Comment from a person paying an 80 cent fine today “Geeze, you lot would close down if it wasn’t for my fines!”. Yes, because that 80 cents is our budget for this year.
Comment Kirsty had from patron paying a $1.20 fine “I might was well have gone and bought the books!” Yes, because those two books were 60 cents each, and not $25 each.
Give me a break.
I just adore my new frog! That’s him on the left (if you can’t tell). he’s a “fine art” frog, and has a Van Gogh print on his back because he is very very special indeed. I also got a little box for Dried Frog Pills, neatly combining my passion for frogs with my love of the Discworld.
I keep meaning to photograph the various frogs in my collection and post them on the site. Then I think “Meh, why?” then I think “Ah, why not?” and so it continues. Trust me, at some stage I will be bored enough (or have something else to do that I don’t want to do and will need a distraction) and the whole collection will go up. And then I’ll think “Meh, why?”.
The self issues machine that repeat readers will recall was a nightmare earlier this year has gone. Well it went a couple of weeks ago actually - a good two months after the end of the trial. THe old one, which I like to whisper sweet nothings to - was dragged out of it’s sulk and is now working wonderfully. I mention this because another branch also had a trial of a new self issues machine, but from a different company. However, this trial was a bit of a waste of time as three months later they still can’t get it to work. The obvious thing to do, then, would be to send another of those machines we can’t get to work to us at my branch. Presumably to see if it won’t work there either. It arrives Monday. Prepare for crankiness.
Being a free service such as we are (not us personally, of course, the library in which we spend our days) we attract some, um, interesting patrons. Today’s Freak Moment was a biggie. See, a guy came in wearing a long leather coat. He asked Diane if it was OK to keep it on while he was inside. She said “Uh, sure”. “Good, it’s my wife’s coat and it’s very hot, where are your books on biological warfare?” (I’m not quoting exactly here, I didn’t hear either conversation). About 20 minutes later the phone rang. I answered and got this:
“Hi, is Diane there?”
“Which DIane? We have two”
“Uh, she was on the front desk about 20 minutes ago”
“Oh, Ok. Who’s calling?”
“I’m just a patron”
“OK, and your name?”
“I’m just a customer. Can I speak to Diane?”
After warning Diane that it was some kind of freak, she answered the call. Yes, it was the Coat Guy and he wanted to know if she thought the coat looked too feminine on him. “Yeah it did a bit” she said. “Oh. Well, do you want it?” “Want what?” “The coat, do you want it?”
Once more I thank whatever forces that made me NOT a cheerful blonde.
What a freaky day today was. Not helped by wearing stockings which I’ve not done in ages, I’d forgotten that “spring loaded leg” thing. Also, if you stride in a skirt, you feel like a drag queen. Who knew?
OK, first hint of the bizarre was a note from a weekend staffer blathering on about the Family History PC. Error message. The only info I need in these cases is “This PC has an error message and won’t load windows”. I got a FULL report “So and so tried to use the machine, and the message came up and blah di blah this andyammer yammer that…”. Meh. Anyway, set that one up for a full reinstall fromt he server and was thankful not much else was wrong apart from woefully slow internet.
But oooooh no. Nope. Not for this little black duck could things be so smooth. Mr W, a man who does not know the meaning of “Personal Space” or.. for that matter “Breath Mint” had a problem with one of the word processors. It won’t accept a floppy disc. With my striking IT support intuition, I take a couple of paddlepop sticks with me (those are the wooden sticks in ice-creams and icelollies). There was a metal flippy bit stuck int he drive (what are those metal flippy bits called? JP? You’ll know this). I pulled it out while being stared at by Mr W. Shudder. Anyway, after that the drive didn’t seem to be working so we put him on the info desk to finish his typing.
Then… THEN! He comes up to be and says “Your computer has put extra files on my disc and renamed other files” so I wander down to have a look and he sits down at the PC so I have to lean over him and carries on an entire conversation with my breasts. I would have left them to it, but my breasts aren’t that great at computer problems so I had to keep interrupting. I’m looking at a batch of duplicated files which could have ended up on the disc in any number of ways, and all of which have edit dates of last month. I say “Well, look, I’m sorry, but I don’t really know how this has happened, but I’ll let IT know”. Then he got sulky “Well I’ve had three discs chewed here, and two at another branch. I’m not game to use this PC anymore and to be honest, it’s ruined my day”.
