tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55117299474123819842023-11-20T00:44:07.853-06:00If I Ran the Universe...Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.comBlogger265125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-59561790258788708412011-07-03T13:33:00.003-05:002011-07-03T14:13:55.542-05:00The EndWell, as you can clearly tell, I don't have much to say here at this blog anymore. Since my job has censored me and I'm not allowed to talk about that anymore, I find myself truly struggling for post-worthy inspiration. I could tell you all about my crazy adventures, like for instance I'm leaving today to spend 8 days in the Boundary Waters, hoping for moose, wolf and loon spottings, as well as my first adult fishing experience, which needs to go well because we don't want to starve. Or I could tell you about my lame attempt at farming my own food. Or any of the other silliness that comprises my existence. However, these things are beter relegated to Facebook statuses and not posts on a blog I don't even feel connected with anymore.<br /><br />If you'd like to hook up with me through Facebook, send me an email and we can do that. Otherwise, I'd like to say thank you to all my loyal readers for years and years and years of support and shared frustration.<br /><br />I know this post is a poor excuse for a closing, but it's the epitome of my ambivalance toward the whole matter these days. Perhaps one day I'll revive it. Perhaps I'll begin writing somewhere else. Or perhaps it's a completed chapter in my life.<br /><br />I love you all and thank you again for all the ways you made me feel like part of a bigger community of understanding, shared misery, and mostly a common interest in sarcasm and poking fun at the things that threaten to make us nuts. Without the warped sense of humor I think we all have in varying degrees, life would be so much heavier, so much less fun, and the insanity we all deal with everyday would begin to overtake us. So keep it up, don't stop laughing, find humor where it seems there isn't any, know you're not alone, and don't let the Black Holes get you down too much.<br /><br />If I don't hear from you, have a wonderful life, thanks for joining me on this wild ride, and I wish for you all the best in the world.<br /><br />Peace.Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-21283595433370137112011-03-04T17:39:00.004-06:002011-03-06T19:35:16.437-06:00The Name GameSometimes working in the reference department has its downfalls, such as I no longer know all my patrons' names.<br /><br />However, we have come up with some odd nicknames for our patrons in the absence of knowing their actual names, or in the apathy of wanting to use them.<br /><br />Some of our patrons' nicknames are as follows:<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Booktalker</span> (he talks to the books, among other things)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Train Scanner</span> (he takes Briana's train and he likes to scan his own card when checking items out, whether you're ready for him to do so or not)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Worse Than Betty</span> (seriously, RUN!)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Pajama Lady</span> (the days when she wears flannels and slippers are good, but often it's a low-cut nightgown and slippers... gag)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Best Buy Guy</span> (wants us to be Best Buy for him)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Creepy Craigslist Guy</span> (CL troll, watch out)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">80s Hair Lady</span> (frizzy, crispy, crunchy perm, THICK black eyeliner, and makes Tammy Faye look au naturale)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Slacker</span> (tall, anorexic-looking blonde guy with an ill-fitting and dingy wardrobe)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Slacker's Mom</span> (his mom, duh)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The B.O. Lady</span> (you smell her before you see her)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Handyman</span> (uses his hands in his lap while surfing porn)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tin Foil Hat Guy</span> (now banned, was totally off his meds)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Serial Killer</span> (odd, lumbering, special guy who leers and frightens people)<br /><br /><br />These are some of our regulars. Do you make up names for your patrons/customers too?Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-60080799493729684112011-02-28T16:30:00.003-06:002011-02-28T16:34:00.453-06:00MushingI'm back! I'm sore! And I have dogsledded!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://librarianatlarge.blogspot.com/2011/02/bayfield-dogsledding-february-25-27.html"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhswX_F107hnlgCFM6nSJrSWmYC8mxup-9e4VOg-xngmuJ2v_ScVViU911E3Eu1A4412ANF8AHpi7LTkT9rBAdn3hvIfKWrP7JekNez4D94foQYaue6imbjd0srwqquvIKwv-S7J9Kkn4Q/s400/DSC_4516.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5578872127909482178" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Read about it <a href="http://librarianatlarge.blogspot.com/2011/02/bayfield-dogsledding-february-25-27.html">here</a> on my travel blog.Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-77712147225060218532011-02-22T13:28:00.004-06:002011-02-28T16:34:20.368-06:00Bits 'N Pieces<span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Do you ever listen to "Lovelines" on the radio?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Bro:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> No, I didn’t know that was still on the air.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Yeah, Adam isn’t on it anymore, but the guy Mike who is on now is pretty funny. Not like Adam, but good in his own way. I love when they play Stinky Pinky.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Bro: </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Do I want to know what that is?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> It’s a long story, hard to explain, but it’s not what you think. It’s a game of clues and rhyming words, and it’s great when callers have true Stinky Pinkies, but so many of them just don’t get the concept of rhyming, or their clues are so ridiculous you can’t really play. ANYWAY, I bring it up because it’s re-reinforcing my love of Dr. Drew.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Bro:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> Oh?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Yeah, he’s brilliant. How is it he can diagnose the most disturbing problems over the phone with little or no information to go on?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Bro:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> Like he knows what herpes sounds like?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Hahahaha, no I mean someone will call up and say he has a girlfriend who farts during sex, and Drew will know that the caller is an alcoholic because his mother was an alcoholic.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Bro:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> Really?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> It’s amazing. It’s like a game. Girl calls up and says she has a papercut on her nipple and Drew pulls shit out of thin air: ‘Molested by an uncle, in the basement, with a candlestick holder,’ and she’ll go, ‘Whoa, how did you know that?’ It’s kinda spooky.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Bro:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> [laughing] Did you just turn that into the game Clue? The uncle? In the basement? With a canclestick holder? Did you just say that? Because that’s really disturbing.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> [cracking up] Yeah, but that’s what he does! He rocks. I love listening to him.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Bro:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> [between laughs] You’ve ruined Clue for me. Thanks.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me: </span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">All the credit goes to Dr. Drew.</span><br /><br />* * *<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">Marina:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);"> Boys’ clothes are more comfortable than girls’ clothes.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> How so? Like, boys’ clothes are bigger and therefore more comfy, or they’re made differently, like out of more comfy fabrics.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">Marina:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);"> Both, I think. You know what sucks? When you have a boyfriend and he lets you wear his sweater and you get it all comffed in, then you break up and have to give it back.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Did you just say, ‘comffed in’?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">Marina:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);"> [defiantly] Yeah.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> That’s as good as ‘mistope’. Or the fact that you can’t math.</span><br /><br />She smiled. Her brilliance is wasted on our job.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Ann and I are going dogsledding this weekend, and we are beside ourselves with anticipation. We leave on Friday, but last Friday we had the following conversation via text, and then on FB.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102);">Ann: </span><span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 102);">A week from today, know what we’ll be doing?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me: </span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Driving.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102);">Ann:</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 102);"> Maybe singing?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Maybe, but not me.</span><br /><br />And I later posted on FB a question about where to get decent coloring books these days. How can Ann and I repeat our Minneapolis weekend of drunken debauchery without decent coloring books?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 153, 51);">Friend:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 153, 51);"> Body paint would work.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> No. She's a children's librarian. She'd paint me to look like a Muppet. I shudder to think which one. ;) For example, I got a text today that said, "A week from today, know what we'll be doing?" I responded, "Driving." She wrote back, "Maybe singing?" What she means is not singing freedom-loving, rocking, melodic road songs that make you roll down your windows, belt it out, and maybe flash a passing semi. She means storytime songs about gumdrops and lemondrops and rainbows and puppies. I feel the need to preserve that, and not corrupt it. And I make fun of her storytime songs, but she's a breath of fresh air sometimes and she keeps my other foot out of the gutter.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102);">Ann:</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 102);"> I am shocked that you do not consider songs about rainbows, gumdrops, lemondrops and puppies to be "freedom-loving, rocking, melodic road songs." How can you not want to roll down your window and belt out such inspiring and uplifting tunes? I bet the truckers have all been flashed before, but how many have been treated to a stirring rendition of, "If all the raindrops were lemondrops and gumdrops oh what a rain it would be!" And my current muppet favorite is Kermit on account of my new hat so I would try to paint you into a Kermit! Then we could sing, "Rainbow Connection."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Ann, if I heard "Rainbow Connection" once in the last 25 years and remembered any of the lyrics, I might actually sing along to that one.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102);">Ann:</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 102);"> </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSFLZ-MzIhM"><span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 102);">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSFLZ-MzIhM</span><br /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Okay, but then we have to sing the censored Count von Count song: </span><a style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-Wd-Q3F8KM">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-Wd-Q3F8KM</a><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">!!</span><br /><br />The subject has been dropped. We are now discussing restaurants.<br /><br />And for the record, I checked Borders, Toys R Us, various grocery stores, Walmart and Target, with the best selection at Target, but hardly brag-worthy. Something is amiss when the “Coloring Books” section is full of sticker books and activity books, but no coloring in them!<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Why is it that seminars/webinars that people put together for libraries are all so lame? Do they think we are googly-eyed morons easily amused by dumb activities and irrelevant information that fills time? If it's a 2-hour webinar about Going Green and the first HALF is spent exploring how much greener we were in ancient times when mankind hunted with arrowheads made of stone. Seriously?! Are librarians that nerdy that we need an hour on ancient civilizations and how we can learn from them to be more forward-thinking? Maybe my attention span is ridiculously short, or maybe we need to get a damn TED speaker occasionally. Dear Dog, it's like being on a library committee! Just. Shoot me.Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-62264509633474255922011-01-20T11:55:00.000-06:002011-01-20T16:20:17.359-06:00How's the Weather?(We're just going to pretend like the last 5 weeks of my life didn't happen at all, mmmkay? Thanks to everyone for your comments of support.)<br /><br />Yesterday I was sitting at the reference desk and a middle-aged man and his teenage son walked up to me. The father asked for books on getting your GED, so I walked him over, showed him what we had, pointed out the newer copies, explained some have CDs, and he seemed polite and grateful for the help.<br /><br />A few minutes later he walked by me with his son and thanked me again. As they were leaving, he did another walk-by and said, "I was going to ask you if you were cold, but it's pretty warm in here."<br /><br />I cocked my head and said, "Yeah, I'm comfortable. Why? Is it too warm to you?" I noted he had on his heavy, winter coat and thought maybe that explained it.<br /><br />He said, "No, it's fine." He smiled and walked away.<br /><br />It still didn't dawn on me what he meant.<br /><br />I got up from the desk to use the washroom, and when I was done and went to the sink to wash my hands, I saw a startling pair of erect nipples in my reflection. Instinctively, I tried to poke them in and mumbled something about it not being the right time or place and they needed to go away. However, my hands were still wet from washing them and then I had two big wet spots on my top. Of course. Some days I really shouldn't be allowed out without a caretaker.<br /><br />That's when it hit me. The comment made by that seemingly polite, grateful father was about my smuggled raisins (thanks Leelu, I'm spreading the joy that is that phrase), and suddenly I wanted to go back out and find that guy so I could punch him square in head.<br /><br />First of all, what kind of man walks up to a woman he doesn't even know and makes a comment like that?<br /><br />Second, to do that with your teenage son in tow is even worse, so whatever body part or animal you deemed him to be in the first question, downgrade it further to an even lower version.<br /><br />When I asked someone last night if he would do that, and under what circumstances, he said on a really bad day (though I'm not sure if he meant "bad" as if he were having a shitty day, or feeling particularly naughty) he could say something about her having on her high-beams, which made me laugh.<br /><br />He then asked what I'd do if someone had said that to me instead.<br /><br />Good question. I think high-beams is somewhat comical, and while I probably would've been more apt to laugh that one off, I'd still be offended deep down that a stranger would cross that line with me.<br /><br />He agreed and said that's probably a borderline sexual harassment issue.