October 6, 2016

 This morning I slept in and it was pretty nice. Unfortunately tonight I will be getting much less sleep because I have to wake up early to open, after closing tonight. Can't wait for that.

Today kind of felt like a throwaway day. In terms of patrons it was a pretty slow day so there wasn't much going on there. I answered several questions over the phone and a couple in person but that was about it. I spent a little time working on my class but didn't really do anything. I'm going to finish it this weekend. I went through the rest of my weeding list and marked off the books that I'll definitely be weeding but I didn't actually pull any books today. Instead, with my time off the desk today, I looked through microfilm for the guy I talked to a week or two ago who ran track in college and wanted newspaper articles that mentioned him. I spent a lot of time searching on the internet to try and narrow down specific days to look for in the paper. I decided on that after spending time earlier in the day scrolling through until I found the Sports page and then searching. It was much easier having specific dates. I found a few things, and need to redo one of them, but I think I can do that tomorrow and then send him what I have. I would like to keep searching but I have a lot of things on my To-Do list.

Out of curiosity I checked to see if any of the books I recommended in my article had checked out. I saw that one of them had and I wanted to see if it was a fluke. Of the however many I mentioned in my article, four of them had checked out since my article was published. The least impressive one had most recently been checked out last month, so not much to brag about. Next up there was one that hadn't checked out since July and one that hadn't checked out since last December. Most impressively was the cookbook which hadn't checked out since January and not only checked out, but also had a hold on it. So at least a few people read my article, even if my name wasn't correct.

There was a chance of bad weather tonight, with tornadoes popping up in surrounding counties, but we only got a short bit of heavy rain. Then the sky looked weird for the rest of the night and when I got off work it was 50 degrees outside. It was nice. Perfect jacket weather. And I was glad we didn't get severe weather because I didn't really want to spend the night in the basement of the library. At least not with a bunch of patrons.

When I got home tonight I signed all the loan documents for the bank. Two of them I had to print out, sign, and then upload them, but all the others I could do it electronically. There were a lot of documents and it took forever to read through everything, but I managed to get it done. We're getting closer.

Now I'm going to go to bed because, as mentioned previously, I have to open tomorrow. Hopefully I can get some things done. Productive things, preferably, not just things that I do when trying to avoid the things I should be doing.

October 5, 2016

 Most of my day at work was spent on the desk. I helped patrons and worked on my tech class for next week. I focused entirely on Prezi and I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do yet. I'll figure it out. And hopefully someone will show up because as of today we're still sitting at a big fat zero. It would be nice if all the time I put into this was rewarded with the chance to actually teach a class.

When I wasn't on the desk I did a bit of weeding. After talking with my boss and one of the other librarians I went back over the shelves I weeded yesterday and pulled several more off. I put less weight on the last checkout date and more on the lifetime checkout number. I had so many books that I passed on yesterday because they had checked out last year, even if they only had half as many lifetime checkouts as they should. Well, I fixed that today. I get in grooves with weeding where I can just tear through the books but at other times I get caught up thinking way too much about each book. Such is life.

I also refilled our Inspirational display today. It isn't mine this month but the assistant who has it wasn't coming in today and it was running super low so I made a quick list and pulled some books. I'm not envious of the people who get that display because it's definitely filled with books I have no interest in reading. Although I could say the same about having Romance this month and that is actually kind of fun to pull books for. Mostly due to the ridiculousness of the books involved. I am shocked those books don't live on the banned books list based purely on their cover art.

In phone news, it's back to sucking. Today Google Services has used 44% of my battery. I had wifi turned off for a lot of the day to test that out but I still had to charge my phone at lunch. Auto-sync is still turned off so I'm not sure what the issue is now. My phone also gets hot pretty quickly when I put it in my pocket. I think it is partially due to being out in the wild because when I'm at home the battery usage pretty much levels out, which is much better than the steep decline I get at work. It's pretty annoying.