Anyone who guessed I would want to say something along the lines of “Well, don’t come here then” gets a gold star for knowing me too well. I didn’t. I just said “Sorry about that” and walked very fast into the workroom to kick a trolley very hard. Having my breasts talked to is not something that happens to me… ever. I’ve no previous base on how to deal with that. Not within “Not Getting Fired” guidelines, anyway.
Alicia was in a little early today so I got to catch up with her. We are both delighted that we have found our collar bones, can feel our ribs and have hipbones to speak of. We both play with our collar bones all the time, isn’t that odd? Guess it’s like a new toy and the novelty didn’t wear off yet.
Today we did training in use of space and display design. There were many people there from many branches and I have to say the branch manager from one of those branches is a total, complete and unsavable bitch. Argh. I know my major flaw is being defensive, and today I very nearly blew my top in her face. All the staff from that branch are unbearable, one of them works weekends with us and she’s a nightmare. Anyway, deep breathes. I’ve had some Bowie since then, and a little bit of George Harrison warning me of darkness and am not remembering the details of the day because I’ll just get all NGURH again. My apologies to Jonah for taking the brunt.
Anyway, one of the best things about all day training sessions (apart from not have to do any real work all day) is that I get to sit around with a pencil and paper. Here are the better efforts from the 12 pages i covered today. Due to my new knowledge (I have a certficate. They mis-spelled my name, but still) I know that the most effective way to present anything is in a pyramid shape, so here is my Pyramid of Distractions. Also, Happy Birthday to Jackie - lotsa hugs :)
No, I’m going somewhere with this. Trust me. OK, I have several Bowie photos stuck to the wall over my desk at work, one of which is a shot of him underweight and drugged as Ziggy Stardust. In this particular shot he is shirtless and the photo is a chest and shoulders. My desk faces the workroom door and as I came in from a cigarette at lunchtime today I noticed someone had cut a shirt out of blue paper and stuck it to the photo. There was also a speech bubble reading “Blue is so my colour!”. I started to laugh so hard Kirsty was alarmed (she often is when I do that) and I pointed it out. She also thought it hiliarious. I wrote a little note along the lines of “Tampering with Bowie is blasphemy!” and peeled the shirt off to use the blutac again. Fresh laughter as the removal of the shirt revealed two bright pink squares covering his nipples (see, I was going somewhere with this). The handwriting on the bubble gave it away as Jackie. I took it out to her and she fell apart, having forgotten she’d even done it. It was one of those “Eye contact will be lethal” things, and we were useless for a few minutes. “That’s for the stapler” she finally said (I may have put her stapler on top of the cupboard for 6 weeks or so, can’t recall exactly… ahem).
Later I went back to see the shirt in place again, I peeled it off again and Jacks said “Oh come on, we don’t want to look at skinny Bowie and his nipples”. I stuck it back on, but first I cut holes to show the nipples. Jackie fell about and covered him up again with the pink squares. So, in revenge for that, I enlarged the chest on the copier and put it in her drawer. Tomorrow the battle continues…
Today was basically weird, despite concentrated attention on semi naked Bowie. One girl came in and said all in one breath “I’m a member of this lie-berry and I’m at the TAFE over the road and I have a MAJOR assignment due today and all the printers at the TAFE had KERashed and we can’t print anything and I know you need, like, a card or something to use the printer here and I have my lie-berry card but I don’t know if I can use that can I? So I guess there’s another kind of card, for the printer, and can I, like, get an application form or something for that?”. At which point I sold her a $2.20 card and told ehr I didn’t need her life story (OK, so I just sold her a card).
Today was also the day we introduced a new, strict overdues policy where books later than 40 days past due are being invoiced and fines older than 40 days are blocking cards. Thankfully, none of the reports they had to run to do this worked…
Also, the IT manager resigned last week. Apparently he offered to give 2 weeks notice (his resignation was requested by the CEO as far as I can gather) and then come back for a week in 6 weeks to hand over the position to a new person. CEO told him he could be out by the end of this week, thanks. Ouch. I’m a bit more shocked than I thought I would be, Tony’s not a bad bloke. Anyway, in the midst of all this shock came laughter at the string of e-mails flying around the BITS people. It ran a bit like this:
Karen: Tony is leaving, should we get him a gift and since the next meeting is at this branch, do lunch?
Karen: I’ll collect money for a gift and do we want to do lunch or morning tea?
Natasha: I’ll put in some money, how much?
Jennet: I thought the meeting was at that branch, not this one.
