December 7, 2017

 So, last night I think I broke my toe. I was going to turn my fan on and instead I kicked the fan cord. Really hard for some reason. And then I reached out to grab the door frame because I was about to fall over in pain, but when I reached out I immediately got a muscle cramp along the full length of the left side of my back. So then I was hopping around on my left foot and shaking my left arm around trying to get the cramp to go away while cursing my hurt toe. This morning when I woke up the middle toe on my right foot was slightly purple. After being vertical for awhile it became very purple. I haven't looked at it since this morning but I'm slightly worried to see what it looks like now.

Anyway, this morning I woke up way too early, got ready, fed the dogs, and made it to my haircut by 7:57AM. Three minutes early ain't too bad for being so early in the morning. Before I left I was able to utilize my height and help the lady who cuts my hair by hiding some power cables for her Christmas lights that were hanging down from the top of her cabinets.

When I got back to my Mom's house I took a nap, watched Doctor Who, took another shower to get rid of the stray hairs that inevitably end up everywhere after a haircut, and then ate lunch and watched Star Trek: Voyager and YouTube videos.

I had two walkthroughs, thirty minutes apart, when I got to work. It was a real pain in the foot. And I ended up walking in such away that my right knee was popping with almost every step. It was annoying. But I didn't have another walkthrough the rest of the day so that was nice.

I was on desk for two hours after that and did things. I continued tweaking the room schedule printout template because it seems like a thing I'll be doing for the rest of time. I also got a confirmation for another adulting instructor. And I learned that I the same group wouldn't be able to help with the plumbing class. I think I've exhausted the non-profit options so we might need to discuss business options. Along with that stuff I also helped a patron with microfilm and tracked down an obscure Moody Blues DVD that is only available through PBS, so it's $84. I think PBS would make so much more money if they actually priced their stuff realistically.

After dinner I spent an hour reading library magazines and managed to finish two of them. A decent accomplishment but I still have twelve magazines in my stack. Slowly but surely. I also went down to the basement because we got a call from youth services that there were people down there, and no one was supposed to be down there. When I got there I didn't see anyone but I did find a puppet. Evidence that youth services wasn't lying just to get me to go down to the basement.

Then I was on desk for two hours. I got a new possible date for the library card outreach, so that's good, and then I spent most of my time working on my catalog tutorial. I started it awhile ago but it all became obsolete when we updated our catalog. So I spent my night redoing all of the screenshots. I almost caught back up to where I was before. A lot of work in an attempt to get back to square one. Good times.

I took a little break in the middle of that to take a look at the newly rearranged tech center classroom. It's not done but it's an impressive start. They got rid of the back two rows and moved the other rows forward to make room for a big table in the back. This will make the room a lot more versatile than just a computer room.

After work I went straight to my house so I could record my audio journal. There were four cars in the neighbor's driveway (two of which were over the center line) and one in the street. One of the reasons for picking this house was to avoid all the college kids on the other side of town. But they've found me.

When I got back to my Mom's house I started writing this and watching Psych: The Movie. It has taken me just short of forever to write this because I've been distracted by the movie. It is so good. My expectations were really high and it has exceeded all of them.

December 6, 2017

 Last night it took me forever to fall asleep. So instead of getting eight hours of sleep I got closer to seven. That was unfortunate.

When I woke up this morning, I got ready, let the dogs out and fed them, ate breakfast and made lunch, and watched Doctor Who before going to work. I also realized why my health coach appointment was messed up. I originally thought it was at 9:00AM tomorrow but when I logged in to acknowledge it the calendar thing said 3:00PM. I sent an email about that last night or the day before and I got a new email this morning with a time for next Friday. It was for 9:00AM according to the email I opened that had been forwarded to my main account from my more “professional” one. When I opened the actual email, it said 3:00PM. Then I noticed that the timezone was wrong in my “professional” account, and that was causing the time discrepancy. I sent another email this morning to apologize for the confusion, and sent a screenshot with the two calendar views side-by-side just to prove to the lady, and to myself, that I wasn't crazy.

