasn't going away, I discovered a decent amount of air flow is happening in the bottom part of the furnace (enough to suck the bottom panel to the furnace). I hadn't put the panels back on after messing with it, but after putting those back in place, the banging stopped. Mystery solved.

Now I'm going to go to bed. And hopefully I will sleep soundly.

May 7, 2018

Last night I got maybe four and a half hours of sleep if we're being generous. I think it was a combination of the heat in my house and also sleeping through most of the afternoon. That certainly didn't help.

When I got to work my locker was covered in green paper with a big Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy logo in the middle of it. That was pretty cool. I was also told there was something for me in the fridge in the breakroom. And by something, they meant a large birthday sack filled with the ingredients for sweet potato and black bean enchiladas. That was pretty cool. I got the stir fry recipe and ingredients last year and have made that recipe several times since, so I'm looking forward to this one.

I was off desk for the first two hours so I refilled my audiobook display and then headed up to the cubicle until nine o'clock. I listened to music, read a few news articles, and worked on the personalized reading list. And then I was on desk for two hours. I worked on the personalized reading list, helped patrons, talked to my coworkers, and sent an email with catalog screenshots to the cataloger for several books I found while weeding on Friday that had discrepancies with their labels and the catalog.

After lunch I had two walkthroughs. After each I went up to the third floor with a laptop. Both of the computers at the desk were taken, there was someone in the cubicle, and there was a meeting in the meeting room that we have reserved for when everywhere else is taken, so I sat out in the open area on the third floor, before actually going into the technical services area, back against the wall with the plants. I thought that would make a good place to camp out for awhile now and it lived up to my expectations. I spent that time working on the personalized reading list. That was the theme of the day.

We had a half hour meeting today with just the librarians in our department to talk about what each of us had going on at the moment. We have the department meeting on Wednesday but we're going to start having short meetings with just the librarians because next month we will be having department meetings with the tech center people, because they're now part of our department, and they'll only be an hour long, instead of two hours, so we won't really have time to cover everything. Hence the short librarian meetings. I think it's a good idea.

There was no one in the meeting room after our meeting so I set up in there. In the last hour and a half I managed to finish the personalized reading list and get it sent off. I also had a little bit of time to start working on a button design for the librarian who will be giving a tour of what to do during a tornado drill later this week and next week. The staff who participate and return the short quiz get a button. That wasn't enough incentive to get everyone to return the quizzes from the first instructional thing about our catalog, but maybe this one will do better.

When I got off work I went upstairs to the bathroom (because it's not a public bathroom) and applied sunscreen to my exposed skin. Then I grabbed all my stuff, including the giant bag of enchiladas ingredients, and headed to my car. That's where I changed my shoes and shirt before heading to the academic librarian's house. She let me store the ingredients in need of refrigeration in her fridge, and then we headed out to go for a walk on a trail. I was somewhat familiar with the area and had actually walked on part of the trail way back when I was dogsitting for my friend's mom. My right knee felt a little angry after it because there was quite a bit of awkward downhill bits, but we'll see how I'm feeling in the morning. I'll probably skip the elliptical, which is unfortunate because I've skipped several days recently, and stopped after twelve minutes this morning because my right knee was bothering me, but I'm still trying. And other than the downhill parts, it was an enjoyable walk. I do like being outside, I just don't have much excuse to go out there.

After the walk we drove back to her house so I could get my food, and because she lives there, and then we talked for a little bit. She's going out of town for a week and she flies back next Thursday, but her ride isn't coming back until after the weekend, so she invited me to come stay the weekend. Other than picking my friend up at the airport a few years ago and stopping at a really good Italian restaurant that looked like it was pulled right out of mobster movie, I haven't really done anything up there since I was a kid. It has also been a long time since I've really gotten away from town, not counting my weekend with my grandma. But that was also a great weekend which made me appreciate getting away for a little bit. So I'm looking forward to it.

I'm also beginning to think that maybe she might like me. I am notoriously bad at picking up and/or acknowledging signals, but I'm beginning to suspect. I doubt we'll make it through the weekend without things being decided one way or the other, but I have impressed myself in the past with my ability to ignore the obvious, so I won't be holding my breath.

We talked long enough that I ended up giving her a ride to her dinner with her friends because she would have been late otherwise. On my way home I stopped at Jimmy John's for a sandwich because it was eight o'clock and I didn't want to spent the rest of the night cooking enchiladas. When I got home I put away my birthday ingredients, ate dinner, and watched a few videos. Then I played a little CoD: WW2 before writing this. And now I'm going to bed because I'm freaking exhausted. Hopefully I'll fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.