Karen: It was moved. Shall I book for morning tea?
Nadia: I’m happy to buy a gift, send the money to me
Tony: Next and last meeting at HQ for morning tea and farewells.
Karen: So since the meeting is at my branch, how many shall I book for? Send money please.
Crystal: I’m confused, who are we sending the money to?
Ah yes, the BITS staff… dynamos one and all.
Not from me even! Wow, I know you’re impressed. Went to the monthly BITS meeting this morning and seriously I have never seen so much anger over so little, every topic had people foaming at the mouth, ranting, screaming and generally behaving in a manner best reserved for politics, the state of the planet and affairs. I’m afraid it was very very funny, especially the dubious tangents (eg, talking about a new hardware system somehow ended up on casuals not being informed of system changes). At one point there was serious fury directed at me because my branch doesn’t use the cordless phone. I mean what a pointless thing to be bothered about.
Hair product is a new deal. When I was a smaller person - in height that is - there was spray, mousse and gel. Now there’s “Product”. Last time I got my hair cut the trendy young thing with the scissors asked me “Now, are you OK for product?”. “Um, yeah” i said because at that stage I didn’t use product. Now I do, in a non-trendy way. While I’m tempted to try the one that makes you look like you’ve just been out on the beach getting all salty and windswept, I am infact using one which calls itself “Anti-Frizz”. This is a perfumy smelling gloop that smooths hair down by simple fac that it’s very much like an oily scalp. In other words, it simulates dirty hair. For $7.99 I can pretend I never washed my hair ever. I’m a moron. :D
Rambling entry today, nothing new there I guess. I’ll start with the important ponder of the day which is what can one do when…
Story is simple. Small child of about 2 years playing with the lever on our watercooler created a puddle at the base of the cooler (this happens at least once a week, the cooler is right near the Children’s Area and most small kids like to play with levers and switches). I wandered up and got him to stop (in a nice way, I should point out) and went for paper towels. While I was kneeling on the floor mopping up as much of the water as I could the little boy stood watching me and his father came over and said “Did he do that?” I said “Yup, but not to worry, no harm done”. The father then grabbed the boy by the arm and dragged him over to his pusher while hissing (and i do mean hissing) “You’re an evil boy, an evil evil boy!”. I commented on this to Jackie, saying it was a bit harsh. Jackie pointed out that the child had a black eye, which I honestly hadn’t noticed. This is where we get stuck, because you don’t want to believe the worst about people and kids get bumped and bruised a lot anyway (Tracey’s little boy currently sports a large bruise from falling and bumping his head), but the way the father handled a minor mishap makes me wonder. Still, even with proof or stronger grounds to believe there is beating going on, there’s not a lot we can do as Library Staff. This was all looked into a couple of years ago when we realised the woman spending our entire open time on the word processors (10am - 8:30pm) was doing so without feeding her toddler. More complicated than that, but too depressing to go into really. You never do want to believe the worst.
Changes still coming from the new CEO who seems determined to make sure that the services we offer that people actually use and/or enjoy are removed, leaving us offering a bare bones service. Yes, OK, we’re a library and therefore the loaning of books and provision of information is our main objective. Blah blah management speak. Apart fromt he removal of the magazine swap box (which is still sending shockwaves through the community and that is only a slight inflation of the truth) we are to stop booksale as of next week. Now, the thing about booksale is that people really like it. The other thing about booksale is it means that books we no longer need are recycled in a practical way while raising funds for the library. We don’t make a huge fortune off the booksale - single items sell for between 20 and 50 cents and we’re selling plastic bags full of books for $3 each - but every little bit helps. Also, considering a lot of what we withdraw are items that we bought many copies of because of long waiting lists (Harry Potter for example) and can now weed down to a few copies, it’s a crying shame to dump them. Apparently we can still have “one off” or special sales from time to time, but the ongoing table is to be discontinued. This means that on Monday morning I have to pack it all up and throw a lot of it out, unless I bag it up and go around the opshops which I might do.
I have my annual review tomorrow morning, which I am about as prepared for as I usually am (which is Not At All Prepared, Oh Shit). Chances I’ll actually be fired are slim, but you never know :P
For those wondering, my Grandmother is as OK as she can be. They decided against the CAT scan on the sound basis that even if they did find something wrong, she is too frail to take treatment. The main cause was exceptionally low blood pressure, but she’s now home and healthyish.