<br /><br />As I've said numerous times before, I think most sexual harassment issues are ridiculous and not something you take to a boss and file a complaint about, but I understood how someone might be really bent out of shape about this particular type of comment.<br /><br />Now, if a friend or coworker had said it, I'd have had no problem with it. Why is that? It was the fact that he was a total stranger that bugged me so much.<br /><br />Is that the oddest part of all?Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-92230098839745806492010-12-17T11:39:00.002-06:002010-12-17T11:46:51.209-06:00Sorry For the AbsenceAm lost. Am destroyed. Cannot write. Cannot sleep. Cannot eat. Have lost too much this year and can just barely breathe.<br /><br />Am trying to keep breathing.<br /><br />Am trying to survive.<br /><br />This has been the absolute worst year of my life.<br /><br />Trying to fight my way out of this. Trying to fake it 'til I make it. Trying to find a ray of hope in all the despair.<br /><br />Want to fix so many things I messed up, but it's impossible. Don't like myself at all right now.<br /><br />Will return when I get a grip. Humble apologies.Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-51523055881444678972010-12-01T01:56:00.001-06:002010-12-01T01:58:14.108-06:00Bite MeWhile hanging out with a friend last night, we watched his two dogs wrestling on the floor. They’d been going at it for an hour, and try as we might to comprehend the premise of the game they were playing, it seemed to just be about biting one another, taking turns. He dubbed the game Bite Me.<br /><br />Mimicking what sounded like his dog’s human voice would be, he said, “I’m gonna bite your face.”<br /><br />I giggled.<br /><br />He continued, “I’m gonna bite your ear.”<br /><br />And onward, “I’m gonna bite your leg. I’m gonna bite your tail.”<br /><br />I said, “That sounds like a blues song.”<br /><br />So, he started playing his guitar in a bluesy way.<br /><br />Duh-NUH-nuh-NUH. “I’m gonna bite your butt.”<br /><br />Duh-NUH-nuh-NUH. “Chomp-chomp. Chomp-chomp.”<br /><br />Duh-NUH-nuh-NUH. “I’m gonna bite your butt.”<br /><br />Duh-NUH-nuh-NUH. “Chomp-chomp. Chomp-chomp.”<br /><br />Duh-NUH-nuh-NUH. “I bit your butt.”<br /><br />Duh-NUH-nuh-NUH. “And I’m gon’ do it again.”<br /><br />Duh-NUH-nuh-NUH. “Chomp-chomp. Chomp-chomp.”<br /><br />Duh-NUH-nuh-NUH. “I’m gonna bite your butt.”<br /><br />I was in hysterics.<br /><br />Today he called the library to find out how late we were open, punched an extension thinking he’d get me, and he thought the woman who answered was me. But she wasn’t.<br /><br />He said to her, “Chomp-chomp. Chomp-chomp. I’m gonna bite your butt.”<br /><br />She later told me that her thought was, <span style="font-style: italic;">well, clearly that’s not a call for me,</span> so she transferred it to Arms at the security extension.<br /><br />My friend thought she hung up on him and realized it wasn’t me who answered the phone.<br /><br />I got an unexplained text saying, “Oops, that wasn’t you.” He later came in and told me what happened, so I went looking for the person who answered the phone and after a hearty laugh, explained the song and the dogs play fighting on the floor. It seemed to amuse her, but maybe she was just a little bit disappointed that a strange man hadn’t called to let her know he wanted to bite her butt.Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-44316237055175190992010-11-02T13:04:00.002-05:002010-11-02T13:10:10.489-05:00CroppingYesterday I was teaching a patron how to use photo editing software and I'd just finished illustrating the way to crop a picture, by drawing a box around the area to keep and clicking to crop to the selection.<br /><br />She very innocently looked at me and asked, "So, where does the rest of the photo go when you crop it?"<br /><br />I blinked. I waited for her to rephrase the question. She continued looking at me in awe. She meant exactly what she said.<br /><br />I said, "To heaven," and then I laughed to let her know I was joking, because she believed me for a moment.<br /><br />When I later related the story to my coworkers, one said, "It goes to Milwaukee."<br /><br />Another countered that no, when you get rid of it and don't want it, "It goes to Detroit."<br /><br />Finally, my favorite answer came from another coworker who reacted to the first two responses by saying, "No way! It's a crop. It goes to Iowa."<br /><br />Thus, I have my answer for next time.Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-28794859075653825322010-10-27T18:05:00.001-05:002010-10-27T18:07:39.912-05:00Costumes<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">We have a coworker who has been having a lot of fun with the Halloween costumes this week.<br /><br />Monday she came in and wore a sticker that said, "Hello, my name is Mary" and her hair was sticking in the air. I thought momentarily that she was Mary from <span style="font-style: italic;">Something About Mary</span>, but if you knew this woman you would think twice, like I did, and profess to have no idea what the costume meant. My first instinct was right, much to my shock.<br /><br />Yesterday she came in with Smarties candies pinned all over her pants. She was a smarty-pants.<br /><br />Today she had the word "book" on her face, with B and O on one cheek and O and K on the other. I looked at her and my initial idea was, this girl is a total book-head, but that was dumb so clearly not the costume.<br /><br />She was getting frustrated and said, "Where is it?!"<br /><br />I said, "Uh, you have book on your face."<br /><br />She stomped her feet and said, "Say it the other way now!"<br /><br />"OH, Facebook!"<br /><br />That one was tough, in my opinion.<br /><br />So, I followed Christi out to the desk today to see if she could get the costume.<br /><br />Have I mentioned lately how much I love Christi?<br /><br />Christi looked at her and said a couple hmms, then finally stated, with no humor at all, "Oh, I get it: B.O. So you have B.O. and you're O.K. with it."<br /><br />I had to sit on the floor I was laughing so hard.<br /><br /></span></span>Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-62852283410211068362010-10-16T19:54:00.001-05:002010-10-16T20:04:03.889-05:00Patron Questions<span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Patron:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> You know your nametag is upside down.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Yeah, that’s so I can read it. How else will I know who I am?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Patron (looking at his own embroidered name on his uniform): </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">My name is right side up.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> That’s too bad. How are you supposed to remember your name that way?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Patron:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> You’re right. I should get them to change it.</span><br /><br />He tried to pronounce his name backward and we laughed.<br /><br />I took the nametag off and put it in my pocket. I was done with the nametag, which was clearly far too complicated for my simple mind.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me: </span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">I can’t believe I’ve been out here for hours and hours and no one told me my name was upside down. Ah, well, I don’t want anyone to know my name anyway.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Patron:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> I know your name.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me: </span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Well you’re special.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Patron:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> Heeee.</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">Patron: </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">So, how long have you been a librarian?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Well, I’ve worked here 18 years, but I’ve only been a librarian for about the last 3 years.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">Patron: </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">And you’re the naughty librarian, eh?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me (in mock horror):</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> ME!? Who told you about me?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">Patron:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);"> Oh, no one had to tell me. I can see it in your smile. I knew it right away – yep, naughty librarian.</span><br /><br />Damn, my cover’s blown.<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102);">Patron:</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 102);"> Don’t you guys have a Halloween section?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me: </span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">What kind of Halloween stuff are you looking for?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102);">Patron: </span><span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 102);">Good ol’ fashioned Halloween stuff.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Oh, that kind. No. Sorry. You’re too late. We’re already prepping for Christmas now. We’re like the stores, you know? And I’m not talking about Christmas this year. We’re working on Christmas for 2011. You’re already over a year behind for Christmas, and for Halloween this year – pshaw! You should’ve seen us in April of 2009. What’s the matter with you?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102);">Patron:</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 102);"> I guess I just didn’t realize…</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Well, now you do.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102);">Patron:</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 102);"> Funny girl. That’s why I come to you with all my questions. And why isn’t there anything for grownups for Halloween anymore?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Sure there is. Halloween stuff falls into two categories these days: little kid stuff and slutty stuff. The sluttier, the better. Costumes give women the opportunity to be total whores and just bat their eyelashes and say, “But it’s just a costume. I’m not really this slutty.” Uh-huh. So, are you looking for the slutty Halloween section?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102);">Patron: </span><span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 102);">OHMYGOD, you’re right! Costumes are getting sluttier!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said before.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102);">Patron:</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 102);"> Actually, I’m looking for CDs with spooky sound effects. Where would those be?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me: </span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Slutty spooky sound effects?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102);">Patron: </span><span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 102);">Uh, no, probably not.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> Kids stuff. See how it works?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102);">Patron:</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 102);"> Oh man, I think you just ruined Halloween for me.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> DUDE, it’s the sluttiest season there is. Enjoy it!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(102, 51, 102);">Patron (laughing):</span><span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 102);"> You’re right! Tits and ass everywhere! What’s not to love?!</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Patron:</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"> I need some information on clarinets. The parts of them. You can look that up, but I have to go to the washroom, so I’ll be right back.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> You better.</span><br /><br />He looked at me for a moment as if he didn’t understand those two simple words I just uttered and then realized I was joking and made a very lame attempt at a forced laugh.<br /><br />I looked at Marina.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Me:</span><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"> He’s scared of me now. Bwahahaha! Score! I bet he doesn’t come back.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">Marina:</span><span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0);"> He may not.</span><br /><br />He did. We spent the next half hour cracking jokes, and he taught me about why they prefer Beechler mouthpieces in Mexico.<br /><br />I guess I didn’t scare him – threatening him made him feel more at ease.<br /><br />My patrons are weird.<br /><br />When they’re weird in a good way and we bond, I just love my patrons.Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-55466643517604666962010-10-13T00:41:00.002-05:002010-10-13T00:52:16.365-05:00Steep and Thorny WayToday, my friend Eric informed me that he was telling his brother about me, how much weight I’d lost and how I’d done it, what a huge feat it was, etc. I was incredulous.<br /><br />He said to me, “You have to be so proud of yourself for doing that! That’s HUGE! Just getting to the point where you have the mindset to get going is HUGE. The rest, 90 pounds, that’s amazing! You have to be proud of that!”<br /><br />No. I’m not. Not really. And I’ll tell you why.<br /><br />Throughout the years, I’ve read all kinds of stories by people who lost a lot of weight, how it changed their lives, how they’ll never go back to what they were, and how if they can do it, you can do it too! <br /><br />Gag.<br /><br />Fuck that shit. Those lying ho-bags left out the biggest, baddest, meanest little factoid in the whole damn story: it’s horrible!<br /><br />Where they get their little happy pills, I don’t know, because I’m bitter. I’m angry. I’m not digging any of this. It’s a monster of a lifestyle change, it’s expensive, and it’s painful.<br /><br />Why does no one mention how painful it is?<br /><br />It’s like childbirth and raising a newborn. People want to talk about the rainbows, unicorns and gumdrops being pregnant was, and godliness of giving birth to this perfect, angelic being who can do no wrong.<br /><br />SHUT. UP.<br /><br />Your body is invaded by an alien and you lose control of everything. Then that thing forces itself out in such a way that you have to be cut or torn to accommodate it, and then it becomes this leech on your body, not allowing you to sleep, not allowing you to have a life, and not allowing you any peace. And that’s if you’re lucky. Some people, and I’ve fwatched them go through this, develop hideous abscesses in their nipples and must have surgery because they chose to breastfeed, and others had permanent problems with arthritis, migraines, depression, and hormone imbalances. Pregnancy can forever mess up your gums, your hair, your health! And that angelic baby who can do no wrong, don’t even get me started on the massive amounts of exhaustive care and attention s/he requires. I have seen moms in a cloud of sleep-deprived insanity, and though they cannot recall their actions after they have collapsed in a coma-like stupor for a few hours, I know what I see of them in these states and they are not well. They say and do things that no drug on earth could elicit from them, and if they’re good people, they deny it later out of sheer atrocity over the idea that they could do such things. Sometimes it’s better to not tell them what they did. Those stories of drunken debauchery you have on your friends cannot compare with the dirt that baby-induced sleep-deprivation can cause. And that, my friends, is the painful truth that people don’t talk much about.<br /><br />Just like with weight loss.<br /><br />I did not lose 90 pounds gracefully. I fought it tooth and nail, whined, bitched, cussed, screamed and threw tantrums regularly.