May 6, 2018

Today was pretty laid back. A fairly uneventful birthday.

This morning I woke up and read in bed for awhile. I spent the rest of the morning eating Cheerios and watching videos. After lunch I ended up spending most of my morning laying in my darkened bedroom, under the ceiling fan, listening to Avril Lavigne, falling in and out of sleep. It was 84 degrees in my house and my bedroom was relatively cool. I also didn't have the motivation to do anything else, which was probably related to the heat. I wanted to play a video game but nothing sounded appealing. Laying on my bed, however, sounded very appealing.

I took a shower around 4:00PM and then headed to my Mom's house. We went to the Chinese buffet for dinner because that is kind of a tradition. The patron I had to talk to the other week about making noise in the computer lab was there with two small kids. We didn't acknowledge each other, but I find it surprising that he has two kids, and that he is fighting to keep them, because he seemed more interested in the TV than paying attention to them.

The best part of the buffet was when a dad was helping a little boy fill up his plate. The dad pointed out the pizza and the boy got excited and turned around to yell at his sister that there was pizza. She said they had that last night and the boy turned back to his dad, suddenly annoyed, saying they had pizza last night, like all of a sudden it was unacceptable. It was funny.

After dinner we went back to my Mom's house, ate cake and ice cream, and I opened presents. It didn't really feel like it was my birthday so it felt kind of weird opening presents. My sister got me a couple muffin tins, which is pretty exciting, because now I can make cornbread muffins.

I got home around nine o'clock and returned my friend's phone call that I missed while at my Mom's house. We talked for about an hour about his truck project, cooking, woodworking, and random other things. I'm not great at initiating communication with any of my friends but I appreciate when they make the effort.

After that I played a little bit of CoD: WW2 just to get in a little bit of video game playing today. They weren't the best rounds of my life. The connection wasn't great and it seemed like everyone on the other team was either using snipers or shotguns. So it was a struggle to get across the tiny Shipment map because of the snipers, and then when I did, I ran into a shotgun. Kind of frustrating, but I managed to finish a few orders and contracts, so it wasn't terrible.

I set up a hike tomorrow after work with the academic librarian. It is definitely outside of my comfort zone, for multiple reasons, but I need to get out of my comfort zone more often. Baby steps.

May 5, 2018

Last night I got home around one o'clock, and clicked around the internet for awhile. I ended up getting to bed around 2:30AM and this morning I woke up around 8:30AM. Sleeping in would have been nice but it didn't happen. And then I spent the morning writing my journal entry from yesterday because it was too late last night to get it done.

After lunch I took a nap and then spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning my house a bit. There is still a lot to do but I got a start. I picked up the living room, the kitchen, and I broke down all of the boxes I had in my basement. I also took the orange recliner in the living room down to the basement. It's is freaking heavy and the foot rest has a tendency to pop out, which is really unhelpful. But I managed to get it down there without hurting myself.

It got up to 84 degrees in my house today, which was kind of pain when trying to clean. I ended eating dinner down in the because it was cool. I hooked up my laptop to my projector for the first time in months and started watching the second season of Santa Clarita Diet on Netflix. I actually started with the last episode of the first season because even though the second season starts with a recap, it just made me remember how much I had forgotten. I quickly remembered how much I like the show. The writing is really good and Timothy Olyphant kills it.

After dinner I finished my laundry and another episode or two of the show. Then I ran on the elliptical, took a shower, and played CoD: WW2. And now it is late so I'm going to go to bed. Tomorrow I kind of want to continue cleaning, maybe clear off my desk, but we'll see. I'm going out to dinner for my birthday, so we'll see what I can get up to before then. I might sleep through the morning and read in bed. Wouldn't be a bad way to spend a birthday.

May 4, 2018

This morning I woke up half an hour early because that's what my body wanted apparently. Bodies are weird.

When I got to work I was off desk for the first two hours so I went out and weeded. I'm using one of the other librarian's weeding lists and she is a much more aggressive weeder. I overrode a few of her decisions but for the most part I went with it because I could see the justification. I made it through the first half of the list and pulled 129 books. That's a lot of books.

I was on desk for the next two hours and a decent chunk of that was spent withdrawing all of the books I pulled. The easiest way to do it is to scan them all into a record set, which is like putting them into a folder, and then you can select all of them and change their status to withdrawn all at once. But that still involves pulling all of the books off the cart and scanning them. After lunch I went and got a big weeding cart, because I had used two other carts when I was pulling, and I very nearly filled the entire, double-sided cart.