Something has gone horribly wrong with the library database, but as I have a sneaking suspicion it’s all my fault, I’ll say no more.
There are two kinds of personality, as far as I can see, in any workplace. The first kind keeps their coffee mug safe on their desk to ensure no one uses it. In extreme cases, tucked away in a draw. At tea break, these people will go to their desk, get their cup or mug, take it to the tea room, make coffee, drink coffee, wash and dry the mug (or cup) and place it back in the drawer. The other kind - of which I am one - leave their mug in the tearoom cupboard, usually wash and dry it (OK, i generally wash it only and leave it on the draining board). The Cupboard people can then be split into two subsections: those who mind if someone else uses their mug and those who don’t. I don’t.
If anyone would like to fund me to study this further and possibly draw conclusions on life and personality, please do.
Well. There are big things going on in the world. Rain forests coming down, governments being overthrown (take our PM… please), people starving to death, war. So, in the grand scheme of things one would imagine a cruddy plastic box full of magazines from the early 1990s would not rate very high on anyone’s rage-o-meter. One would imagine incorrectly. We knew, when the new CEO wandered through and made some interesting changes, that some people would be irate but none of us were prepared for the levels of rage about this damned box. OK, the basic idea of the box is this: you have old magazines you no longer want. You bring them in, put them in the box and maybe find something you do want which you take. Hence the name “magazine swap box”. Anyway, the CEO deemed this to be “clutter” and removed it. Public outcry has been massive - from the former staffer who comes to annoy everyone of a Saturday to… well everyone else really. The Saturday annoying person was livid, and abused Diane at length.
It’s interesting that this box provokes such loyalty and anger. In other parts of the branch, the teenage collection has been decimated, the incredibly popular parenting section is under threat, the booksale may be a thing of the past (although the collection manager person was in today and may be able to allow us to keep the booksale), posters are coming down and there’s a risk of the collection floating - I dread a floating collection. At the moment, if someone borrows a book from Branch A and returns it to Branch B it is sent back to be shelved at Branch A. With a floating collection, if you borrow at Branch A and return to Branch B the book stays at Branch B. This would result in a shift in the collection numbers with most items at two branches (mine included, we think) and we’d run the risk of losing titles to branches that have a slash and burn weeding policy (we tend to think if a book is still useful and all in one piece we should keep it. Other branches are less forgiving and will throw out with the smallest reason). We’re hoping this whim will pass.
On another note, seems Jigsaw Pig was right (omg, can it be so?) with his comment on Isaacs. Today another Isaac was in, aged under 4. This particular Isaac was on a leash. Child leashes are pretty rare these days, but Isaac’s mother seemed to feel it was needed. Isaac’s older sister was allowed to run free. I don’t know her name ‘coz I got the giggles when Isaac’s mother mentioned his name, thinking how right JP was.
I understand Alex is reading this piffle too. It comes to something when you can name your hits, but I think that something is good.
More library blather coming now, sorry. The other day a boy of about 4 came up to me and said “Excuse me, is this a good book?” I flicked through and said “I think it might be, yes”. He looked at me very seriously for a minute then said “Yes, I think you’re right” and wandered off. A few minutes later he was back. “Are you sure this is a good book? It might be too hard for me to read” I said “Well, you can ask your Dad to read it to you” “Oh yes,” he said, “I can do that”. “Or,” I said, “you can have a look at other books before you take them, to see if you’ll like them”. “Oh yes,” he said, “I’ll do that”. At this point his father called him to come back over to the children’s area. The boy turned around, put his hands on his hips and said “Dad, I can’t, I’m busy. I’m talking to this lady about books!”. Then he turned back to me and gave me a “Fathers don’t understand” look which was priceless.
There was an advert in the local paper today for dance classes which I am very tempted to do. A local studio offers ballroom, rock’n'roll and Latin American among others, all of which sound like fun. I’m a bit worried that I’ll end up with a class who takes it all very seriously tho. Yes, I’m thinking about ringing up about the classes but rest assured I’ll have talked myself out of it by tomorrow.
Also, I need to be brave enough to go to the nearest photography shop and buy some infra-red film without being flummoxed and flustered by the million question man who always talks me into buying something other than what I want to try.
System upgrade attempt #2 today. The company who designed the software did it this time, so in theory it was all quite smooth but once the upgrade was done at HQ, the PCs in branch needed to be updated. Yvette phoned at 12:40pm to say “go ahead and load the software”. At 4:40pm the first download finished and we were able to get one PC up. Limping, but up. Most of the other PCs kept crashing and it was all very messy with 8 branches trying to download huge files at the same time. We left the night shift with boxes of returns and a full branch run so good luck to them.
