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Jan. 8th, 2003 12:24 pmtoday, instead of calling the library to locate a book for a patron, i called the patron asking her for the book. plus i think i accidentally locked the keys to the basement stacks in the basement. at least they'll be safe there. but me? i need a blood sugar boost. yummy lunch.
yesterday, as Vali pointed me to the Trib, i realized that my day could easily be worse. i mean, it's not like i got someone off Death Row and now they were trying to extort me or anything.
there is a teeeeeeny teeny infinitesimal fraction of me that's in common with this, i feel. i try to be nice and fair, but was treated with utter contempt by snot-nosed brats. why am i still on this subject? because as i was telling Commonreader in a reply, it's completely frustrating to be entrusted to keep discipline when you have very little power to do so. you tell the asshole kids that you come in late, you lose your hours (dickhead) and what do they do? call the supervisor at home and do an end runaround.
so why don't you just throw in the towel and give up? not my style, i guess. i see something wrong, and i really try and fix it myself, if i can. but i'm not getting paid to be The Law of the Land around here, if you know what i mean.
it's interesting to me too that the guy from the Trib article who tried to extort money from his attorney was also the same guy who turned his friends in for a lighter sentence, knowing that none of them committed the crime. no rapist and murderer he, but not a nice guy either.
This American Life even did a piece on them back in April of last year. listening to Calvin Ollings was pretty awe-inspiring because i could understand if he came away from his experience hating the whole world, but he didn't. he saw what happened to him as a message to get more involved with the world, not less. it was pretty amazing, the whole thing.
just now someone in the office asked me a question. i gave her the answer. she then called someone else to verify the answer. so why am i asked questions, then? i don't know. sometimes i think i'm clear--people see me but keep on going as if i wasn't even there. i need a tiny violin, stat.
i'm reading Bud, Not Buddy in preparation for the author to come to GPL at the end of the month. truth be told, these books looked pretty good (the other one being The Watsons go to Birmingham--1963), but this was the kick in the pants needed to finally read them.
and i liked Bud, Not Buddy overall, except for this: boy characters are concerned with family, finding a new family, getting out of the Home, running away from evil foster "parents", trying to find long lost ones, blood and gore, hopping trains to find work, and basically trying to stay alive. what's the only girl in the story concerned with? trying to kiss Bud. it's a little simplistic, but not too much so. but i've got more yet to read. (i read slow.)
the women characters are pretty cool, though.
I said, "And she moved all the way to Chicago?"
"That's right, but Chicago isn't that far. Here, I'll show you."
She reached under her desk and pulled out a thick leather book called "Atlas of the United States of America".
She thumbed through a couple of pages and said, "Here we are."
She turned the book to me, it was a big map of Michigan and a couple of the states that were next to it.
"We're here." She pointed to the spot that said Flint. "And Chicago is here in Illinois."
They looked pretty close, but I know how tricky maps can be, shucks, they can put the whole world on one page on a map, so I said, "How long would it take someone to walk that far?"
She said, "Oh dear, quite a while, I'm afraid. Let's check the distance."
She reached under the desk and pulled out another thick book called "Standard Highway Mileage Guide" and turned to a page that had a million numbers and city names on it. She showed me how to find Chicago on the line that was running across the page and then to look at the number that was writ where the two of them joined up. It said 270.
She pulled a pencil out and said, "OK, this is how one figures the amount of time required to walk to Chicago. Now--" She pulled a third book out.
Shucks, this is one of the bad things about talking to librarians, I asked one question and already she had us digging through three different books.
That sounds about right.
And this made me giggle:
I think it's that smell that makes so many folks fall asleep in the library. You'll see someone turn a page and you can imagine a puff of page powder coming up really slow and easy until it starts piling on the person's eyelashes, weighing their eyes down so much that they stay down a little longer after each blink and finally making them so heavy that they just don't come back up at all. They their mouths come open and their heads start bouncing up and down like they're bobbing in a big tub of water for apples and before you know it...woop, zoop, sloop...they're out cold and their face thunks down smack-dab on the book.
That's the part that gets librarians the maddest, they get real upset if folks start drooling in the books and, page powder or not, they don't want to hear no excuses, you gotta get out. Drooling in the books is even worse than laughing out loud in the library, and even though it may seem kind of mean, you can't really blame the librarians for tossing drooly folks out 'cause there's nothing worse than opening a book and having the pages all stuck together from somebody's dried-up slobber.