I took a break from that to go take pictures of the construction. The demolition kind of started Wednesday afternoon but really took off yesterday and today. My boss wanted me to “sneak” behind the plastic wall and take pictures when the workers went to lunch, so I did. I took several pictures but one of them is a panorama of where the reference books were, my bosses old office, and where the reference desk was and it looks really cool. I also really like the plastic wall. I would think they would use a more heavy duty tarp but it's basically a giant, cheap trash bag. As you walk along it the whole thing expands and contracts, rippling with your passage. It's kind of fun.

On my way back from lunch I was behind a moving truck and the driver had the leadest of foots. It was impressive but also terrifying, so I kept my distance.

I had a walkthrough when I got back and then it felt like I was kind of all over the place. I pulled more books for the audiobook display on the first floor, went up to the third floor to get the big weeding cart, brought it down and loaded it up with my books and took it back up to the third floor, grabbed another cart because I knew I would need it, addressed an envelop for one of the other librarians and dropped the mail off in the basement, went back up to the third floor to put a finished PRL in the notebook, and then sat behind the desk for a little bit talking to my coworkers.

I had the last three hours off desk and I went back out to weed. I finished the second half and pulled another 151 books. I took the big weeding cart out with me but filled it up so I had to swap out near the end. So many books. When I got done pulling I had to scramble a little bit but had just enough time to withdraw all of them and take the cart of books up to the third floor. My main goal today was to finish weeding and I accomplished that.

When I got off I ran home to change shirts because after all of the running around today I just felt kind of damp. Then I went back across town for dinner at the academic librarian's house. I found it on the first try, which I was pretty happy about, because usually I end up doing an accidental drive-by when I'm looking for a place for the first time.

She had gotten a start on making dinner but I was able to contribute by chopping the bell peppers. We had a cold rice salad with the bell peppers, shredded cooked carrots, black beans, spinach with lemon and avocado, and a creamy sauce made with almond flour and nutritional yeast and other things. I will admit I was a little hesitant about the nutritional yeast because my only experience with it was years ago and it smelled/tasted like dirty feet. But it was all very tasty. We also had mochi ice cream, which was interesting and also tasty, and a Korean melon, which reminded me of cantaloupe, but better.

After dinner we talked in the kitchen for awhile before moving out to the living room. We ended up talking until almost one o'clock in the morning. She has led a fascinating life so far. She lived on an island in Maine and worked on a lobster boat, lived in Tanzania in the Peace Corps, biked across the United States, was a volunteer EMT, went to college in Canada after her parents didn't want her to go to the local music school in North Carolina, and the list goes on. I need to do more interesting things (I say as I plan to spend the weekend not leaving my house).

May 3, 2018

I got a lot of sleep last night, which was nice, and I finally ran on the elliptical again, which was also nice.

When I got to work I had two walkthroughs. During the first one I ran into my friend's dad and we talked about British shows for awhile because that's primarily what he likes to checkout from the library. During my second walkthrough I ran into the one-on-one tech trainer looking at DVDs, and she was also picking out British shows because her and her husband really like British dramas. A fun coincidence. I picked up a lot of good recommendations, so now I need to make time to watch things other than YouTube videos and livestreams.

I was on desk for for two hours after that and spent a little bit of that time looking up possible music for dinner tomorrow. I asked what I could contribute and she said music. She doesn't have the internet, so streaming is out. At the moment she's into bluegrass and folk music, and I've got some of that (if I can find them in my CD collection, but I thought I would also check out collection at the library, because I always forget we have a CD collection. Well, I don't forget about it, I just never think to look at it. I ended up finding a couple things, and I think I need to check out more music from the library. I miss CDs.

While on desk I also looked up the web traffic stats for last month, created a spreadsheet and charts for the tax stats, read the local paper, and had a long conversation with one of the other librarians about mental health.

I was off desk for an hour after that and the first half hour was spent speaking to two of the other librarians about completely random stuff that was in no way library related. It was pretty great. Today felt a bit like a Friday. In the second half of the hour I went and printed raffle tickets for summer reading. I think last year we started with 400 tickets and thought that might be pushing it. And then we quickly ran out and needed to print more. This year I decided to start with 2000. I can't remember if I wrote down how many tickets we actually used last year. It's probably somewhere, possibly even in my journal, but I decided 2000 felt like a pretty good number. When I got done printing them I also checkout a couple of the CDs I looked up earlier.

