Vacation is here and . . .
12.29.03 (8:17 pm) [edit]serenity is mine . . . well, maybe not. It's been really weird not working for a couple of days and I just realized that my vacation is nearly half over. Where did it go? :?
Christmas was surreal . . . I'm not going to go into details, but it was weird with all the family stuff that's been going on lately and not having my dad around. :( On the other hand, my daughter had a great Christmas and got way too many toys, which she has already pushed aside in favor of the big cardboard box that the one ( her new play kitchen set w/music, lights and color-changing food ) came in. :roll: In fact, she's been battling with Grandma's cat to see who gets to play in the box first. :roll:
I feel so out of the loop. I haven't read any blogs, or written one in days. I'll have to catch up on them when I'm at work again and getting paid to surf the net. In the meantime, I've been trying unsuccessfully to read some books - actual print media. :o But it's been hard because I got a new game for my computer and between that and my daughter staying with me for 4 of the past 5 days, I'm not getting much "vacating" accomplished.
I hope everyone has a [b]Happy New Year![/b] I'm going to spend mine at my brother's house watching Kurosawa's "Rashomon", drinking plum wine, sake and eating pot stickers and egg rolls. We're having an Asian themed night, if you couldn't guess. :wink: Of course, if the sake and plum wine don't work out, I bought a six pack of a local microbrewery's porter to try. :wink:
And if we have the time and the stamina, we might just have to fit in a Zombie movie for good measure. I have "Dawn of the Dead" coming for me to the library hopefully tomorrow, so I can pick it up for Wednesday night. Zombie movies always freak both my brother and me out, so of course we love to watch them whenever we get a chance. We both loved "28 Days Later."
Anyway, I just have three more short things to say and then its back to my new game.
1. [b]The Packers Rule! They're going to the Superbowl![/b]
2. [b]The Vikings Really Suck![/b]
3. [b]Go Badgers![/b]
:D
Feeling Better
12.23.03 (8:40 am) [edit]As my countdown to vacation winds down, I'm definitely feeling better. I got all my wrapping done last night while I watched the Packers annihilate the Raiders last night. :D I know that earlier this season, I was calling for Favre to retire, but not now; not if he's still capable of having games like last night's. :D I'm very sorry that he lost his father the other day. I certainly know what he's going through . . . :cry: His loss will be, I think, harder than mine because of how suddenly it happened. My dad was ill for so long that it was somewhat more of a relief than a shock.
Anyhow, things are slow here this morning at work. They were slow last night too. Hopefully the day won't drag on as I countdown the seconds until my vacation. At least my library system has added another really cool genealogy database to our reference resources, so I can indulge in my genealogy hobby while at the same time exploring a new tool for helping patrons. :) It's always nice to be having fun while working and to be doing something that's fun and encouraged by your managers. :)
Just had a call from one of our sem-regular goofball patrons. This one is the "Dictionary Lady." She, we assume it's a she but it's hard to tell for sure from the voice, calls us once or twice a month (twice this morning) to ask about words. From the way she talks, we also assume that she's mildly retarded. She doesn't ask the definitions, rather she asks about things like whether or not "behave" is one word or two (be have?), or what endings go on certain words. This morning, besides the "behave" question, she asked me what endings go on the word "program." I dutifully went to our biggest dictionary and looked it up for her, relaying the info that program could be plural with an "s", or made into a past tense verb "programmed" or an active verb "programming." I'm sure there are some others, but that seemed to satisfy her. We really need to take up a collection and buy her a dictionary, but then again I don't think she'd believe her own dictionary without having one of us verify things for her. It's not that she's really difficult or anything, just that the phone conversations with her can get really surreal. :roll:
Well, I think that's about it for this morning's report. Perhaps I'll be back again later. Who knows? Only the Shadow . . . :wink:
Weekend finally over
12.22.03 (10:25 am) [edit]Back at work. :( Definitely not in a Christmas mood. :( Don't want to have to deal with the patrons here today, especially the kids off from school who's parents are using us as free daycare. :(
The only thing that's helping me today is looking at my countdown to vacation on my blog. With each passing second, I'm getting closer to some time away from this place and the work stress - not that there isn't a lot of stress in my life from other things. I think being separated has just made me trade one set of tensions for another. At least my father's death has blunted some of that and I think it's lowered people's expectations of me for the moment. The assumption is that I have too much to deal with and can't be put upon for extra work, etc.