<br /><br />Coaches at my gym can attest to the fact that I refuse to join any kind of supportive team/game going on because I don’t have enough faith in myself to accomplish any goals and don’t want anyone keeping close track of me. I’m a non-joiner. I barely speak to anyone at the gym. I grunt, sweat, pout, grumble, and have been known to curse out a machine or kick it. There is very little socializing going on, and if there is, it’s only with the coaches and not the others working out. Screw them. They’re on their own. It’s every woman for herself in there as far as I’m concerned, and I really do not want anyone to be my friend because my sole purpose being there is misery and ass-kicking. You want to help me? Bitch me out before I start my workout and that will help me. You wanna derail me? Pat me on the back and tell me how wonderful I look in my new thrift store clothes because I can’t afford regular store wardrobes every couple months. I hate getting sweaty. I hate getting up early. And most of all, I hate how hard it is. FUCK! I hate working out! There simply is no dignity involved!<br /><br />So, now I ride a bike. This also means I eat an inordinate amount of bugs, sweat profusely in strange places, have sores in even stranger places, and lug around a bicycle everywhere I go. A bicycle, by the way, requires almost as much care as a baby, which, if I’d known that before I bought it, I’d be taking swimming lessons right now instead. I gave up the filthy gravel trails in my county and have shifted west to the paved luxuries of my neighboring bikers. Yet, no matter where I bike in this flat state I live in, it seems there are hills and moraines so large that they cause my quads to burn as if acid were churning through my legs and my lungs shrink up to raisins. Hills are my enemy.<br /><br />It’s relative, too. Now the gym isn’t quite so miserable because at least I consider that we’re on flat land. The food sacrifices aren’t quite so severe either, because I didn’t have to bike uphill with a headwind to get fed. Anything that occurs on flat terrain now, no matter how unhappy it makes me, can always be made worse by being on a bike going uphill.<br /><br />The bitter irony is that when you get good at one hill, you feel the need to go farther down that trail to the next section you’ve yet to explore, and lo and behold, there is a bigger hill. There is always a bigger hill. So true in every way. And I hate it.<br /><br />I fight the hills. I grind my teeth, I gasp for air, I push my legs, I count the feet I have left until I reach the top, and I just about cry. Crying requires energy to be diverted from the muscles ascending a hill, so it’s simply not possible or I would do it every time. Swearing, too. If you’re nearby, you can often hear me gasp out a very desperate “Motherfucker!” as I crest, but only as I crest because talking requires expulsion of air, and I usually have none to spare, so no swearing until I’ve hit the top. And then the floodgates open up.<br /><br />I do confess, I also can be heard giggling at the garter snakes, tee-hee-ing at the ground squirrels, and ooh-ing at the hawks as I ride. If you see me violently swerve, it’s most often to avoid the glorious grasshoppers that look just like dead leaves until you get up close, or to go around what looked like a stick, but is really a fuzzy little caterpillar. Sometimes I want to recite applicable Eric Carle books to them as I pass.<br /><br />But I digress. This isn’t about the cutesy moments. This is about the overwhelmingly angry moments.<br /><br />Last week I fell off the wagon completely. I abandoned my high-protein, low-carb diet and went on a Culver’s Concrete Mixer binge. (Chocolate ice cream with toppings of peanut butter and peanut butter cups, thank you very much!) It was an awful week. One I may never completely recover from emotionally, but one I need to fight my way out of now, so I had to break up with Culver’s and get back in the saddle, literally. I put on 5 pounds last week, and when I reported this to Eric (who has become my coach), he insisted I hadn’t eaten that many calories in one week and was simply retaining water. I disagreed and insisted I was retaining ice cream. <br /><br />Two days of riding and I realized I wasn’t doing myself any favors because I was riding my route faster and shaving off more time with each run, which actually reduces the number of calories burned over time, so I had to lengthen my route. By adding another couple miles, I’m riding deeper into a wooded area of the trail that I’ve never been to before. That’s what sucks about weight loss. Just when you get a handle on things, adjust to the level of hell you’ve committed yourself to and you tolerate it okay, it stops working and you have to add more torture on top.<br /><br />Today I met my arch enemy. It’s a hill. But it’s not just any hill. It’s a hill that I could not ascend.<br /><br />THAT. BUGS ME.<br /><br />Going up it, I was down to my very lowest gear, still barely able to turn the pedals, and at one point I had only the strength to hold the pedals from going backward. This toppled the bike from lack of movement, and I found myself quickly dismounting in order not to take a huge fall into the woods. So, I fell off my bike trying to get up this hill that completely immobilized me. It was a bitter defeat and I turned around and rode back to my car 7 miles away. I then drove to my usual restaurant, where I ordered a gigantic slice of pizza and ate only the topping (okay, I had a little crust, but not much), and I pouted the entire time. I whined. I texted Eric, who had recommended this part of the trail, and asked if he was trying to kill me. He insisted he could not recall such a treacherous hill on this part of the trail. That made me angry. Not only had I been beaten by this hill, but evidently it wasn’t even memorable to anyone else as a tough hill to climb. I stabbed at my pizza until it was a saucy mess and decided to go at the wretched hill again today.<br /><br />The second time around, that hill was just as bad, but I made it a little farther up, with a lot less grace. Instead of freezing and trying not to go backward, I wobbled all over the path, steering into the teeter of the bike going too slow to stay upright, and after swerving all over and off the path, I realized that if I wasn’t leaning all the way forward onto the handlebars, the bike did a wheelie due to the extreme incline of the path. Okay, that did it! This was a bitch of a hill! If I had to lean to keep from falling backward off my bike, it was steep. I stopped and walked the rest of the way up. From the top, it didn’t look so bad. From below, it was like a wall. Yet, there were signs that you were supposed to dismount and walk your bike down the hill because of the speed you would build riding, on a path that was not only dark and wooded, but twisty and turny, so you could easily end up in a pond, or plowing down a hapless walker. (Damn pedestrians.) Clearly, this was not a hill to be taken lightly. As if to emphasize this was the fact that I was hyperventilating. I cannot recall a time I was gasping so hard for air. This hill kicked my ass!<br /><br />And as I was thinking this, a very capable-looking rider began ascending the hill, growling and grimacing, huffing and puffing, barely able to move his legs at all. He made it!<br /><br />As he got to the top I said, between gasps of my own, “I hate this hill!”<br /><br />He shouted back, “THIS HILL SUCKS!”<br /><br />I loved him in that moment. Comrade. Even though he made it all the way up, we were of like minds: we hated it!<br /><br />So, I am not a happy, proud member of the lost-alotta-weight community. I fucking hate it. It hurts. It sucks. It beats the crap out of me. I yell. I swear. I fight it every step of the way. And sometimes, something terrible happens in my life and I submerge myself in vats of ice cream, only to have to fight harder to get out of that rut as well. I don’t even know if I’d recommend it, it’s that brutal. It completely sucks.<br /><br />But if you have the fight in you and you’re up for the challenge, it’s the fight of your life, and it never gets boring.Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-23838626940100832722010-10-05T00:08:00.003-05:002010-10-05T00:24:56.793-05:00Larger Than LifeI had a friend named Jeff.<br /><br />He came to work at my library about 8 years ago, but we didn’t really start talking much until the end of 2003, when a rogue board member decided to bully the other trustees into making a new rule restricting R-rated movies to patrons who were 17 or older. During a staff meeting where we were informed of the board’s decision to ignore our objections, I took a stand and said that I was both a patron of our library and a staff member, and as a patron I would do what I had to do to fight it, even if it put my job in jeopardy. Little did I know, I was sitting next to someone who would turn out to be the greatest champion of free speech I ever met. The bond was instant.<br /><br />Our friendship blossomed when we discovered how many things we had in common: atheism, book-love, liberalism, and many more. When my father was diagnosed with cancer in early 2004, Jeff was a quintessential member of the small support group I leaned on regularly. I’m sure I couldn’t have gotten through that without him. The day my father died, I drove home from the hospital in the very early hours of the morning, showered, redressed, and drove over to the library, where I stood outside the back door until he arrived at 8:45. When I told him what happened, he hugged me for a long time and then asked me if I’d driven all the way over at this fragile time just to stand around waiting to see him. Of course I had, but suddenly I was embarrassed about how much I relied on him to make me feel better. At a time when everyone was saying the stupidest things to me about my dad’s death, when strangers were trying to foist upon me their religious beliefs without regard to my own beliefs, and when I was desperate for some peace, I knew only Jeff would understand. I told him no, I was restless and had gone to the library to arrange for time off. He hugged me harder. He didn’t want to think of me standing alone outside the library in this state waiting for him to arrive. He never knew I did just that.<br /><br />I work in a library like many others, full of colorful characters. Easily, the most colorful character was Jeff. I could live to be 100 and never meet anyone with more passion and love of life than he had. He spoke many languages, including Spanish, Portugese and Chinese, and adored other cultures and people. He championed many causes, celebrated diversity, and became an ordained minister so that he could marry people. The only times I ever saw him angry were when there were occasions when he was witness to discrimination, or when someone tried to say that food in Chicago was better than anything in Iowa. The man loved Iowa. Born, raised, and educated there, he had a marrow-deep aversion to anything compared to Iowa. His intellect was impressive, even in a library environment, and though he didn’t often work the reference desk, if ever there was an obscure fragment of information I needed (for myself or someone else), he was my go-to person. He was married to a woman I never got to know, though I wish I had, and never had children, though I think his worship of his cats was probably greater than any proud parent I’ve ever encountered. Jeff had a heart so big it was overwhelming. I often didn’t know what to do with all the compliments he bestowed upon me, but if you knew him, you’d know he meant every one. If he cared about you, it was 200%, never less. And the only time you ever saw him less than ecstatic to see you was when he was very sick, and then he was only somewhat muted, but always enthusiastic. Jeff made everyone feel good.<br /><br />As the head of our Technical Services Department, he was in a role he seemed born to play: king of cataloging. Like many catalogers, his focus on details was exquisite, and if you dared to ask a question, he would tell you the answer down to the DNA that the answer was made of. He was precise. He told me many times that his mentor advised him that if someone asks him what time it is, not to tell them how to build a watch. While Jeff found this amusing and self-defining, I think we all (including Jeff) knew that we were going to get the watch instructions anyway. But it was okay. Because it was Jeff. And his heart was always in the right place.<br /><br />Jeff was not just lovable, but he was loved tremendously by so many people, and he loved back tremendously. There was never a doubt in my mind that he was my friend and he loved me. I hope he knew the feeling was mutual. A few years ago he had a car accident, and during the chest X-ray the technician told him he had the largest ribcage he’d ever seen. This was merely confirmation that his heart was so big, only the largest ribs could contain it.<br /><br />Walking into a room where Jeff was, if you said hello, how are you, he would reply, without fail, “Great, now that you’re here!” If I didn’t say hello first, he would announce my presence to anyone nearby by shouting, “LOOK! It’s the lovely and talented Nikki! Isn’t that great? Nikki is here!” Sometimes he simply would say, “Hello, beautiful,” and it was never sleazy -- it was true to him. I wish I could see myself through his eyes. He said these things to all the women on staff, but because he said them all with sincerity and flamboyance, no one ever felt it was anything other than complimentary. We ate it up, squirmed under the spotlight, and ultimately felt good.<br /><br />Jeff loved food, passionately. He loved a good debate, passionately. He loved the people in his life, passionately. His laugh could be heard at a distance, and no matter the situation, he could always find a way to make it funny. Though he hated meetings at work, passionately, none were without his hilarious participation to resurrect them with life. There are very few photos of him at our library where he wasn’t making a silly face. Tonight Ann shared a story of when he worked with her mother in a very strict and unfriendly environment. If things got too quiet and serious, he’d fly a paper airplane stocked with glitter over the cubicles, crop-dusting his coworkers with sparkles. Jeff made everything better.<br /><br />Over the weekend, Jeff suffered a series of strokes and died.<br /><br />The enormity of this statement is still unacceptable.<br /><br />If I hadn’t seen him in the hospital bed myself, I might not believe it at all. There was simply too much life in him to lose it all. He was too young. He was too strong. He was, and is still, a presence that made the world a better place. It simply does not make any sense at all.<br /><br />Losing him is devastating. Knowing him was a gift.<br /><br />I had a friend named Jeff. And I was honored that he considered me a friend, too.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZtPv90odmpVQW2EqEvws7hT7I4M0DzKAQKfCFTQwZk1zZTREhgIrf_zxN_42y5UaKIogjEFjza1x3Z2WpinlQz_lPLc5cYey-WXsTvUMod-LS-iYkBVHLaJA6VVpLaZU-TGz5Fvn6PTU/s1600/DSCF5973.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 223px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZtPv90odmpVQW2EqEvws7hT7I4M0DzKAQKfCFTQwZk1zZTREhgIrf_zxN_42y5UaKIogjEFjza1x3Z2WpinlQz_lPLc5cYey-WXsTvUMod-LS-iYkBVHLaJA6VVpLaZU-TGz5Fvn6PTU/s400/DSCF5973.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524424505477319650" border="0" /></a>Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-70409619166333665082010-09-24T02:13:00.006-05:002010-09-24T02:24:26.148-05:00Because It's WorthyFar be it from me to promote anything on FB and anything to do with Oprah, but here I am because dammit, it needs to be done.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=132862353428325&ref=mf">Oprah, Libraries Need You!</a> was set up by Marilyn Johnson, beloved author and friend of mine, with the hopes that Oprah will do something to draw attention to the sad state of public libraries and the potential losses they will continue to suffer if something isn't done. Why Oprah? Well, if you work in a public library, you know how much power this woman has, not just with the public and Oprah's Book Club, but the media and political world. She spends so much time promoting books, education, literacy, etc., but she's been unusually silent about the problems libraries are facing today. One can only wonder why. Thus, library champion Marilyn Johnson started a FB page hoping to attract a crowd and the attention of those who might help.<br /><br />If you're a FB person and you're a library-lover, please consider joining as well.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=132862353428325&ref=mf"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 256px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil-2i4kZz0tWU2W2r51UKhmQbWWoYWI2ah4etscO5pLelnpOQOuZPF_fQo3FisbByQPVkWFKivGttw60xQxjXCJwj6LRaI58pcxpF2vA5PPBJ0oJBMwZQqnPPmA16nf6j3aIlv48dFUoc/s400/41572_132862353428325_4222_n.