I think that means that the next time that slack-jawed kid that comes in here looking for GED books starts chewing on the spines of the books while i'm trying to hold a conversation with him, i'm going to tell him to knock it off. it's just that it doesn't seem like something you would have to tell people: please don't gnaw on the books. but i should know better than that already.
yesterday, as Vali pointed me to the Trib, i realized that my day could easily be worse. i mean, it's not like i got someone off Death Row and now they were trying to extort me or anything.
there is a teeeeeeny teeny infinitesimal fraction of me that's in common with this, i feel. i try to be nice and fair, but was treated with utter contempt by snot-nosed brats. why am i still on this subject? because as i was telling Commonreader in a reply, it's completely frustrating to be entrusted to keep discipline when you have very little power to do so. you tell the asshole kids that you come in late, you lose your hours (dickhead) and what do they do? call the supervisor at home and do an end runaround.
so why don't you just throw in the towel and give up? not my style, i guess. i see something wrong, and i really try and fix it myself, if i can. but i'm not getting paid to be The Law of the Land around here, if you know what i mean.
it's interesting to me too that the guy from the Trib article who tried to extort money from his attorney was also the same guy who turned his friends in for a lighter sentence, knowing that none of them committed the crime. no rapist and murderer he, but not a nice guy either.
This American Life even did a piece on them back in April of last year. listening to Calvin Ollings was pretty awe-inspiring because i could understand if he came away from his experience hating the whole world, but he didn't. he saw what happened to him as a message to get more involved with the world, not less. it was pretty amazing, the whole thing.
just now someone in the office asked me a question. i gave her the answer. she then called someone else to verify the answer. so why am i asked questions, then? i don't know. sometimes i think i'm clear--people see me but keep on going as if i wasn't even there. i need a tiny violin, stat.
i'm reading Bud, Not Buddy in preparation for the author to come to GPL at the end of the month. truth be told, these books looked pretty good (the other one being The Watsons go to Birmingham--1963), but this was the kick in the pants needed to finally read them.
and i liked Bud, Not Buddy overall, except for this: boy characters are concerned with family, finding a new family, getting out of the Home, running away from evil foster "parents", trying to find long lost ones, blood and gore, hopping trains to find work, and basically trying to stay alive. what's the only girl in the story concerned with? trying to kiss Bud. it's a little simplistic, but not too much so. but i've got more yet to read. (i read slow.)
the women characters are pretty cool, though.
I said, "And she moved all the way to Chicago?"
"That's right, but Chicago isn't that far. Here, I'll show you."
She reached under her desk and pulled out a thick leather book called "Atlas of the United States of America".
She thumbed through a couple of pages and said, "Here we are."
She turned the book to me, it was a big map of Michigan and a couple of the states that were next to it.
"We're here." She pointed to the spot that said Flint. "And Chicago is here in Illinois."
They looked pretty close, but I know how tricky maps can be, shucks, they can put the whole world on one page on a map, so I said, "How long would it take someone to walk that far?"
She said, "Oh dear, quite a while, I'm afraid. Let's check the distance."
She reached under the desk and pulled out another thick book called "Standard Highway Mileage Guide" and turned to a page that had a million numbers and city names on it. She showed me how to find Chicago on the line that was running across the page and then to look at the number that was writ where the two of them joined up. It said 270.
She pulled a pencil out and said, "OK, this is how one figures the amount of time required to walk to Chicago. Now--" She pulled a third book out.
Shucks, this is one of the bad things about talking to librarians, I asked one question and already she had us digging through three different books.
That sounds about right.
And this made me giggle:
I think it's that smell that makes so many folks fall asleep in the library. You'll see someone turn a page and you can imagine a puff of page powder coming up really slow and easy until it starts piling on the person's eyelashes, weighing their eyes down so much that they stay down a little longer after each blink and finally making them so heavy that they just don't come back up at all. They their mouths come open and their heads start bouncing up and down like they're bobbing in a big tub of water for apples and before you know it...woop, zoop, sloop...they're out cold and their face thunks down smack-dab on the book.
That's the part that gets librarians the maddest, they get real upset if folks start drooling in the books and, page powder or not, they don't want to hear no excuses, you gotta get out. Drooling in the books is even worse than laughing out loud in the library, and even though it may seem kind of mean, you can't really blame the librarians for tossing drooly folks out 'cause there's nothing worse than opening a book and having the pages all stuck together from somebody's dried-up slobber.
I think that means that the next time that slack-jawed kid that comes in here looking for GED books starts chewing on the spines of the books while i'm trying to hold a conversation with him, i'm going to tell him to knock it off. it's just that it doesn't seem like something you would have to tell people: please don't gnaw on the books. but i should know better than that already.