I think this is going to be one of the worst holidays I've ever faced, but I need to do my best to make myself appear happy for the sake of my little girl. She deserves as much happiness as her mother and I can make for her. :)
I had a bad dream last night about my father. I'm sure it won't be the last one . . . and I'm sure that's affecting my mood today as well. :(
At least I was able to enjoy myself for a while this weekend with the family gathering and monopoly game session for my nephew's birthday. I (sadly) did not win. In fact, I was the first to bankrupt out. :? I was prepared to crush all opposition, and yet 2 rounds after gaining my first monopoly, I was bankrupted by my sister-in-law who had all 4 railroads and the Park Place/Boardwalk monopoly. I landed on Boardwalk when she had a hotel on it and I was finished. She eventually won, sometime after I went home. I left after bankrupting since it was already after 10 and I wanted to go home and get some sleep after working all day Saturday.
The other fun thing I managed to do was to play my regular weekly session of Dungeons and Dragons last night. :D Once again, many monsters were smitten, treasures gained and drinks consumed. :wink:
Back to the library - as I seem to be all over the place today. We've only been open for 20 minutes and already, the place is hopping. The computer lab is full and some of the kids and YA terminals are occupied too. Why don't these people have lives? Or at least Christmas stuff to do? Are games and chat really that important? :roll:
Oh yes, I've succumbed to the lure of having a calendar on my blog. Unfortunately it's ad sponsored. :( Maybe I can figure out a different way to do it, but this one shows when I've posted and a generic one won't be able to do that . . . at least I don't think it will. Subject for research today I guess . . .
Saturday Morning/Saturday Night
12.20.03 (8:21 am) [edit]Saturdays are pretty quiet here at the library. Things don't start to pick up in this neighborhood until around noon. I guess this is about the only day of the week that the people here get to sleep in, so we mostly see a couple of kids straggling in until that time, or a few adult patrons who have a specific need, like a car repair manual. I have to make the assumption that the straggler children are the ones who's parents have told them to get out of the house so they can sleep, or that they're the ones who don't have computers or cable tv, or probably much of a family life at all since they're here and very needy. I say cable tv because there isn't much on regular tv for kids on Saturday mornings any more. It's not like it was when I was a kid . . . when Saturday mornings were filled with crappy cartoons and kids shows. They were bad, but they were for us kids. (Smurfs, Care Bears, Transformers, Bugs Bunny, etc.) It's amazing how many of those shows have been modified and repackaged for the kids today, but in a format that means that they (or I should say their parents) need to spend money in order to view them and then become inculcated with the desire to buy whatever products associated with them that the manufacturers want them to buy. All of that advertising used to be free, on network tv damn it! :twisted:
I really don't expect it to be very busy today, except for the patrons who want movies for the weekend, or the holiday - which they aren't going to get if it isn't on our shelf right now. Anything we order in for a patron at this point isn't going to get here until next Saturday, or possibly Monday or Tuesday before New Years. Our patrons don't usually grasp the fact that the library isn't like Blockbuster and you have to do some planning and have some knowledge of how the system works if you want something by a specific date. I fear that's going to be the main repetition today, rather than the usual spiel about the computer sign-up system.