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520376748682628514" /></a>Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-77878977648725934142010-09-19T14:59:00.003-05:002010-09-19T15:03:38.783-05:00Here's a New OneGirl comes up to the desk and says, "Can you help me at the computer? I need to get into my gmail account and print something."<br /><br />I say sure and ask what she's struggling with.<br /><br />She answers, "I know how to get there on my phone. I use the internet on the cell phone all the time, email, all that stuff, but I don't know how to use the computer to get to gmail."<br /><br />She had no idea how to use the address bar and found the keyboard confusing.<br /><br />Wow. Are computers obsolete already? Are handhelds the only way young people compute now? Or was she just *special*?Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-40288054057848003002010-09-18T21:31:00.003-05:002010-09-18T21:40:25.363-05:00I'm Back!I've published a post on my <a href="http://librarianatlarge.blogspot.com/">Travel Blog</a> about the trip if you're interested.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://librarianatlarge.blogspot.com/"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 268px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFIN7aX-7TSdS8adhfpHLsT4sNid34V2sqUrYrY20UyIECNhzZDSkKeDg3_5UzbzJuK3VAEPvD_UnAHUvZjrzWB3Jwwb6z11bA7gKFsPvHAfqrUSAzzmQI0UWtkeCw2mEJyJPDmngL9W8/s400/DSC_1596.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5518448363866313794" /></a><br /><br />Otherwise, it should be back to life as usual.<br /><br />While I was gone, Marina sent me an email saying that she just had to tell someone what she saw because she was utterly grossed out. The Creepy Craigslist Guy was apparently wearing at T-shirt that read, "It's not going to lick itself." Today she elaborated that it made her throw up a little bit. People as creepy as him should not be allowed to wear suggestive clothes like that. It should be a law.<br /><br />Man, I do not miss these encounters when I'm on vacation. At all.Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-57996216427664692612010-09-01T16:41:00.001-05:002010-09-01T16:48:12.838-05:00Pieces-PartsTwo weeks ago I got the “okay” from my internist to start a low-carb, high-protein diet when my own low-cal, low-fat diet had stalled for 6 months. I’d maxed out at 81 pounds lost, which sounds like I should be done, but I’m not goddammit. She ran a battery of tests to make sure it was simply a plateau and not something more serious causing stagnation in the weight loss (we also had a short argument about how much more I had to lose, me insisting on a lot more and her insisting on not that much), and suggested I try South Beach instead of Atkin’s simply because it was much easier to maintain. Well, those were the magic words, but not the ones she imagined. Knowing that Atkins was more hardcore and harder to maintain, that’s the one I chose. Also, instead of limiting myself to 20g of carbs per day, I deprived myself extra and hovered around 5g. On top of that, I switched out a meal for protein shakes, too.<br /><br />People, when you ride your bike 10 – 20 miles per day and work out at the gym, and restrict your calories to 1,000 - 1,500 per day while eating only protein, something unbelievable happens to your muscles. They grow. Like fast. Like really fast. But when you’re burning more than you’re taking in, that seems to go straight to bulking up the muscles that propel you and you have little to live on, so you get tired. Like really tired. And those big new muscles start to ache like you’re coming down with the flu. And the combination of losing too much water and not consuming enough calories turn you into a zombie with dry skin, dry eyes, and a pasty mouth. Not fun. So, I now eat more carbs. More of everything, actually.<br /><br />Marina, who is trying an all-carb diet, has been horrified with my lack of carbs and the volume of eggs I’m forced to eat. It doesn’t help that I have been prone to burst into tears when I see someone eat a banana in my proximity, and another coworker brought in bagels yesterday, which caused me to wail and moan in the agony of my depravation. I shut myself up by eating some cheese curds and organic pepperoni. (Didn’t know such a creature existed, did you!?)<br /><br />Marina’s biggest beef (ahem) with my no-carb existence is that I cannot have bread. In her world, no bread would simply mean life wasn’t worth living.<br /><br />She said with consternation, “Bread and I are very best friends. And I don’t give up on my friends like that!”<br /><br />And so we forge on with our opposite diets, and she sympathetically listens to me bemoan how much I’d love to have a really hot guy roll around in some liquid chocolate so I could sprinkle him with raisins and Rice Krispies and then lick him clean. Or the detailed descriptions of my favorite cake: chocolate with buttercream and strawberry filling. Or just the random tantrum where I fling myself upon my desk dramatically and whine, “Bananas…” Her diet doesn’t cause her so much pain, and this, I fear, is what my doctor was warning me about.<br /><br />However, in addition to developing these extraordinary muscles in places I just used to have a firm collection of subcutaneous fat, I’m dropping pounds. Whew. It’s always good when you make a huge sacrifice and it pays off rather than it just costs.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />I had a patron ask me today if we have reading glasses we lend out.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Hissy fits are the absolute worst when they come from middle-aged men. I don’t know why. I’ll take a hissy fit from anyone else, but a whining middle-aged man who can’t figure out some of life’s simplest tasks will cause my patience to evaporate and my self-control to shudder under the pressure of my frustration.<br /><br />He was computer literate, seemingly. He managed to get himself a reservation and log into the computer without any instruction from me, though he’d never done it before. But about 10 minutes later he came up to me having his hissy fit and I very nearly chucked a box of Kleenex at him.<br /><br />“I can’t get online! It opens up on your website, and when I type an address in the address bar, there’s no Go button to click and I can’t go anywhere!”<br /><br />These words were spoken drawn out, in whines, and he stomped his foot for emphasis when he uttered “anywhere”. If his lip had quivered, I would’ve just decked him.<br /><br />I suggested he hit Enter after typing the address.<br /><br />“Enter?! I’m supposed to hit Enter?!”<br /><br />I assured him that this would direct his browser to change pages if everything was entered in the proper location.<br /><br />“Why did you take the Go button off? I mean, people use the Go button and when you take it away, how are we supposed to get to other websites?”<br /><br />Enter. Really, who lifts up their hand and uses the mouse to click the Go button? Just one guy: Mr. Hissy Fit.<br /><br />He stormed off, completely infuriated that he would now have to hit Enter instead of clicking Go.<br /><br />Sorry I ruined your day, bub. Try being me for a shift.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />There’s a woman who frequents the library with her husband, and my nearest guestimation is that she was hit by a train. Nothing is right on her body – nothing. She looks like a Picasso painting. Also, it’s impossible to understand what she says through the grunting, which is just like Karl Childers in Sling Blade. Where she gets brand-new-looking 70s rock band T-shirts, I’ll never know. She is a mystery. But if she asks for some biscuits, I may lose it. Mmmmm-hm<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />A man asked me where the <span style="font-style: italic;">Ann-himes</span> are.<br /><br />My look must have said it all because he tried again.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Ann-hymees. Ann-hymms. Ann-himates. Those movies!</span><br /><br />Anime movies.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />People who bring in handfuls of pencils to borrow our sharpener periodically creep me out. How can you be so devoted to wooden pencils but against purchasing your own little, plastic, hand-held sharpener?<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Boyfriend Extraordinaire is flying in tonight and staying for 2½ weeks so I’m not sure how much I’ll be around to post things. Not that I’ve been posting all that much anyway. Perhaps another camping adventure might inspire some written observations of the foibles of amateurs venturing out in nature or the intersecting of irritating people with the perfectly reasonable pair we are. We shall see.Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-88161044994527227192010-08-20T11:16:00.003-05:002010-08-22T12:09:30.544-05:00A Day In the LifeA teenage girl walked up to the desk and we had the following conversation:<br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;">Girl:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"> Do you have scary movies?<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Are you looking for the series of movies called <i>Scary Movie</i>, or are you looking just for scary movies in general?</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;">Girl:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"> Scary movies.<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Um… the series, <i>Scary Movie 1, 2, 3</i> and <i>4</i>?</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;">Girl:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"> Uh… scary movies.<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Soooooo, just movies that are scary.</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;">Girl:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"> You know? Scary movies?</span><br /><br />NO! I DON’T KNOW! PLEASE TELL ME!<br /><br />Later, a handsome black guy walked up, and he was walking with a limp and a cane, but all I could see were those gorgeous braids in his hair – I get severe braid envy – and I tossed him a really big smile.<br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc9933;">Guy:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc9933;"> Hey there. I’m looking for books on magic.<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc9933;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Oh, well, okay, so do you mean books on how to do magic tricks, or books on the card game Magic: the Gathering, or just novels with magic as a theme, like wizards and stuff like that?</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc9933;">Guy:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc9933;"> Well, like, magic. Just books on magic.<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me *blink, blink*:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc9933;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Yes [deep breath], but what kind of magic?</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc9933;">Guy:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc9933;"> Um, the regular kind of magic.</span><br /><br />Not irregular magic. Thanks for that clarification.<br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Okay, let’s narrow this down. You’re not looking for stuff on the card game Magic, right?<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc9933;">Guy:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc9933;"> I don’t think so.</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Are these books for you or someone else?<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc9933;">Guy:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc9933;"> For me.</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Okay, so you don’t play the game Magic, right? We can get rid of those from the equation, correct?<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc9933;">Guy:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc9933;"> I guess so.</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Well, that leaves us with books that teach you how to do magic tricks. Is that what you want? Or do you want fantasy books about magic and dragons and things like that?<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc9933;">Guy:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc9933;"> Just, whatever you have on magic.</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Okay. I can show you samples of both. But what are you hoping to get out of these books? Do you want to learn magic?<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc9933;">Guy:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc9933;"> I don’t know.</span><br /><br />THEN NEITHER DO I!<br /><br />I walked him over to the learning magic tricks section and said that if this was not what he was looking for, then to come back and see me and we’d hit the novels. He browsed for about 5 minutes and then left empty-handed, didn’t come back for more help or even make eye contact on his way straight out the door. Now really, I can only take the blame for so much. Clearly if you don’t know how to communicate what you’re looking for, my ability to mind-read a blank canvas is almost nonexistent.<br /><br />As if it were a full moon, more irritations continued. <div><br /></div><div>We have the usual creepy crowd of pathetic, older men who peruse singles ads online, as well as porn sites, looking to hook up. Some are guys who won’t ever get their foot in the door, and others might hide some of their creepiness in the first couple of exchanges before it becomes a full-on, heebie-jeebies fest for the receiver. One of these guys I’ve caught on those barely-legal porn sites, advertising teenage girls for your sick pleasure, so I keep my eye on him. The second I see something illegal, he’s going down.<br /><br />My first encounter with him was when he ran up to my desk, completely frantic, on the verge of tears, voice cracking and wild panting, wanting me to help him find someone he’d had three email exchanges with on Craigslist, and now his emails weren’t going through to her inbox. He wanted me to figure out a way to find her, a phone number, an address, an alternate email address, something he could use to continue communicating with her because suddenly he can’t get any email through to her account. Things had been going so well, too. He needed to know if she was okay and he had to find a way to talk to her still. All the while, he was sniffling and fighting back complete loss of emotional control.<br /><br />My absolute favorite commercial out right now is this one.<br /><br /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/JhlWddAXSRA?fs=" width="480" height="385" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" hl="en_US" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed><br /><br />And I had, at that moment, a fantasy about calling him a jackwagon and chucking a box of Kleenex at him. Seriously. Get your ass back from mamby-pamby-land and get a clue, crybaby.<br /><br />Ugh. Teen porn and online stalking: he’s a winner.<br /><br />Anyway, I was working in the office while Marina was at the reference desk and she sent me an IM.<br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;">Marina:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;"> Creepy Guy just asked me for a camera.</span><br /><br />I laughed really, really hard and turned to my boss and shared this gem.<br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#993399;">Boss:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#993399;"> Did he want a web camera? Ewwww.</span><br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me (typing to Marina):</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Web cam or digital camera?</span><br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;">Marina:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;"> Digital camera I think, but I didn’t ask. I don’t want to know.<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me (to Marina):</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Did he say why? Did he want to use it here or take it home?</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;">Marina:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;"> He started to tell me why he wanted it and then stopped himself in the middle and quit explaining.</span><br /><br />I roared with laughter and shared this bit with my boss as well.<br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me (to boss):</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> So, when are those volunteers coming back? The ones who clean the keyboards and stuff?