Friday

What I'm doing between questions: ILL requests and generally trying to keep myself mentally distracted.

9:00

• Dude needs help getting his friend to [nearby state] and out of dude's basement because dude's wife is getting increasingly annoyed with friend living in their basement -- fifteen minutes of trying to come up with suggestions for him, and generally listening to the dude vent. Another patron pokes he head around a pillar 10 feet away and sighs heavily before sitting back down at his computer....
• ....so once dude leaves, I ask The Sigher if he needs help. His reply: "What, did that guy just come in to socialize?" I reply that he needed help and it was a complicated situation (which this guy CERTAINLY could hear), and it is my job to help people. "He's been talking for 10 minutes!" ??? Well, people do talk.... "This is why I come in here early!" [???  WTF JUST HAPPENED?? Bah humbug to you too, asswipe *]
• Several reserve requests arrive from ILL person
• Railroad magazines ("wailwoad"--it's definitely early!) [Model Railroad is perfect, yay]
• Property tax bills for homes in sunbelt state [actually, first I looked up her card number, but eventually it just seemed easier to do the whole thing for her]-- she even pays me for printing without me having to remind her

10:00

• ...waiting for The Sigher to get all bent out of shape about two women working together on a computer across the reference area; there is instruction going on, and not particularly silently....
• Help with getting into Word [to type her annual Christmas letter, just like last year and, apparently, the year before that!]
• Local weekly paper
• Pay to print

3:00 in children's room

• The day hasn't improved since I left the desk this morning, so I'm just trying to hang on at this point
• "Why is my card blocked?" [no parent's name in Guardian field, and fines of more than $6]
• Worried 8- or 9-year-old notices her mom has left the room, can't find her, didn't hear her say she'd be back in "15 minutes"...is concerned, even though her stuff is all here  -- aah, here she comes!
• Bathroom key
• Those are crafts to take home -- "Can I take two?" 
• "How much was that fine?" asks the kid from earlier
• Keys for cleaning dude
• ...and back

4:00 in children's room

• There is card-playing going on at one of the tables across from me: Go Fish, I think
• ...they've moved on to War
• Just realized I'm freezing!!
• Bathroom key
• "Where do I return books?" [at circulation, which you walked past] Oh, duh. "What about my daughter's first library card picture?" [still hanging on the wall--he finds it]  "OK, good, now I'll go back over and return these and head to Santa's hut to get it warm for him and the kids tonight."  [I love living in a small town!!]

_____________

* Mind you, this hits a little harder today anyway, since at my review on Wednesday I was told to keep the chatter in the workroom down, and also to "treat the staff the way you treat the patrons" i.e., keep my anger in check. So, yeah, asswipe...you're lucky your a patron, or I guess I'd probably rip you to pieces. Cuz apparently I do that to staff.

Saturday

What I'm doing between questions: checking to be sure we have all the Man Booker short-listed titles (and winner), cleaning up the on-order material, and reading reviews.

1:00

• Pay to print
• Computer shut down [he actually accidentally punched the off button]
• Refesh time
• I'm instructed to "stay warm" by one of our regulars [who has sprouted a beard since I last saw him...oddly charming]
• Help with the scanner...picture coming up too dark [and the Queen of Technology--hah!--fixes it all up]

2:00

• [phone] Three items requested: we have one on the shelf, another is checked out, and the third hasn't been released yet so I do a request for purchase
• "Catholic" movies [for teens...er....]
• Look up card #, and can she ask for extra time if she needs it [blah blah, basically yes, unless...]
• [phone] Morality and moral controversies [uh, no, probably a college library...]
• Borrow the USB drive
• Librarian H warns me that she sent a woman here to use a study room because the quiet area she was in suddenly was invaded by a group of kids working on a project ; she arrives, grumpy as promised

3:00

• [Big City Nearby] magazine from this August [so much easier to get to these now that we've moved them to the reference area]
• A flock of baby Mormons arrive....
• [phone] "Amazing Grace" the DVD [is here, and I set it aside for her]
• ...at the same time "Dead Poet's Society" [our copy has disappeared, so she's out of luck :(]
• Renew expired nearby-library card...front desk [takes awhile to sort this out due to language issues, but we're good]
• Pay to print
• "Do you have any hard candies?" [his throat is dry]
• Help with photocopying
• Pay to print
• VERY complicated question about a college paper on the character traits and ethics of Katniss Everdeen

4:00

• Pay to print
• Refresh patron time (and calm him down, since the guy next to him--the hard candy dude--is coughing...so...MOVE, buddy!...and he does, without me having to say it)
• Very Loud Woman needs Debbie Newcomb [i.e. Macomber] books
• Discussion with Children's Librarian post-Día de los Muertos program about cleanup and her after-work activities [mine included shoving food in my piehole and going to sleep]
• ...and the panic of closing commences

Saturday

What I'm doing between questions: checking the catalog for dead people--I'm only 10 months behidn.

9:00 in kids' room
The entire children's room has been overhauled in the last day and a half--I knew about some of it when I left work on Thursday, but today it's totally rearranged, except for the books. And, naturally, the only email from the children's librarian mentions one part of the whole thing, something that's been ongoing for several days this week. So, yay: where are the puppets? I dunno. Where are the magazines? I dunno. Where are the intermediate-level activity kits? I dunno. [OK, actually, I do know, but only because I've prowled around and been given a heads-up by another staff member]

• Easy books about occupations [they are now with the occupation....]
• The Calling (Tiernan) [our copy isn't there, so I place a hold on it]
• Woman from church comes in with a new pink cast (replacing the former over-the-elbow cast of two weeks ago); she's looking for books for her grandkids

10:00 in kids' room

• Discussion of teacher cards and dual-language and checkout limits....
• Look up library card number for SAM use
• Oh carp that twerpy kid is here--it's his sister who needed her card # [the freckle-faced one in this post]
• Librarian J wanders in with new magazines to shelve--and doesn't know where the magazines are now 
• Bathroom keys for cleaning dude ... and back
• Twerpy kid, his sister, and mom leave [he'd been pestering the grandpa/grandson on their computer--thank God for other kids' patient grandpas!]

11:00

• [phone] Do we have public computers with floppy drives? [no, but we do have an external floppy drive that patrons can borrow]
• I've already had to move three public-area chairs that apparently Librarian J didn't notice were completely out of their places, and while I'm up a do a quick walk-thru to get the lay of the land; there's a guy reading the paper with one of his shoes off ... lol
• Of Mice and Men [for a h.s. kid--and it's here!--who just finished 1984 and loved it. YAY!]
• Help with setting up Excel page for bill payment [the gentleman calls me "Señorita" thus earning massive cred for being blind to all the gray in my hair... ;-)]
• Copier not giving change--out of order sign on it

12:00

• Cleaning guy wheels past with mops, et al. [I suppose cleaning the bathrooms at the same time you mop them would cause some kind of short circuit?]
• Oh, really?! BOTH copiers are out?! NIIIIIIICE. Good thing the scan station is working, unless you need legal-size
•  ...and then I got swamped

Wednesday

What I'm doing between questions: checking the roof for worsening leaks, and various "do we have this?" lists against our catalog. [I also have vertigo today, so I'm trying not to move my head too much or too fast. And I'm crabby, too.]

12:00

• "How do I get onto the Internet?" [new card--just sit down and go]
• Please, Librarian F: talk squawk a little louder because we can't actually hear EVERY word you're saying in your office!
• Sign in for study room (x2, oddly) 
• One of those guys needs a guest pass for the internet
• "What's my password?" [I show her]
• Help with saving a screenshot and emailing it to himself
• Add money to SAM account
• Fax [of course the new system doesn't send the confirmation email right, so I end up sending the fax the old way, which of course works fine]
• Guest internet pass
• Help getting online  [these last three are all going at once]
• Paperclip?

1:00

• A whole flurry of stuff: YA prizes, help someone picking out a phone at Radio Shack's website, patron leaving a resume for Libarian T, money on SAM to print, patron looking at job ads, signup for study room  == all within 5 minutes
• Two guest passes for internet [clearly, there are a ton of people here today from not-here]
• Help printing
• Help with printing (same person) and logging off
• "My sessions are ?disabled?? But I haven't used up all my time today?" [all fixed--SAM doesn't like if you computer-hop too quickly]
• Another flurry: two phone calls (horrible, horrible connection on both!), two people paying for print, some others needing to scan, GRE books [luckily, Librarian H happens by and can take on the scanning part while I do the rest]

Saturday

So, yeah, it's been awhile. I've been buried, both from the cataloging standpoint and while out at various public desks. Busy times at the library. I'll see if I can keep up with this today since it'll be interesting to have a snapshot of a rainy Saturday during Summer Reading Program time.

Also, I'm setting this all up prior to the library's opening, so that helps. Lights in the building flash on at 8:43--yes, I have been sitting in the (relative) dark in here since 8:15.

_________________________________________________________________________

What I'm doing between questions: checking the most recent Death Dates list(s) against our catalog, and checking my buying areas of our collection against the latest Public Library Core Collection (a.k.a. PLCAT). 

9:00 in the children's room

• Two girls arrive, looking for the "Horse Diaries" series [no one in our consortium owns, so I do a request and get a name to contact when we get them]
• They are also looking for their "first library card" pictures in the bin--Mom eventually finds them because they do look different from a year ago ;-)
• "Where can I look something up in the catalog?" [I point him to the dedicated computers, rather than the Internet stations]
• Pencil [same guy]
• "How many items on a specific subject can I check out?" [same guy]
• Nope, gotta check out everything at the front desk [same guy--really, there are other people here, but they're doing their own things]

10:00 in the children's room

• Page comes in here to run this morning's picklist
• One of my favorite patrons--whose wife has the same disease as the one my sister had--passes through with a cheerful greeting
• How to look up children's books in the catalog
• Sign up an adorable little guy for SRP
• How to get online, and what the games computers have on them [yup: games]
• Prizes for two little ones...