It was a weird morning at work because I was only there for an hour and a half before lunch. I talked to my coworkers, checked my email, had a walkthrough, and maybe did some other things I don't remember. And then I went to lunch at noon.

When I got back to work I was on desk for two hours. I spent most of that time looking at exhibits for the virtual conference I signed up for today. That led to a lot of previews and samples for graphic novels and comics. Not a bad way to spend my time on desk. I also helped a patron with the copier and made a state library card for another patron. And, I continued trying to schedule an outreach event in February for library card sign-up at the university library. The university librarian picked one of the dates I sent him but then circulation pointed out two conflicts I hadn't thought about, one of which was on the day the university librarian picked, so I sent off another email with updated availability.

I was off desk for an hour after that and then had a walkthrough. I continued looking at the virtual conference stuff, read news articles, ran around a little bit looking for a key to one of our meeting rooms, and created a Christmas desktop wallpaper because the other librarians have Christmas-themed wallpapers and I did. On one of the computers I still have a big picture of a vegetarian burger as my desktop so I edited that by adding holly, tinsel, Christmas ornaments, and a gingerbread man. I'm thinking of maybe adding a new layer or randomness to it each day.

After work I went to my Mom's house to feed the dogs and then I came home to eat dinner myself and watch videos. I just recorded my audio journal and as I finished watching videos and typed up this entry.

Now I'm going to head back to my Mom's house. On my way over here there were some snow flurries. I didn't realize it was supposed to snow today. I'm hoping it's not something that sticks around. I'm good without snow.

December 5, 2017

 My alarm clock went off at 6:30AM this morning but I stayed in bed until after 7:00AM because my bed was warm and my room was cold. Also, I miss my old bed. It is really hard, and there is a spring that kind pokes me occasionally, but when I sit up in the morning my back doesn't hurt. My new bed is firm but also cushiony, and when I sit up in the morning it feels like my spine has to settle back into place.

When I finally got out of bed, I got ready, and then headed upstairs to feed the dogs. I then ate breakfast as I made my lunch, because that's what I do, and then watched Star Trek: Voyager and Doctor Who until it was time to go to work.

I was off desk for two hours when I first got to work and spent that time reading news articles and I started converting my homebound spreadsheets to the new layout. I had to tweak the new layout a little bit as I went but I'm happy with it.

After a walkthrough I worked on the room schedule printout. I had to edit the report so that it will include events, and then I made a few changes to my template, trying to make it make more sense. Slowly but surely.

I had an hour off desk after work and went upstairs to continuing working on my homebound spreadsheets. And then I was on desk for two hours. The first part of that was spent walking one of the other librarians through the updated room schedule template. Kudos to my coworkers for trying to figure out the very convoluted template designed to make things simpler.

The rest of my time on desk was spent finishing the conversion to my new homebound spreadsheet layout, and tweaking my room schedule printout template, yet again. I think I'm done with it at this point but we'll see how it goes when people actually have to start using it.

I was off desk for my last hour at work and I decided to walk around a little bit because I had been sitting at the desk and playing with spreadsheets for two hours. I rearranged my parent cart display and then ran into my co-presenter from the conference. We chatted a little bit and then I headed back to the desk and sat at our table and read a little bit of a library magazine. I'm so far behind on reading library magazines.

As I was about to leave I noticed a wasp, just hanging out on the exit door leading to the backstairs. So I went back to the desk, grabbed our spider cup, and caught a wasp. I then released it outside and I was really glad that it didn't attack me because it was buzzing around in the cup and I have no idea if I'm allergic to wasps.

After work I got gas and then went to my Mom's house to let the dogs out and feed them dinner. And then I came home to eat dinner and watch YouTube videos. I just finished recording my audio journal and soon I'll be heading back to my Mom's house.

Tomorrow I don't go in until 10:30AM so I'll get to sleep in a little bit. I'm looking forward to that.

December 4, 2017

 This morning when I went to pull out of my garage there was a car parked behind me. Luckily it was far enough back that I was able to snake out but I did nudge the trash can in my garage. There has been a lot more activity over there recently and when I drove past tonight the curtains were open and there were a bunch of Christmas decorations. Based on four or five cars and the noise, I'm assuming they were also having a party. I just hope they learn to park on their side of the driveway so I don't have to have any interactions with them.