On my way to my Mom's house on my dinner break it started sprinkling. Not long after arriving the downpour hit. It knocked out the satellite TV so I spent most of my dinner in silence, which I was actually okay with. I also had a chance to read a new children's book that I requested at the library called This Is a Taco! by Andrew Cangelose. It's about a squirrel named Taco and it's pretty funny. By the time I left my Mom's house the rain had stopped, which was nice because it meant I only had to dodge puddles on my walk back to the library, not worry about getting completely soaked again.

I had a walkthrough when I got back and then I went down to the basement to use the large paper cutter to start cutting summer reading tickets. By the end of the hour I made it through the first 1000, which isn't too bad.

I got stopped by the assistant circulation manager when I went to put the cutter key back and she said someone had spotted a leak in one of the staircases. We went and looked at it, and it was in fact a leak. Then we went outside to check the outside of the wall, because I was curious, and there was a giant puddle of water, so I'm thinking it might be a ground water issue. Later on in the night I happened upon two other leaks. In each case I took pictures and sent them to the head of the maintenance department and the assistant director, not only so they were aware, but also just in case they dried up before I could show them the spots tomorrow.

With the rest of the evening I didn't really accomplish anything. I helped figure out how to replace the toner cartridge in our new printer, caught up on the news, messed with the tax stat graphs a little, and talked to my coworkers. I learned that the assistant graduated high school in a class of sixty-nine people, her hometown has a population of about 4000 people, and there are only two stoplights. I think my graduating class had at least 400, possible 600. Way more than sixty-nine.

When I got home I clicked around the internet, ate a snack (because I ate dinner at four o'clock), and now I'm recording some songs so I can burn them to a CD. When I'm done with that, I'll be going to bed, because I'm tired, and a fan of sleep.

May 2, 2018

This morning I opened and did all the usual things, with a little extra running around because I needed to go up to the third floor (which I ended up doing twice because I forgot something the first time) and down to the basement. I also refilled the audiobook display and did a little work on my county map.

When we opened I was off desk for two hours so I went up to the cubicle. I listened to music and spent that entire time working on the map. I missed a number when I was putting numbers on the map, so I had to go through and change the majority of them, which took some time. I also had the thought after I finished the index to paste that list into a spreadsheet and sort it to make sure every number was accounted for. This turned out to be wise because I had used one number twice, so I got that fixed. I also ended up erasing all of the county names that were originally on the map, and replacing them with typed out names in Publisher so that they would be as clear as the index. I had to resize the map to get it to fit on the page and I was pretty sure the text would have come out too blurry for my liking. Then I fiddled with the formatting to make it look better. And I finished with just enough time to print it out and put it in our emergency notebook before I was on desk.

I took a little break in the map project to come down and say hi to one of my former classmates, who is good friends with one of the other librarians (who was also a classmate of mine), and was at our library today as a consultant.

The two hours on desk went by pretty quickly. I caught up on the local paper, and talked to my coworker about a lot of random stuff, like student loans and money in general because they are currently in the middle of posting all the public salaries in the paper. At one point we even pulled up Google Maps to look at a barn that is on the way to the town where I went to grad school and where her in-laws live. The drive itself is really nice and we both mentioned a barn that we liked. It took me awhile to decide if the one she was talking about was the one I was talking about, but in the end I decided it was, which was kind of strange, but also pretty cool.

After lunch I had a walkthrough and then spent the rest of the hour down in the Youth Services workroom playing with their die cutter. I decided to be in charge of decorating the assistant's locker for her birthday and instead of printing stuff out, I decided to see if they had a die cutter. And they did. They also had a big notebook that had an example of each pattern, which is a genius idea and made the whole process go a lot quicker. While I worked on that I talked to one of the workers down there (the same one I was talking to about cultural appropriation the other day) because she was working on creating a storytime slideshow. I learned she plays piano, so that's a fun fact. This came up because when I walked in she was jumping up and down on a large floor piano doing her best Big impersonation.

I had just enough time in the hour to take my cutout shapes up and tape them to the assistant's locker. I also used the outline left after the clown and dinosaur shapes and glued them onto a another piece of paper, because they looked cool. I was just going to throw them on the table up in the meeting room where we were going to have her gathering, but when I got up there I had a flash of brilliance. I bent a paper clip in roughly a ninety degree angle and taped one side to the back of each cutout, creating a small stand. Brilliant.

With the next hour I talked to the one-on-one tech trainer for awhile and then started on counting the leftover tax documents. At the end of each season I fill out a form with what we have left and send those numbers back to the IRS. I think tomorrow I'm going to make a spreadsheet with those numbers for the last few years so I can get a better idea of how much we actually go through each year. It seems like the distribution goes down each year, but I want to get all of the numbers in the same place to confirm this.