11:00 ...ok, I really thought I would make it today, but--like everyone else in town--I just don't feel good, so I'm going home early (again)

12:00

Monday and Tuesday

What I'm doing between questions on Tuesday: trying to find the email I left for the schedule person about being gone tonight. I guess I didn't actually do that, even though we talked about it. Shit. At least she's in a good mood today... whew

MONDAY 1-2
not crazy-busy, but didn't have time to log into Blogger or refgrunt at all.

12:00 in the children's room

• Pen, and (later) stapler
• Everyone using the computers in here is an adult. :(
• ...and that's it...whee

Monday

What I'm doing between questions:

9:00 in the children's room

• Oops, didn't realize I was "on" so nothing is set up. But since there's no one in here but me and one of the pages (who doesn't know which computers to turn on), it's all good
• And that page brings me a book that she found on the shelf that doesn't have the same call number as the one on the picklist....
• ....which leads to me trying to fix it and Millennium taking a solid 5 minutes to bring up the record...
• Maintenance guy comes to check on one of the bathroom door locks [email from me yesterday about it being loose and acting weird, according to the Admin Asst who didn't want to email him]
• And why is the craft-room door locked??
• OK, bathroom doors are fine
• Some people with small children wander through...

10:00 in the children's room

• More people wandering in and out 
• [phone] Renew materials [@10: 39]

Saturday

What I'm doing between questions: email, RSS feeds, and Public Library Catalog.

9:00 in the children's room

• Two former pages who are now engaged are here picking out books for her pre-school class. So good to catch up with them, and OMG I am old--they are fully adults, been out of college several years....

10:00 in the children's room

• More art in the adult section... [x 2 or so]
• Cleaning guy ... blah blah blah
• As I move on, I leave 3 teen/tweeners in here shoulder surfing on one computer...and they are (so far) quiet

11:00

• Naturally, Librarian J did absolutely none of the reserves placed yesterday or today..... :-\
• Two birthing books for a very pregnant woman (her sixth) [one we have, one is an ILL]
• No open computers, except for two that show open but have people online [SAM=FUBAR]
• Werewolf needs her print money back [blah blah blah--her card is wet when she hands it to me, but I give her her $.40 back]
• More people waiting for open computers....

12:00

• Werewolf needs maps of the Austro-Hungarian Empire [printy printy printy] and Europe from the 12th century [more printy]
• Friendly dude and I both suggest the other go outside and enjoy the weather [he's leaving; I can't go yet]
• Pay to print x3
• Classified ads and pencil/paper
• Pencil/paper
• Woman yells from nearby computer: "Help! Can you help me?" [well take off your earphones FIRST dumbass and no there really isn't any other way to turn up the sound...maybe the headphones are broken]
• Help logging on to SAM

Thursday (a.k.a. my Friday)*

What I'm doing between questions: checking Book Award winners announced this month against our catalog

1:00 in the children's room

• "There's more art in the adult area..." [a young man--possibly just out of high school--looking at the art; he already had seen what was there. oh well]
• Overheard from across the room: "Just go away! Do something!" [adult on computer to child, probably about age 5....nice parenting skills there]
• Why is it that "SHHHH!" from a parent is nearly always louder than the kid "making noise"??
• [phone] "I'm trying to log into My Media Mall...." [whoa-up, let me get you to Reference]
• [phone] ...for the Admin Asst.

*After Friday, I will work my occasional 7-days-straight shift. Gee but I love those.

Wednesday

What I'm doing between questions: checking in Public Library Catlog 2013 for what we own. In my collection sections only.

11:00

• Just as I arrive, a woman needs to save her resume so she can attach it to an email. Librarian M sets her up with our Reference thumb drive on her way to her office.
• Piano music books
• Do we know anyone who repairs computers? [hello, Yellow Pages] She says the internet won't let her online because of all the buttons she pushed [I can't make anymore sense out of it than that, so I tell her it probably won't be too hard to fix, and send her on her way]
• Homeless dude...order of protection...needs to chat...45 minutes later...[we have absolutely nothing on orders of protection from any perspective, and anyway, since he's the one who has to stay away, we wouldn't be real likely to have much in the first place; poor, young, naive guy (who's probably telling me a Big Fat Lie)]

I was on desk at least an hour yesterday, but it must have been busy, since I didn't have time to log in, nor do I remember much of anything except a prolonged trip to the Local History area where I had to explain from scratch what we've got and how to use it.

Monday

What I'm doing between questions:

12:00

• Three proctored tests have arrived in the mail; I have no idea what to do with them, but I read the (limited) instructions and hope for the best
• Paper/pencil
• Three books, only one of which is in our system; he decides to wait to order it until after he's done with the two he's got now
• Dude shows me photos in a book on Ireland that are in a book on Ireland he has at home which wasp published 120 years ago....
• Deaf woman asks if her email was sent "automatically" when the screen showed an airplane. Of course she's logged out now, so I have no idea but I say I think so
• I ask gentleman 25 yards from me to please turn down his headphones as I can hear it from the desk; he says he would love to but doesn't know how [ah, well, then...I turn it down]
• There are still MORE baby Mormons here today. Two I vaguely recognize, maybe, but the others are  new faces [how can one tell a baby Mormon without seeing a nametage? men: white shirt, tie, black pants & shoes, occasionally a suit or sports jacket, and very conservative haircut. women: long skirt, conservative haircut, usually a white shirt (but not always), and usually a cardigan or jacket. Both: using the internet endlessly to update their mission reports. No Facebook, some emailing.]
• Local history intro/tutorial

*1:00

• Refresh the new baby Mormons' time
• Fax
• We have a full on chair dancer...sitting straight in front of my computer screen. She's also occasionally singing along with YouTube. AND I can totally hear the song. ...sigh, I'll be over there to shush her shortly
• Librarian M comes out from the workroom and says she'll cover from 2-4 today because 5 hours is ridiculous, and 4 hours straight is unreasonable for anyone
• Now one of the babies is watching some kind of loud video. It is far too quiet in here, I guess.
• Friend stops to chat
• "Not sure where we found these on the shelves..." [we'll do that for you]
• The singer/dancer knows I'm watching her...but she's really engrossed....nevermind--I've told her not to sing along
• Meanwhile, another regular comes in with his own earbuds on 11....
• Paper/pencil
• Librarian M looking for III's help page finds only help for their new platform, not the one we're on. Nice.
• Refresh older baby Mormon's time
• How to spell "nephew"
• Where to print
• Last week's girl who didn't receive her test for us to proctor is back asking for all our contact info again
• Cooking books, cooking dictionaries, but couched as "Do you have any cooking books?" [uhm, yeah]
• Pay to print

2:00  Librarian M took pity on me
3:00  I asked Librarian C to cover this hour so I could catalog at least a few of the things with holds

*6:00 in the children's room

• I forgot this was "opening night" for the school district's spring art display. Consequently, it is absolutely MAYHEM in here: lots of kids and families, lots of questions, and the new children's librarian is getting to meet people that I can introduce her to as they wander through. However, as far as I'm concerned 7:00 cannot come soon enough. Probably 25 reference questions and requests for the bathroom keys in the first half hour. By 6:50, it has settled down to just plain busier-than-usual

*These were my originally-scheduled desk hours today. One librarian called in sick. There are 5 other librarians at work today. Are you kidding me, Schedule Person?!

Tuesday

What I'm doing between questions: reading Autocat posts, etc.

7:00 in the children's room

• Really sweet boy asks if he and his sister/friend/whatever can go in the craft room and look at the fish tank from that side [I say no, but I will probably take them in there in a sec when they're done with the Peeps viewing; it's pretty quiet in here]
• ...and now I have fishtank eyes and feel mildly motion sick (ugh) [but they were VERY appreciative and nice]
• Help with printing
• Quick walk-through nets me one lost library card at the printer [I call to let her know I found it] and not another soul in the room with me

8:00 in the children's room

• Help with formatting and printing
• Teen girl walks in talking (rather loudly of course) on her phone: "Becausse it ISSSS. That's what I saaaiddd...." and uptalking [welcome to town, Kim Kardashian...ugh] ; ooh and then we get to hear whining, too, and Spanglish [she is 35 feet from me and I can hear every . word . "...the whi'e onnne....aaate-forrrtyyyy-fiive! Check in da miiiiicowa'e ovvennnn" argh]
• ...and she leaves, still on the phone, clearly in a mild panic: "Wha' am aaaIii suppoz to doooo?"
• Time for final clean up so I'm shutting down.

Saturday

What I'm doing between questions: six-year-old cleanup project that was run prior to The Migration That Didn't Happen. I work on this whenever the guilt gets to be too much.