When I got to work I was on desk for two hours. Most of that time was spent working on and submitting my monthly report, and reading news articles. And helping the occasional patron, answering the phone, and responding to a chat.

I had two hours off the desk after that and went upstairs so I could watch another leadership video on Lynda.com. It was shorter than the last one so I was able to watch it, take notes, edit my notes, and get them posted to the department blog. A productive two hours.

After lunch I went back upstairs for an hour and composed some emails. I sent to first one to a librarian at the university to set up a time in February for us to go back and sign up university students for library cards. Then I sent one to hopefully get instructors for two of our adulting classes next semester. After a few emails back and forth over the next hour or so I was able to nail down someone for the gardening class. Now I just need to figure out plumbing and taxes.

I was on desk for an hour and along with getting an instructor for the gardening class, I worked on the schedule printout a little bit. I added another comment to cover how to sort the schedule. I also reorganized all of the comment boxes so they flow better and are less scattered. And, I read a couple picture books that one of the other librarians wanted me to read. One was about a lost hat and the other was about a found hat. They were pretty good.

With my last two hours at work I had two walkthroughs and did other stuff. I updated our view count statistics for the pages of our website that I keep track of. Apparently I forgot to do that in October, which I find very believable. I read more news articles. I printed out tomorrow's room schedules because we're switching over to the new system and won't be able to print schedules in the morning. I also figured out how to use one line of code in my macros for my homebound spreadsheet idea instead of one line of code for each row I want to show or hide. I'm pretty happy about it.

After work I went to my Mom's house to feed the dogs and then I went to my house so I could get dinner and relax a little bit. I recorded my audio journal and then I watched videos and livestreams, and played a couple rounds of CoD: WW2 and finished a couple daily orders.

 Now I'm back at my Mom's house, writing this and watching Star Trek: Voyager. As soon as this episode is over I think I'll go to bed.

December 3, 2017

 Last night I got ten hours of sleep. I woke up after eight or so but decided to just role over and go back to sleep because my bed was feeling very cozy. It was nice.

Today was uneventful and I didn't really accomplish much. I would have liked to have been more productive but the motivation wasn't there. This morning I watched YouTube videos and AFK'd in Tera for awhile. They are doing a thing in December where you get a loot box each weekend for playing the game for three hours. I didn't feel like playing so I just faced a wall and put auto-run on so I didn't get kicked for inactivity.

Eventually I did end up playing Tera. The Gunner class gets a little more fun as you level up and get more abilities and can actually deal more damage. I leveled up to level twenty or twenty-four, whatever level unlocks the first dungeon, and then jumped into a dungeon because that's the quickest way to level up.

I recreated the Joker perler bead pattern I found in GIMP so I can use it as a cross stitch pattern. I also tweaked it a little bit to make it look better. I still want to mess with it a little bit but I think it will make a pretty cool cross stitch.

For dinner I made the bean soup that the one-on-one tech person gave everyone in our department for Christmas. She gave all of us a jar (or a a tin, in my case, because she ran out of jars) with all of the dry ingredients. I just needed to add water and a can of diced tomatoes. It took forever because the beans had to cook, but it ended up tasting pretty good. I also roasted potatoes, which were leftover from Thanksgiving, and mixed those in after the soup was done.

After dinner I played a little bit of CoD: WW2, just enough to complete a few daily orders. Then I played a battleground in Tera a few times so I could level up even faster. The battleground kind of sucked, you slowly walk over to the other team's boss and hopefully punch it once or twice before getting killed. Rinse and repeat. Over and over again. Luckily, three out of the four times I played my team won. I got seven million XP the first time because it was part of a quest, and then a million XP each the next two times, so I was able to get up to get up to level thirty-one I think. Not bad.

It's now after eleven o'clock and I've got a headache so I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed. It would be nice if tomorrow wasn't Monday.

