Sunday, January 30, 2005

1:00 - 4:00 p.m.

What I'm doing between questions: Demand order.
Yesterday was busy--lots of people. That doesn't bode well for today being peaceful. Oh well, here we go...

1:00

* Tax forms
* Word proc
* Earthling [crusty old man, my favorite]
* Word proc
* South Beach Diet and cookbooks from Weight Watchers
* Tax forms
* Classical novelists, American [I name a few, he lights on Steinbeck, and heads to Fiction to check out our selection]
* Word proc
* County tax forms [don't have; should we??]
* Find someone named Stoner in Ohio [I couldn't make this up!]
* Word proc
* Encyclopedia volume with Scotland
* Publsher isn't working for one of the word proc people...[oh well]
* "Do we need to stop by everytime we want to use the Internet?" [no--and yes your adult card will work on a chidren's computer]
* Publisher folks need to buy a disc
* Queen Bees and Wannabes, and other ideas for about parenting a middle-school girl
It's 1:30! Yikes.
* Encyclopedia volume with Alaska
* Tax forms
* Encyclopedia volume 'M' [I'm sensing a theme here....]
* State tax form for non-residents
* [phone] Bibliographic information for books he left at school
* 8th-grade project on childhood cancer
* Word proc
* M volume dude needs another encyclopedia [I show him Britannica and warn him]
* "Why is my printer printing 'dirty'?" [I suggest printing from the main printer instead]
* Speaking of American authors: "Any books by Ayn Rand (spelled "Eyn") on his notepaper, which he took directly out of today's newspaper... [he takes Atlas Shrugged to wade through]

2:00

* Word proc
* Excel? [All the public PCs are taken, so...no]
* Pencil
* When will an internet terminal free up? [well, you could wait, or check upstairs, or....]
* Another Country
* "Icebreakers" for a party
* Can I give her more time on the net to do some legal stuff...? [I'm such a sucker...]
* Tax form 8889 & instructions [printed from their site, since we don't have any copies]
* Where did my paper print? and Can I have more time? [the latter just as his document gets deleted because he only gave me 2 minutes to find the password to do that the way it needed to be done]
* Headphones
* Tax forms
* How to cut and paste from Word to a form on the Internet...in theory, because he's not online right now
* Instructions for 1040 schedule D
* Three books on Italy for a little girl; everything we have is checked out [what a mess: her card's expired, plus it's blocked, AND the phone number on her record is wrong...and she's gone already]
* State tax forms--she really can't see them [because they're inside the instruction book]
* "Why is Word typing over everything when I go back to make corrections?" [Let me introduce you to the 'insert' key...]
* Medieval music examples for the vo-tech level high school kids [oy]
* How to do a bibliography for a local history book edited by one person....etc., etc.
* "Where can I log on to the Internet?" [Once a terminal becomes free, over there, but right now no place]

3:00

* Books on wolves
* Headphones [very quiet, non-English speaker--it takes me about 2 minutes to figure out what he wants...I'm a dope]
* "I've been waiting upstairs for an internet terminal, but..." [right there, there's one free, quick go get it!!]
* More bibliography help
* Lost card [I leave a note on the record and put it in the lost box]
* State tax forms [in the instruction booklet; he says thank you, then stops at the desk on the way out the door to whisper "thank you" since he yelled it before... ;-) ]
* Return headphones
* More help with bibliography boy--this time he wants to borrow a dime for a photocopy [I make a copy for him on our printer for free]
* Headphones
* Patron wants two books: "Birth of a Nation" [when I tell her we have the movie but not the book it was based on, she says, "It was a movie??"] and "Life in the Woods" by 'David Wallace Thoreau' [so I get her Walden and tell her it's the same thing...which it is]
* Quiet boy returns headphones
* Last set of headphones is returned
* "Why can't I get my floppy in to save on it?" [from a 6-year-old....]
* Bib. boy thinks he can type a 3-page paper in 5 minutes....bzzzz [I have to eject him]
* No one else seems to want to leave either.


Whew NUTS-busy day!