During the day I decided on my plans for tonight. And I actually stuck with them. I played Minecraft for the first time in months, and watched 10 Cloverfield Lane. I have wanted to watch that movie for awhile but kind of forgot about it until a YouTube video popped up discussing the movie. I started watching that video but realized pretty quickly that it was going to dive deep into spoilers so I stopped watched until I could watch the movie. I've gotta say that the ending was a little surprising because I forgot all about the origins of the Cloverfield name. It was an interesting movie. I'm always intrigued by movies that can remain compelling with a small cast in a confined space. Three characters in a bunker kept the movie interesting and I think that's impressive.

In Minecraft I finished building a staircase out of a cave and then ended up wrapping a walkway up to the top of a hill I came out near and then building a tall watchtower-like structure on the top. I can see it from my regular house and it looks pretty sweet off in the distance. I would really like to know how many hours I have put into Minecraft over the years. It's easily way more than any other game but I would like to know the actual number of hours. And I'll continue dumping hours into it.

Now I'm going to go to bed because it is late. I get to sleep in tomorrow and I am really looking forward to that.

October 4, 2016

 I turned my laptop on at just after nine o'clock, it is now almost 10:30PM, and somehow I am only just now typing these words. Time flies.

I got an email from the newspaper today with a PDF copy of my article with my actual name on it. It looks so much better with my actual.

Today I managed to fill my day with stuff, and it felt productive, but it also felt like I was avoiding stuff I should have been doing. For one, the next class I have to teach is next Tuesday and Thursday and I haven't finished the outline or made a handout for it. That should have been done weeks ago. That is definitely on my list for tomorrow.

Instead of doing that today, I did other things. I finalized the edits to my weeding list and printed that out. For a little bit this morning and this afternoon I started going through my section. It is kind of a frustrating section because it seems like most of the books have only checked out about half as much as they should have but they also have checked out within the last year, which should make them safe from weeding. But I don't necessarily think it should. I'm going to check with my boss because I know the goal is to be more aggressive with the sections we're in now and I could easily get rid of a bunch of books if I focus on the checkout totals instead of the last checkout date.

I have also come across several books in this new section that aren't on my list. I found out that the ones added to our collection this year were not included on my list, which makes sense but also makes it confusing. I came across a book or two in my other section that we got this year but wasn't on my list and it turned out it hadn't been moved in the computer from being in the new book area. So even if it was intentionally left off I still need to pull it and double-check. There are also older books that aren't on my list but show up just fine in the catalog and I have no idea what that's about.

I found one book that wasn't on my list and it didn't show up when I scanned the barcode. I typed in the title and that gave me a result but it was a different copy of the book. The librarian that used to work in circulation showed me how to search for books that had been deleted and that is where the book popped up. Several months ago it had been listed as missing and was then deleted from the collection and a new copy was ordered. It is no longer missing and even though I don't think we need two copies of it, I'm having it added back into the collection just so I can experience a little victory.

I took down the Banned Books display and put up Whimsical & Witty again. I think it looks even better than it did before. Hopefully it does as well as last time. So far it is my best performing display. Tidbits had a pretty good run at the end because we moved it to a new display case and I think the novelty helped. I might have to recycle that idea in the future.

I did other little things throughout the day. Like helped patrons find books. It would be nice if my job involved a greater percentage of reference and helping patrons. Ultimately, most of my job is helping patrons, but I like the one-on-one stuff more than spending hours trying to come up with books I hope my homebound patrons will like or coming up with ideas for classes that very few people will come to.

To help me with all the little, and big, every day things that I need to keep up with, I started a Trello account today. It's like a more interactive To-Do list. I first heard about it in one of my classes, and then again during my first staff meeting when it was brought up as a potential collaboration tool for our department. I have been thinking about needing to get on top of things more than I am at the moment, mostly because I have felt so distracted with the house stuff lately that it feels like stuff at work keeps surprising me, and it shouldn't. I started talking with one of the other librarians about it today and she pulled up Trello because she had actually started using it lately. I really liked how she had it set up and I am trying to set mine up the same way so I can keep track today, tomorrow, next week, next month, and so on. I can have a list of things I need to do at the beginning of the month and keep track of the little things. I think it will be really helpful and hopefully I can keep up with it.