After my next walkthrough I went back up to the cubicle so I could listen to music while I continued counting several hundred forms. Based on last year's numbers we should have come much closer to getting through all of those forms, but we didn't. I think part of it has to do with there being such a delay in us getting forms. We were turning patrons away for at least a few weeks before everything finally showed up.

I finished that up and got the formed emailed with a few minutes to spare before five o'clock. That is when I was supposed to go home, but it was also the time scheduled for the assistant's birthday gathering, so I stayed for that. We basically just sat around and talked but it was nice.

The weather was slowly starting to get worse and by the time I left a little before six o'clock there was a really strong wind and horizontal rain. Had I left at five, I would have been perfectly fine. Instead, before I even made it through our parking lot my pants, shoes, and socks were completely soaked. And my bag and jacket were pretty damp. I started out trying to avoid the giant puddles, which were coming pretty close to ponds, but by the time I made it to the sidewalk leading to the public parking lot I walk just walking through them. It was kind of like being a kid again. I just had to embrace the complete wetness.

When I got home I threw my clothes and jacket in the dryer, just so they wouldn't be sitting in my laundry basic wet, and I propped my shoes and bag in front of a fan. I think my shoes will actually be dry by tomorrow, but even if they're not it doesn't matter, because I have to pairs and switch back and forth every other day.

While I ate dinner I watched videos, and then I played CoD: WW2. I couldn't get in a decent match of War to save my life. It seemed like only one group was playing because every time I tried to leave (even waiting awhile) I kept getting dumped in with the same players, and the connection was awful. Each match was filled with hit markers and me constantly getting shot around corners. I also think at one point there was a cheater because during the part of Operation Neptune where the attackers have to destroy radios, there were able to destroy most of them without getting into the bunker. There are a few you can shoot from the outside, but they were getting some that they shouldn't have been able to get from outside unless they were shooting through multiple walls. That is already the worst map, and cheaters make it all the more awful to play.

Despite all the rain, my basement remains dry. Let us hope that continues.

May 1, 2018

I had the first two hours off desk this morning. I started my day by pulling books for my biography display. Then I took down the old books, put up mine, made sure all the old books were accounted for in the record set, took the old books off display status, and put them on the reshelving shelves behind circulation. I also pulled several audiobooks to fill out that display. And with the little bit of time remaining, I went up to the cubicle, read news articles, listened to music, and watched a couple videos.

Then I had a walkthrough and spent the rest of that hour walking one of the other librarian's through formatting the monthly report form. She was feeling more comfortable with it by the end so I'll say we accomplished something. And she's ready to go for the rest of the year.

After that I had two more walkthroughs and went up to the cubicle after each one. And then I had yet another walkthrough when I got back from lunch. And I once again went up to the cubicle, but this time it was to call back someone who was wanting a reference for our old assistant. I emailed a reference a few weeks ago but I think that was before the interview process. I found out from the person today that they had offered him the job, assuming the references went well. He was a really good worker, and just a good person, so it was easy to give him a strong reference without having to lie or try to over-sell him, which made it a lot easier. And after that I read a couple news articles and caught up on the staff blog.

I was on the desk for two hours and they were a very quiet two hours. It started with talking to my boss and coworkers about library things. There is a chance they'll actually start construction stuff tomorrow afternoon. None of us are holding our breath. Then I caught up on the local paper. And that was pretty much my time on desk. I answered a few phone calls and did some email stuff, but nothing too exciting.

I spent the last hour back in the cubicle to make room at the desk. I was going to look at the latest personalized reading list request but then got sidetracked. We were in a tornado watch today and my Dad texted me and asked if I had a county map. I always just get online and get the map that way when the weather people start listing off counties I'm not familiar with. But if the power goes out and all we have is a radio, it will be hard to know where things are actually happening. So I figured I would get a map and put it in our emergency binder, that way we'll have it if we end up in the basement.

It was pretty easy to find a map with the counties on it, but I wanted something better, and couldn't find it, so I started making one. The map covers most of the page but beneath it is an alphabetical index of the counties. Then I went through and added a number to each county on the map and got a start on adding the corresponding number to the index. This way, if you don't know where the county is, you can find it in the index, get the number, and then look for the number. It shouldn't take me too long to finish it tomorrow, just in time for another round of bad weather.

On my way home I stopped at Target to get a few things. When I got home I ate leftovers and watched videos for awhile. And then I played CoD: WW2. Most of the games I played were crap because I couldn't get a decent connection and it felt like I was getting 90% hit markers and 10% kills. It was rough, but I completely my orders and challenges, and I had a decent enough escape.

Tomorrow morning I open. I'm going to bed now.