9:00 with the kids

• First kid in trots past ["slowly..." I say] to grab 'his' computer [he's a regular I'm pretty sure he's autistic]
• Second kid in walks in quite strangely--half-limb, half tip-toe
• Tip-toe needs bathroom key...and it's back
• Grandpa (?) and kid come in [another regular duo]
• Father (?) daughter pair pass by saying hi as they do so
• ...and can't remember their SAM passwords [they are the same: 1234]
• Help finding "Award Winners Shelf"--oops, wrong library [we find Eragon on the regular shelves under the author's name, of course. ;-) ]
• 8-year-old has two CDs: Neil Young and ICP. o_O  He says he's going to keep them in his drawer when he isn't listening to them so his grandpa won't find them and take them away [I like his grandpa already, whoever he is!] Cute, freckle-faced kid with a cowlick...
• Grandpa & kid need to print his artwork, which turns out to be pretty awesome

10:00 with the kids

• And suddenly there are loads of people in here, all behaving nicely. Nice!
• Kleenex [I steel a box from Circ]
• Bathroom key [and mom needs to help with key]
• Help listening to music on computers [freckle dude; and he can't because he needs internet access to do that, or a games computer, but he doesn't have access for the net, and the games computers are all in use]
• OMG OMG OMG: Eric Estrada! [no, actually, first name is spelled differently and he's about 10 years old; cute, but in a wholly different way]
• Mr. E needs to print...his dad wants me to break a $100 bill for a 50-cent print job 
• Freckle-Face's mom is here yelling at Tip-Toe Girl to leave...ah, yeah, gotta love families
• OK, lots of work with Mr. E later, he has his Lamborghini photos
• And I pull down First Library Card photos from February while I'm waiting for the next print-job

11:00

• OK, I'm seeing a lot of our regulars here
• ...and the first question is one of them: local weekly paper and People [which he declines because he's as tired of Wills and Kate as I am]
• Tax forms
• Guest pass
• Help with printing
• Werewolf is paying for stuff she printed a couple of weeks ago [technically, I printed it for her, but she's been worried about paying for it...] and some new stuff
• Pay to print (guest pass)
• Stapling tax forms
• Local paper comes back
• Tax forms
• Armor pictures for the werewolf [she's going to draw them and try to sell them at this summer's Ren Faire]
• Dude is talking to himself...and a patron asks if he's talking to her which vaguely confuses him: "I'm lookin' for somebody"

12:00

• Massive number of things all at once: help with specific songs/CDs for a class [one we have, one no one has], Thompson v. Oklahoma information [they execute minors in OK? Not OK!], pay to print, nice romantic fiction for a woman who is a caregiver (for the patient) [she had a list of authors: Snelling, Carr, etc.], other stuff I don't remember... Oh, and someone left a flash drive in one of the computers and StickMan returned it
• Pay to print
• Help printing
• Check in on how the court case girl is doing
• Babysitting dude's stuff in one of the study rooms; technically, I guess I'm watching to see nobody goes in there while he's peeing
• Chopin Nocturne (op. 9 no. 2) [we do have it; helps if you aren't spelling it "nocturnal" lol]
• [long quiet spell while I catch up on Autocat posts...sigh]
• Pencil and paper
• Pay to print

Tuesday

What I'm doing between questions: sorting the deadly Bottom Shelf books, many of which are now in OCLC after waiting a few weeks since we got them. Others will still need updating or full-on cataloging. Yay. And, later, checking Bookletters against our catalog to see what we need to order.

12:00 in the children's room

• Boxcar Children #2 [we don't own] for mom with hyper-allergic sensitivity child. I've talked to her at length before; this little girl is allergic to hand-sanitizer among other things--technically, she's allergic to alcohol, I think--and when I say allergic, I mean quick-time anaphylaxis when she's exposed. She's now home-schooled.
• Colored pencils [for a grown man who literally can't wait 2 minutes for me to walk into the workroom and back before he's harassing the front desk about "who's supposed to be in the kids' room" -- douche. Buy your own $2 box of colored pencils. Srsly]
• OK, seriously, when a room is closed and dark, why would you let your 2-year-old go inside? And, conversely, Librarian C, why are you annoyed with ME when I ask if I should shoo them out--they aren't here THAT early? And if you'd checked in before everyone got here you wouldn't be running around spazzing because a book is missing....

1:00 in the children's room

• Crashing noise of books falling...o_O...turns out to be a bag falling over and the books falling out. Whew: NOT a shelf emptying itself.
• Bathroom key ... and back
• Who writes the "Little Critter" books [Mercer Mayer]
• Books in Spanish for little kids [yup, over here]
• Lots of voting on the Peeps

7:00 in the children's room

• Don't even have time to sit down: "Do you have Harry Potter movies?" [yep, and I walk her over there]
• Librarian K is in here looking for the external floppy drive--no clue where it's ended up
• Pen
• Extra headphones
• Bathroom key ... and they start monkeying around in the doorway so I get to do Teh Glare
• Key is back
• Electricity, magnetism, and simple machines [for a science project, so I show her the science project books too]
• There's a little guy, maybe 8?, sitting at the table in front of me with a stack of 25 or so picture books. He's working his way through all of them, sorting them very carefully, looking through them. Keeps clearing his throat like it's sore, but otherwise absolutely silent and engrossed. Adorable. Restoring my faith in humanity and children

8:00 in the children's room

• Dictionary
• And it's back
• The room is completely empty except for me.......
• And the room is tidied and ready to close...at 8:53, which means some loser will walk in at 8:58 in a panic, but I'm closing down anyway

I've backed off doing this blog a bit in the last few weeks. It takes more time than it looks like and frankly is frustrating when I'm swamped in Tech Services to be plopped in public so much where I can't catalog. I mean, look at my schedule today, for instance: I'm covering for Head of Circ and another circ person who are on vacation. WTH--how is that financially reasonable!? /rant

Friday

What I'm doing between questions: seriously, a headache? Just when I need to be perky? I'm working on the latest LCSH updates list (from last month, right on schedule, LoC).

1:00 kids' room

• Kindergarten visits are going on today; two classes here right now
• Help finding a couple of picture books

Thursday

What I'm doing between questions: 

1:00 with all my best friends in the kids' room

• First non-staff member to walk through--at 1:40--is our beat cop doing a walk-through

2:00 in the kids' room

• School's out, and here come some people
• Help with printing
• Voting for Peeps displays is VERY hard this year: lots of entries, many many good ones
• Bathroom key ... and back
• We have a screamer in the play area, who sounds much like a screech owl (and occasionally like someone vomiting) -- quite the range
• [phone] Renew books
• [phone] Closing hours during the week
• Sunday hours are scheduled for fall and mine are now on my calendar...and the hunt for a sub on my birthday commences
• Help the custodial guy move the craft room table
• Bathroom key

Wednesday

What I'm doing between questions:

12:00 guess where...

• ...yeah so glad I was in here for an hour...

Tuesday

What I'm doing between questions: collection development

6:00 in the children's room

• How to print in color
• Pay to print
• Headphones returned
• Can't get online [...cuz you owe $11 in fines]
• Pay to print
• Needs the headphones back after all
• 
  

7:00

• Finish up proctoring a test
• Test dude wants programming books
• The Lost Boy [popular title for several books, but she wants the Pelzer one, of course]
• Reset time [srsly? we're only open another half hour...ok, then]

Monday

What I'm doing between questions:

12:00 in the children's room

• Homeschooling journals and other resources [lengthy conversation about this]
• Author of Dork Diaries [and lengthy conversation about Lexile scores and reading levels]

1:00

• Pay to print [and interrupts a conversation I'm having with Librarian C about series titles for YA books...grr...also, dude, wearing a plaid hoodie under a nice wool coat with a Sinatra hat (with feather in headband) is NOT a look!]
• ...and then he wants to reimbursed for blank pages [since they are actually completely blank, I do refund the money]
• Patron I chatted with for quite awhile a week or so ago [pseudo mother-in-law] stops to say hi
• Local weekly paper
• Tax form [I print it for him]
• Weekly paper is back
• Pictures of his great-grandchildren shown to me by one of our regulars, whom I now know is in his mid-80s [and is online here daily]

Saturday

What I'm doing between questions: praying for sinus relief, and working on end-of-month stuff

9:00 with the kids

• Where are the Spanish fiction books? [they do move around...sigh]
• GED books [I direct her to the adult section, but she heads to circ instead...]
• Where to check out books
• [phone] Hours today

10:00 still with the kids

• [phone] Renew book
• Pufferfish, specifically in encyclopedias [yes, this I can do!]
• Pokemon DVDs

11:00 Librarian T took pity on me and did my hour

12:00 back with the kids instead of at Ref thanks to Librarian T again

• Pay to print

Thursday

What I'm doing between questions: waking up, trying to kill the sinus headache, and poring over subject heading changes; and email.

9:00 in the children's room

• I'm not quite late this morning, but pretty close. Not an issue since there is not a soul in here.
• At 9:30 someone comes in to print something from the computers in front...and leaves
• New IT guy has questions 
• New residents looking around...

10:00 in the children's room

• Raising chickens
• Book two in the Prydain Chronicles [yes of course we have Lloyd Alexander books... ;-)]
• Anne of Avonlea [our copy is checked out, but we have it on CD]
• All three of these questions are from the same family--sensing a theme?
• We have bathrooms in here for kids [I catch a mom leaving for the adult area with her toddler]
• ...and she's back with the key
• Printing procedures
• "Religious" Easter DVDs

I was out at Reference, back and forth, much of the afternoon backing up the New Boss when stuff he wasn't sure about occurred.

5:00

• Sewing machine ratings, etc.
• The Monkees [our disc is checked out and he doesn't want to hold it, or get anything from another library...poor guy, totally tweaking, with a broken/injured foot to boot]
• Help getting online + tax forms/efiling, etc.
• Refresh time immediately for efiler
• Refresh time for someone else too
• More tax questions, from another very antsy guy [is everyone tweaking but me?]
• "Where is the print button?" [stupid Microsoft and their control button or whatever they call it]
• Help with efiling (same patron)
• Next Margaret Maron book on CD after the one the patron just finished

Thursday Wednesday

What I'm doing between questions: steaming. Librarian J called in with a headache on a day when there are already three librarians on vacation. Her 8-hour shift starts at noon, but she called at 9  to tell us she would have the headache all day. Right. Bitch.