<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#993399;">Boss:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#993399;"> Not soon enough!</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me (to Marina):</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Whose turn is it to clean the computer stations?<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;">Marina: </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;">The good news is he’s been here ALL DAY but I just keep giving him extensions on the computer he’s at, so he’s only touched one computer the whole time he’s been here.</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me (to Marina):</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Uh… good? Hey, [Coworker] comes back from vacation tonight. We could suggest she wipe down the computers when she’s looking for busywork.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;"><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;">Marina:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;"> That’s exactly what I was thinking!</span><br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me (to Marina):</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Great minds think alike.</span><br /><br />I later did not suggest to our beloved coworker that she wipe-down computers. I like her too much.<br /><br />And to prove her worth, she came up with the most brilliant idea I’ve yet heard.<br /><br />There’s been a world of controversy swirling around our library and our cherished security guard, Arms, has received some bad PR by a group of idiots who dubbed him a thug. It’s hysterical to me, but then again I don’t have to deal with the fallout, so I can afford to laugh.<br /><br />Anyway, I was telling our recently-returned-from-vacation coworker about the mess, and she too was experiencing gut-busting laughter about it all, but she got me thinking that we needed to show our appreciation to Arms for all that he does, to stand by him. All week I’ve been saying we love our thug, and our thug can take your thug any day of the week. My boss even added, “Bring it on. It’ll make his day.”<br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff6600;">Coworker:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff6600;"> Someone said we were going to get him a t-shirt?</span><br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Yeah, it should say something like “Have you hugged your thug today?” and have handprints on the back. Can you imagine how much Arms would freak out if we hugged him? Particularly you and me?!</span><br /><br />We both laughed hard about that one because we pick on him a lot.<br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff6600;">Coworker:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff6600;"> “Thugs need hugs too!”<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me: </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff6600;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">“Thug love!”</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff6600;">Coworker:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff6600;"> OH GOD, we should do a DISPLAY!</span><br /><br />My tiny little brain began turning and a smile slowly spread across my face until I erupted with a scream of enthusiasm.<br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> YEAH!!!! I have so many thug-titled books in the street lit collection! We could subtly throw them all on a display and call it Thug Lovin’ or something like that, our homage to Arms!<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff6600;">Coworker:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff6600;"> Do you think the director would get mad?</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Oh c’mon! I put his big, life-sized head in the middle of a display and he looked at it for a while and didn’t even realize it was his picture! He’ll never notice!<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff6600;">Coworker:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff6600;"> Do you think we’ll get some heat? Will we get in trouble?</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Why would we?! It’s a mini street lit display, right? It’s not like we’ll put his picture on it. OR SHOULD WE? Would that be going too far?<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff6600;">Coworker:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff6600;"> Oh, we should! We should put his big head right in the middle of the Thug Lovin’ part!</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Most people would have no idea what it was about. It would be pretty much an inside joke. Do you think we could get away with that?<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff6600;">Coworker:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#ff6600;"> I don’t know.</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#cc0000;"> Maybe I’ll just do a subtle Thug display and if that floats, I’ll stick Arms’ head in it later. That is the single best display idea you’ve ever come up with. You are my absolute favorite person right now! I may love you more than my thug!</span><br /><br />We laughed for a long time, and other staff members started finding their way to our desk wanting to know why we were having such a good time. We did not share. They will find out soon enough.<br /><br />And that’s a typical day at my library. </div><br /><br /><strong><em>**Update**</em></strong><br /><br />Done deal.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijZ0SsZVJWgOCh3PeBlWiVEadJWAMnSKaVjqpHMVqH3gE90x3gm8Dq-su90Nr4z8Q7rg0X2C9aX5V0-6c8SfNmfjUHmOY1k6k-gH9vtanaYJhE6GHmPJ9iyb7xWlqgjX1ZGcuxIApjjKQ/s1600/DSC_0867.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5508281694036353266" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 266px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijZ0SsZVJWgOCh3PeBlWiVEadJWAMnSKaVjqpHMVqH3gE90x3gm8Dq-su90Nr4z8Q7rg0X2C9aX5V0-6c8SfNmfjUHmOY1k6k-gH9vtanaYJhE6GHmPJ9iyb7xWlqgjX1ZGcuxIApjjKQ/s400/DSC_0867.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPmtTebs51R1D_a1sR_dbvfJmfOlY1WTxUiZdragSGK2caSUXwjpyaw8v3z82X_cKmyrBBAq00PKrLsq8Cubw4lMTTZivrK1iTDST_g2zkqi32wixafLdioW8H3JTXQXZPCOs2ptKfGzY/s1600/DSC_0868.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5508281698463029970" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 268px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPmtTebs51R1D_a1sR_dbvfJmfOlY1WTxUiZdragSGK2caSUXwjpyaw8v3z82X_cKmyrBBAq00PKrLsq8Cubw4lMTTZivrK1iTDST_g2zkqi32wixafLdioW8H3JTXQXZPCOs2ptKfGzY/s400/DSC_0868.jpg" border="0" /></a>Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-46737049646771978292010-08-13T14:56:00.004-05:002010-08-13T15:18:21.042-05:00Wish BookIn March I bought a bike. It was my first bike since I was a teenager and the billowing nostalgia washed over me as I instinctively got into my car and drove to the department store that represented all of my childhood wants: Sears.<br /><br />If you’re old enough, you remember the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears_Wishbook">Sears Wish Book</a>, which was a catalog that Sears published annually, pre-Christmas, and it rivaled the size and heft of the most daunting tome my juvenile eyes had ever beheld.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCYkKFRq4YiqVRM76wnAnLj2uRjQUZQL9xjKCJqKzxAAujNHzQvpK918TB-BbZbPFJXqXMVUCNvZHFp2sA-6r8eJ9HaqbS0SXkMoYGTNIcTKXc-IeWBGFDZ0JKokthJWE8iNVLBIsdRHk/s1600/Clipboard01.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 294px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCYkKFRq4YiqVRM76wnAnLj2uRjQUZQL9xjKCJqKzxAAujNHzQvpK918TB-BbZbPFJXqXMVUCNvZHFp2sA-6r8eJ9HaqbS0SXkMoYGTNIcTKXc-IeWBGFDZ0JKokthJWE8iNVLBIsdRHk/s400/Clipboard01.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5504989305152467618" /></a><br /><br />Hours and hours of my life were spent pouring over each page in that behemoth, mentally drooling over every single thing any human could possibly want or need save for food, water and air. Every toy, every article of clothing, every electronic, every appliance, every tool, every THING anyone I knew could possibly crave was in that book. Until I was about nine, that Wish Book was completely mine, and every circled item description on each dog-eared page marked an item that I desperately wanted. When my brother was old enough to share in the mental drooling, we color coordinated the pens we used to circle items so that Santa would know who wanted what. Whether anything we ever dreamed of was purchased at Sears is a mystery to me. The gifts on the wish lists we compiled were likely purchased at any store where it was sold the cheapest, which was fine by us because as far as we were concerned, the Wish Book from Sears was merely a catalog of everything. It was the Amazon of my youth, hard copy.<br /><br />Someone recently told me the largest seller of bicycles is Walmart, which makes sense, but I hate Walmart and only shop there when all else fails. There are pros and cons in dealing with large department stores. What you give up in skill, service and knowledge you bank on with apathetic employees who are more willing to accept returns and exchanges without questions or receipts because they’re not personally invested in the store’s success. Neither of these are selling points to me, but I hoped and anticipated that no matter how lacking the help at Sears could be, at least they’d be better than Walmart.<br /><br />My $200 bike from Sears presented with problems immediately, and what frightened me was that my model wasn’t even a bike listed on Schwinn’s website as one they offered, so how proud were they of this product bearing their name? The seat was a veritable torture device, which was replaced after my very first ride, and then I immediately had to buy gloves with gel cushions because the grips on my handlebars were hard plastic. That was only the beginning. Quickly, my $200 bike was growing into a $300 bike, and no one could explain why my kickstand was way too short for the frame and would never hold it up or why I have to fill the tires with air each and every time I ride it. It must have taken four full months for me to finally find comfort on that bike, accessories and upgrades essential in making it a ridable vehicle. Bikes were not this complicated when I was a kid, and the difference between riding as an adult and riding as a child were so stark, it was a whole new experience to me.<br /><br />Once I found my groove, felt as if the bike was finally where I needed it to be, and I could ride 10 – 20 miles at a time, I started experiencing problems with the gear shifting. Initially it was just violent shifting that would jolt me on the bike so hard, my feet would fly off the pedals and I’d momentarily lose balance. My brother kept promising to help me adjust my derailleurs, but it never happened. On a 20-mile ride last week, halfway into it, fifth gear would not hold at all and slipped harshly and continually into another gear, up and down, randomly. I ended up riding back to my car 10 miles in smaller gears, pedaling my glutes off, utterly exhausting myself trying to keep pace with the person I was riding with. The next day my brother attempted to adjust my derailleurs and discovered that sixth gear, not even the gear I had trouble with, had a quarter of the teeth missing. They did not look like fresh breaks, either, and though I hadn’t had any trouble riding in sixth gear, the fact that the teeth were broken did not give me confidence to test it.<br /><br />Bike riders I know were incensed on my behalf over my very young bike being such a problem child already, and many times I was snapped at to return the lemon and get a real bike. However, my receipt only allowed for a refund within 90 days of purchase, which expired in mid-June, and as far as I could tell, I was stuck with it.<br /><br />Boyfriend Extraordinaire, in an impressive showing of assertion and support, got on the phone and began making phone calls on my behalf, both to Sears and to Schwinn. By Monday, he had arrangements at Sears for me to drop the bike off, where a manager would take a look at the damage and decide whether they would replace the cassette or simply switch out the wheel with another bike, but they would do right by me and fix the problem for free. In the event that they failed, B.E. also secured a promise from Schwinn that they would send me a replacement part free of charge and all I had to do was get it installed. Plan A took place yesterday and I dropped the bike off at Sears, where The Bike Guy and The Manager would put their heads together today and fix my problem for me. I was told I’d receive a call in the morning with their decision.<br /><br />My impatience was killing me. I couldn’t sleep last night at all, woke up far too early this morning, and managed to hold off until 11 am to call Sears about my bike when I, of course, had heard nothing from them.<br /><br />This is when my lemon of a bike turned into a lemon of customer service.<br /><br />The phone number listed for the Sears store where I took my bike was on an automated system. I spoke to the machine that I wanted the Repair Department, and I was forwarded to a new series of choices, none of which suited my needs, so I asked for Customer Assistance. A woman with an Indian-sounding accent answered the phone and I was immediately sifting through a cacophony of white noise of a call center surrounding her. When I spoke my problem to her, wanting to find out the status of my bike repair, she could not hear me. I repeated loudly and she still could not make out my words. Shouting at an uncomfortable volume was the only way she was able to discern the words I spoke, multiple continents away. When she finished taking my information, she transferred my call, and that line rang and rang and rang. Eventually someone picked it up and immediately hung the phone up on me.<br /><br />Sigh… back to square one.<br /><br />Called Sears again. Spoke that I wanted Repair. Spoke that I wanted Customer Assistance. Was immediately disconnected before anyone in India could answer.<br /><br />Deep breath.<br /><br />Called Sears again. Spoke that I wanted an Operator, hoping that this would give me a live person in the store itself. A man answered, I explained what I was looking for, he forwarded me to a department that forwarded me to another department, that never picked up the phone and I was disconnected for being on the line too long. Or so it seemed – the ringing stopped dead and the line disconnected.<br /><br />Called Sears again! Spoke that I wanted Repair! Spoke that I wanted someone in Parts! Got another woman in India who also could not hear me unless I screamed myself hoarse, and she could not find a record of my purchase or me in Sears’ system, so I had to feed her all of my personal information at eardrum-puncturing volume, after which she said she’d transfer me to a store nearest my address. I managed to stop her before the transfer went through and explained that the local store was merely an outlet for tools, and I had taken my bike to the Sears Grand at the mall. This I had to repeat because I wasn’t screaming loud enough, though I felt as if she might have been able to hear me in India better if we hadn’t been holding up phones/headsets to our ears. She transferred me, someone answered after about five minutes of ringing and hold music, and they said I had to be transferred elsewhere, which resulted in another disconnection.<br /><br />CALLEDSEARSAGAIN! It was now 11:30 and I’d been having conversations with machines and people in India for a half hour, with a mix of ringing, hold music, and disconnections to keep the conversations lively. I’d had it! I did not ask for Repair. I did not ask for Customer Assistance. I opted for the choice at the very end of the menu for someone in no particular department to handle my unclassifiable problem. It was a woman! And she sounded at least within 2,000 miles of me! And she spoke English without an accent! And she could hear me speak in my normal voice! Though now I felt a lot like screaming at someone! And I felt myself start to unload on her the horror of dealing with their automated system, India, screaming, being transferred all over the world, and disconnected more times than I even cared to count – would she please help me find someone at the store I went to just yesterday who had my bicycle?! In a very practiced, scripted voice she apologized for the inconvenience I’d experienced and promised to stay on the line with me until someone picked up the phone where she transferred me this time. Part of me wanted to hit her just because she was there, and another part of me wanted to French kiss her for finally being a person who pretended like she cared enough to get someone else on the line.