Human cloning. You may have seen the report, so here’s my 2 cents. OMG that’s scary! If you missed it, some scientist claims he has implanted an embryo into a woman that contains only the father’s DNA. He cleared the cell or something (science not my strong point). While this claim has been met with lack of belief from the scientific community, the idea is still horrible. Apart from the dodgy ethics, the age thing bothers me. With Dolly the sheep, she was genetically the same age as the sheep she was cloned from. This is why she died at such a young age and suffered from arthritis etc so young. To clone a human while this “hurdle” still exists is akin to deliberatly changing an embryo that will eventually be a child with, for example, cystic fibrosis. It’s creating a person destined to die young.
Medical research is one thing. I’m not opposed to the idea of using unwanted embryos from IVF for research because it will save lives. Creating a human, making a person for scientfic study is one of the coldest things I have ever heard. And we claim to be civilised. Terrifying.
I’ll whack the disclaimer here that I really don’t know what I’m on about and these opinions are formed with the slightest knowledge of the subject. As per usual :D
Pffft! OK, so I get home and there’s the Dell boxes and it’s all good so I pack up my old PC which is now my mother’s and set up the Dell (after cleaning the desk, I had no idea dust could clump like that…). All unwrapped, all marvy all plugged in and… insert lots of swearing here coz the monitor wouldn’t monit. In other words, no picture. I like to be able to see what’s on the screen, I have a whole thing about it. So, read all the documents again, tried to install the help file CD on the old PC but the install system shut down coz the old one isn’t a Dell (snobby) and was about to head to work to look stuff up on the internet when Dad suggested we borrow a Dell laptop from the IT Centre. So we go down there, get a lap top, come home, install the files and find no help at all. By this stage I’m pretty much over it. Anyway, eventually the cause becomes clear. I had plugged the monitor into the wrong monitor connection (hey, at least I wasn’t trying to plug it into the wrong kind of connection!). Well, if they WILL put 2 on the thing… anyway, all is good, this screen is very nice indeed and the keyboard is just about silent. This is a very good thing indeed. Now I have to brace myself for a major patch on TSO.
As far as days go, today was kinda sucky. Turns out that yesterday when the branch was empty the new CEO, the customer service manager and the Promotions Lass all came in and had a fine old time rearranging and playing with our signs etc. They took away things like the opening hours bookmarks, the magazine swapbox, booksale signs… Tracey was livid. So were we all. Stupid things they did like move the magazine rack into the middle of the floor (I guess not enough people were walking into it) and the junior fiction trolley was way away from the circ desk, so practical for unloading the JFIC. Now they want the Italian collection moved to a more open area (although our 4 italian borrowers know where it is anyway). If the new CEO is trying to win friends and influence people, she’s doing a crap job of it.
Spent today wearing the birthday tiara. this is a plastic tiara of some tackiness in gold with big plastic gems on it. It’s strange serving people in an ugly plastic tiara. You can sort of see people Not Commenting. Some people did make remarks like “hiya Queenie”, others looked then looked away. It was fun. At one stage I also donned the pink feather boa and carried the purple fluffy fairy wand. The tiara was the real winner though.
Last night our library software was upgraded from the 2002 version to the 2003 version (up to the minute). Today we were on our standalone back up system because the upgrade went very badly wrong. People seem to think that because we aren’t actually writing numbers down (which we do when the system will be down for an hour or so only) the computers were fine and we were just teasing. One woman said to me “Can you look up a book for me because the other lady won’t.” I said “Well, it’s not that we won’t it’s that we can’t” which ended up with her having a whinge about all that. Very annoying indeed, again it’s the idea that these things only happen to annoy the person we are serving. Yes, we brought down the entire system region wide to make sure Mr Bloggs couldn’t pay his fine today.
At least Kate has agreed to wear wings and have her photo taken. I offered to pay, but we’ve settled on lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe instead. Good deal :)
Work is very strange at the minute. After some days of utter deadness (I worked last Saturday and with three staff on we outnumbered patrons for a good hour. At one point I thought it was 3 all, but the other “patron” turned out to be Kate, one of the shelvers) we are having days of total frenzy. I think we’re in the weird zone where people who went away over Christmas are back, and people who are going away for the January part of the holidays are about to leave. Anyway, it’s annoying as we never know how many staff will be needed on desk. This is not actually my problem, so I don’t know why it’s annoying to me.