Changing the topic: I had my daughter with me Thursday night and last night. I had off yesterday, so she was with me all day yesterday too. I was really sad to have to leave her this morning to come to work, but it's a necessary evil. Her mother was coming to pick her up this morning to take her to her aunt's house for their family Christmas celebration today. This is the first time in 5 years that I haven't gone there too. It's a really strange feeling . . . :?
:o Here's a shot of her that I took last night when she decided to put a bag on her head:
[image]ArcadeAttendant_31 7788319.jpg[/image]
Tonight though, I'm going to go to my brother's house for my nephew's 11th birthday celebration. He's ultra-competitive about playing board games and loves Monopoly, so were having a surprise massive Monopoly tournament there tonight in his honor, so it's probably best that my girl isn't going to be there. :D Wonder what'll happen if my nephew doesn't win? 'Cause I'm sure not going to take it easy on him. :wink:
Circulation Sadness
12.18.03 (10:07 am) [edit]Just had a patron come up to me and hand (actually toss) his card to me and say, " I got this card a while back and they told me I had to wait to check out movies. Can I check'em out now?" ( We have a 3-4 week "probationary" period on new borrowers in order to verify addresses, etc. ) I checked his record and sure enough it'd been long enough that he was able to check out videos now, but on a whim I looked down further on his record at whether or not he'd checked out any other materials during that probation period. He hadn't, and from his manner and appearance, I hadn't really expected anything to be there. Genre Chick recently had a blog about this phenomenon.
I know I used to get frustrated when we used to manually sign patrons up for the internet computers that they'd have no circulation listed on their library records. Many of our patrons only get a library card because it's required for use of the computers, or get a card only to check out videos. I know that videos and computers are a necessary evil as far as attracting patrons and that funding is all a numbers game based on how many people come in and how many things they check out (books=videos for the stats), but we have so many patrons who never check out a book that I wonder if it's really worth it (at least the videos do count).
What really sucks is that for now, the computers don't count towards circulation, like other items do. So we literally have thousands of patrons with cards who never "count" towards circulation totals because all they use the library for is the internet. :cry:
Timer and Links
12.18.03 (8:46 am) [edit]It's been very slow this morning at work, so I managed to get that countdown timer working on the left side of my blog. While I was at it, I thought I'd update my dropdown list of Librarian weblogs. I've added links to Book Kitten, Cellar Dweller, Libraryland, Library Girl and Tales from the Liberry. Hope you check them out. I read all the blogs on that list every day. :) I'm sure I'll have more to blog about later today, but right now I'm just enjoying the silence . . . :)
Countdown
12.17.03 (1:09 pm) [edit]Through the miracle of staffing changes and with more than a bit of luck, I managed to gain some measure of seniority on the staff here this year and thus am able to take some vacation time around the holidays. :o
As of Tuesday 12/23/03 at 6:00 PM, I will be off from work until Saturday 1/3/04. That's 10 whole days away from the crowds of needy patrons. 10 whole days without having to explain in detail why people don't need to tell me they want to use our computers and then explaining in detail how to use our [b]SELF-SIGNUP SYSTEM[/b]. 10 whole days of not having my schedule be dictated by someone else. 10 whole days without ordering Pokemon or DragonballZ videos for kids who have no idea how far behind the times they are . . . 10 whole days of not having the scary prostitute staring at me for hours on end. And on and on and on . . .
Can you sense a trend in my thought train? Hey, I just thought of something. I might even be able to finish the book that I've been slowly reading off and on for the past month :arrow: http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob...
I think I'm going to see if I can add a countdown timer to my blog, just so I can check it all the time.
:wink:
Good Patrons
12.16.03 (1:24 pm) [edit]I spend so much time dwelling on the bad patrons at my library, and the bad things that happen here, that I forget from time to time that there are a lot of really nice people who do frequent my branch. There are a couple of really nice patrons that I enjoy helping and use the library well. :)
The first one shares a common like of graphic novels with me. He's always ordering stuff that I then see on the hold shelf and think that it's my stuff coming in. We have something of an informal competition going on to get the newest graphic novels in the system. Today he was in and I stumped him with one that I had ordered and he hadn't heard of yet, so I fixed him up with a request for it.