<br /><br />The man who took in my bike yesterday answered the phone and I explained who I was and why I was calling. <i>Has there been a decision on what to do with my bicycle?</i> That’s all I wanted to know. Nearly 40 minutes of fighting my way through a maze of dead-ended extensions and I could ask the question burning deep into my soul, and ask someone who was actually in a position to know.<br /><br />Well, The Bike Guy isn’t in yet, and he only works on Fridays, but no one knows when he’ll show up. The Manager who was going to decide what to do hadn’t responded to the repeated attempts to get him to take a look at the bike and make the decision, and attempts had been made all day yesterday and were starting over today. If The Manager doesn’t make a decision before The Bike Guy leaves today, my bike will not be serviced and will have to wait until The Bike Guy returns sometime next Friday, at his leisure. But The Phone Guy promised to call me today with an answer, even though this Sears doesn’t do any bike repairs, which are usually sent 60 miles south of here to a bigger store that will take roughly 35 years to ship, fix, and ship back my bike. He was quite clear that they were doing me a favor by taking in my bike and considering fixing it themselves. And oh what a favor it was to indefinitely hold it hostage and create a myriad of puzzles one must solve in order to get through on the phone to find out if my bike has even been looked at by anyone who is kind enough to bless me with their attention. They sure do a helluva job avoiding being reachable. You’d think they didn’t want to deal with people. Who gives them business if not people?<br /><br />The department store bike purchase has now become one of those epic mistakes I’ve made in my life, on par with dating a pro-wrestling fan, and one I will stand at every podium and climb upon every soapbox to warn people against following in my footsteps. Much as it causes parts of me to die a little bit, I can’t help but wonder if I should’ve gone to Walmart after all. No, no I shouldn’t have. That was a correct choice. I’d be in the same boat, except that I’d be able to get through to people at Walmart without having to call India twice, and find that they were equally apathetic about helping me get what I paid for.<br /><br />On the verge of a nervous breakdown, feeling a lot like there was some kind of conspiracy taking place in the universe to keep me off of a bicycle, I called the local mom-and-pop bike shop, who have done right by me selling me the myriad of accessories and upgrades my lame bike has necessitated. Quickly I explained that I have a Schwinn that has broken teeth, Schwinn will send me a replacement cassette for free, which is so much easier than dealing with the numbskulls at Sears, and how much would they charge to install it. She did some mental math out loud, <i>wheel off, change cassette, wheel on, </i>and replied that the charge would run about $15.<br /><br />Fifteen. Dollars.<br /><br />How many gray hairs did I just get from dealing with Sears and how much will it cost to color those hairs for the rest of my life? More than $15.<br /><br />How much is my time worth: driving to the mall, dropping off the bike, driving home, waiting around all morning for a call-back that would never occur, calling all around the globe for answers for nearly an hour, calling other places to fulfill Plan B, then returning to the mall to break my bike out of Sears prison and driving home again? More than $15.<br /><br />How much is my sanity worth? Well, what little is left might be worth $15, but not much more.<br /><br />So, it’s 3 pm and I’m on my way to retrieve my bike so that I can spend $15 and have it fixed by the people <i>I should’ve bought a bike from to begin with!</i><br /><br />Long gone are the Rockwellian days of the Wish Books and Sears love. Outsourced, no doubt.Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-65397003715673236272010-08-11T17:51:00.000-05:002010-08-11T17:53:45.334-05:00Back TalkerA man walked up to my desk and mumbled something to me, which I could not make out. All I heard was something about signing up for something. Given that our newsletter just landed in the mailboxes of all our residents, he could’ve been asking to sign up for any number of things.<br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"> Excuse me? You’d like to sign up for what?</span><br /><br />He rolled his eyes at me, turned his back to me and leaned against my desk facing away, and mumbled again, “[Mumble]...sign up...[mumble]...library card...[mumble]...for a few minutes.”<br /><br />I know why old people are cranky. I’m getting there way before my time already. Patience with rude, inconsiderate and stupid people runs very thin somewhere around the age of 35, if you’ve been dealing with the public. The more you deal with the public, the quicker it runs out.<br /><br />Surmising from the three phrases I managed to understand, and completely jumping to conclusions about the mumbles that interspersed the intelligible portion of his conversation with me, I not so patiently replied to him.<br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"> I’m sorry but it’s hard to understand you when you’re not even talking TOWARD me. Are you asking for a reservation for an Express computer because you don’t have your library card?</span><br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;">Him (glancing over his shoulder, rolling his eyes again):</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"> YES, a COM-PEW-TUR!</span><br /><br />This guy was not a punk 14-year-old. He was easily in his late 20s, judging by his receding hairline and slight acne still upon his skin. And by the way, he needed to wash his thinning hair. Even though there wasn’t much, it was greasy-gross. I should also mention I might not have noticed how clumpy and sticky his shiny hair was if that wasn’t the part of his head he insisted on presenting to me.<br /><br />So I made the reservation, tore off the reservation slip, and held my hand out to his back. Still he would not turn around and face me, and eventually he noticed out of the corner of his eye that I had my arm extended to hand him the slip. With maximum effort -- I kid you not -- he twisted his arm around backward so that he wouldn’t have to actually move his body at all, and just opened his hand up so I could put the slip into it.<br /><br />I did not gracefully and delicately place it into his hand, lets just say.<br /><br />From there, things did not improve. Though I was helping other people, in the middle of explaining something with words flowing freely from my informative lips in the direction of patrons standing before me, FACING ME, he would yell to me from the computer, “MISS! MISS! THIS ISN’T WORKING!”<br /><br />“This” being his brain? Sorry, I’m not trained in handling that kind of problem.<br /><br />I grew tired of looking at him in the middle of my conversation and giving him the finger.<br /><br />Not that finger. Thought I very much wanted to.<br /><br />The hold-one-minute finger.<br /><br />Eventually I quit bothering with the finger and just kept talking. He would sigh and get the point, though it didn’t stop him from continually doing this throughout his stay.<br /><br />What it turns out he needed was something from his mortgage company that had his address on it. A simple bank statement wouldn’t work. Apparently, in order to register his child for school, he had to prove not only his address with formal ID, but ownership of property. I’m guessing he was mistaken but this was what he insisted upon, and logging into his online account did not include the physical address of the property anywhere in the account, so he was frantically demanding I figure out what he could do.<br /><br />I asked if another item would suffice: utility bill, car insurance card, etc. <br /><br />He looked at me with incredulity.<br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;">Guy:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"> They’ll take a car insurance card?<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;">Me: </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;">Well, I don’t know. You’d have to ask them. What I’m asking YOU is if you asked them if they’ll take anything else with your address on it.</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;">Guy:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"> I don’t know. Why would they take my car insurance card?<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"> Because some have an address printed on them, which may or may not be enough proof that your car is registered to that address. That’s something else with an address -- car registration. I mean, there are a number of options, but I can’t tell you what the school will accept.</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;">Guy:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"> But why doesn’t the mortgage put my address on my online account?<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"> I don’t know that either, but it’s probably a security measure. You log into your credit card account and, at least with mine, they don’t put the account number on it. Sometimes the last four digits, but mostly you just have to know it’s yours and recognize the rest of the information. It’s for your protection.</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;">Guy:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"> So how am I supposed to get this information?!<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"> Call your mortgage company and see if they can print something out for you. Or call the school and see if they’ll take something else.</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;">Guy:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"> But what else would they take?!</span><br /><br />I was tempted -- oh so tempted -- to turn my back on him and mumble my repeat of suggestions, rolling my eyes. If he can dish it out he should certainly be able to take it, but that is almost never the case.<br /><br />Instead I paused and repeated. He was realizing that his problem wasn’t going to be immediately solved and so he stormed out.<br /><br />Good riddance, I say.<br /><br />Or...<br /><br />[Mumble] riddance...Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-77633331900002397542010-07-26T12:28:00.002-05:002010-07-26T12:31:28.751-05:00The Bitch PrincipleThank you so much to my anonymous commenter for reminding me of this post. I wrote it when I worked for another director, in another department, and the reminder was both painful and jarring. I needed it, thanks. It's part of the defunct Happyville Library archives and no longer published, but I figured I should re-publish it for nostalgia's sake. And my own. So here it is.<div><br /></div><div><br /><br /><em>Warning: I wrote this post after reading (and re-reading, because it was so damn funny) an entire book of Dilbert comics. When I finished, I had an abundance of crazy manager memories flooding my brain and I wrote this with many of my past jobs in mind. Happyville is NOWHERE near this bad, but I've been places that are and this is not an exaggeration of some workplace philosophies. Read it with the humor it was written with.</em><br /><em></em><br /><em><br /></em><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">The Bitch Principle<br /></span></strong><br /><em><span style="font-size:130%;">You are owned by the taxpayers of this community. This means you are their bitch. They pay your meager salary and begrudge you every penny.<br /></span></em><br /><strong>Corollary 1<br /></strong>A bitch’s job is to keep the patrons happy, at all costs. Some will be satisfied that you have done your job if you merely answer their question about the library’s hours; others will be dissatisfied with your output if you call in favors, pull strings, hack a government computer and sell your personal possessions to pay for the bribe used to acquire information you seek on behalf of a patron. It is recognizable that you may eventually find your resources have reached a limit. When this occurs, find another bitch with greater resources and tell the patron you are referring them to someone with more authority in that area.<br /><br /><strong>Corollary 2</strong><br />If you are off the clock and shopping in a local store, you are still their bitch. Whenever possible, without regard for your personal situation, do your best to serve their needs.<br /><br /><strong>Corollary 3</strong><br />Find someone else’s bitch for them. Sometimes patrons get attached to the work done by a particular bitch on staff. If Joe is Mr. McCarty’s favorite bitch and Mr. McCarty is on the phone looking for Joe, find Joe immediately. Patrons don’t like to leave voice mail messages for staff because it feels less like their bitches are at their beck and call, so you must track that staff member down or take a message, thereby taking personal responsibility for Joe getting the message. Bitchdom is transferable like that so it is preferred that you find the bitch in question.<br /><br /><strong>Corollary 4</strong><br />Never forget you’re their bitch. No matter how harsh, offensive or brutally critical a patron is, show them their proper respect. Only when a patron breaks a law and infringes on the rights of other patrons can you act in defense of the other patrons. Your honor is not important and if they belittle you, that is their right. If it weren’t for them, you wouldn’t have a job. It is only through their generosity that you are able to put food in your mouth. Show some gratitude.<br /><br /><br /><ol><span style="color:#cc0000;"><strong>Exclusion<br /></strong>If you are a member of the community in which you work, a taxpayer to the library where you are employed, you are not your own bitch. Being everyone else’s bitch overrides any entitlement you might have. If you would like to have a library full of your personal bitches, you must move out of the library district in which you work. You automatically forfeit your rights to having library bitches when you live and work in the same library district.<br /></span></ol><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Behavior Principles and Management Noninvolvement</span></strong><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><em>Patrons are unpredictable and you should predict their behavior accordingly, without aid of your supervisors.</em></span><br /><br /><strong>Corollary 1<br /></strong>Try to diffuse a belligerent patron’s temper before they take their complaint to management. Managers sought promotions to get themselves away from the positions of serving the public because they were terrible at it and they hated it. Do not remind your boss of his or her shortcomings by bringing them a raging patron.<br /><br /><br /><ol><span style="color:#000099;"><strong>Explanation</strong><br />By “diffuse” we mean to use any means necessary. A shovel and dolly are in the receiving room and the property is adjacent to some dense woods. Use your resources wisely. A dead taxpayer is preferable to a disgruntled taxpayer.</span></ol><br /><br /><strong>Corollary 2</strong><br />Inebriated patrons should be refused service. There are no repercussions because if they are as drunk as they seem, they won’t remember it anyway. If the inebriated patron raises suspicion that they might be dangerous or driving, the police should be alerted. If you are feeling apathetic on this particular day, remember that they are parked in the same parking lot as your own vehicle, and they might have lagged on their liability insurance.<br /><br /><strong>Corollary 3</strong><br />Mothers with children are like ticking bombs and should be given an enormous amount of leeway. Some prefer you to discipline their children for them; others don’t care if their child has eaten the first three volumes of the <em>Encyclopedia Britannica</em>, and they do not want you to say a negative word in the direction of their children. You have to figure out which type of mother you are dealing with and then be prepared for the fallout. Again, “diffuse” the situation accordingly and avoid management if at all possible.