Tonight was supposed to be Chipotle night but the weather didn't want to cooperate with that idea. In the end I think the bulk of the storm missed us but it did get pretty loud for a bit and the power blinked off once. Instead of my sister coming over for Chipotle I ended up going and getting Little Caesar's. Pizza is always delicious. I think I like it more than Chipotle, and it's cheaper, but I'm already not that healthy and eating pizza every week wouldn't help with that.

After dinner I read a little bit but spent most of the night watching YouTube videos and various other things. I want to do things with my evenings but after working all day it is really hard to find the motivation to be productive. At this point I would consider watching a movie as being productive but I can't even manage that. I need to start another craft project.

October 3, 2016

 This morning I woke up early so I could get ready early and then make phone calls before I went to work. Waking up and getting ready was successful but the phone calls were kind of a fail. At eight o'clock I tried to call my first option for radon testing. I got a voicemail and didn't want to leave one because if it didn't work out and I decided to call someone else, I didn't want to deal with the awkwardness of explaining that. So I waited. Around 8:30AM I tried again, and again got voicemail, so I moved on to the next name on my list. He wasn't able to do it until next week, which doesn't work because it has to be done by next weekend, but he suggested another company because they have multiple testers. That company was also on my list so I went with them next, and they were able to start the test on Wednesday and pick up their stuff on Friday, which is in my window. Once I finally had that figured out I was running out of time but decided to call my insurance company. I thought they had to send someone out to look at the roof to see if they would insure it. Instead, I just had to give them information on the house and they gave me a quote. So that was easy.

But I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. I called to set up the radon test before work but she said she would have to call me back after she found out what times were available. And when I called my insurance company she also said she would have to call me back. And they both got back to me after I had gone to work. I was on desk for the first two hours of my shift but after that I went into our little break room and started making phone calls. I started with the radon test, found out about the Wednesday time, and agreed to that. My insurance company actually texted me after I didn't answer my phone and I was able to give them my email address and they sent me the quote. Finally, I was able to call and schedule a termite inspection for tomorrow. She ended up needed to know a bunch of information that I hadn't brought with me to the break room so I had to go grab it and come back. At one point I was certain she was going to ask for the name of my first-born. I ended up paying for the inspection over the phone because it was $25 if you paid up front or at the time of the inspection, or $75 if they had to send you a bill. That is really good incentive to pay first.

So many adult things were done this morning. Once I had all that figured out I text my realtor so he could make all the necessary arrangements with the house. Also, the house is finally listed as off the market online, which makes things all the more serious. I just hope the radon and termite inspections don't find anything expensive or deal-breaking.

I once again ate lunch in my car while driving back to work because I spent my lunch break at the bank. The bank guy had been sent my contract stuff so he was able to update my estimated costs and show me what my monthly payments would look like. He also locked in an interest rate and my fingers are crossed that it does not drop significantly before I actually close on the house. My realtor has said in the past that has happened and he has taken his client to another bank to get the lower rate. I learned that if I took the current rate the bank would pay me several hundred dollars or I could pay them $150 to take a fraction of a percentage off that would save me $8 a month. I asked him to do a little more math and it would take me nine years to break even and make the lower rate a better deal for me. I may or may not still be in the house in nine years but I don't plan on living their forever and I decided that several hundred dollars now is better than paying $150 for a benefit that I won't see for nine years. It would be nice paying a little less each month but I'll survive. Hopefully.

I also managed some work related things today. I worked on some statistics stuff, wrote and turned in my monthly report, pulled all the books for the Romance display for this month, took down all the Romance books from last month and replaced them with mine, pulled most of the books for the return of my Whimsical & Witty display, emailed the newspaper about printing the wrong name on my column, and helped patrons.

