November 13, 2017

 Last night I slept maybe five hours. I think I had a nightmare and at one point I was too hot. Overall, I slept terribly, and it made for a long day.

Despite that, I got to work on time, and did all the opening stuff. And then I was on desk for two hours. I worked on a perler bead handout, caught up on emails, found books for a patrons, and got a chat from a school librarian from a neighboring town. A student returned one of our books to the school library and they wanted to let us know. I looked up who checked it out (and at the same time learned how to do that) and then called that patron (or rather the father of the patron) and let them know what was up.

The majority of the rest of my day was spent working on adding subtitles to my presentation. It's a tedious process but I made a lot of progress today, so that was nice. Other than that, I finished printing bookmarks for homebound and put them in the books (still need to label the bags), replaced the finished jigsaw puzzle with an unfinished one, refilled the DVD and new audiobook displays. A surprisingly productive day for being on the verge of a nap all day.

When I got home I spent a long time looking over restaurant menus on a food delivery site because I had no interest in cooking. It also turned out I had no interest in food, because nothing sounded good. Nor did paying a lot of money for food I could make myself for far less money. Instead I had peanut butter on a tortilla and other random things. Kind of like last night.

I really wanted to play CoD: WW2 but again with the motivation. I ended up watching a few YouTube videos and then started watching The Good Place. It is such a good show. I want to stay up and finish watching it but I also want to sleep. So I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed.

November 12, 2017

 This morning I woke up at eight o'clock after only six and a half hours of sleep. That kind of sucked but I survived. I posted to my group on Facebook and sent a text to my friend to let them know I was going on a date and if they didn't hear from me than the woman was probably a fifty-nine year old man and it had turned into a Silence of the Lambs situation. And then I got ready and headed out.

I made it to the restaurant in almost exactly an hour and got there about ten minutes early. I stayed in my car and started my notes for the day because I hadn't had time to do that before I left. I then got a text from my date letting me know she had gotten there and was standing outside. And then we met.

She was in fact a she, not an old he, and looked just like her pictures. That was an instant relief. We went in, waited a little bit, and then got seated in a booth. We talked for a little bit, ordered food, and then continued to talk. We talked about all the random things until a little before three o'clock because that is when they closed and they had already vacuumed and we were the last people there. And then we stood outside and said goodbye for over two hours. It was cold and my feet froze, and I think my legs partially fell asleep while we stood there, but we just kept talking. I think we both tried to end it several times but then our conversation would sidestep into a random thought and just keep going. During the meal and then while outside we probably talked about all the taboo date topics, like religion and politics, but it ended up working out pretty well. About ten minutes after five o'clock we finally put a fork in it after agreeing we would continue to text and we'd figure out a second date.

The drive home went quickly and when I got home I had random stuff for dinner. I didn't want to cook or pick anything up so I basically just had my typical lunch. I then watched YouTube videos and eventually played CoD: WW2 multiplayer. It was fun. I ended on my best match so far in this version of the game. I got twenty kills, only had seven deaths, and I was the top scorer. It was definitely more of a fluke than skill, but I'll take it. I then spent a lot of time in the headquarters trying to retrieve three balls hidden on the map. I got two of them, the one in the bunker was a struggle, and I only have the watchtower one left. That one will take awhile because I did try for a little while but had to call it a night because it was getting frustrating.

Now I'm going to record my audio journal because I'm tired and want to go to bed. I open tomorrow so I'm already looking at six hours of sleep at most, which means tomorrow will be a long day. Hooray.

November 11, 2017

 Today was pretty uneventful. I got eight hours of sleep last night and when I woke up I played some CoD: WW2 multiplayer. This afternoon I went to my Mom's house to do laundry. While there I replaced the batteries in the basement smoke detectors, watched Hannibal Rising and an episode of Monk, and maybe took a short nap.

On my way home I stopped at Target to get peanut butter, picked up a Jimmy John's sandwich for dinner (using a free sandwich card), and I got gas. When I got home I ate dinner, watched YouTube videos and livestreams, and played more CoD: WW2 multiplayer. I am really enjoying the multiplayer. I'm still not good but for the most part I'm having fun. When lag happens or I go up against a team that is really good, then it's not very fun.