The next one is a really sweet older man who is retarded and lives with his mother still. He comes in several times a week and has a kind of revolving list of topics that he's obsessed with, including jet planes, dogs, loons, and western/John Wayne films. He's kind of hard to understand when he's talking, so he can be a little trying, but when you finally get the right thing for him, he's so happy. He brings in treats for us and last year brought us a whole bunch of handmade Christmas ornaments made from pinecones and sparkles. :)
There are some others, but both of them came to mind today, especially because they were both in. :wink: Now my mind is going blank about the good patrons because school is out and the swarms of latchkey kids have started to infest the building . . . buzz . . . buzz . . . buzz . . .
Busy Weekend, Calm at Work.
12.15.03 (9:37 am) [edit]Friday, my branch was closed to the public but we were allowed to be in the building to get caught up on stuff. They didn't give us a full staff, so we were limited in how much we could get done. Even so, it was pretty great! :D I felt like I got more library work accomplished in one day than I normally do in a week. There were no interruptions and no supervisors (we did have to send out an email report about what work we completed). I got to listen to music all day and processed about 150 new books for circulation, among other things. :)
Today, I'm here again early for the 1st shift and we don't open to the public until noon. I'm starting to feel like I've had another vacation, only without having to get caught up when I get back. :D
[b] Warning, non library content ahead.
My weekend though wasn't as restful as I would have wished and I didn't sleep well last night at all . . .
We viewed my dad's body and cremated him on Saturday, after I took my daughter back down to her mother's home that morning. It was sad and yet I finally feel like he's at peace and we can move on. My mom is doing much better with every day and I think by Spring when we have the memorial service and ash scattering, we'll all be ready for it. I think it'll be much more of a celebration of his life then, rather than a grieving for our loss. :)
After the cremation, we (mom, brother, his wife and I) went back to mom's home and sat around for a while having a glass of really cheap, bad Merlot and talked about dad. We had a good time remembering the good times we had growing up and my sister-in-law remarked how it sounded as though we had a pretty idyllic childhood. Her words were something to the effect of "it sounds like you guys lived in a story from Boy's Life." (Which we did and is kind of ironic because Boy's Life magazine is the official magazine of the Boy Scouts and we were in that and our dad was the Scoutmaster.) :wink:
After that, we went out for dinner at a really good Chinese restaurant; one where at least half of the clientele were Asian. I had their Singapore noodles, which were pretty good [image]ArcadeAttendant_64 3456827.jpg[/image](they're one of my favorite Chinese meals, 'cause I love curry). Then my brother and I went to see "Last Samurai," which really sucked. It had beautiful cinematography, but a poor storyline. My brother called it "Dances With Wolves" in Japan. I'm not going to waste more time talking about it here though, except to say that I recommend waiting for the video.
Sunday, mom and I went shopping for the rest of the Christmas presents that we needed for my daughter and my niece and nephew. My daughter, despite or because of my wife and my separating, is probably going to have the best Christmas of her young life as far as presents go. She's getting so much stuff that I'm sure I can't catalogue it all here. The main things are a new play kitchen set (with all the bells and whistles), a Barbie CD/Karaoke machine (even though she's only 2&1/2, she's a big singing and dancing machine herself), 4 new Rolie Polie Olie books, and a stuffed Rolie Polie Olie doll. If you don't know who Rolie Polie Olie is, you can check out the link here: http://disney.go.com/disneych...
My niece (9) and nephew (11) got a bead jewelry making kit and a plasma ball lamp, respectively. I'm sure both of them will love their gifts and I can't wait to see them open them up.