11:00

• Pay to print
• "Does everything delete when I log out?" [yes, your ICE stuff will go away...not the usual ICE demog either]
• "What's my PIN?" [you make it up]
• Help printing the St. Joseph prayer [and much chattering from him in between]
• Pay to print
• Stapler and job folder
• Register new patron in SAM born in 1935 and sharp as a tack with computers
• Pen, or pencil [golf pencils are fine, yay]
• "Washroom?" 
• Opening an Apple document on our (Microsoft) computers [I have no idea--nothing I try helps, and he's willing to wait till he gets to work so it's all good]
• Extend time for new SAM user
• Pay to print, and do we fax, and where can I make a copy
• Refresh time

12:00

• Fax
• Refresh time
• Can I look up his card number? [No because he's not our patron, but I give him a daypass]
• Fax woman comes back looking for 50 Shades of Grey; "everyone says I should read it" [and voilà we have one on the shelf!! wow]
• Reference station #26 not printing [I go reboot it and leave a note for staff]
• Where's the fiction section?
• Request slips
• Day pass for SAM
• Help with printing
• [phone] IRS publication 525 [no we don't have it, but it's online...]
• Director walks past the study rooms and then comes to tell me that there's a guy in there using a typewriter, which he obviously brought in himself [wow!]
• Pencil and paper
• Online test proctoring [help!! I don't know the password]
• Fax
• Add money to SAM account
• ....where the heck is the Director NOW--he's supposed to be here so I can eat? [he forgot]

3:00

• ...and back. Proctoring is over thank God and I'm hoping the IRS dude has been and gone....
• James Blish Star Trek books [ours have all gone away, and I can't ILL them because his card is outside our system]
• And no, I can't make you a card, you'll need to go up to circ [where they, I hope, will break the news that if you have a library card in another town you can't get one here, and by telling us you're homeless, you won't get a card here either, not for checking out books, sorry]
• Add money and time to SAM account
• [meanwhile, I'm emailing with colleagues about "Hogwarts" being changed by LC from an "imaginary place" to an "imaginary organization"]
• Ah, the dude needing a library card and James Blish books is the typist--he's leaving with his giant box
• [phone] Renew materials [why was this sent to me??]
• Day pass for internet
• Problem with card...blah blah...needs to pay down fine...I send him to circ
• [phone] Patron was notified that an ebook he put on hold is available, but when he checked his account, the wrong book is showing up and the one he wants is still unavailable...I have no idea, which is bad considering that this guy is one of the Town Pests
• Today's papers
• ...and she's back because she needs the classifieds
• ...and also Sunday's classifieds
• There is NO Kleenex here, or in the workroom :(
• Refresh time
• Movie from another consortium library, which I can't get cuz he has the wrong kind of card, so I explain the whole deal to him; "we're working on it" he says... whatever that means
• Refresh time x2
• Today's local paper

4:00

• All the papers are back
• Guest pass
• Today's classifieds (of course, I actually put them away for a change)
• Guest pass not working [I reboot the computer]
• IRS dude arrives {bummer} asking what looks to me like a self-evident question, but it's not obvious to him, so we get him set up to use the internet to read Pub. 575
• ....aaaaand spppaaazzzzz occurs -- that is, it got terribly busy

Monday, post-vacation

What I'm doing between questions: checking our ordered items to see if I missed any that are actually on the shelves.

1:00

• Lots of DVD TV shows for chatty patron who totally reminds me of my mother-in-law in all the good ways
• Head of Circ here to collect money for deposit
• Pay to print
• "Is this (Mortal something or other) the first in the series?" [honey, it's the ONLY in the series...]
• Pay to print
• How to work the printer, and then send a fax
• Pay to print
• The Social Worker is definitely in today...more life-stories in the past 40 minutes than I've heard in a awhile
• Can't download Amazon MP3 Downloader software onto our computers, so yeah...bring a flash drive next time and maybe it'll work...
• Fax
• Help logging in [she just forgot to hit 'enter'], and then help getting into email too

2:00

• Reading a local listserv about cell-phone policies while watching one of the regular (nice) patrons run back and forth from computer to study room as he sorts something out online with a ?credit card? or something
• Propagation of Venus fly-traps, not using Wikipedia [I hate profs]
• Books on hearing, deafness, etc. [we have...two...grrr]
• [phone] When is the next Intro to the Internet class? [no clue--the schedule is only updated through the end of March]
• [The] Invisible Man [the one by Wells, not Ellison, and yes we have it for the young man]
• Color in interior decorating

Saturday

What I'm doing between questions: downloading orders, checking next month's Bookletters, and generally keeping out of the way of the BIG NOISY PROGRAM going on from 10 to 3 today.

9:00 in the children's room

• Help with printing [ah, yes, yesterday was St. Baldrick's Day...]
• Easter books + CD sets [yes, but...this rack is all Spanish...yeah, the English ones are on that rack]
• Circulation's money drawer key is MIA [see above re BIG NOISY PROGRAM that involved clearing the whole circ desk off last night so the caterers could set up food stations on it. Yes, this program is Mayhem Incarnate]
• Highlighter
• Volunteers are trickling in ... and chatting
• Cleaning guy is cleaning the cleaned bathrooms [sigh] and chatting
• Yeah, keeping this up-to-date today is going to be impossible. I'm thinking "Monet" rather than "Warhol"
• More people start arriving for the program...noise level is increasing
• CD woman stops to say she can't read or write but she likes stories that's why she's taking 9 sets home...and she loves our library [she is LD, by the way, but quite nice]
• ...it has begun...

10:00 in the children's room

• [phone] Cataloger from another library in our consortium calling because her director wants her to transcribe ALL the contents from the Harvard Classics series. Here's the contents for the "Chaucer to Gray" volume. Yeah, this director is clinical
• "Sleuth or Dare" series for kids [we don't own--I do order requests for them, thankfully only three books so far]
• "DAD! This [section of the program] is COOL! [gotta love that]
• Bathroom keys are in and out and there's a LOT of chitchat with custodial dude...

11:00

• The Prizewinning Skill spot is near the Reference Desk, so I get to hear a lot of "No, I won, really" "No you did NOT; you have to do it [according to the rules]" etc.]
• Look up PIN number for internet
• Just exactly how ignorant do you have to be to walk BEHIND a staff desk (a four-sided area) without realizing it?
• Pay to print x2
• Day of the week for 11/28/12
• Flurry of fubar'd internet passwords
• If former-Librarian L comes for the program, Librarian J has something to give her and I'm supposed to tell her (L) if I see her
• Recorder + piano music (scores) [uhm, we have each individually, but not together, but he's pretty happy with what I did find]
• Fax x 2
• Werewolf in need of "tunic" [i.e., Teutonic] knights information...that she hasn't already printed off and read...omg 
• Then a discussion of appropriate scoring for the program going on ensues between werewolf and her son
• Scratch paper
• [phone] Who wrote The Hippopotamus? [7 letters--yes for a crossword--I think it's T.S. Eliot's poem, not a book]

12:00

• [I have now finished page one (of three) of the April Bookletters list, which I began looking at over an hour ago]
• Dude sits down at a computer and starts muttering about noise. I tell him it's going to be loud today because of the program and he says sarcastically, "That's a smart idea" while shaking his head. Dude, you can always come back tomorrow when it will be slightly quieter....
• Graphic novels [what age?] for teens [back to the mass of (noisy) people by the front door]
• "This is the noisiest this library will ever be" [yeah, while we're open anyway, lol]
• "The one day you won't shush us" [only if the adults start screaming, lol]
• Yes [that happened so long ago that I forgot what "Yes" was for]
• [phone] Tax forms
• Crabby dude finished up and left while I was running around
• Tax forms (same woman as was on the phone)
• [phone] Where to pay city water bill? [CityHall, and there's a slot in the side door for when they are closed]
• Can I turn on the fireplace in the reading room [absolutely!]
• Prizewinner shows off the car he won -- woot [I think it's the kid who made me a crown several weeks ago]
• Is Librarian J here? [yeah, but she's eating lunch...so the woman takes it upon herself to check her office...ok, then]
• Pay to print
• Notary [not a single one of the five on staff are here today]
• Current Reader's Digest
• Black pen

Thursday

What I'm doing between questions: cutting out large bunnies for storytime

1:00 in the children's room

• The new director just told me that he'll be at the Reference Desk alone for two hours this afternoon, so he "may" be calling me [yeah, I'll find something unobtrusive to do in the nonfiction section near the desk..."may" my Aunt Fanny]
• There's a little guy hooting while he's playing; it's quite relaxing to listen to hooting while I work....
• Bathroom key (the hooter)

Wednesday

What I'm doing between questions: the printer went crazy last night and printed a lot of gobbledegook pages, so I'm sorting the gooky pages apart from the clean ones to reuse

12:00

• When I first get out here, Librarian B is giving out permanent guest-passes to a couple [cuz, yeah, I suck: I was late]
• Drums, specifically tuning
• [phone] Baron von [Werewolf's last name] in Luxembourg...blah blah [I dig up something that she wants me to print so that's good]
• [phone] Test proctoring
• Renew time for the guest-pass couple

2:00

• "Habemus Papam!"  Not that we know who, or what name he's chosen
• Dora the Explorer Spanish for kids CDs [yes, they're here]
• ABC and 123 books [well, grandma is at least trying to educate the baby, even if she does pronounce  it "liberry"]
• Historical fiction for a ten-year-old
• Bathroom key
• Board-book grandma stops to chat about the books she's got
• Both bathroom keys are back (one went out while I was looking for historical fiction)
• Paper clip?
• Mr. Popper's Penguins [yup on the shelf]
• The new Pope is 76. Uhm. Is the Vatican eventually going to run out of Oldies?
• [phone] Can't log into patron record... [I change password and she tries again, successfully, and now is changing her password back to whatever she had]
• No price on overdue book [it went out on the fly and we don't enter prices in that case so...]