I also hashed out the details for tomorrow. We're going to go to a random cafe I found on Trip Adviser that had good ratings and breakfast food. We're meeting at eleven o'clock, so that's either a late brunch or an early lunch, I'm not sure what the time frame is for brunch. If things go well, then we're going to go to a big antique store. And if things don't go well, then we can make up believable excuses and duck out after the food, but hopefully not during the food.

And now, once again, I need to record my audio journal because it's becoming a struggle to keep my eyes open.

November 10, 2017

 I got less that six hours of sleep last night and it felt like it for the rest of the day.

On my way to work I got behind the public transit bus for the third time this week. I get behind it on the last half of my journey, it is going to the library, and it drives twenty-five miles per hour. It's rough.

I was on desk for two hours when I got to work and spent that time doing things. I got a start on my homebound lists, I compiled the attendance and feedback information from my workshop last night, I helped a patron find information about the Coast Guard, and I engaged in a long email conversation with a patron about a purchase request. When she filled out the form she didn't put a specific book and I thought maybe she just wanted help with our digital library services and used the wrong form to ask us. Over the course of an hour and several emails, I figured out she had actually meant to request a specific book but had forgotten to put it on the form. That would have been maybe a ten second conversation if we had been face-to-face. A technology fail.

When I got off desk I had a walkthrough and then went up to the cubicle to continue working on my homebound lists. After lunch I was able to finish my lists and I pulled about half of the books before I was on desk again for an hour. In that hour, among other things, I checked out the books I pulled, updated my spreadsheets, and started making bookmarks for the books.

In my last two hours I was off desk and I was able to finish pulling books. I got them all checked out, updated my spreadsheets, continued but didn't finish making bookmarks, and I got them bagged up and stored in our closet so they are out of the way.

I would have been able to finish the bookmarks but I ended up helping a patron figure out how to use Excel for a budget. I ended up just finding a template for that because it would have taken me forever to actually build one from scratch and explain the process to her. Once I had it pulled up she wanted to send it to herself so she could work with it on her computer. This required her remembering her email password (which she had reset two hours previously) but she didn't remember it. So we went through the process to reset the password again. To be fair to her, I get screwed over frequently when I have to change a password I've become used to typing in every day. She's not alone.

I also explained the events project to the assistant so she could get a start on it if she got bored. We are getting rid of a bunch of even types and changing some things with age groups with our new events program. This means before we can import the old events into the new system, we have to change the event type and age group so it aligns with the new system. Super tedious. But hopefully the assistant will be able to make some progress on it.

After work I picked up Sonic for dinner because I was feeling too tired and unmotivated to cook. I also stopped by my sister's house because she got some pumpkin pie Pop Tarts and brown rice for me. And then I spent the rest of the night watching YouTube videos and livestreams. It was a super uneventful night.

November 9, 2017

 I got seven and a half hours of sleep last night night and woke up feeling pretty good. It helped that I woke up at seven o'clock and just laid in bed until 7:30AM.

When I got to work I went over to the auditorium to find out how many people were supposed to be at my presentation. With that number in mind I went to make enough copies of the news audit handout, but the copier wasn't sucking in my paper at the top and that annoyed me enough that I wasn't going to put it inside on the glass. Instead I decided to log into one of the computers and just print off what I needed. And then the computer wouldn't connect to the network drives so I couldn't access the file. I tried logging out and back in a couple times but it didn't work so I restarted the computer, which took way longer than usual. I did finally manage to get the handout printed and there was a little less stress in my life.

The presentation went well. At least I think it went well. Along with the question portion I ended up taking the full hour, which was good. I warned them at the beginning that depending on how much I rambled or forgot to say it was either going to last ten minutes or forty-five minutes, and I'm glad it didn't take ten minutes. For the most part I read from my script with a little bit of improve and speaking from memory. I had to use a microphone, which worked great because had I been reading from my script without a microphone I would have been talking into the podium and my voice wouldn't have carried to the back of the auditorium. It was also nice because I wasn't having to project, which saved my voice. At the end they were a little slow to ask questions but I ended up getting quite a few, which was a pleasant surprise.