I know this will sound weird, but later on Sunday, I went to my wife's place for dinner. I needed to pick up some more stuff from down there and she asked me to stay for dinner. It would have been hard to just stop in and grab the stuff and go anyway, since my daughter was there. We're still getting along fine since the separation, as we were up until it happened, but were definitely not going to get back together. It was really sad when I did leave and my daughter wanted me to stay, or for her to go with me. :cry: But I do have her tonight and another 2 nights and one whole day this week. :) She's adjusting to the living situation, but she's 2 and still doesn't quite know why daddy and mommy aren't still in the same house. I do know that she knows we both love her more than anything in the world. :)
Finally, I went to my brother's house last night for our weekly Dungeons and Dragons game. Had 4 beers (New Glarus Native Ale :D ) and killed more than a few monsters, along with the brain cells. :o
Library of the Frozen North
12.11.03 (2:18 pm) [edit]The temp here in the building keeps dropping. My glucose monitor is giving me the temperature error warning, so I know from the manual that it's below 57 degrees Fahrenheit in here. It's definitely not going to get warmer outside either as the sun is going down already. At this rate, I think all the staff will be wearing gloves, hats and coats inside tomorrow. :roll:
Cursed . . . ;)
12.11.03 (10:46 am) [edit][b]First off, I want to thanks everyone for their support and condolences during this past week. I really appreciate it and it's been good to know that I've been making some friends out there. [/b]:)
My dad had been in poor health, both mentally and physically for some time now. The ravages of being a diabetic from the age of 3 had finally caught up with him. He'd been suffering from an Alzheimer's like dementia from vascular damage caused by the diabetes, along with other cardiac and organ problems, and had been in a nursing facility for the past six months. We'd all been prepared for his death for a long time - ever since his quintiple bypass surgery a few years ago. Even he thought that he'd lived on borrowed time for a long time and no one in his family, including his mother who's still around, thought that he'd live as long or as full a life as he did. He made it to 63, and got to see both my brother and I have kids of our own. :)
My mom is doing much better. She didn't have a heart attack as we had feared. It looks as though she was undergoing a panic attack after viewing the body. It's almost been a blessing in disguise that I've been living with her since last week when my wife and I separated, because I took the call from the home that my father had passed. I hate to think what would have happened if she had been alone when the call came. In any case I think she's been really lonely since my dad had to be moved to the care facility and it's going to be good for both of us to have each other for support. :)
I'm back at work today and surprisingly, things haven't piled up as much as I thought they would. :D It's so nice that I wasn't swamped coming in through the doors this morning and tomorrow will be like a vacation day for me as we're closed to the public and the staff has been given approval to stay at our branch to catch up. I'm not going to like working in the "fishbowl" all day; with people staring through the windows at me, but at least I won't have to deal with them inside. :twisted:
However, I almost wish that I was going back to the other branch tomorrow, as has been usual on Fridays. I have a friend on the staff there and it would have been fun to work with them there tomorrow. And beside, the furnace is still out in my building. :roll: We had 1 hour of heat today and that was all. It's down in the 50's inside today, so I feel like I'm working in a warehouse, a homeless warehouse. :twisted: Today's high is only supposed to get to 25 and only 23 tomorrow, so we're all keeping our frozen fingers crossed that it's fixed tomorrow as promised. :roll:
Getting to work today though, was something of an adventure and that's why I think I've been under a curse lately. Either that or my life has truly become a soap opera. It rained here most of the past 24 hours and then the temperature dropped. We didn't get much snow, but the rain froze up my mom's car locks and doors so I couldn't get out of the driveway this morning. Here it was my first day back at work in 5 days, after having the weekend off and then with the funeral leave, and I had to call in and tell them that I was going to be late. I ended up standing outside, pressing a garbage bag full of hot water up against the door of the car with my body to get the locking mechanism to thaw. I hope none of the neighbors saw me . . . who know what they would have thought. :wink: Even with the thawing process and stopping for a McDonald's McGriddle (I admit it, I'm addicted to them), I was only 5 minutes late. Wouldn't you know it, my supervisor was 5 minutes later than me getting to work, so it wasn't a big deal. Just figures that something would have to go wrong. :wink:
At least for one thing that's gone right in the past couple days, I got my DSL installed at my mom's place, so I have my bandwidth back at home. :D I had gotten so used to having highspeed internet over the past year that it was rough going back to a slow dial-up service over the past week. Now if only I could get my DVD drive on my computer working, I'd be all set. :wink: I think it got bumped around during my hasty move last week and I'm going to have to crack the case on my computer this weekend to see if I can fix it. The power comes on and everything seems okay, but it can't read any disks that are inserted. :( There's a regular CD-RW drive in the machine that still works fine, but I was relying on my computer as a DVD player for the near future, until I get my finances straightened out from the separation and eventual divorce. Good thing DVD drives have gotten so cheap lately, in case I do need to replace it. :D I checked prices and even retail they're down to 50$ or less. Maybe while I'm at it I'll put in a new video card too. Then I can play some of the newer games out there when I don't have my daughter with me. :)
Well, I guess that's more than enough for now. Again, I want to thank everyone for their expressions of support during my trying times over the past couple of weeks. :) It's really been a help to me emotionally. :) Thank you all.
Bad things in 3's
12.08.03 (8:37 pm) [edit]They say that bad things come in threes.
Well, this week has certainly proved it to me. The first thing was my separation from my wife a week ago. Things have been working out pretty well on that front, but as I've blogged about before, it was a big hurt that had been building and then erupted suddenly.
Numbers two and three happened today as we got the call this morning that my father had passed away this morning in his sleep. It was something we'd been expecting for a while. He had been in poor health and his dementia problems (caused by being a lifelong diabetic) had forced us to place him in a nursing care facility about six months ago. Just this past week, he'd had a bout of pneumonia and a bladder infection at the same time, but seemed to have turned the corner. Apparently beating these two infections pushed his already compromised body over the edge and he passed away peacefully sometime early in the morning. We were all saddened by the loss, and yet relieved that his suffering was finished.
Number three happened when we (my brother, his wife, our mother and I) went up to view the body this morning. We all had a good cry and I thought that we were all fine with the closure that provided. Unfortunately, the stress got to my mom and her blood pressure went soaring, causing severe nausea. She didn't get any better and my brother took her to the hospital, while I tried to handle some other errands that needed doing.
Luckily, though we haven't heard anything definite yet since they admitted her overnight for some testing, she's going to be fine. It looks like she's had a silent heart attack sometime in the past few months . . . no doubt from dealing with the stress of my father's situation. So if there's a silver lining to this cloud, it's that at least now, we can focus on her health and not on my dad's.
Anyway, I just felt that I needed to write something tonight. I'm going to be offline for a couple days now, but I'll be back again shortly and hopefully without more bad news. I'd much rather be at work and dealing with and venting about aggravating patrons than this mess.
Quiet Day
12.05.03 (8:05 pm) [edit]Today, for once, I didn't have any crazy patrons. It was slow and I actually got some librarian-type work done. :D It probably had to do with the fact that I was at the other branch today, but still it was nice. I wish work was like it was today, all the time. I got my paperback ordering done and still had time to catch up on reading some blogs and reviews online. :) Had a nice dinner out and I'm responsibility free tonight because my daughter is with her mother tonight. I miss her and yet at the same time it's so nice to have a quiet night to myself. Maybe I'll even get a chance to read for a while . . . a rare enough occurrence in itself. We'll see how it goes after I crack open a beer or two though . . . :wink:
More regular visitors
12.04.03 (10:30 am) [edit]In the past, I've mentioned some of the regular visitors/inhabitants of this library, but I obviously didn't get them all. Today another pair of our semi-regular crazy patrons are in and I realized that I haven't mentioned them before.