Have confirmation of the new PC, the order has gone in and I’ve paid for it now I just have to allow 10-14 days for delivery. Since I have had the nerve to ask for a floppy disk drive it will quite probably be longer than that anyway. Yes yes, I know, we have CD burners now blah blah but if I want to bring home something from work (where we don’t have burners) or take a file to work or whatever, I don’t want to have to use a CD, I want to use a floppy, dammit! I guess real technology types e-mail things to themself. I could do that. Anyway, I should have put in the “special instructions” box that I’d be quite happy if they just threw the drive in and I’d install it myself. I fear no voided warranty!
For the record, I was NOT drunk on Wednesday night. I did have a few drinks, but since I remember the evening with perfect clarity and was able to feel my limbs the entire time, I can safely say I was merry at most. I will admit that I acted out of character, but this was no bad thing. “Oooh, do tell HP do tell!” I can hear you say. Don’t get too interested, it’s nothing that would make the news.
Alrighty, that being said here we go with Wednesday night. This was the night of the branch night out for the end of year festive cheer and we all wandered along to Rios in Richmond, a latin american restaurant with floor show. This was cause for concern for everyone but me as the menu is mainly meat. Having been vegetarian for 11 years I can say that there is usually something I can eat, but the others were stressy about it. This annoys me, why should other people worry about my food habits? There was no cause for concern anyway since the salad bar was bursting with brilliant things like fetta and olive salad and cauliflower in a cheesy sauce. Once you’ve loaded up with salad, waiters come around with big skewers of meat and load your plate. Judy found it hysterical that i was sitting on the end of the table and therefore was right in front of the meat the whole time. i found it bothersome that she harped on because I wasn’t fussed about the meat. Alicia was delighted with the whole meat deal :) Our waiter was new, it was his first night apparently (yeah yeah, he’s probably worked there 5 years and just uses that for tips), and he was so sweet and gorgeous.
Anyway, after the food the band plays and the patrons are invited onto the dance floor. Of course, no one wants to be first on the floor so everyone was sat about until the band leader came down off the stage and grabbed Alicia and I by the hands to go dance, so once I was up I was up and I figured “oh hell, why not?”. This was possibly partly due to a couple of cocktails (although as a spirits girl usually I have to say the cocktails weren’t that strong) and partly due to my fabulous dress. Also, suddenly I was tired of sitting around watching other people have a good time, so I stayed and danced which was so freakish it warrented Tracey taking quite a few photos of me (although once I spotted what she was doing I made sure I kept my back to her!). Eventually some of the others joined us, so we did that thing women do and danced in a big circle before Alicia Jackie and I dashed out for a smoke.
The floor show started kind of pathetically, but improved vastly. Very active, huge energy and the women were stunning. It was just three girls and two guys doing some incredibly speedy costume changes. OK, they weren’t doing the changes on stage, there’s sexually charged and there’s too much information… I’d have loved to photograph them (which is why I was sitting where I was, right on the edge of the dance floor) but that’s not allowed, which I cursed ‘coz there were some good photos to be had. At the end of the floor show one of the women came out and dragged a guy out from the audience to dance with her and seriously, since she was wearing a thong and a spangly bra, he looked like he’d died and gone to heaven! Then one of the men dashed out from behind the stage and dragged a women out of the audience to dance with him and - you may have guessed [and this is why everyone keeps telling me I was drunk] - that was me and it was MASSIVE fun! The first couple of seconds I thought “Oh hell, I can’t dance to save my life!” but he was great at leading and pretty soon i didn’t care.
OK, so it seems like a tiny thing, but after all these years of wall flowering on the basis that fat chicks shouldn’t dance, it was brilliant to find that fat chicks can get away with it. :)) Even Judy said she didn’t know I could move, so there’s a compliment indeed.
And no, I wasn’t drunk but it was a great thing to find. Dale, on the off chance you read this, compare it to your tickle fight :)
There’s an e-mail in my in box promising me smear proof lips. I’m glad to hear it, I hate it when my lips smear all over my face. Sometimes they smear right off my face, and then of course it’s a mad panic wondering where i left them.