Turns out you can't throw a stone in the library without hitting a romance novel. They're all over the place. I ended up filling most of the display with books that weren't actually on my list because I kept running into books as I was walking through the stacks. They're pretty easy to spot just by the spines. I tried to change things up a little and include paranormal romance (because Halloween is coming up) and stories that are about love, not just erotica. We'll see how it goes over. One book had already checked out by the time I left work but I'm not sure what type of romance it was.

I emailed the newspaper as soon as I got to work. I wrote the email last night and sent it to myself. Then I had my boss read it before I sent it just to make sure it was coming across correctly. The lady I emailed wasn't working today but she apologized for the mistake and said she would look into getting me a PDF copy of my column with the correct name tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed on that.

Instead of coming up with another display idea for this month, I am bringing back Whimsical & Witty because it was supposed to run for two months anyway. There was just a brief intermission for the Banned Books display. Much like Romance, I got a little distracted while browsing the stacks and ended up with a lot of books that weren't on my list. And I meant to go half-and-half with non-fiction and fiction but it is definitely going to start out non-fiction heavy because I have over twenty books pulled already and I didn't make it down to the fiction section. I should be able to put the display up tomorrow.

For a few hours this morning part of the non-fiction section was blocked off because they were replacing a very large air conditioning unit on the roof and just in case something went wrong, they didn't want anyone crushed when it fell through the roof. Due to the size of the unit, they actually had to bring a huge crane from another town that could lift it onto the building. It looked like a real-life Transformer. It was nuts. Thankfully, nothing fell through the ceiling. Also sadly, nothing fell through the ceiling. I didn't want that to happen but how cool would the story be if it had happened? We need good stories every now and then to keep things interesting.

Tonight I watched YouTube videos, clicked around the internet, and now I'm listening to Nickel Creek while writing this entry. Very soon I will be going to bed because I am tired and I open tomorrow. I need to get on a better sleep schedule. One that will allow me at least seven hours of sleep each night. Preferably eight.

October 2, 2016

 My column was in the paper today and it was cool but also a bit of a bummer. It was cool because I've never written anything that has been in the newspaper before. It was a bit of a bummer because they used the wrong last name. My full name was displayed in the “From” field of my email, my full name and title were the only thing in the body of the email, my full name and title were in the signature of my email, and my attached picture was named with my full name, last name first. You would think that would make it kind of hard to get that wrong. I spent hours writing my article and they couldn't take five seconds to double-check that they spelled my name right. So that's a bummer. I'm going to send them an email tomorrow just to see if I can get a PDF copy or something of my column with my actual name on it. I was texting with the school librarian about it and decided that at least I can retain my anonymity (minus my picture being with it) and that will help keep all the fans and stalkers from tracking me down. She agreed and sent a GIF of a crowd dancing at a concert. It was pretty funny.

So, my day went from excitement to feeling bummed real quick. And despite it kind of being a disappoint and kind of a big deal now, I'll get over it eventually. It did kind of affect my day though, and I didn't really feel like doing anything after that. So nothing productive happened. I dug out Black Ops 3 again, and by that I mean I clicked on the icon on my desktop. I didn't get very far in the campaign because I was playing on the hardest difficulty and school started again. Today I started where I left off and immediately got killed several times before moving the difficulty down to Hardened so I could actually play the game. I actually wanted to play the game and enjoy it and that is really hard to do on the hardest difficulty because one bullet is instant death. And the worst part about dying a lot is hearing the same few lines of dialogue over and over again. I think when I was playing it before I actually turned the voices off because my frustration was multiplied exponentially by hearing the same line over and over and over again. I died occasionally on Hardened but I was able to soak up a few bullets and get behind cover most of the time. At some point I might jump back into multiplayer but not any time soon. We'll see if I can get through the campaign first.