After the presentation I went downstairs to the childrens' workroom so I could make sure the Spheros were ready. I charged a couple just to be safe. I also played with the Little Bits, a little bit. After that, in my remaining time before my four hour break, I started adding my script into my presentation as subtitles so that I can eventually get it sent off to all of the attendees.

And then I had a four hour break. When I got home I ate lunch, watched YouTube videos, started playing a new idle clicker game called Idle Champions which is set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, and played a little more of the CoD: WW2 campaign. There was a weird glitch in the cutscenes where I could hear the random background noises but the dialogue was inaudible. I'm just glad I had subtitles turned on. I'm also even more convinced that I'll never be able to play this game on the hardest difficulty. There have been more than a couple times now where I have completely had my ass handed to me, repeatedly, and it has taken me multiple tries to get past certain parts. I can't imagine the hardest difficulty.

When I got back to work I was on desk for an hour and, among other things, I spent that time creating a perler bead egg wearing glasses as an example for the craft night next week that one of the other librarians and myself are leading. I haven't made anything with perler beads since I was a kid but I have been tempted to the last few years. I like all the 8-bit stuff you can create. That's also one of the reasons I like cross stitch.

When I got off desk I had a walkthrough and then I started setting up for my workshop. I pulled a few tables together and set up a little maze thing like I did last time. I made little gates to drive the Sphero through but a couple people pointed out they looked more like a croquet setup, and they were right. I also had one of the iPads hooked up to the projector, just in case we had a lot of and they couldn't all see the iPad screen. That ended up not being an issue but it was still a good idea.

The first people to show up were women. One looked really familiar and she ended up being the mom of a kid at the school I used to work at. She was looking for robotics-related activities for her Girl Scouts, so that was pretty cool. About forty-five minutes into it they transitioned over to the Little Bits and a couple came in and I got them going on the Spheros. The husband ended up being an engineer and he was super methodical about figuring out the Sphero, which was a lot of fun to watch. He also really liked it. Later on he played with the Little Bits and also really like those. So overall, I would say it was a successful workshop.

I got everything picked up fairly quickly and then headed downstairs to close. When I got home I watched YouTube videos, clicked around the internet, and now I'm writing this. And now, I'm going to record my audio journal because It is after midnight and I want to go to bed. Due to distractions it has taken far too long to write this. Will I never learn?

November 8, 2017

 This morning was much like yesterday, woke up, got ready, went to work. I was on desk for the first two hours and answered the phone, email and chat. When I wasn't doing that stuff I read through my script and tweaked a few things.

I was off desk for an hour and then had two walkthroughs before lunch. I spent that time reading a couple articles and one of them aligned perfectly with one of my slides so I added a quote from it to my presentation. The article came out on Monday so I like that I am able to include something so recent in a presentation about news.

After lunch I was on desk for an uneventful hour, just chat and phone calls. I was able to mess with the formatting of my script and I got that printed out. I have already had to make a few tweaks to the printed version, which is the problem with hard copies.

We had our department meeting this afternoon. I was nearly ten minutes late because I was on desk and had to wait for the teen librarian to come cover out desk. It ended up being alright because we were scheduled for a two hour meeting but it only took an hour. We did all the usual stuff, talked about a policy and the book chapter we read. Did kudos and covered random announcements. And then we talked about our personality test results. I had the same result as our assistant director and our new assistant. Just a fun fact.

To end out the day I had two walkthroughs. On the second one I refilled the Mystery display, which I love because I just have to wander the stacks and look for the Mystery sticker on the spine. Earlier in the day I refilled the audiobook display and it was still looking good, so I'm probably set until next week.

After work I picked up Qdoba and went to my Mom's for dinner. I didn't show any videos because I wanted to get home early so we just ate and talked and watched TV. And then I headed home.