Well, we turned 30 at work today, hooray and all that. I had not slept anywhere near enough the night before (of course) and so was a little bleary for the first part of the day, but got to try out the new camera which was fun :) Handing out balloons to brats is not my idea of a great time, but thankfully most of the kids were fine (and Diane mentioned that I’m really good at balloons, so there’s a career option for me). It’s the kids who take one and then want another that piss me off. Some kids ended up with 5 or 6. OK, there was a lot of demanding cranky people today and i’m too too tired to bother going into it all.
In short, it went OK :) (the balloons I did yesterday had, of course, deflated :P )
A lady came into work today with purple streaks in her hair and three rows of curlers lined up on top of her head. She was in her 50s, I’d guess and when I smiled in greeting (the smile i am certain looks incredibly fake) she grinned at me and said “It was a choice between staying home with nothing to read or coming out like this for some books. The books won!”. I think I’d quite like to be her when I grow up.
It has been a tiring 2 days what with preperations for the 30th Birthday bash tomorrow. It’s a birthday bash for a library, which is no bad thing. What is a bad thing is my fantabulous balloon displays (with 4 balloons filled with helium and floating at different levels*) will be total rubbish by morning. However, there would be no time to do them tomorrow so they had to be done today. I think I’ll sneak in at 6am and throw them out.
My new camera arrived today and I am sure that once i get the hang of the controls I will be flying. I do know it takes a great picture, which is brilliant after the el cheapo digital I’ve been using. Will have a play with it, playingis the best way to learn.
*To create this effect: fill 4 balloons with helium and attach strings. Pull strings down one at a time to place each balloon on a different level. Tie strings together at bottom. Fill sandwich bag with at least 1 cup of rice (uncooked, obviously). Tie strings to sandwich bag. Sandwich bag looks horrible, take two rectangles of tissue paper (in different colours). Place the inside colour on an angle over the out side colour, drop rice bag in the middle. Prick bag with pin and squeeze air out. Gather tissue paper up to where the strings are attached to the bag (you may need to poke the top of the bag in a little bit). You can now either tie the tissue paper around the top of the bag with a fiesta of curled ribbon or, if you are lazy and have a lot of these to do in a short time (me me!) tie it with one bit of ribbon and cut the ends off close to the knot. Foof tissue paper so both colours show. Have nightmares about balloons for at least a week and wonder why you volunteered for balloon duty on the day.
Complaints complaints complaints. Whinge whinge whinge. What’s most annoying about complaints is those people who make a complaint about soemthing that was going to be changed/fixed etc anyway, then they get all up themselves ‘coz they think they had some direct influence. Example: we used to stick security tags to the CDs which was not an issue until CD burners came out, then people would peel the security tag and the barcode off in order to burn the cd, this meant that the security tag (a thin strip of metal on a clear sticker) would get twisted and often lift off. This is incredibly annoying when you play a CD ‘coz it goes “thwaka thwaka thwaka” the whole time the CD spins and in some cases lifts of inside the CD player and gets stuck in there. Anyway, we stopped doing it pretty much for this reason (and also because when peeling off the sticker, the silver backing peels off too). A couple of weeks after we decided to stop putting them on, some woman comes in to say a tag had lodged in her CD player. She was very irate. I apologised and said “But we aren’t putting those tags on the CDs anymore for that reason”. “Oh good,” she said, “I’m glad I’m being listened to. It’s about time my comments were noted”. Yes, we determined using our psychic abilities that this would happen to you personally.
That’s the other thing, people take problems etc so personally. If our library software crashes, it’s obviously timed and planned just to annoy who ever we happen to be serving at the time. If a book is missing in transit, it’s not just one of those things that happens (and it happens a lot), it’s a personal attack on the borrower who requested the book. If we can’t change a $100 note for an 80cent fine it’s not because we just don’t have the change, it’s to ensure the fine stays there to be annoying next time.
*Sigh*, I’m such a whinger.
The thing about going through your old clothes in order to shed some of the rubbish you never actually wear is that you always dig out something you haven’t even thought about for years and then decide to keep. Then you put it back and a year or so down the track dig out again during the next clear out and think “Oh, now, I really will wear this” and put it back again and so the cycle continues. i expect this sort of major event just doesn’t happen to the kind of person who says “Oh my god that is so last season!”. They don’t know what they are missing, to be honest.
Today a little girl walked into the work room while I was on coffee break. She looked at me sitting at the PC (with my feet on the server because that is so comfortable), put her hands on her hips and said “I didn’t know you were out here!”. It was so cute. Then she said “Are you going back out there today?” and pointed into the main library. I said “Yes I will when I’ve finished my break”. “Oh,” she said, “I’ll see you out there then.” and with that she turned around and left.