December 2, 2017

 This morning I woke up at 8:30AM, which means I only got five and a half hours of sleep. But I was wide awake so I decided to get out of bed. I spent my morning playing a bit of CoD: WW2 and continuing to watch the recording of the first day of the Yogscast's Jingle Jam.

Around 2:30PM I finally made it over to my Mom's house to do laundry. If all goes well next Friday, I should be able to do laundry with my own washer and dryer next weekend. While my laundry was going I wanted to take a nap but I apparently wasn't tired enough because I couldn't fall asleep. Instead I watched Star Trek: Voyager and looked through a couple cross stitch books I checked out from the library. I also put up some Christmas lights on the front porch because my Mom wanted them.

When I got home I ate dinner, watched the Yogscast stream, and eventually played a little CoD: WW2. I unlocked the gold camo for one of my sniper rifles. Turns out I need to unlock the gold camo for the other three sniper rifles in order to unlock the diamond camo for all of them. That'll take awhile.

And that was pretty much my day. I just finished watching the first day of the livestream and now I'm watching YouTube videos. And soon I'll be going to bed. I'm looking forward to that.

December 1, 2017

 It's December already. Good grief.

This morning at work I restocked three displays. I completely restocked the Bestsellers, which is my display this month, by adding 40 books to the backup cart. I also restocked the audiobooks and DVDs because they were getting low. I also started making a list for the parent cart, because that is my other display this month. I haven't had it since June, so I need to try and get back into the mindset of a mother who takes her kid(s) to the library. We'll see how I do.

I spent at least twenty minutes helping an older patron get back into his Hotmail account by creating a Gmail account so we could reset his password. This is the same patron who came to the last few tech drop-ins and classes. I have also helped him get back into his Hotmail account before. I may have even done it twice before. And at least one of those times I created a Gmail account for him. I am hoping this time he won't misplace the information with his Gmail address and password. Or that he won't lose track of the paper with his new Hotmail password on it.

This afternoon I finished my list of books for the parent cart and had just enough time to pull books and get them on the display. I probably put too many books on it to start out but I'm going with it. A couple hours later two books had already checked out so hopefully that will be a sign of things to come. It probably won't be, but I can hope. I decided to go completely with nonfiction and I'm interested to see if that will work or if I should throw in some fiction books.

For the last two hours of my shift I was on desk and it was relatively uneventful. I made a quick printout for some of the holiday events happening around town. I also read a lot of news articles and talked a little bit with my coworkers. The loud phone-talking lady wasn't back today but the long haired older patron was and he came over to complain about two of the teen siblings after a very minor outburst, that remained under control, so it wasn't really even an outburst. I didn't have a problem with the teens' behavior because I thought they were doing a really good job of controlling themselves. I once again suggested to the patron that the tech center was a quiet area and that people were allowed to talk at the computers upstairs. He didn't seem to appreciate that. He went back to the computers for a little while and then left, either down to the tech center or possibly left the library. I don't know, and I don't really care. It may not have anything to do with race but his almost immediate reaction today compared to putting up with the white lady on the phone yesterday for over two hours seems to favor a different conclusion. He also brought up the fact that he had been assaulted at the library. I assume he is referring to when the patron who we later banned and was then arrested, lunged at him after he wouldn't stop staring at the other patron. It seems like he's looking for a fight, but not an actual physical altercation (I don't think he'd do well in one of those), he just wants to insert himself into situations and cause trouble. It's annoying.

After work I stopped at my Mom's house to set up her new TV in the basement. It's not too heavy but it is awkwardly big and hard to hold onto. I was pretty proud of my genius idea to open up the bottom of the box, as well as the top, so I could just lift the box off the TV, instead of trying to pull the TV out of the box, which was never going to work out. After getting it out of the box it didn't take too long to get the feet installed and get it set up.

I got home a little after seven o'clock and then ate dinner and started watched the recording for the earlier Yogscast livestream. Today was the first day of their Jingle Jam, which they do every December. It's a livestream that lasts all month long and all the money they raise goes to charity. It won't keep the same pace all month long but by the end of the day they had already raised $1.3 million. That's kinda crazy.