Tuesday

What I'm doing between questions: leftover item requests from yesterday and this morning, and then checking a list I created this morning of materials added to the catalog by [library that doesn't have a cataloger on staff and it shows]. This is in response to the email I got this morning from them indicating they didn't realize their bib records aren't up to snuff: "Can you send us a copy of the criteria regarding 'quality of record'." Uhm, dumbass, that's why we have meetings, and training sessions and lists of rules...oh, but wait, you haven't been to a meeting in 6 months. Out of the first 75 records on that list, 37 are screwed up. The other half have been fixed by other libraries when we've added our copies, or they just got lucky with OCLC records.

3:00

• Help with copier
• IT guy is replacing all the computers under the giant light fixture that just got a new bulb
• Dude emailed a request for the audio & book version of a specific Bible [uhm, no, there is no such thing in that version, sorry--email to him to explain it all since a call would just get way too complex]
• Pay to print
• It's blizzarding outside: third Tuesday straight, though this one wasn't "promo'd"
• More help with copier (same person)
• Royal land patents and Commonwealth land grants...Commonwealth of Virginia [ok, who's the crackhead who took this request? Like Virginia's gonna ILL this too us?]
  
• Read-alikes for The Time-Traveler's Wife and/or The Help [ugh thank God for Novelist that boots up my brain and I suggest A Discovery of Witches and Jennifer Chiaverini's books...and show the husband how to get into Novelist himself so he can show his wife]
• Guest pass
• [phone] Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet [yup, here, now on hold shelf for patron]
• Pay to print
• Today's classifieds
• Look up library card number...which is expired, and her new number isn't in SAM, so....ok done

4:00 in with teh kidz

• It's a madhouse in here when I arrive
• Mom From Hell from last Friday is here, along with S holding at least 4 empty puppet bags and dealing with several young middle-schoolers
• "Dork Diaries" series [yup]
• Dora the Explorer books [yup]
• Dick & Jane books [yup--and please don't suck on the giant lizard puppet's tail...]
• Lots of random stuff strewn everywhere on the floor
• Pretty much everyone clears out by 4:15 [I'm that scary just sitting here]
• Girl-bookmarks, i.e., not the free Jack the Giant Slayer movie ones [that's what we've got, sorry]
• I freak out a mom-friend by saying I just saw her son--thinking she was here looking for him [she's expecting me to say something like, "...and he was misbehaving..." but he wasn't]
• Graphic novels
• Tail-sucker says "Whoops!" when I remind him about the tail sucking [lol--he's adorable]
• Beginning readers in Spanish
• [phone] Va calling to say she'll be late
• Books for babies? [I explain that he can check out whatever he wants...]
• MUCH quieter when I leave at the end of my shift

Monday [grey and grody outside]

What I'm doing between questions:

1:00

• Admin Asst. comes out to close a file--which won't close, and then the computer borks so I have to reboot from scratch. Great start
• Explanation of printing
• Jobs folder
• Pay to print
• Classified ads 
• Guest pass
• [phone] Werewolf needs a "fat" German-English dictionary [now on the hold shelf for her]
• Guest guy can't get resume open...because he used Word Perfect...sigh
• ....and with that all hell broke loose and I have no idea what-all went on...

4:00

• ...deep calming breaths...I hate when panic in my non-work life bleeds over into work
• Very cranky dad with very sassy daughter, who needs to clean her room before she can watch the DVDs she's picked out according to cranky dad
• New director is excited that ALL the lights are lit--first time since he arrived that all the bulbs have been replaced....
• Help, and a calming voice, about doing a report on the Department of Justice [mom's freaking out, but she leaves happy when I tell her the DOJ has a pretty good overview on their website, and there's stuff in the online databases]
• Ivy + Bean books [yup got 'em]
• Books about Thomas Edison

5:00

• Right off the bat we have a non-English speaker with a new computer running Windows 8 needing to get online but her wi-fi is off [no one here has used  Win8 yet, but I figure it out eventually with help from Vi's translating skills]
• Birdhouses, building of [plenty of those around]
• Help sending an attachment [how kids save their docs to work on at home]
• It smells very strongly of soy sauce here today--wth?
• Refresh time online
• Books on concussions for a research paper
• Help Librarian B with...something or other
• Help with printing (and consolidating into fewer pages)
• Pay to print

Friday (ranty)

What I'm doing between questions: intermittently running around the workroom, and sitting in here being bored

1:00

• Bathroom key  ... and returned
• The entire staff is wack today, apparently
• I think we have a home-school family here--lots of 'old' (i.e. school-aged) kids, including one REALLY LOUD one in the play area "doo doo-DOO-doo-dooDOOdoo-doo ..."]
• Really, I used to like kids...today they are just annoying...*

*OK, no, it's really home-schooled families that get my goat. First of all, these kids today range from 7ish to 17ish. Secondly, they're (well, the boys anyway) cocky little shits who refuse help from me when I know they need it (books on Cuba and Russia and several other countries--we don't have any?? Riiiight....). They all walk like they have sticks up their butts, or slouchy-cool. One is all in camo. The mom is pretty much completely ignoring them--she shushed the kid in the play area (alone, may I add, in the play area) from 40 feet away! Thanks for lowering the general decibal level. When the kids come over to her, she keeps talking to the other person sitting by her at the computer. I would bet cash-money that no one will put anything away in the play area.

The same (youngest) kid is wearing a puppet everywhere he goes like a glove; God alone knows where the bag for it is. Oh, and he just wandered into the storytime room to see the fish...so I have to go roust him and tell him to look from the OUTSIDE. No comment, no awareness whatsoever, from Mom. Now Custodial Guy insists on cleaning up in the play area since the kid isn't in there anymore. No comment, no awareness from Mom. Oh! There are actually TWO families here: second mom and her daughter leave: daughter is pigeon-toed, wearing snow boots, and drag-thunking her feet with every step she takes.

Oh, and NOW, NOW, it's my fault that I'm "yelling at" her kid for asking where the bags are for the 4 puppets Custodial Guy just brought to me. She snatches them up and puts them back on the spinner, THEN she goes in to the play area and starts bossing Custodial Guy around--"stop picking up!"--and telling him that her son "was going to" clean up. Riiiight. After they leave the room, CG walks up to me and asks why she's yelling at him. And the coup de grace: CG finds three activity kits scattered all over the room, not counting (of course) the one the family actually checked out.

Mind you: I started typing the rant a good 20 minutes before I "knew" they were going to be a problem. Custodial Guy asked me how I actually could tell; what I did NOT say is "cuz they're home-schooled" but that's clearly part of the problem. These kids simply do not know how to behave in public.   I need a drink.

Thursday (oooh, sunshine outside!!!)

What I'm doing between questions:

1:00 in the children's room

• My eyes are incredibly screwed up this week ('tis the season) and I just put in drops before coming in here; now my eyes are so blurry I actually can't see anything close up at all!
• Books placed on hold haven't come [yes, they're in transit] ; but they're for a 10-year-old and they're picture books [I find her some other historical fiction options that are more appropriate]
• Bathroom key
• Returned... "Did you get a haircut?" [well, every 5-6 weeks, but yeah, I whacked off all my long hair almost a year ago] "It's cute."
• The above reminds me of an exchange with a coworker earlier this week: "I love your gray hair!!" [thanks, I work hard on it, lol]

4:00 in the children's room

• On my way out here, the director catches me to say that there are kids in here "canoodling" [there does seem to be a larger-than-normal contingent of upper middle-schoolers/young high-schoolers that I'll have to keep an eye on]
• And a family comes in the room: mom & dad sit down at computers and the mom directs the kids to "go in there" (the play area) [yes, this is Ikea's playroom, right, ugh]
• I go warn the teens to keep it PG- or better yet G-rated
• "Did anyone turn in a coat?" [uhm, no] ; "ok, maybe my sister has it..."
• Pencil (mother of the year)
• Pencil & paper
• Dr. Seuss books [not many here, since it's been Dr. Seuss Week at school (etc.) all week]
• How to print [M.o.t.Y.]
• "I need to go to ta baffoom!" "Give me 5 minutes...." [guess who said the latter]
• Spongebob books [in the kids' graphic novels]
• What order do the Penderwick books go in? [I sort it out for her]
• ...so, over 10 minutes later, and "baffoom" boy is still here...clearly they don't know we have a baffroom he can use in here [and he insists on YELLING into the play area to tell his sibling]
• They finally leave. And the teens have gone too.

Weds.

What I'm doing between questions: database cleanup, and downloading order records; also RSS feeds.

9:00 in the kids' room

• Bathroom keys [custodian supervisor checking up on his work]
• I check on the message that was left yesterday...
• ...and talk to the random people who thought there was storytime today...
• yawn

12:00  in the kids' room

• Printing issue [printer hasn't been used yet today so it needs some time to warm up...and eventually her boarding pass appears]

Tuesday

SNOW DAY!!!!

