general announcement: sleep is awesome! I remain a committed fan.
park note: the squirrels are getting so fat! I know a lot of it is just winter fur, but some of it has got to be because they are eating so damn much of the corn someone is leaving at the base of the trees. These hefty rodents can still climb a tree faster than a dog, so I guess they're doing okay. (and they are so cute! They're mostly red squirrels, but I've been noticing some grey/red combo ones as well. all very adorable, even as they give me the beady stink-eye for daring to walk past the squirrel buffet. I don't want your corn, okay?)
earth tilted on its axis note: I hate that it is dark at 4:15 pm. It's just not right.
Second Weirdest Coincidence of the Week: some establishing information -- when a patron puts something on hold in our library system, the default is that the "copy returned soonest" will fill that hold. So if you put the new Murakami on hold and you've finally waited your turn and are #1 out of however many, whichever copy comes back into the system first will start wending its way to you. If the copy gets turned in at a library across town, your information comes up on the screen, your hold is triggered and the item gets sent to your home library for you to pick up. Stuff is constantly moving all across the city. SO, imagine my surprise when last Friday I was working at the Belmont library for only the second time ever, and a patron came up to the counter and handed me a movie that would turn out to be for me. He was returning some stuff and paying some fines. He handed me Fritz Lang's Metropolis and I thought "hey! I have this movie on hold," only to scan it and see MY NAME come up on the screen! It's so bizarre! It may not seem weird, but it so is. As an on-call substitute, the odds of me being at that branch at that counter at that time were slim (I only worked on the desk 3 of 8 hours that day, Belmont is one of 17 library locations), the odds of him coming to my station instead of the other were 50/50, the odds of me BEING THERE on that exact day at that exact time... well, it just seems so unlikely! He could have taken it to the book drop! he could have come an hour sooner or an hour later and I would have never been the wiser. It would be one thing if Belmont was my home library and I was checking in materials that were sent to fulfill holds -- I've had that happen before -- but to snag one in the wild like that was SUPER FREAKY. What's even freakier is that this was only the second weirdest coincidence of the week! (the first one was so strange I can't even write it out.)
Christmas note: I am woefully unprepared for Christmas. I don't think I'm making cards this year unless desperately simple inspiration strikes in the next three days. I've done no shopping, I've done no decorating. I'm not feeling particularly grinchy, but I'm not feeling particularly jolly either. I think the remedy to this might be cookies, but I'm not sure. Tests may be required.
Monday's post-it note bounty: Here's what caught my eye while I was processing materials on Monday. I usually write this stuff down on a post-it or scrap paper so that I can place the hold from home (where I am more used to managing my Hold List Empire):
Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series -- I don't know why, but I always have this picture in my head that bootlegs, particularly Bob Dylan bootlegs, should come either on reel to reel tapes or possibly as a microchip that is implanted directly in the brain. This is a CD set and I guess I am okay with that as it will be easier for me to listen to than reel to reel or brain chip.
Joseph Cornell: Master of dreams by Diane Waldman -- I could actually list Cornell in my series of weird coincidences, but in a week that featured the other stuff, he hardly rates. (I'll just say that he's been EVERYWHERE and that I finally got my hands back on a book (out of print, library only has one copy) that someone with an educator's card (check out period: 6 weeks instead of 3) had cruelly stolen from me (by placing a hold) 6 weeks ago.)
Field Guide to Dreams by Kelly Regan -- this looks to be slightly different than the typical dream dictionary and I've been having weird dreams lately so we'll see.
The Wishbones by Tom Perrotta -- I glanced at the back and flipped through the book -- it seemed like it could be fun and interesting, so why the hell not? This is the beauty of the library!
Of course all of this took some juggling in order to have this many spaces to place this many holds. The system only allows you 15 holds at a time. These are troubles I can live with, however.
Well, it is time for me to get back to my new BFF, sleep! Last time I said I would try to be more timely with updates was followed by taking even LONGER to update, so I'll just say that I hope to find some balance here pretty soon. I think I'm getting closer.
park note: the squirrels are getting so fat! I know a lot of it is just winter fur, but some of it has got to be because they are eating so damn much of the corn someone is leaving at the base of the trees. These hefty rodents can still climb a tree faster than a dog, so I guess they're doing okay. (and they are so cute! They're mostly red squirrels, but I've been noticing some grey/red combo ones as well. all very adorable, even as they give me the beady stink-eye for daring to walk past the squirrel buffet. I don't want your corn, okay?)
earth tilted on its axis note: I hate that it is dark at 4:15 pm. It's just not right.