<br /><br /><strong>Corollary 4</strong><br />Patrons will deny responsibility for any and all offenses they commit, no matter how obvious it is that they are guilty. If you cannot convince them that they must be accountable for their actions and the matter is presented to management, be prepared for the manager to exhibit his/her spinelessness and give the patron what they want, not backing you up and not standing by the written and formal policy. Managers suppress their confrontational abilities until they wield the pent-up confrontation on an underling. If you are the patrons’ bitch, your manager is an upper echelon bitch and held to an even higher standard of devotion and servitude to the patrons. Do not expect your manager to take your side or uphold your decisions.<br /><br /><strong>Corollary 5</strong><br />When all hell breaks loose, call the police instead of management. Though there will be a delay in the time it takes for officers to arrive, it will be much faster than locating an effective member of management. Order must be restored as quickly as possible, and often that can only be accomplished by those with guns. Choose wisely and keep in mind that the library will remain open regardless of fatalities, so minimize the mess because it will be you working among the splattered blood.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Emergency Principles<br /></strong><br /><em>The only thing that should close the library is the building itself being blown to smithereens. Your emergency kits should suffice in rescuing you from any situation, with the exception of the building being blown to smithereens. If you and the building are blown to smithereens, you may officially close the library.</em><br /></span><br /><strong>Corollary 1</strong><br />If there is a fire, gather the patrons and rescue them first. Your life is less valuable and without the patrons, you wouldn’t have a job anyway. Then you may rescue the library pets. Once the important ones have been evacuated safely, you may leave the building. Don’t forget to sign out (you won’t be paid for your time of evacuation), log off the computers, turn on your voice mail, leave a note for your boss saying you left early and why, and get it signed by a fireman on scene (preferably the first one in the building so that they don’t force you to leave before you have finished your duties). The library should reopen immediately unless otherwise indicated by the fire department.<br /><br /><strong>Corollary 2<br /></strong>In the event of a tornado, patrons should be gathered and led to the shelter areas in the building. Some will refuse to evacuate to a safe place – leave them where they are because that is an effective “diffusing” of a problem patron, no doubt. Remember to bring the emergency kits located at each reference desks and the circulation desk. You should then nominate a staff member to check outside to see if the tornado has passed and it is safe to come out. If that staff member doesn’t return, wait a while longer, nominate a new staff member and repeat. If the building collapses on you due to the tornado’s damage, you will be glad you have the emergency kits handy.<br /><br /><br /><ol><span style="color:#000099;"><strong>Explanation</strong><br />These emergency kits will save your life. In the rare event that a sharpened pencil, some scratch paper, a flashlight, some glow sticks, a whistle, band-aids, and a battery-operated radio cannot be utilized to save your life, their presence will absolve the library of liability and prevent your next of kin from filing frivolous civil suits. If you do not know how to save your lives with the whistle, a sharpened pencil and some glow-sticks, then that is your problem.</span></ol><br /><br /><strong>Corollary 3<br /></strong>If a bomb threat is made, follow the same instructions given in Corollary 1, but remember to call the police and have them sign your note to management. We do not have bomb alarms and if a board member or the director happens upon an empty library with all the patrons and staff running for their lives and no police or other law enforcement present, it will be assumed you have abandoned your position and you will be fired. This is particularly important if the bomb threat was a hoax and the building was not blown to smithereens.<br /><br /><strong>Corollary 4</strong><br />With frequently erupting cases of violence and mass murder occurring in workplaces and public buildings, a domestic or non-domestic terrorist threat should be handled as exhibited in the following passage:<br /><br /><br /><ol>Evacuate as outlined in Corollary 1. Inform the director immediately so that she might sit in her chair observing a storytime session, staring off into space, ignoring the threat for a good hour or so. Employees will be ordered back to work right away and the director will protect the public from future attacks by posting a color-coordinated Library Terror Alert system, which instructs everyone to be watchful but continue with their lives, regardless of color warning. Paranoia will be the key to convicting the suspects and the library faction behind it will be chased, without being caught, for all eternity. Dissidence will be considered anti-patronotic and a Patronage Act will be passed that allows the library to revoke library privileges from anyone, at any time, holding their library card hostage and forcing people relinquish their library books indefinitely, without a defense. Terrorists will not get away with harming our library. Well, they might, but we’ll look busy trying to fix it.</ol><br /><br /><strong>Corollary 5<br /></strong>If a patron has an accident, becomes ill, or shows symptoms of ill health, call an ambulance immediately. If you are unable to prevent a bodily fluid spill from occurring, it is up to the staff member nearest the spill to clean it up, regardless of their job description. Supplies are scattered about the building haphazardly, and you will probably have to cordon off the hazardous area until the supplies can be gathered. No matter how enormous the spill, the library should not be closed. A biohazard suit is available, as well as anti-tuberculosis wipes and individual alcohol swabs in case contact is made. The janitors should be notified immediately and contaminated material should be set aside to be determined if it is in need of being destroyed. It is preferred that contamination should be contained and only staff exposed. Innocent patrons should be spared first and foremost, and management spared second.<br /><br /><strong>Corollary 6<br /></strong>Miscellaneous emergencies such as gas leaks, flooding, building damage, power outage, water shutoff, etc., should not result in evacuations unless advised by the fire or police department, and the library should remain open. Keep in mind one steadfast word: smithereens. If the building is not in eminent danger of being blown to smithereens and valuable patrons are not in danger, you should continue doing your job and the library should remain open.<br /><br /><br /><ol><span style="color:#006600;"><strong>Reminder</strong><br />If a patron knifes/shoots/maims one of your coworkers, you should not suspend your duties or accompany that coworker to the hospital. Should that person die, you are advised to mourn their loss on your off time.</span></ol><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>Remember: smithereens! Don’t stop doing your job unless the library is blown to smithereens! </strong></span></div>Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-79074451076153929872010-07-20T21:52:00.000-05:002010-07-20T21:53:01.806-05:00A Little Understanding Goes a Long WayIt’s nice to have a boss I can complain to and follow up my complaint by saying, “Some days I go home and pat myself on the back because I didn’t kill anyone today. They may have deserved it, but I let them live. Good job!” He agreed, good job, and there was no call to 9-1-1 to have me taken away. He gets me, thankfully.<br /><br />The patron I was complaining about is quickly becoming one of the most hated people we deal with, not just by me, but by anyone who has to help him. First, he comes in right before we close and has extensive research he wants us to do. Secondly, he has no idea what he’s looking for and requires a ridiculous amount of digging to discover what he’s looking for, and then we must try to locate it. He’ll know a song, but not remember the name or the band. It’s always Christian rock too, so don’t even get me started on that crap. The song may be by this band or that band and he’ll know it when he sees it, so he needs us to look up each band, every album they’ve made, so he can look at the song lists until he recognizes the one he’s looking for. Some of these bands have 20 albums, and because they’re obscure, unpopular Christian rock, maybe 10 libraries in the world might have it. I have gotten to the point where I’ve said he has to sit down and figure out the album and artist himself – Google or Amazon can deliver the information – because I just don’t have time or patience enough to have him leaning over my desk so he can see my monitor as he tells me, “Scroll down, no, not that one, down, more, wait, maybe, no, not that one, keep going, is that it?, no, okay, next album.” I won’t do it anymore. I make him get on a computer and scroll through the albums himself until he finds what he needs. There is no leaning over my desk, breathing in my face, giving me orders to scroll anywhere. Not anymore.<br /><br />But he does this to other people, though I think many of them have followed my lead and tell him to find the album first and then see us.<br /><br />Yesterday he came in and wanted to make a resume for his daughter, who has only worked at the local arcade. Why a high school student needs a resume I’m not sure, but that’s his problem – he has to make it. Well, evidently he thought he didn’t. Rude awakening! I’m not writing your daughter’s resume, moron!<br /><br />So, I sit him down at a computer, get him to open Word, show him where the templates are, explain it’s fill-in-the-blanks and I can’t do that for him so he can get to work on it.<br /><br />He said, completely seriously, “So, if I have a question, what do I do? Yell out ‘HEY YOU’?”<br /><br />*blink*<br /><br />I replied, with a definite air of irritation, “Uh, nooooooo, you walk up to the desk and ask whoever is available to help you.”<br /><br />Why do I have to teach this man basic rules of etiquette?<br /><br />Later he walked up behind me, behind my desk, and said near my ear, “I need help!”<br /><br />When I shook off the fact that he scared the shit out of me, I wanted him dead. Not quickly dead of an aneurysm or stroke, but slowly, losing parts of his body one by one, with time in between to wallow in the agony, and then another comes off. To the pain. Then to the death.<br /><br />I walked over to discover he had 2 minutes left until the computer shut down, which is irreversible and not extendable when we’re closing – it’s automatic. So, instead of being able to teach him how to save a document, I jumped to action and saved it quickly to the computer so I could log in again after it shut him out. Oh, and he also wanted a PDF as well as a DOC, even though the document wasn’t complete. And he wanted it burned on a CD, not emailed to himself, free of charge. And he then had to go purchase a CD from Circulation. I kept thinking about his deserved death and the injustice of not being able to give it to him myself, but I managed to get through it.<br /><br />As we were finishing and the CD was burning, he wadded up a piece of paper as garbage and tried to hand it to me, saying, “Here.”<br /><br />This was too much. There was no nice left in me. WHO DOES THIS!?<br /><br />Cold as ice I said, “There’s a garbage can right there. You can put it in yourself.”<br /><br />He laughed a stupid and unfriendly laugh and responded, “Yeah, you don’t get paid to do that, huh?”<br /><br />I said, “That’s not the point. You can throw away your own garbage. The can is 5 feet away.”<br /><br />He didn’t say anything after that and I just walked away in disgust.<br /><br />On his way out he thanked me and said he’d be back the next day to keep working on it, would likely need more help, just so we knew.<br /><br />I nodded. I knew I wouldn’t be closing tonight so I figured it was up to the next crew to not kill him. And if they did, I’d completely understand. And I’d testify on their behalf. And I’d dance on his grave.<br /><br />He never showed up tonight. Maybe someone else did the deed for us. He can’t be that rude and shitty just to us – this has to be a trait he practices all the time. To be this good at being an asshole takes a lot of work.<br /><br />But it takes more work to let him walk out the door without shedding a drop of his blood.<br /><br />I’m glad I have a boss who understands and appreciates this.Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-66422767960912478062010-07-17T19:48:00.001-05:002010-07-17T19:52:34.040-05:00PocketsPockets are not attractive. I realize they are very important, essential possibly, for many people to have built into their attire. It’s why we love marsupials so much – pocket envy. We need to have stuff with us. Given the size of women’s purses, the number of pockets in cargo pants, and the inability to get rid of silly little breast pocket on shirts, pockets are clearly here to stay. However, they are ugly and they distort the shape of our silhouettes, weigh down our clothes with stuff, and no matter how neatly they are sewn into the designs, they still look bulky and droopy, and the more you have, the bulkier and droopier you look.<br /><br />That said, women, your bra is not a pocket.<br /><br />If you’re going to walk around in microscopic shorts, a tank top and a bra, your bra does not become a place to keep your cell phone, reminder notes, money, lipstick, or other necessities. Get a purse like the rest of us. And if you pull a library card out of your sweaty bosom, you might as well put it right back in there because we are not going to handle that biologically contaminated tit-card. Your girls are round, they are pretty, they are soft and they should be treated with respect. If you put 53¢ in change in your bra, along a wad of bills and your credit card, those breasts end up looking like a refrigerator decked out in too many magnets. I can only imagine what your boobies look like at the end of the day, the indentations, maybe even the paper cuts, and nothing you can wiggle or jiggle will make them look nice when there’s an imprint of a quarter and the large, rectangular fossil of your cell phone visible on that soft flesh. It doesn’t matter if it says Samsung or Blackberry backwards on your melon – that’s just trashy. Get your shit out of your bra, ladies.<br /><br />Also, men, your underwear do not qualify as a pocket.<br /><br />If some smart designer started putting pockets in boxers (for surely there’s no comfortable place to put them in briefs), the pocket wouldn’t be right down the center of your waistband. When you reach down there to pull something out – anything out – you should be prepared to be either arrested or ridiculed because nothing down there is something you want to show to a librarian, even if it’s just your library card. Unless your full-time job is at a male strip club, you moonlight doing stripper-grams, and you’re in really high demand, leave it in your pants, you perv. If it’s touched a part of your skin that is warmer than room temperature, we don’t want anything to do with it. I know there’s a long-standing tradition of stuffing socks down there, and that’s fine so long as you don’t whip out that sock and hand it to me. In fact, stuff whatever you want down there, but whatever it is has to stay. You’re stuck with it. Money, credit cards, cell phone, hamster, tapioca, Brilo pad, or whatever your heart (ahem) desires to have down your underwear is between you and your underwear, literally. Keep it to yourself.<br /><br />So, while I admit I use pockets, though I dislike any more than one or two in my clothing, I don’t like people creating pockets where none exists. And what baffles me the most is why don’t these people put pretend pockets somewhere that isn’t R-rated?<br /><br />I swear, I don’t know why I serve the public. The public is so creepy.Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-43570781649315748612010-07-16T21:59:00.010-05:002010-07-16T22:34:51.628-05:00What I Learned CampingWhen I was in Girl Scouts, we went on a two-day camping trip to Butternut Springs. This was something like 28 years ago, and the way it was set up was there was a cabin for the troop leaders to sleep in, prepare meals, and a dining room to feed the troops. The girls camped in tents in the surrounding woods. These were permanent tents with a deck-like floor and prison beds and mattresses inside. Given that it was in Indiana, and we were there in the height of a sweltering summer, we were fairly miserable in the woods, sweating and bored, with only a single strip of flypaper hanging in the tent for bug protection. The first night we were there, I did the sensible thing any kid who had been trained by her cruel, older cousin would do: I scared the crap out of the girls telling them ghost stories in the dark. Many of the girls couldn’t sleep, either because they were terrified or because they were homesick, and throughout the night many cries were heard from many of the tents. And then a terrible storm hit, which quieted the sobbing, but also brought a tree down on one of the tents. In the morning, the nonchalant troop leaders congratulated us on surviving our first night camping and said the second night would be easier. I was having nothing of that and I organized a coup against the leaders. Screaming, crying, whining girls ranging from 6 to 12 years old, dozens of them, have a way of wearing down the defenses of even the most weathered troop leaders, and the second night we slept in the cabin, snug as bugs in our sleeping bags on the linoleum floor of the dining hall. So went my first camping experience, which I don’t really count as camping.<br /><br />Last weekend I camped for the first time for real. Aside from having a lot of fun, it was quite a learning experience. And being a good librarian, I’m going to share it with you. (Click pictures to embiggen.)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii8OSP57ApdUxtlp5JlVJljqsWhbzgXnSwDX6OB-XYHwCG9NokZarvuO-NZvohFhJmwdC0uedE6_-lpKbPlsjcDaIHDtsbVn7SN44yL1USuAEmUhqioI1W0g2v0xzBf1PiJgQIOKw-eJI/s1600/DSC_0668.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 96px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii8OSP57ApdUxtlp5JlVJljqsWhbzgXnSwDX6OB-XYHwCG9NokZarvuO-NZvohFhJmwdC0uedE6_-lpKbPlsjcDaIHDtsbVn7SN44yL1USuAEmUhqioI1W0g2v0xzBf1PiJgQIOKw-eJI/s200/DSC_0668.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494712169401691506" /></a>1. This stuff, without DEET, is awesome at keeping bugs away. This is not a light statement made by someone who can frolic in the woods with Skin-So-Soft. Oh no! If there is a biting bug within 100 yards of me, it will find me, send up a signal to any biting bug in 4 square miles, and the swarm will descend upon me with ravenous hunger until I am all but exsanguinated. They leave enough blood for me to survive so that they can feed upon me when I step outdoors the next time.<br /><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2NU6NZvhDeA-C8iTd_m_j-ttESBc2Y8pXYGbVPcnD3nlQ7TZTqBRkHE3qr-QpBDEBwFIaclB-dvibGFPlywFnWnk5_io9Y1T2SmGywnWa5P90iOZ3_IHaZGQaMZ0LjoWv5R9x0fmNPqc/s200/DSC_0667.jpg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 104px; height: 200px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494711827597437826" />This is the stuff I usually use. If you can’t read that, it says 98% DEET. This is the only way for me to come in from an evening outdoors without losing my mind – and my blood.<br /><br />2. Putting up a tent is a lot easier than I thought it would be. But it would’ve been a whole lot easier if it hadn’t been 95º.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha-hgVAFY8NEEDB4smUFjt68E0ifxmIIo9xJzYdpMJ3JIDwBz5cFEy3Knc5LsDWUn3LM1C9qYPC-CmIa_D3GLQj7EMgfx-11xHLktacKhZPeMZA3JGUqKBzFAVtDJd_m9IzmJerEHwCAs/s1600/DSCF9388.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha-hgVAFY8NEEDB4smUFjt68E0ifxmIIo9xJzYdpMJ3JIDwBz5cFEy3Knc5LsDWUn3LM1C9qYPC-CmIa_D3GLQj7EMgfx-11xHLktacKhZPeMZA3JGUqKBzFAVtDJd_m9IzmJerEHwCAs/s200/DSCF9388.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494712425280271186" /></a>Even the tent wanted to melt. Taking down a tent is easy too. Getting it back into the container it came in is a whole nother story. Good luck.<br /><br />3. Never bring a photographer with you on camping trip. They are way more interested taking pictures of you putting up the tent than actually helping put it up.<br /><br />4. When your car wobbles (or shakes violently) at high speeds, something is wrong. If you have the tires rebalanced and this does not fix it, check again. Because sitting in your car on the banks of the Mississippi River on a Saturday night, changing a flat for a spare, trying to find space in your already packed car for the tire that was worn down to the cords is really going to put a damper on the whole camping experience.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisfNBuEpE6s9WTKoB3S3KqeFtAsUcVeji4gLyMtZF2AeG1i_bTvqBhDdu5IRw-ka-BFS7o1GBE1C7jQCBeCDCSg8NDWH6XvYcaVzKO411SAcXKfswWD-ykTz7CrbYq0Ox6bSX6GiNC2P8/s1600/DSC_0671.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 102px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisfNBuEpE6s9WTKoB3S3KqeFtAsUcVeji4gLyMtZF2AeG1i_bTvqBhDdu5IRw-ka-BFS7o1GBE1C7jQCBeCDCSg8NDWH6XvYcaVzKO411SAcXKfswWD-ykTz7CrbYq0Ox6bSX6GiNC2P8/s200/DSC_0671.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494713346629546354" /></a>5. This little LED lantern (which is merely 5½ inches tall) generates enough light in a 9’ x 9’ tent for two people to lay on their bellies and do crossword puzzles in the darkness of the late night, while waiting for the neighboring tent campers to either kill one another, or shut the fuck up. Handy little device. I highly recommend it.<br /><br />6. If Person One is in the tent doing crosswords with the lantern on, head positioned right by the tent door, turn OFF the lantern for a few moments before Person Two enters tent, or all the moths, gnats and other light-attracted bugs who are patiently waiting at the door to get at the lantern will invariably get into the tent and drive you completely mad.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiddlzQCDUWfVWNqRnayju_6GCUs2NG-KcPFkP811_tHyUvaeUb_IrrMcojix__x4T8Wm5fF9VEjkd_0jbFM5d6j0D-dpL4VOTb1V4npibCip6EdlM5xs4oVl3kNa_-WxjZ4BpTUWorYOI/s1600/DSC_0669.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 196px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiddlzQCDUWfVWNqRnayju_6GCUs2NG-KcPFkP811_tHyUvaeUb_IrrMcojix__x4T8Wm5fF9VEjkd_0jbFM5d6j0D-dpL4VOTb1V4npibCip6EdlM5xs4oVl3kNa_-WxjZ4BpTUWorYOI/s200/DSC_0669.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494713101698294626" /></a>7. These batteries only work if you scrape them with something metal each and every time you use them in the little LED lantern. Totally retarded. Don’t know why. Don’t know why we tried this. They worked fine in B.E.’s camera, his camera batteries worked fine in the lantern, but these batteries + the above lantern = need for scraping.<br /><br />8. When you have inconsiderate, idiot camping neighbors who stay up until 1 am setting up their tents, hammering their spikes with actual hammers and not mallets, vacuuming the tents out, using their car headlights to do all this, with the keys in the ignition and the alarm going off the entire time, slamming car doors every three seconds, no matter how many times you complain, they will insist they’re almost done and that your complaints are absolutely unreasonable.<br /><br />9. However, revenge is yours in the morning when the drunken losers are trying to sleep off their hangovers. Revenge is sweet. And best served cold. And loud.<br /><br />10. Millipedes are gross, but massive quantities of millipedes in the campground’s bathrooms/showers are massively gross.<br /><br />11. When you camp and the temperatures are already above the mid 80s by 7 am, you get so sweaty, so slimy, so dirty, that even in showers infested with 1-inch millipedes, you will shower daily, and you will be grateful for the ability to do so.<br /><br />12. Bug spray needs to be reapplied before you leave the safety of the shower. Freshly showered humans are most delectable.<br /><br />13. Trees make for nice insulation against noise, protect you from the direct sunlight that seeks to fry you to a blistering pulp, and provides perches for the early morning birds that sing you awake. Yay trees!<br /><br />14. Trees also are the homes of many bugs that will annoy you to no end. Tit for tat.<br /><br />15. The only thing worse than sunburn is sunburn with bug bites on top of it.<br /><br />16. If you have a sweetie with you who will scratch your sunburn and bug bites for you, you are a lucky, lucky person.<br /><br />17. No matter how awful you think the whole experience is going to be, it’s never going to be that bad. Bring the condoms just in case. Assuming you won’t be in the mood is an underestimate. Being sexually frustrated in the woods is just sad.<br /><br />18. Air mattress. Get one. You will not regret it.<br /><br />19. A bag of cherries is great for camping. Put them in the cooler and the cherries will stay fresh longer, but they will dye the ice water a purple-ish red color. Which will dye everything else a purple-ish red color.<br /><br />20. You, too, can have the coolest meals around if you have a propane stove and make pizzas for dinner! Others are eating sandwiches, or burgers and hot dogs that are not cooked enough, or cooked too much. Pizzas rock.<br /><br />And so, despite the heat, bugs, things we forgot, people who irritated us, car mishaps and general annoyances, we had a really great time and are already planning our next camping trip. After we get an air mattress.Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-2183580948511029582010-07-01T22:44:00.003-05:002010-07-01T22:47:14.907-05:00BenjeI learned to read when I was three years old. That sounds a lot more impressive than it is because all I did was beg my parents to read the same bedtime story over and over every night until I memorized it. Once I could recite the entire book cover to cover, I applied my knowledge of those words and the combinations of letters I saw on the pages of the book, and quickly understood what I was looking at. After I figured that out, I was able to read other books and increase my written vocabulary by recognizing words I already knew and adding the sounds of the letters around those familiar words. It was a lot of figuring out, but from an early age, once I had a taste of something I liked, like reading, I attacked it and had to devour it entirely.<br /><br />Working in a library, I run into many people who also love to read, and though I haven’t interviewed them all, I suspect they all have a book – a single, solitary book – that they can trace their love of reading back to, and will remember that book (or the essence of that book) for the remainder of their cognizant lives.<br /><br />My book, which not only taught me how to read but also bred my love of books, was <span style="font-style: italic;">Benje</span>, by Elizabeth Rice. It’s a touching story about a squirrel who loses his tail in a trap and becomes depressed because he isn’t like the other squirrels and can’t do the same things he used to as well. Eventually he’s talked to by an owl, who teaches him to appreciate what he has and learn to do things again without his tail. He does and lives happily ever after. Something about the sad, tailless squirrel spoke to me and the book just stuck.<br /><br />This is the actual book, which some 34 years ago turned an ordinary child who was a veritable blank slate into a life-long reader.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN_8a8iu3gYVQmg9GjtrfjBmsxfGoU94kFdUBab-v9tuv4EGt-fcGnJEDseK9wA7oROomRNnHVCHpBg4dpM4MJRoRzHvD1wL5OMPpLo0qXe5xgqj3DbS-w_PMJlQEEQG9UhBQSrnQhSiE/s1600/Benje.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 351px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN_8a8iu3gYVQmg9GjtrfjBmsxfGoU94kFdUBab-v9tuv4EGt-fcGnJEDseK9wA7oROomRNnHVCHpBg4dpM4MJRoRzHvD1wL5OMPpLo0qXe5xgqj3DbS-w_PMJlQEEQG9UhBQSrnQhSiE/s400/Benje.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5489149853158700722" border="0" /></a><br />I’m curious what your book is. What started you on the path of being a reader?Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5511729947412381984.post-3265388418594911862010-06-22T10:39:00.004-05:002010-06-22T11:04:33.253-05:00BenefitsAt the reference desk, we have about seven of these toys for the public (and us) as a form of self-entertainment.<div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNKxNLy8eI5Fh023BYF-gv2ANIyHf3jugMrjNiW-NE7OP0RmEs-YNxM37YDGJWEgClFUiXz5XiUtijo2B_cykBADXpovLfZgJ5C0BLcIQoc1P1yt9jZ4IzTYAd9owSyeYRoFDjDbfNzGY/s1600/Clipboard01.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNKxNLy8eI5Fh023BYF-gv2ANIyHf3jugMrjNiW-NE7OP0RmEs-YNxM37YDGJWEgClFUiXz5XiUtijo2B_cykBADXpovLfZgJ5C0BLcIQoc1P1yt9jZ4IzTYAd9owSyeYRoFDjDbfNzGY/s400/Clipboard01.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485623311533343074" /></a><br />The director walked over to the desk and as he started asking us how things were going, he flipped one of the seven toys over, but left the other six as they were.<div><br /></div><div>This bothered the OCD part of my brain, and with no regard for his position, I snapped, “You can’t just DO that! You have to flip them ALL now!”<br /><br />And so he did. With a smile. And without batting an eyelash or challenging my tone of voice. It was great.<br /><br />So…<br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"> Now stand on one foot and “bock” like a chicken.<br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;">Director:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"> I’ll do that… later. That’s an after-hours game.</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"> Oh my! What other tricks do you do after hours?</span><br /><br />He laughed evilly.<br /><br />My partner at the desk, who’d only last week sung along with the “My Ding-A-Ling” song, begged out of the conversation because it was getting too racy, but typical of her, she never actually left and then rejoined and upped the ante.<br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;">Partner:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;"> Do you play the chicken with feathers or without?</span><br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;">Director:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000099;"> Well… [more evil laughter]</span><br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"> He starts out with feathers, but then…</span><br /><br />He began making sexy plucking motions that had me in hysterics.<br /><br />Ahh, the benefits at my job are not monetary, but they do exist.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">* * *</div><br />One of my favorite regulars was in using the computer, as always.<br /><br />On his way out, he asked about our Summer Reading Club display (which I will share with you when I get a chance – it’s so twisted), and we joked about it for a few minutes, then he left.<br /><br />I turned away and heard a crash, looked up to see him, and he was looking at the big glass door, dazed, and his son was laughing at him.<br /><br />I shouted, incredulously, “Did you just run into the DOOR?”<br /><br />He scrunched his head down between his shoulders, giggled a little, and left.<br /><br />My partner at the desk looked at me and we both busted up. It reminded me of the <a href="http://ifirantheuniverse.blogspot.com/2009/08/glass.html">glass conversation</a> I’d had with my brother a while ago, and I couldn’t stop chuckling.<br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;">Partner:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;"> You’re so mean! You shouted that! <i>‘Did you just run into the DOOR?’</i> Everyone looked up and saw him!</span><br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"> I… I… was concerned about him.</span><br /><br />We collapsed into giggles.<br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;">Partner:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;"> You were not! You embarrassed him!</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;">Me: </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#990000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;">No! He embarrassed himself! I was worried about his health! His mental health, but still!</span><br /><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;">Partner:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#990000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;"> And people say <i>I’m</i> mean!</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"><br /></span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;">Me:</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#CC0000;"> You are mean! But that’s why we like working together.</span><br /><br />And we do. More benefits you just can’t put a price on.<br /></div></div>Happy Villainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11276030867866594194noreply@blogger.com1