Monday

What I'm doing between questions: ha ha ha

1:00

• Disabled girl needs all kinds of music, and she's not totally clear on the title of the new(ish) Heart CD [however, we find a lot of what she wants]
• Pencil
• Help with tax forms
• Local weekly paper
• 1966 Ford tractor parts
• A book in French [ILL'd]
• Pencil woman--who sets off alarm bells in my head from long ago (like 10 years ago) interactions--requests a book on some sort of quacky medical b.s. that no one in the system owns [I do an ILL request and note that no, we should not buy this]
• ...and some other stuff that ate up the last half hour completely and caused me to run for my desk in the workroom at the end of my shift, and that I mercifully forgot along with the concept of hitting "publish" on this post....

Thursday

What I'm doing between questions: wheeeeee, end-of-month stuff!!!!!!

1:00 in the children's room

• The Lion King [yep, we have]
• Pay to print x2, same person
• [phone] 87 years old, needs help with Talking Books...[I let Librarian C talk to her since she's our current Shut-In Coordinator]
• Parochial school class learning how to do research [about ten 9-year-olds and their minders, in boots
• [phone] Long discussion of renewing books, how to do it at home, etc.
• Pay to print (same person again)
• Help with a website that won't open properly [I call for help from Librarian M and neither of us can figure out what the deal is]
• Mayhem with the class--good mayhem, but noisy all the same
• ...other stuff maybe, but I can't remember...

4:00 in the children's room

• Chat with a local school librarian now working as an aide with disabled kids
• Look up card number [and fix birthday ...]
• Bathroom key...and back
• Ditto and ditto
• ...and then I basically went back to chatting with the aforementioned person

Wednesday

What I'm doing between questions: reviews for collection development

11:00

• Pay to print
• Pencil & paper
• Romeo & Juliet on DVD, the Zeferelli version [we don't own, but it's in the system]
• Login number for internet and how to get a card
• Soundtrack for the Keira Knightley Pride & Prejudice movie [comes packaged with DVD, but we don't own that version so I order it for him from another library]
• There is a small child cooing like a dove about 10 feet from me....
• Pay to print
• [phone] The Language of Flowers by Diffenbaugh [yup, now on hold for her]
• Visitor's pass for internet, and he mentions needing to do a resume, so I tell him about the resume-builder software we have installed on some of the internet computers
• Complete Idiots or --for Dummies guide for Private Investigator/Dectectives [yes there is an Idiots one, and he just lost the bet he had on this--but he checks out the book]

12:00 in the children's room

• Yes, you're right: no lunch hour scheduled for me today cuz, yeah, why would I want to eat? Fortunately there's no one in the kids' room who cared that I went and headed up soup and brought it in here
• There are 21+ new books on baseball coming out this spring! WTH--hasn't it all been written already??

1:00 in the children's room

• Two kids at storytime today...bad weather? 
• How many activity kits can I check out? [one per card]

Tuesday

What I'm doing between questions:

12:08 in the children's room

• [yeah, following a salt truck into work as it salts completely dry roads tends to slow things down, gah]
• Director asks me if the sig on a bad photocopy is our maintenance guy's; yes, I think so, but maybe check with Head of Circ.
• Then we discuss weather and closing, etc., for tonight since I'm the only librarian in the building after 6
• And the snow has started....
• [phone] Sales person [I dump them over to the Ref Desk]
• Fishtank guy arrives to clean up the tank; storytime starts at 1, so it's a race
• "I Spy" type books that aren't quite as hard as the original ones [we have some in beginner readers that are easier, which is majorly counter-intuitive since those books are for older kids than the 'hard' books are]
• "I Survived" books
• [phone] Call for Librarian C [she's at lunch, so the caller will try again in a few minutes]
• Where is children's music? [over here]
• Register for the next round of storytimes
• "How many CDs can I check out?" [three is way under the limit, so he's fine]
• I can barely see through the snow to the houses across the (residential-width) street!!

We closed at 4 due to whiteout conditions and general terror of driving home after dark. It was ugly outside!

6:00

7:00

8:00

Thursday

What I'm doing between questions: checking Best Of Lists, and the ever-present subject list.

11:00 in the children's room

• Cold in here again...on with the gloves
• And just after I get settled, it started reeking of chlorine and burning [burning ballast in the lights]
• It's Winter, Dear Dragon isn't on the shelf...? [yes, but it's in the easy readers, not the regular picture books]
• [phone] "Is the director there?" [uhm, yeah, and when I ask who's calling she says she's a patron who was here last night and wants to talk about an employee...duh duh DUH...I go warn Head of Circ in case it's one of her peeps]
• Former employee, my former tech, stops in--one of my favorite people [miss her...sniffle]
• "Just what I need"--he grabs a couple kleenex--"thank you" [no problem]
• Cleaning guy is having his own weird smell problem in the janitor's closet, but it's spilled cleaning stuff not ballast [he was sure they were the same as in here: Cat. the Canary goes to check and my nose says they are entirely different, but still very smelly]
• Lots of grown men walking through the room today...grr
• I sure hope this smell dissipates before I'm back at 1--my head hurts and I can taste the stink in the back of my throat

1:00 in the children's room

• Staff member's husband is on grandkid duty today, so he's here with the youngest [age 4 and she looks at least 10...scary]
• Bathroom key ... and back
• Headphones [ones on the computer are broken]
• Big Nate books [ayup]
• Turtle in paradise [all copies are checked out...patron is out of the area, no hold]
• [phone] Friends of the Library person calling for Librarian M (out with a sick kid), or second choice, Librarian C (at the Ref Desk)
• The blind man and the elephant [found it] ; where's the copy machine? [past circ to the right]
• [phone is ringing off the hook suddenly] Librarian M calling for Librarian C is the one I get
• Are we connected to other libraries? [basically, yes you can use your card here, even if it was issued in another library...blah blah blah]

Wednesday

What I'm doing between questions:

11:00 in the children's room

• I get out a tally sheet for today since no one else has done so...
• [phone] Reference question but they are swamped so I jump in. In the "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" school, I fall down the rabbit hole: woman has found mold in her Singulair and wants me to tell her if it's going to make her sick. Mind you, she's already called the pharmacy and the FDA who basically shut her down--cuz she's a) dumb as a post and/or b) crazy--and she's going to the doctor because she's got this rash....but do I think the moldy meds have made her sick? "You should SMELL the container!" Uhm, no thanks. "Be sure to watch the news; they [whoever They are] said this will be publicized soon." [eyeroll]
• Activity kit about energy [best I can do is "recycling"]
• Librarian T: donation of a Sophocles paperback = add to collection? Absolutely!
• Preschool Power videos [not here anymore, and she doesn't want use to ILL them]
• Page wondering if I really want her to pull all those YA books on the list [yup, I know, it's a lot, but we're outta space]
• Cleaning guy is wired today...not that this is news, and we knew he'd be especially wack today since yesterday was so nuts [and he was here and peripherally involved in the fight outside]

3:00 in the children's room

• What's the limit for books to check out? [it's a mom, so I tell her she gets to set the limit for her kids] ; also chapter books for elementary readers ;and the bathroom key
• Key comes back...and leaves again immediately...and comes back
• It's so bloody cold in here I'm wearing fingerless gloves and I may have to get a sweater--the desk, where my forearms rest while I type is frigid
• Older woman asks if the "children's library" is arranged the same way as the adult library [deep breath as I start to explain all the different sections...] ..."I'm looking for Charlotte's Web and I don't remember the author" [oh, yeah, E.B. White is over here...] "That's right! It's ok, I can find it, thanks."
• Stapler
• ...all she found was the giant annotated edition of CW which she's fine with, but worries that we don't have any 'normal' copies [yes, we do, they're just checked out and/or misshelved with the Little House books
• Cookbooks
• Bathroom key...and back
• Can't access the WiFi, which is weird, but I go reset it and it's fine again, but she still can't access it; others can, I can on my phone, but her laptop is obstinately refusing to connect...sigh

Tuesday

What I'm doing between questions: see below, and also placing about 10 holds that no one got around to all day (ahem), and other random cleanup...and some collection development reviews....fun times.

12:00 in the children's room

• I'm trapped in here with the chatty cleaning guy...and no one else!! aaargh
• It's not helped by the fact that I'm doing putzy cleanup jobs: wrong media type (list from Library M), items marked New in the catalog that were added to the collection over 13 months ago...whee
• Elephant bathroom key
• ...I'm off to find the "New" books on the shelf to take the labels off
• Bathroom key is back
• Kids and moms (no dads this week) are here for storytime
• [turns out I missed the excitement: big fist- and kick-fight outside while the Head of Circ went out and broke up, all ~135 lbs dripping wet of her; cops came, two guys arrested, blah blah blah]

6:00

• Poetry books [aha--my purchasing section--I know those numbers!]
• Pay to print
• Help with a proctored online test
• Pay to print
• Other internet printing issues
• Another poetry question, this time specifically Ralph Waldo Emerson [note to self: we don't own Leaves of Grass anymore; need to buy a new copy!]
• Last night's "Get to work" guy is back, asking why the gas fireplace is on today for the first time in about a zillion years [no clue, except maybe the new boss said we should?]
• Transfer funds from mom's card to kid's for printing
• Edith Hamilton's Mythology [we have two]
• Refresh internet time
• New (guy) baby Mormons, need to print
• ....I hear giggling...either someone's watching a funny video, or there are shenanigans going on in the stacks....
• No, we still haven't found your USB cord, or your SIMcard...[same guy as always, see last night]
• Our new baby Mormons aren't particularly quiet...grrr

7:00

• We have now achieved "normal" for a Tuesday night, i.e., the frantic scattershot that I walked into at 6 has turned into 8 people doing assorted internet things and some desultory studying (i.e. flirting) going on at some of the tables
• "Fiction Stephen King novels" [the Department of Repetitive Redundancy is right over there--I walk him to the fiction section]
• Pay to print
• Printer's being weird
• Popup issue
• Auto painting, Insanity workout DVDs, and...something else wacko that we don't have.... :(
• More time online
• Printer. I'm tempted to kick it in the processor...plus he's a dime short for his printing so I spot him the difference [nice kid]
• Same kid places hold on No Easy Day
• One of our regular, teaching himself typing, needs a stand for his typing-exercise book

8:00

• "Do I have money on my account?" [nope]
• Test-taker finally finishes/gives up [he wasn't having fun--it's a MIS (business) class] and I email his prof that the test is finished
• My foodie friend (see yesterday) can't remember his login number, temporary pass [I check and it's his regular guest pass number] "Man, I must be trippin'" he says, and I say, "Yeah, you are trippin' for sure" and he giggles as he walks away [lol]
• Stapler
• I start the closing stuff
• Yelling at people playing Magic the Gathering...just too easy [but really, shhh!]
• In One Person [I find it, after they say they couldn't] 
• Time to shut off the gas fire and so on
• And of course we have a mom walk in at 8:55 needing stuff on Mt. Kilimanjaro for a report that's due tomorrow...grrrrr

Monday

What I'm doing between questions: RSS feeds, and subject headings list.