Second Weirdest Coincidence of the Week: some establishing information -- when a patron puts something on hold in our library system, the default is that the "copy returned soonest" will fill that hold. So if you put the new Murakami on hold and you've finally waited your turn and are #1 out of however many, whichever copy comes back into the system first will start wending its way to you. If the copy gets turned in at a library across town, your information comes up on the screen, your hold is triggered and the item gets sent to your home library for you to pick up. Stuff is constantly moving all across the city. SO, imagine my surprise when last Friday I was working at the Belmont library for only the second time ever, and a patron came up to the counter and handed me a movie that would turn out to be for me. He was returning some stuff and paying some fines. He handed me Fritz Lang's Metropolis and I thought "hey! I have this movie on hold," only to scan it and see MY NAME come up on the screen! It's so bizarre! It may not seem weird, but it so is. As an on-call substitute, the odds of me being at that branch at that counter at that time were slim (I only worked on the desk 3 of 8 hours that day, Belmont is one of 17 library locations), the odds of him coming to my station instead of the other were 50/50, the odds of me BEING THERE on that exact day at that exact time... well, it just seems so unlikely! He could have taken it to the book drop! he could have come an hour sooner or an hour later and I would have never been the wiser. It would be one thing if Belmont was my home library and I was checking in materials that were sent to fulfill holds -- I've had that happen before -- but to snag one in the wild like that was SUPER FREAKY. What's even freakier is that this was only the second weirdest coincidence of the week! (the first one was so strange I can't even write it out.) Christmas note: I am woefully unprepared for Christmas. I don't think I'm making cards this year unless desperately simple inspiration strikes in the next three days. I've done no shopping, I've done no decorating. I'm not feeling particularly grinchy, but I'm not feeling particularly jolly either. I think the remedy to this might be cookies, but I'm not sure. Tests may be required.
Monday's post-it note bounty: Here's what caught my eye while I was processing materials on Monday. I usually write this stuff down on a post-it or scrap paper so that I can place the hold from home (where I am more used to managing my Hold List Empire):
Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series -- I don't know why, but I always have this picture in my head that bootlegs, particularly Bob Dylan bootlegs, should come either on reel to reel tapes or possibly as a microchip that is implanted directly in the brain. This is a CD set and I guess I am okay with that as it will be easier for me to listen to than reel to reel or brain chip.
Joseph Cornell: Master of dreams by Diane Waldman -- I could actually list Cornell in my series of weird coincidences, but in a week that featured the other stuff, he hardly rates. (I'll just say that he's been EVERYWHERE and that I finally got my hands back on a book (out of print, library only has one copy) that someone with an educator's card (check out period: 6 weeks instead of 3) had cruelly stolen from me (by placing a hold) 6 weeks ago.)
Field Guide to Dreams by Kelly Regan -- this looks to be slightly different than the typical dream dictionary and I've been having weird dreams lately so we'll see.
The Wishbones by Tom Perrotta -- I glanced at the back and flipped through the book -- it seemed like it could be fun and interesting, so why the hell not? This is the beauty of the library!
Of course all of this took some juggling in order to have this many spaces to place this many holds. The system only allows you 15 holds at a time. These are troubles I can live with, however.
Well, it is time for me to get back to my new BFF, sleep! Last time I said I would try to be more timely with updates was followed by taking even LONGER to update, so I'll just say that I hope to find some balance here pretty soon. I think I'm getting closer.
I so understand what you are talking about with the weirdness of it all and if you had just done one thing differently that day you would not have processed your own hold. Maybe not that exact example, but I can relate. Lately things seem to be working out in a very, dare I say, mysterious way? LG and I can tell you about the day where we would just mention random people and they would appear. It was fun. Oh. I guess that is the whole story.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it was weird! Not so much the processing my own hold, because that has happened from time to time (although always at my home branch where it's more likely to happen since ALL of my holds end up there) -- but that the first available copy in the entire system happened to land directly in my hands as I was working at a not-usual branch was so strange! In a week of strange things.
ReplyDeleteI want to hear more about the mentioning random people day. As the day went on did you start mentioning increasingly unlikely people, like say, Charo?
Charo? She would have been an inspired choice. But no. Just random folks that we knew and had no reason to run into. This was like 8 years ago...hard to believe that anything was that long ago, you know?
ReplyDeleteI have been feeling less than Christmassy also. I'm not as rundown as last year, but not as jolly as years past. I will test your cookie "hypothesis" next week when I have several days off for Ikea and cookie baking. Perhaps we should compare the effects of assorted cookies?
ReplyDeleteIn other news, how were you with Pushing Daisies last night? At the end Mr Anonymous T said "I didn't see THAT coming"
BBD -- I KNOW! 8 years ago seems like forever, but also like yesterday. Damn those kids and their loud music. (P.S. I just opened your Christmas card the other day and it made me SPIT MY DRINK it was so funny.)
ReplyDeleteAnonymous T -- I think shared cookies could be EVEN BETTER. And I'm all excited to realize that I am not scheduled nearly as heavily next week as I was last week! Woo hoo! As for Pushing Daisies... I wasn't expecting that either, but it certainly does put a fresh spin on things. I'm still thinking it over. (but how great is Paul Reubens? SO GREAT!)
I am glad you did a Danny Thomas spit-take when reading my card. I sent it to a half dozen people and none of them got it AND they were not returned to me, either. Perhaps the size of the envelopes somehow made them vanish in some sort of Mother T (nee Agnes) vortex? No idea. I have to get regular sized envelopes and send them out again. No fun. Postal service is going to the top of my list. Not a good place to be.
ReplyDelete