They're a mother and son (age 7or 8?) team of kooks who come in once a week to play games on the kids computers.
It's so hard to describe them except that the mother looks like she was the kind of kid who was a complete nerd in school and probably got picked on to the point that she snapped and went off the deep end. (Sort of a modern day, heavyset "glass menagerie" girl.) Her son looks like (if he even goes to school, because I'm assuming he's homeschooled since they come in during the normal school day) that he would get "wedgied" everyday by the other kids ( a really weird, chunky little momma's boy). Anyhow, it's not how they look that's important, rather it's how they act. :?
They come in and giggle to each other at what must be private jokes - in fact they act as though they're in their own little world all the time. It's almost as if they're two little 1st grade girls who are telling secrets to each other all the time. Anyway, they come in and get on the computers, put the headphones on and then go to play the same internet game as each other on the terminals. Then they forget that everyone else in the library can hear them and proceed to keep giggling, making comments about the games, and imitating the sounds of the games out loud. It's almost as if they have Tourette's syndrome (apologies to anyone who has that terrible disease). Thank heaven that their time is limited on the computers and they almost never interact with any staff member. :?
I'm sure that poor kid is going to grow up to be either a shut-in or a serial killer. :roll:
Frost and Fire
12.04.03 (8:40 am) [edit]As I've mentioned in a past blog, we're having furnace problems here at my library. We have space heaters set up behind each of the reference desks and behind our circulation desk so that the staff can stay warm. We don't dare set them out where the public can get at them for fear of the patrons burning themselves on the heaters or setting the building ablaze by stuffing paper into the heaters. The heaters have to be unplugged at night (temperatures have been dipping as low as 25 degrees at night here) because of safety concerns. I guess they don't want another fire here (see yet another recent past entry). So each day when we come in, the ambient temperature has dropped in here by about another ten degrees. Since the building is closed tomorrow due to our staffing shortages, the heaters won't be on at all for about 36 hours. I'm so glad I don't work on Saturday here. The staff that is on will need long underwear and ski jackets. :wink:
Okay, here we go again. We've been open for less than 1/2 an hour and I've had to call 911 again. Thankfully, it was for something not connected to this library. A patron came in and said there was smoke coming from a house off the corner of our parking lot. I looked out the window and called 911 right away. At first I didn't think it was much; maybe a blocked chimney or a bad cook, but you never know. When I first saw it, I could see smoke coming out from under the roof and the eaves, but by the time the fire department got here, I could see the flames in the windows though, so I hope no one got hurt. Nothing like a fire or a 911 call of any kind to get the heart pumping first thing in the morning. :wink:
Broken Record
12.03.03 (5:22 pm) [edit]Today, I'm feeling like a broken record. I keep repeating the same thing over and over again. "Our computers are self-service. I don't need or want to know if you want to go on them. You need to find your own computer and sign yourself in. The instructions are right there next to each terminal." Argh! How many stupid people can there be in this neighborhood? The signs about computer use are everywhere in both English and Spanish! If you can't figure it out then you don't need to go on the computers. :evil:
Thanks :)
12.03.03 (11:51 am) [edit]Thanks for everyone's kind comments and well wishes. I'm doing better today and things will get easier with time. Just need the initial shock of the big changes to wear off . . . :)
Despite all the crap, my wife and I have been able to keep things pretty amicable so far and will, I hope, be able to do so in the future. It's not like we don't still care about each other, if only for the sake of having two loving and stable parents in our daughter's life. Saying that though doesn't mean that I think our marriage can or should be saved, or that I think it's possible for us to reconcile ever. The level of trust necessary for that is gone forever, but that's not to say that we can't still stay on friendly terms.