1:00

• Do we fax? [yes] Can I borrow a pen? [Yup]
• Fax
• Printer is printing streaky...before I change the ink, I ask Librarian K and he shakes the printer cartridge...suddenly it's all printing fine [sigh--when I shook it, it was still streaky]
• More time online? [sure why not]
• Pencil
• Personal message in a sealed envelope for Librarian B from ... some guy ...? I will ask her about it...lol
• [phone] [State] Services and Manufacturers directories [yup, they're here, 2013s even!]
• More time since we're dead quiet [sure--it's the guy I talked about food with here]
• Fax
• Lost USB-to-MP3 cable [dude has a lost something every week, and we NEVER have what he's lost...scam, much?]
• Hand sanitizer 
• Internet connection on one of the public computers just died...I restart it since all the cables are connected 

5:00

• 1040 instructions [STILL don't have them...sigh]
• [phone] AllData for car repair? [no we have Ebsco auto repair stuff...and he doesn't have a card, so he'll have to get that sorted before he can use it]
• No, Librarian T, no 1040 instructions...sigh
• Renew time (again) [for the food dude above]
• I glance up and find a dude staring at me; when I make eye contact he looks down and moves towards the reading room; then when he gets to the doors he turns around and looks at me again  [don't be a creeper dude--but I check to be sure I don't have blood or food on my face or clothes...nope]
• Pestery regular comes by, smacks the desk and says, "Don't pretend to be busy!" ["Like I'm pretending?" I answer]
• Creeper is still staring, now from the hallway to the entrance.... grrrrr
• How to access internet [uhm, wow, ok....I'm really not up for the easy questions today, even] [and of course she has to call home for an ID number she needs, and of course she's looking up her paystub from Wal-Mart...]
• [phone] Setting up a freshwater fish aquarium [I pull a bunch of things and put them on the hold shelf for him

Saturday

What I'm doing between questions: [see below mixed in]...and later, at Reference, 

9:00 in the children's room

• Going through the multi-disc bibliographic records that need to be updated to the new 2-week checkout coding and doing them one by one because there aren't that many left [only 40 when I finish, all of which are checked out so I can't update]
• Updating my work calendar for the week
• It appears to be Grandpa Day at the library: so far only people to come in are two grandpas with three grandchildren (one is sitting quietly doing computer-y things; the other is trying to read a book out loud to the boys while they empty the puppet rack and ignore him for the most part)
• Grandpa #1 is wandering, looking puzzled, so I ask if I can help him [off we go to origami land, and I explain the difference between the preschool NF and the elementary NF sections]

10:00 in the children's room

• Dog arrives to be read to--though we forgot to put the sign out to remind people
• I start working on cleaning up subject headings
• Scratch paper
• Books on whales in Spanish [well, I manage to dig out about 4 pages' worth of info for him]
• Scratch paper
• Dog is now hunting for customers...and manages to terrify a little girl [this is the least terrifying dog ever, though she is big--but SLOW-moving]

11:00

• Entourage, seasons 4-8 [not here, but I place holds]; Hung, season 1 [no one has, shockingly]; Workaholics, season 1 [no one has this either, and I've never heard of it]; intro Latin [we have zippo--what the HELL?!]  Yes this is all the same patron
• "What tax forms do I need? [uh, well, judging by the question, I'd guess 1040EZ, but I load her up with the basic forms and what instructions we have and tell her ask her parents]
• "I need to use the internet..." [I'm so tired that I just gape at her, only barely catching myself from saying "So? Go? Get online, your card is in your hand..." and changing it to something a little more welcoming and explanatory]
• Librarian T arrives to sort out the jobs folder and rattle on at me about ... stuff
• ...the Werewolf family is here... massively bad posture and greasy hair and mildew smell and all]
• "What is Picasa 3 on the computers?" [another one I just look blankly back at the patron...oh, yeah, the photo software, yeah, that's it...]
• "How do I enter my barcode?" [uhm, the number on your card...?] "It's been a long time since I've been here; did you always do this?" [well, for almost 15 years, yeah] "It HAS been a long time..." [dude, you were totally here last month, I remember because I helped you with job stuff, and it turns out that, while you're not unattractive on the outside, you're a complete nutbar on the inside]
• Home theater installation [crap, everything--all two books--we have is checked out]
• The Way by Adam Hamilton [not that he could remember the author's name, but I eventually find that he has a hold on it for when it arrives]
• Richard Spileman [I find a wikipedia page that mentions him and the Werewolf pays me to print it for her, with her last change--it's a "no-money" week she says]
• Pay to print [two cheeky young teens, one of whom gives me "$2" that is actually just one...sneaky-pants lol]

12:00

• The Werewolf children are sniping at each other...
• ... someone comes and "registers a complaint" about the rude woman in the children's room who told her friend that she has to use the adult bathrooms not the ones in the children's room [WTF?? REALLY? I tell her I'll talk to 'her' about it and apologize that she felt slighted, but also why we ask adults not to use the kids bathrooms...sigh and then go find the person and get her side, which of course is the same reaction as mine: WTF?? REALLY??]
• Pay to print [one of our every-day regulars who has literally never spoken to me before...]  --- oops, except it's color, so it's a dollar to print so he goes and finds his ?Dad? or anyway the guy who asked about the Hamilton book to pay, and I add the dollar and give him back his 20 cents
• [phone] Librarian T has the password for the events calendar backwards
• Oooh, new baby Mormons!! Girls....
• And nutbar-boy immediately starts chatting one of them up [no, no, no] but she brushes him off nicely somehow
• Librarian T walks back hollering about how she caps-lock on, stops to bug Librarian J during her lunch break, and then comes to ask me about the DAR's use of ...something something ... which I know nothing about so off she goes with the same woman trailing her
• [phone] Blubberland [not in the system, and he says rather than having us check, he'll try when he is "up in [state capitol to our north]" next week, so I check and let him know that they do indeed own it at the state university there]
• [phone] Rosetta Stone [I explain that levels one and two no longer exist, and check for other alternatives, none of which are available on CD, so then I suggest she come in and we'll see what we can find for her
• Look up password for internet
• Librarian T needs help printing from Ancestry.com, but when I go help, she gets completely wiggy and ends up shutting down the program...I'm seriously NOT in a good mood [eventually I calm her down and we figure out that you can enlarge the photo online, but you can't print the enlarged version]
• Pay to print
• [phone] Lee Child books on CD [for the caller's husband who is right next to her, so I can hear him, but she has to repeat everything I say, then she repeats what HE says back, etc. Can I kill them both?]

Thursday (zzzzday)

What I'm doing between questions: repairing and updating all the Erin Hunter series books. There are 10 "legal" series by that author, some of which are series-within-series [shoot me, please!] and I'm refusing to do the manga ones. Ugh.

1:00 in the children's room

• Bathroom key ... and returned
• Storytime is actually a bigger program today [conferences week: the kids had a half day today] and yes, it does meet downstairs, and for an hour
• [phone] Renew books
• Chapter books about fairies [ah, yes, Daisy Meadows...]
• On the way back from that, someone asks for the Harry Potter books
• Do we have a horse puppet? [no, which is WEIRD--I leave a note requesting we buy one]
• Barbie books [same girl, ten minutes later]
• Bathroom key [same girl, immediately after Barbie]
• Bathroom key

2:00 in the children's room

• First key is back
• Second key is (finally) back
• Program is an hour long, yes
• One of the circ people comes in with a full cart of shelving and says, "I don't know why Librarian T got out these books when I asked for books in Spanish for 2nd graders on countries; they don't have anything specific, just general 'some people eat spaghetti and some people eat whale blubber' stuff" [yup, but then T. doesn't know Spanish as well as she thinks she does, and she is far too quick on the draw on stuff like this...sigh]
• "Jake! Jake! Where are you?!" [I signal him that he's 'over there'] ; all 25 lbs. of him scoots by the desk saying, "GANKS!" as he goes...LMAO
• Bathroom key ... and it's returned by the "GANKS" kid, who tells me that they are "WOOOKING FOW A BOOOWK, A KIDS' BOOOWK" [I'm dyin' here]
• "I survived..." books, by Tarshis [for "Jake"]
• He also wants to know how to get a card [I ask him if he brought some ID, like a driver's license, and he smiles and says, "I don't have one yet" -- lol, he's probably 9 or 10]
• When did it become OK for kids to wear bedroom slippers out in public? Hon, you're 12, and I can see your slattern future all over your feet
• Both copies of Brisingr [ugh, one's in here, and one's in YA, sigh]
• Mom of Jake (and Josh, the little guy) tells me, "He (Josh) doesn't want to leave" -- lol, I do hear that a lot
• Renew card for internet use today, but she needs to bring mom/dad next time to renew her card properly
• Bathroom key
• Mark of Athena [yeah, we have it but it's on a waiting list, and he doesn't want to add his name]
• Key is back
• Librarian C comes in to ask me about ALA and asks why the ladybug bathroom is open [yes, you should go to the conference and I have no idea why J&J's mom left it open, so she'll close it on her way back to the Reference area]
• It seems the program is over...kids are filtering back upstairs
• What's wrong with the computer games? [I dunno, but I restart and then RUN because my shift is OVER....