I fixed my phone battery issue. It was draining super fast, to the point where I would have to plug it in at some point during the day just so it would last the whole day, even though it spends most of the day in my pocket doing nothing. I could see that it was related to Google Services and there were errors in syncing one of my Gmail accounts, but fixing those errors didn't have any effect. And trying to stop the various Google apps didn't do anything either. In the end I turned off auto sync and that seemed to do the trick. I'm not sure why Google all of a sudden decided it needed to constantly sync my stuff. It was either when I added another Gmail address or when I started using Google Photos. Regardless, turning it to manual syncing did the trick. I unplugged my phone Friday morning, haven't plugged it in all weekend, and it is now at 27%. For the last week or two it could hit 27% by noon. So this is a vast improvement and it means I don't have to worry about getting a new phone for awhile.

Tonight I watched the premiere of Westworld on HBO. I liked it. I really like the idea of virtual reality and being able to fully immerse yourself in a make-believe world. This show does not involve virtual reality, or augmented reality, but it created a make-believe world through realistic robotic humans that populate an old west town that real people can pay to visit and participate in. It's kind of like a really immersive theme park, and that is cool. This first episode did a good job of teasing the upcoming story, with some of the robotic humans experiencing glitches and memories from past lives in the world, and a man searching for something within the world. Hopefully I continue to watch it.

October 1, 2016

 I slept in today and it was nice. I woke up a couple times in the middle of the night thinking about house stuff but always managed to get back to sleep. And even when I woke up this morning I stayed in bed awhile longer just because I could.

My main accomplishment for the day was digging out and going through the numerous boxes of kitchen stuff I have. My mom has been buying me stuff here and there since I turned eighteen, and it looks like I'll finally get to use it soon. I had never seen all the stuff in one place before and good grief. There are still a few things that I'll need to get probably, but I'm definitely set when it comes to plates, bowls, cups, and silverware. And measuring cups and spoons, of which I've got three sets of both. I went through each box and gave each more specific masking tape labels so I will know what's in them.

I was supposed to know by noon whether my acceptance of the counter offer was accepted and by two o'clock I still hadn't heard anything so I texted my realtor. He got back to me and said I was good to go on scheduling the radon and termite testing and getting my insurance company to look at the roof. We'll see if any of those places is open on Sunday. And if not, hopefully they open at eight o'clock on Monday so I can call them before work. I've only got a week to get it all done. We'll see how that all goes.

With the rest of my day I did laundry, watched YouTube videos, looked up house-related things, and watched two movies. I started with Pontypool, which is a zombie-like thriller that takes place in a radio station and for most of the movie all the zombie action is only implied. So rather than seeing crazy zombies stumbling around, you hear about the events going on in the town through people calling into the radio station. It was interesting but I wanted more out of the ending. It is based on a book and now I want to read the book because I imagine it is better than the movie.

The second movie I watched was called 31. It is kind of a cheesy horror movie with a decent budget so it wasn't entirely awful. It reminded be a bit of Devil's Rejects but with the budget of House of 1000 Corpses. The premise of the movie is that a group of carnival people are kidnapped and then try to survive for twelve hours inside a warehouse complex while being hunted by various killers. The first killed is a Nazi midget who can speak Spanish or Portuguese. Unique to say the least. For the most part I'm not a fan of graphic violence so I made sure to be looking at my other monitor while people were being killed, but I don't feel like I missed anything. It's not a movie I would watch again but because I was doing other things while I watched it, I don't feel like it was a waste of time.

It is now late and I'm going to go to bed. Tomorrow I might call some places about the stuff I need tested at the house, if they're open. I will also be reading my column in the newspaper. That is a little exciting and also a little terrifying. I'm also a little afraid that it will be in next Sunday's paper, not tomorrow's, but I'm pretty sure it is tomorrow's. I'll find out soon enough. If it is tomorrow I might go out and buy a couple copies of the newspaper for the sake of posterity and because it will be the first time I have had something I have written published in the newspaper. But now it's time for bed.