Okay, that's enough about my personal problems for today. I need to think about other things, like work . . . especially since I'm doing all of my internet and blogging on the taxpayer's dime for right now. :wink:
On the other hand, I fell the need to write about work conditions, so briefly - today at the library, the furnace guys are going at it with grinders and other power tools. Between the noise of the space heaters and their pounding, etc. the homeless people can't sleep, so other than the usual internet junkies, things are slow today. As always, I'm sure there will be more stupid patron stories coming as the day and night continue to unfold. :roll:
Back to normal
12.02.03 (2:16 pm) [edit]With all the crap going on in my life it's almost reassuring that things are "normal" here at the library. The regular "residents" are all here today; the shelves are still a disaster; the kids are still noisy and obnoxious, and we have a "crisis" going on with the building's furnace.
Here it is December 2nd and in the Midwest it's cold, so of course our furnace had to go out and so now we have space heaters set up everywhere. The maintenance crew says it may be days or even weeks until it's working again. Parts are hard to come by, etc. And our wonderful patrons have a great habit of propping our outside doors open year round. Guess our homeless population won't be finding too much relief from the cold for the next few days.
Okay, just had a patron, who looked like he was going to pass out or fall asleep on me, ask me how to find magazine articles on oxycontin. Maybe he needed to find out how long the effects last? :wink:
Here we go again. Just had another cherub-faced kid walk along a whole wall of the library, pushing the books back into the shelf and ruining the facing of the titles. I caught him and asked him repeatedly why he did it - no response. Habla Ingles? No response. Habla Espanol? No response. Finally his sister who understood English came over and I told her that she needed to explain to him that he couldn't mess up the shelves. I don't think either of them understood . . . sigh.
:(
There seems to be another influx of patrons who don't understand our self-service computer sign-up or self-service copy machines today. How self-service can these things be if we have to explain them in painstaking detail to the patrons, or physically have to make the copies for them? :(
[i]Where is the "friction" section? [/i](italics = patron's actual words) I asked her for clarification . . . like two things rubbing together? [i]No, the "friction". [/i] Yes, friction? Like two things rubbing together? Or do you mean [b]fiction,[/b] like stories? Of course that's what it was . . . :roll:
I think I can make it. Only two more hours to go, then I get to see my girl again. Yeah! :D
Back to work . . . with some big changes.
12.02.03 (8:51 am) [edit]I don't normally write about personal stuff in this blog. When I started it, I planned to pretty much stick to job-related issues and stress relief. But, things have changed a lot in my life the past 48 hours.
During that time, I went from reasonably happy and semi-secure in my married life to separated and soon to be divorced. It's been a huge swing of the pendulum and I know that in the long run, I'm going to be happier for it, but it hurts so much right now.
This has been building for a long time, as my wife and I have had some problems over the past year. Up until Sunday, I honestly believed that we could work things out. However, there was a precipitating event that happened Sunday afternoon and I couldn't stay there with her any longer. I'm not going to go into details about what happened, because I don't want anything that I write here to be used against me later for the divorce, etc. I don't think it would, and my wife and I are (ironically?) trying to work together to separate amicably, but I need to protect myself if I'm going to do what's best for my daughter.
I don't want either of us to suffer hardships, though I know they're coming. I would prefer it if my daughter had as similar an environment at both my wife's place and mine as possible, so as to ease the transition and the shuttling back and forth. My wife and I have decided that joint custody will be the best and that we're not going to use our daughter as a weapon to hurt the other. We both need to focus on raising her the best we can, even though it's going to be in separate homes.
I know that my daughter is going to be okay. She's tough and she'll adjust. I'm thankful for the fact that she's 2 & 1/2 and that she doesn't really understand what's going on, except that she gets to sleep at two different places. She knows how much both my wife and I love her more than anything in the world.
All of this has made me do a lot of self-examination and made me realize that the job isn't worth working myself up over. I'm still going to write about the petty aggravations and the vast amounts of stupidity that I deal with every day here, but I'm not going to let it eat me up. The past two days have made me really thankful for what I do have, more than some made up Thanksgiving holiday ever did. I'm sure that everything will work out in the end.