When I got home I slowly got around to reading through my presentation script. And about halfway through it I began to worry my voice wouldn't survive through the real presentation tomorrow, so I lowered my voice quite a bit and switched to more of a mumble/whisper. It came out around half and hour, which is perfectly fine by me. I decided to do the news audit handout, so that will add at least five minutes and then there will be time for questions at the end. I know it will come out a lot shorter because I'll probably go off-script and forget a lot of what I want to say. But it won't be the end of the world. Life will go on and I will be able to shift my focus to tomorrow night's tech workshop. It's never ending.

I tried a spoonful of honey for my throat and I was glad to find out honey still isn't my thing. Whatever it does in the sauce I use for stir fry is good times, but on it's own, it still tastes like honey. With the rest of my night I watched YouTube videos and now I'm watching a livestream. But it's time to record my audio journal so I can go to bed. I'm tired.

November 7, 2017

I got seven hours of sleep last night, got up, got ready, and went to work. When I got to work I quickly made a whiteboard sign for the tech drop-in today and had another librarian take it down to the atrium because I was on desk for two hours. It was a very active two hours. Seven or eight purchase requests came in since last night, one of them couldn't be purchased but one library in our ILL network had it so I suggested that but never heard back. And we already owned two of the other requested books. I also had a number of phone calls throughout. I only got hung up on once by our regular patron who is always calling and asking for random phone numbers and addresses. I had gotten a few words into my sentence when she hung up, immediately called back, and said she was waiting for me but was conserving her minutes. So she used more minutes to hang up and call me back and explain why she hung up on me, rather than just letting me finish my sentence.

In between all of that stuff I worked on my presentation. I started exporting the slides I had made in Publisher as PNGs and importing them into PowerPoint. It's a convoluted system but I have more options to tweak things in Publisher so that's that.

When I got off desk I went to a meeting for the upcoming updated room reservation and event program. It's better and worse depending on how you look at it. Overall, though, I think it will be for the best. We'll get used to it.

After that I had two walkthroughs and then went to lunch.

Immediately following lunch we had our tech drop-in and it was a big success. One person showed up early and over the course of two hours we had six people, four of whom were there most of the time. Thankfully we had our volunteer today and we had to pull in another librarian and there was still a bit of a wait for people to be helped. We helped patrons with: saving camera phone pictures to an SD card instead of internal storage, syncing mail between an iPhone and an iPad, our ebook and audiobook resources, paying bills online, setting up a printer (which the patron actually brought in), and a Kindle Paperwhite that started out in German. Quite the range of questions.

I spent the rest of my day finishing my presentation. I threw in some GIFs at the end and rewrote my conclusion and I think I'm good. Hopefully. I also had a walkthrough, which was uneventful except I saw one of the sister's of the teenager we banned for a week. None of the siblings have been in for the past week and I thought seeing the sister might be a sign that the brother was also back. Today was the last day of his ban, however, so when he did show up upstairs I went over with one of the other librarians and gave him his ban letter and let him know that he was welcome back tomorrow but he would have to leave today. The best part was that he said he hadn't been to the library in two weeks and that he had never been disrespectful to library staff. Hilariously false on both counts.

I checked out a book with an eggplant parmesan recipe in today and when I got home I made it. It looked really good but it turns out I don't really like eggplant. I couldn't even finish the portion I put on my plate. It wasn't overtly bad but there was just something a little bit off about the flavor that wasn't for me. Luckily I also made mashed red potatoes with parmesan and garlic. They were pretty tasty and they ended up being the majority of my dinner. I ate way to much.

After dinner I put air in my tires and the air compressor was far less scary this time. I only jumped when it kicked on halfway through filling my tires. It helped that I was wearing earplugs, because it is uncomfortably loud. I meant to grab my protective earmuffs from my Mom's house today but forgot but I still had earplugs from the Fourth of July, and those worked well.

Then I washed my dishes and played a couple matches of CoD: WW2 multiplayer. I wasn't too bad. I wasn't great, but for not having a lot of practice, I wasn't too bad. I even got in the top three in one of the matches.

And it is now eleven o'clock. I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed. That sounds like a really good plan.