September 30, 2016

 This morning was a little different. I didn't hear from my realtor about meeting at the house at eight o'clock but I went there anyway. Shortly after eight o'clock I texted my cousin to let him know I was at the house and he said he would head over. Not long after that a car pulled up next to me and an old man got out. He was soon joined by a couple other guys and they went around the back of the house with a ladder. Turns out the old guy was the owner and at least one of the other guys was a roofer. They walked around the roof and took pictures for awhile. My cousin got there and we just stood in the driveway and talked, waiting for them to get down so he could go up. He ended up not being able to do that because we ran out of time but he was able to tell by looking at it and watching the guys walk around on it, that it had twenty-year shingles and that they should have five to seven years left on them. My realtor later heard from the other realtor about what was happening with the seller. He had the roofer take pictures and was going to have an estimate on Monday.

I went in over lunch to sign the counter offer and my realtor suggested adding in that the owner would replace the damage to the roof based on the estimate of his roofer. I briefly thought about it but than said no. For one, I didn't want to keep going back and forth. And two, I didn't want to lose the house over a few shingles. I was happy with the price I got and not having to replace to roof for at least a few more years. No sense dickering with it any more.

I was about fifteen minutes late to work (and now I know how long it takes to get across town) but ran into my friend's dad in the parking lot and was about five more minutes late. We're not counting that though because in the conversation I told him about two of our resources for ebooks because he primarily uses a Kindle now. We talked about a few different things, including the new job at the library and my current house-hunting adventures. I told him where the house is and he thought about it for a second and realized he picks up the guy who lives in the duplex across the street every Sunday for church. The guy is a blind woodworker and my friend's dad said I would never be able to sleep-in on Sundays because the church van has a really loud backup beeper. Something to look forward to. He was also telling me that my friend and I were both good guys and needed to start hanging out with more girls because we should have wives and it's a numbers game. True.

This morning at work I did things. I updated information about my tech classes so all the information I collected has been added to spreadsheets and documents. I also did other things but my mind is kind of blanking at the moment.

I saw the most adorable thing this morning and it started my hearing someone slowly climb the stairs near the reference desk. Eventually I saw a country guy, dressed in a polo shirt, nice jeans, boots, and a baseball cap. He stopped before he got to the top and not long after I saw why. He was holding his daughter's hand as she slowly climbed the stairs. She was wearing tiny overalls and cowboy boots, and had her blond hair tied up in two little buns on either side of her head. Adorable.

My lunch break was once again spent at my realtor's office signing the counter offer and talking about inspections. I said I'd think about the whole house inspection but I didn't really think it was necessary given we have the information from the inspection a month ago. It would be $400 to be told the same things that we've already looked at. I might regret that later but for now I don't think it is necessary. I think I'm just going to do the radon and termite inspection, along with making sure my insurance company will insure the roof. Fingers crossed on that one.

I was already going to be a little late to work so I ran home real quick to grab my lunch, which I hadn't thought to bring with me this morning, and ate it quickly on my drive back across town to work. Two days in a row now I have eaten in my car. I kind of like sitting at my desk more. It's a lot less rushed.

This afternoon I continued doing things at work. I finished picking the books for my most recent personalized reading list yesterday but today I was able to move all that information to an email along with the other information we send, and got that sent to the patron. I also will potentially have a new homebound patron next month so I typed her a letter and enclosed that in an envelop along with the sign-up material. The goal is that she can get that filled out and returned before we go out next month and I'll be able to pull books for her. I also did other things at work but again, my mind is blanking because I am super tired.

On my way home from work I had to stop back by my realtor's office to re-sign the counter offer because he had to add something in that he forgot the first time. We then went over to the house because he wanted to check real quick to see if there was a radon detector in the house. There was not, which means I need to get that inspection. We did manage to find the sump pump, which is kind of hidden under the stairs right up against the wall on the other side of the downstairs bathroom. My realtor noted that it is actually hooked up to the city sewer, which is apparently illegal. My brother can probably fix that, or knows someone who can, so I'm not too worried about it.

Tonight I kind of just zoned out and watched YouTube videos. Tomorrow I need to call my insurance company and find someone to inspect for termites and radon within the next week. Hopefully that goes well. But first, I'm going to sleep.