The painting work at work has finished and I couldn’t maintain my “I have no opinion” stance because it basically looks fantastic. The interior was mainly beige and green - well, all beige and green really, which was a bit bland. Now we have purple (only they call it “plum”) an ochre-y yellow, a brilliant orange which everyone but me hates and a bright deep blue. I adore having all this colour around, it’s perked me up no end. Apparently we still have the option to change it, so I’ll lose the orange soon, but while it’s all there, it’s all marvy.
More from Unshelved, yet another “funny coz it’s true” moment. We are having such a freakfest at work I can hardly believe it.
In keeping with the library theme (funny about that) someone from the local paper rang tracey today to ask some questions about our 30th birthday next month. One of the questions was “How many books were loaned out in the first year the library was open?”. This kind of assumes we keep stats int he branch for 30 years. Actually, Trace did find a sheet of stats where each loan was recorded by type, ie, Adult Fiction, Large Print, Magazine, Junior Fiction, Non Fiction… to look at that and see that less than 300 loans were done in any given day is a bit startling.
Apparently David Bowie was booed off stage last night after losing his voice halfway though a show. Bit hurtful, he probably needs a hug.
I am writing a short murder mystery for a competition at work. The competition is for the patrons, they will need to figure out who the murderer is. I am not allowed to enter because I know who the murderer is. To be honest, at this point, i don’t have a freaking clue who the murderer is, but I hope it will kind of keep writing itself as it has been. Anyway, the thing I dislike most about writing fiction is thinking of names, and today I thought “I wonder if there’s a random name generator on the internet”. One trip to Google later I discovered, amazingly, a random name generator. I love the internet :) One of the names I got was Neil Feely which I didn’t use in the story but adore so much I may create a male sim in TSO with that name.
Part of my productive day was doing an internet survey about chewing gum. The people behind the survey really take their gum seriously with questions like “Think about where you were and how you felt last time you bought gum. If you were in the same place and felt the same way, what would you consider buying instead of or as well as gum?”. The bold in that question is theirs. I’m not sure I remember how I felt the last time I bought gum. I’m not even, if we’re honest, entirely certain when I last bought gum at all. I didn’t tell them that, it would be hurtful to them. Another question ran “When you finish a pack of gum, when do you buy your next pack?”. One of the options was “Right away. I have a routine”. Who has a gum routine? I want to meet someone with a gum routine.
I found a small child half in a cupboard today. I said to him in my sweetest voice “Come on out of there mate, that’s not for playing in”. His mother screamed at him “See? See? there’s the lady and she’s going to growl at you now!”. A quick glance around told me I’m the lady in question. I should have known I was the damned lady.
Also, the McDonald’s woman came back today. She wanted to claim her prizes in some inane contest (she’s won the consolation prizes) and needed to go to the McDonald’s website to do this. The McD’s site uses some file set up that is blocked on our public PCs so I took her and her feral son (who, frankly, could use a bath, a haircut and a good ticking off) over to the Info desk. She said, in one breath as far as I could tell, “I was in on Monday and tried it then and it didn’t work then either - ISAAC! Where’s Isaac? ISAAC! What ar eyou doing, don’t, the lady will be cross, so I rang McDonald’s yesterday and they said it should work and I said it didn’t at the library and they said they didn’t know why ISAAC! so they gave me, I mean I rang them, because it didn’t work monday, so I rang them and they gave me a file or something and ISAAC! is this the computer to use? Where’s the backspace? Shall I click here? The backspace ISAAC! The backspace doesn’t work….” and so on. Meanwhile I’m rescuing the counter, clipboard, pens, other info terminal, employment section of Saturday’s age and anything else not actually nailed down from Isaac’s grubby little paws. Once she’d entered her claim codes (I made that sound like it took less than half an hour) she needed to fill in her name and address details. “What shall I put for ‘name’? Do they want my name? Is it my name they want? Password? Six letters? OK, Isaac has 5 letters, that’s close to six, do they want my address here where it says address?”
I think though what really turned me against this insane woman (apart from her son…) was her habit of shouting “Excuse me!” and then beckoning when I looked at her. I hate being beckoned like that. I don’t mind being waved over, that’s OK, but waggling fingers at me makes me see red.
Now I have a four day weekend. Yaaaaaay! Also, my Bowie tickets arrived yesterday. Yyaaaaaaaayy!