Ash Wednesday

What I'm doing between questions: checking last month's Death Dates list.

9:00 in the children's room

• Storytime starts at 9:30 so there is lots of pre-class running around

10:00 in the children's room

• Lengthy discussion of the possibility of a new catalog database with our IT guy, and how slow the new nearby Sierra system is [is it? Is it really??] and other juicy gossip
• [phone] Nearby library checking on one of our patrons who wants to check out [different library system from us]
• One of the guys that lives in the SRO next door has been in here printing twice; he tends to mumble and harrumph all the time, but this last time he actually says, "MICHIGAN!" fairly loudly behind me while he's waiting, causing me to start [Tourette's? Maybe?]
• "Where did you put my library card, hon?" [mom to toddler son] [While she's chasing him and his brother around, I do a circuit of the room and find the card + sunglasses]
• The pigeon books [Mo Willems is awesome]

There was some more random kid stuff, and a very odd hat on a rather odd woman, but nothing else I wanted to get into on here...

Tuesday

What I'm doing between questions: collection development stuff...blah blah...demand media order stuff...blah blah...

12:00 in the children's room

• ...completely alone...
• Valentine's Day [for an under-2, and no there's really nothing left on the shelf....]
• ...and no one had gotten out a tally sheet all morning so either there was no reference or it all got added to yesterday's...[more likely to be choice one]
• [phone] Circuit Breaker form [no longer extant and I transfer her to Reference to let her know what is still funded]
• "MayIpleasehave the key to the elephantbathroom?" [eventually I translate that]
• [phone] No we really do not close on Ash Wednesday [even though you thought it was "Presidents' Thing]

1:00 in the children's room

• I go restock the muffin basket for storytime--more people here than expected!
• Bathroom key is (finally!) back
• Bathroom key ... and back
• I race after an escaping toddler since his pregnant mom is miles after him...he ends up in the women's restroom in the adult area where, Mom says, she can wrangle him
• Pencil

4:00

• [phone] Major Pettigrew's Last Stand [one of my favorite book covers EVER, and it's on the shelf so I pull it for the patron and put it on the holdshelf for her; she says that's "above and beyond the call of duty" hah! lol]
• Tax forms
• [phone] Ward's Automotive Yearbook, 1994 [only available at four libraries in WorldCat, all corporate, so I get the phone numbers and wish him luck calling to ask them to look stuff up for him
• Look up guest number for one of our regular homeless guys, and then get involved in a really long discussion of where to find "old stuff" like from the twenties [whatever he's sort of a crank and I end up showing him the Nearby Big City library page--he's stunned that a library can fill an entire city block!--and the CDC where Vital Statistics are crunched]
• How to brighten up the screen [can't figure it out--grrr--he moves to another computer]
• Pencil
• Renew time [which I shouldn't do since he's already been here 3 hours, but oh well]
• How to access the internet x2 and they want to sit together, but there are no computers next to each other [it's quite busy, oddly]
• Meanwhile I'm trying to log off one of the abandoned Internet stations and it doesn't want to work -- I end up having to physically reboot it
• Another abandoned terminal resets just fine when I try [shrug]
• Regular guy wants to know what happened to "that black bag" he told Librarian B about [no clue about any of this, but clearly it wasn't a bomb]
• One of the two newbies can't get her password to work, so I go apply some Librarian Glare and voila, it's all good
• Pay to print
• "Where are the tax forms?" [under the 24x30" sign saying TAX FORMS, and we don't have everything]
• How does eaudio work? [so I do a quick n dirty explanation and she says she'll monkey with it]

Monday

What I'm doing between questions:

1:00

• Value Line is sitting here so I sort everything into the appropriate notebooks
• And then a not-very-computer-savvy dude needs help getting online and onto email ["jaw-hu"] and finding and printing some immigration documents for his fiancee
• Meanwhile, another guy is fiddling with the cables on another internet station [someone else apparently shut it down completely, so we wait while it reboots]
• Pay to print
• List of local companies for unemployed guy--I show him the jobs file but he's not interested [so I guess it's the two-year-old local business journal annual report which isn't really very helpful, but duded, really?]
• Reset password [and his terminal gets scooped by someone just as he's headed back to it]; more computers over there
• Help saving to flash drive
• Pay to print
• Stapler
• Just got kicked out of SAM [weird; I renew his time so he can finish his test ... sigh]
• [phone] [Our] County Magazine [well, it's not exactly called that, but I go get the one I think he means, but I don't see the article he wants in it so he's going to contact them directly]

Friday (TG!)

What I'm doing between questions: blergh

11:00 in the children's room

• [phone] Can't download from MyMediaMall because card expired yesterday [chg exp date on computer, leave note on record and voila: downloading can commence]
• [phone] Can she hold a job fair here? [uhm, probably needs to talk to Head of Circ about use of meeting room, and she's not here, so call back Monday]

So glad I came in here....zzzz

What I'm doing between questions:

1:00

• Help saving resume [for a legally deaf woman--Librarian J didn't know how to save to a flash drive--no, I'm afraid I'm not kidding]
• Annoying patron is annoying, and leaves a list of 12 or so "Greatest Hits" CDs he wants [look out: Ratt, Cinderella, Iron Maiden, and Skid Row fans, he's one of you!]
• Annoying patron is back, asking if he can get back online [uhm, yeah]
• More help on attaching resume to application
• Chat with friend whose wife suffers from what my sister died of--she needs a new hairdresser nearer home who can help her get from wheelchair to sink and so forth, so I suggest the place I go
• Annoying patron is STILL here, now asking for a Bond flick
• Genealogy volunteer is here to do a little searching for someone who sent in a request for an obit
• Pay to print
• Stapler
• Pen
• Renew time online

2:00

• Guest internet pass
• "I don't want to go out to the car for money, but I printed..." [I suggest he finish what he's doing and then when he's all done run out and run back in and print]
• Help with printing, and she didn't preview so the side (what she needed, in the end) didn't print...sigh
• No-money dude is having issues with whatever he's doing ... I can't figure out why it's not letting him back into the site he's using either. Weird.
• Computer stopped playing [well, dude, you've got 8 video windows open, which might have something to do with it...I sort it out]

I hate Wednesdays

What I'm doing between questions: prepping an order or two to place tomorrow, and generally not much else.

11:00 in the children's room

• Books about friendship and relationships for 6-year-old [holy cow, that's like the whole picture book section!]
• Where to print
• Help with printing [different person, and for some reason the printer demands legal-size paper for two of the pages, even though it only has letter-size text to print]

12:00

• "Can the plat book from 1900-blah-blah be photocopied?" [yes, carefully]
• Can't log in, [nearby library] card, says she renewed it here last time she was here...[ultimately, her card expired 4/1/11 at the home library so I renew it through today so she can get online, but tell her she'll have to go there to renew for real. ...while thinking to myself, this whole "I just renewed it" thing = pure bull]
• Our 911-calling patron is here, and seems crabby. Great. 
• Financial newsletters? Not magazines, newsletters [nope, and hey, you might want to try this new invention called the internet...]
• Guest pass for the internet
• HELP (as in I need it) with downloading to a Kindle
• Register for this Saturday's internet class
• New card, needs internet access

2:00 in the children's room

• [phone] Renew books that he is "thoroughly enjoying!" [they're already 2 weeks overdue!]
• Muppet movies [checked out, doesn't want to place a hold]
• Bathroom key
• How to look up a book in the catalog 
• Key is back
• Key (same little girl)...and back

3:00 in the children's room

• Books on colonial U.S. history for a second grader
• Jack Prelutsky poems [not an easy question for a boy who stutters]
• Bathroom key...and she almost forget to give it back
• Turtle in Paradise [yep there's a copy here, which I eventually find]
• In the meantime, someone else needs the bathroom key, which I hadn't put away yet, so yeah go ahead and snag it off the desk, thanks!
• "The screen just flipped sideways!" [well, the game she's playing is still ok, and while I look up the solution, why don't we just let her play and I'll fix it when you're done--win-win]
• Books on penguins
• "There are some kids from [nearby school] upstairs running around while we're trying to study and they won't settle down and there's a long line over there so we wanted to tell someone and you were less busy than them, and ..." [whoa, take a breath! Of course the miscreants are gone by the time I get upstairs, and some other kids from their school tell me they think they've left the building]
• Wonky screen is fixed now, and I find some other kids to holler at for being stupid and running up and down the stacks
• Someone turns in a tiny flip notebook that commands me to "SMILE!"
• "Is anyone using this computer?" [it's logged into the internet, but I tell them to just log whoever it is out and go ahead and use it--I haven't seen anyone there at all, can't even figure out how it got logged in!]
• Pay to print