... the IT man in LibraryLand
Well I made it despite my doubters.
It was a hard slog and after the blog-a-day experience I think I shall take a blogiday (a holiday from blogging) and return to my weekly-ish posting frequency.
I have felt that my posting standards slipped and I at least noticed the lack of editing time - not to mention time for other things (no weight gain from all that Xmas feasting being but one of the many side effects).
Still it has honed my writing and especially my stream of consciousness skills as many of these posts were banged out from only a title idea and ended up going on and on for paragraphs.
Oh well, a happy New Year to you all. I am now off to Legion3's for a laid back New Years with much less dancing than last years Svetlanaland soiree.
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... The Last Day
So it's the last day of the year and instead of being quiet I am being besieged with a billion little tasks and jobs to be finished before the year is out.
To be fair most of them are jobs I should have finished months ago but I won't let that stand in the way of my outrage!
In particular Sister Serials has been hounding me with questions about new books and the RFID process. Also, puzzleingly, AntagonisticAl has also been throwing tasks at me in some sort of attempt to undo all the good work she'd done to earn my favour.
And now I am sitting here as all the staff leave and I have to wait for another one of those drawn out processes runs until it finishes. Ooh it just finished, I better get to it so I can make my evening rendezvous.
.
To be fair most of them are jobs I should have finished months ago but I won't let that stand in the way of my outrage!
In particular Sister Serials has been hounding me with questions about new books and the RFID process. Also, puzzleingly, AntagonisticAl has also been throwing tasks at me in some sort of attempt to undo all the good work she'd done to earn my favour.
And now I am sitting here as all the staff leave and I have to wait for another one of those drawn out processes runs until it finishes. Ooh it just finished, I better get to it so I can make my evening rendezvous.
.
... Train Works and Tiger Bites
Last night's quiet night in was frequently punctuated by The Tiger insisting on, at first, food and then all that attention she deserved by birthright.
In her catty way she demanded that I stand beside her as she ate - either that or she has some sort of feline dementia and forgets that there is food in the bowl until I follow her eager escort to the kitchen and lo and behold I have miraculously half filled her bowl and she can now chow down.
In either case it came to the "give me attention" point of the evening and then all of a sudden rubbing against Phill's hand became nipping which became digging the teeth in as the hand was pulled away.
Later, after application of a bandaid and much scolding, I retired for the evening only to be awakened a scant few hours later by the glorious sounds of workers enthusiastically getting back to the nearby overnight railway line work after their Xmas break.
I'm not certain but I do believe they were employing cranes to swing the new rails against each other and create that far-carrying and penetrating ringing sound of metal on metal - they were quite good at it too, carrying on for almost an hour.
Of course all of that night-time hullabaloo left me a tad tired today and, combined with the mind-numbingness of stats work, meant that I slipped up at Devil's Advocate's birthday lunch and didn't think to follow up on the Turkish bread component of my meal when it failed to show up for it's imminent consumption.
I did, however, recover enough in the afternoon to make copious use of the thank you chocolates given to library staff and left unprotected in the staff room.
.
In her catty way she demanded that I stand beside her as she ate - either that or she has some sort of feline dementia and forgets that there is food in the bowl until I follow her eager escort to the kitchen and lo and behold I have miraculously half filled her bowl and she can now chow down.
In either case it came to the "give me attention" point of the evening and then all of a sudden rubbing against Phill's hand became nipping which became digging the teeth in as the hand was pulled away.
Later, after application of a bandaid and much scolding, I retired for the evening only to be awakened a scant few hours later by the glorious sounds of workers enthusiastically getting back to the nearby overnight railway line work after their Xmas break.
I'm not certain but I do believe they were employing cranes to swing the new rails against each other and create that far-carrying and penetrating ringing sound of metal on metal - they were quite good at it too, carrying on for almost an hour.
Of course all of that night-time hullabaloo left me a tad tired today and, combined with the mind-numbingness of stats work, meant that I slipped up at Devil's Advocate's birthday lunch and didn't think to follow up on the Turkish bread component of my meal when it failed to show up for it's imminent consumption.
I did, however, recover enough in the afternoon to make copious use of the thank you chocolates given to library staff and left unprotected in the staff room.
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... Learning to Fear the Desk
After a nice few days rest and a relaxing afternoon gaming on Sunday I was thrown head-first into the maelstrom today.
There I was innocently minding my own business and trying to motivate myself to get started on a mass of stats that needed to be done when Miss Amanda conveniently realised that there was a rostering muck-up and I was needed to cover out front for "only 25 minutes".
As naive as I am I did not see the trap I was blithely walking into as I considered that it was both holiday time and rather nice weather outside so why would anyone want to while away their time in a library.
Nearly two hours later I am reeling from the nigh-constant flow of borrowers with mountainous piles of books to return, unique queries, and bizarre desire to join the library. On top of all that I had to repeatedly fiddle with some of the equipment which was obviously still in holiday mode and had decided to work for only five minutes before having a little rest.
After finally crawling away to safety I made my way outside for some welcome outside-ness and fetching of a late lunch.
The whole experience has made me much wiser about accepting short shifts on the desk although I was obviously still a little stunned for the rest of the afternoon as I neglected to pay the bountiful cake and snack table in the staffroom the attention it deserved. Luckily I'm back there tomorrow.
.
There I was innocently minding my own business and trying to motivate myself to get started on a mass of stats that needed to be done when Miss Amanda conveniently realised that there was a rostering muck-up and I was needed to cover out front for "only 25 minutes".
As naive as I am I did not see the trap I was blithely walking into as I considered that it was both holiday time and rather nice weather outside so why would anyone want to while away their time in a library.
Nearly two hours later I am reeling from the nigh-constant flow of borrowers with mountainous piles of books to return, unique queries, and bizarre desire to join the library. On top of all that I had to repeatedly fiddle with some of the equipment which was obviously still in holiday mode and had decided to work for only five minutes before having a little rest.
After finally crawling away to safety I made my way outside for some welcome outside-ness and fetching of a late lunch.
The whole experience has made me much wiser about accepting short shifts on the desk although I was obviously still a little stunned for the rest of the afternoon as I neglected to pay the bountiful cake and snack table in the staffroom the attention it deserved. Luckily I'm back there tomorrow.
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