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.