In with the new, out with the old.....

And it's not even new year's yet!!! *grin* I got my new shearling slippers from Cabela's last night. I usually replace them every 2 years at christmas, this year my old pair wasn't going to make it that long. (Heck, I'd already resewed the uppers to the soles with cotton yarn scraps when the origional sewing shredded last month.) So, rather than wait, I went ahead & ordered myself a new pair. My 2 year old worn out slippers are on the right, my new ones on the left. Give me a year & a half, and my new ones will be looking pretty identical to the old. Ahhhh, love the feel of shearling on my bare feet. *grin* (Ok, Ok...... I know nobody REALLY wants to see pictures of my ratty old slippers. *wink*)

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Let's see..... This week at work has been less-than-thrilling so far. My boss is making it pretty clear that she doesn't like me and my Monday night coworker has clued me in to rumors being spread about me. Basically that I'm lazy & slow and that I talk too much & read too much. It's a library for crying out loud! Ironically, the patrons get a kick out of occasionally catching us browsing a book while we're shelving. And yet, with the boss it's a strict no-no to open a book for any reason other than to inspect it, and even THAT better not take too long. (And, "too long" is entirely subjective. I've been chewed out by my boss for "reading" while I was inspecting & taping & erasing pencil-marks from books because she didn't hear the computer "ding" in several minutes. Never mind the fact that erasing marks & taping tears take a couple of minutes. Nope, evidently I'm supposed to have that computer "dinging" frequently & regularly. And yet, we are of course supposed to be thorough. Unfortunately being thorough doesn't always jive well with being fast, as some of my other coworkers have proven.)

Monday, my friend C. and I were venting to each other about a couple of patrons we'd had "trouble" with and I was actually inspecting & checking in videos as I did it, and C. was taking the time to empty the return bin, and the boss jumped in and told C. to stop helping me and get back to HER job. C. said that the only time she's EVER told to stop helping or talking is when it's me she's been helping or talking to. *shaking head* The boss has also been rather peevish on Monday nights when I have pick-up and I don't get it 100% completed.

(End of the night pick-up is supposed to entail walking the entire library once, picking up any books laying on "reshelve" carts or tables, and putting away any magazines and newspapers. Second go-round is supposed to be up and down each & every shelf, picking books off that are out of place and straightening the shelves as you go. Third go round is the same as the first, but is supposed to happen promptly at 9 pm. We have a rather large library though. When I was wearing a pedometer, I was racking up 1000 steps with the FIRST go-round. The second go-round includes doing a minimum (for me) 5000 steps. And again back to the third. Ok. I know it's hard to explain how big that is, but NOBODY in our library has been able to complete the nightly pick-up 100% each & every time. And I admit that I DO spend a good amount of the time straightening shelves. It's a library, they're SUPPOSED to be orderly! And some nights are especially messy, making it even harder to succeed in being 100% complete with it. I've even compressed my go-rounds into 2, doing the up & down the aisles bit while doing my first go-round. We're supposed to start this at 8:00 (on Monday nights, 4 pm on Sunday afternoons), and I usually start 15 to 20 minutes early, just to give myself a little extra time. And STILL my boss gets all snooty when I don't get it completed. Which is about a 50% success rate for me. C. has taken to helping me out by doing the up & down part in the fiction section while she's out shelving, which leaves me free to focus on the rest of the library without worrying about fiction. I do the same for her on my pick-up nights.)

I've also been chewed out for not getting a minimum of 3 full carts put away during an 8 hour day, and for taking longer than 45 minutes with a single cart. To give some idea why it's near impossible to put away 3 carts in an 8 hour day, here is a typical Monday schedual for me:

12:15 to 1 pm: Start. Begin by putting a cart together, forgot to put my name on it so it gets taken by one of the E's.

1:00 to 2:00: at check-out desk for minimum of 1 hour, sometimes longer (depending on when my "relief" comes and how many books & extras I have to put on the mending shelves & take to the children's room, etc).

2:00 to 2:15, take a break, get a bite to eat, use the bathroom.

2:15 to 3:00: take an already-assembled cart & go shelf for 45 minutes. If it's fiction, I can probably get it done unless they're a LOT of straightening to be done as well. If it's non-fic, I'll get 1/2 to 2/3rds of the cart completed. Get nasty glares when I come back with books still on the cart.

3:00 to 4:00: back-up for the circulation & check-out desks. This entails 1 hour spent checking in videos & cds & such, emptying the interior book-bins & organizing the contents on the correct carts for check-in, doing some book check-ins, and occasionally helping out at the check-out desk if there is a line of people waiting to check-out.

4:00 to 4:45 or even 5:00: book drop. (This time of year this also includes getting all my winter gear on before actually going outside.) There are 4 book bins outside, and 1 media (video & dvd & cd) drop. Book bins 1 and 2 are usually about 1/2 full at most. Bin 3 is 3/4 to completely full, and bin 4 is often so full that the drop-door usually won't shut completely. The media drop is typically 1/4 to 3/4 full, but often that requires a second trip outside with the second cart to unload it. IF the bins are relatively empty, it can take as little as a half-hour to do this. I don't get that lucky. I also try to avoid unconsciously shoveling books from the bin into the cart with no rhyme or reason. I spend a bit of time nicely stacking them so I can fit more into the carts to avoid a second trip out or damage to the materials. So, I spent at LEAST 45 minutes, usually a full hour, doing the book-drops when I've got the assignment.

5:00 to 6:00: lunch! I'm taking my full hour, damnit!

6:00 to 7:30: check-out desk. we also have a cart of books out here to be inspected & checked in as time allows. Between patrons we're supposed to be inspecting these books, taping minor tears, erasing small marks, and checking them in. Busy shifts mean not as many books get checked in. It also depends on whether the cart is full of jp's (juvenile picture books) or regular "mass-market" sized books. If it's jp's..... we'll, let's just say we all HATE to see a cart of jp's out there. They take so damned long and almost every single one has taping & cover-cleaning to be done on it. If it's a cart of "regulars" it can go pretty quickly if there isn't a constant stream of folks to check-out.

7:30 to 7:40: put the damaged books on the damages shelf, take any baskets back to the kid's room, use the bathroom, get a drink of water.

7:40 8:40: First Pick-up go-round combined with moving as quickly up and down each shelf while simultaneously trying to straighten as much as possible as quickly as possible.

8:40 to 8:50: back to the circulation work-room: unload cart of picked up books & put them on their proper shelves for reshelving the following day.

8:50 (if I'm lucky) to 9:whenever: second (and last, in this case) go round, picking up any more books and magazines & newspapers that patrons may have been reading before being almost physically removed from the library by the senior Librarian for the night.

Back to the work-room to unload the cart again.

9:15: off!

So, you see why I have a hard time getting more than 1 cart shelved in an 8 hour day. The boss doesn't give us much time TO shelve carts! It can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 35 minutes to simply put a cart of books in order. On 6 hour days, it's not quite so hard to get a couple of carts done, actually. I DID get 2 carts put together and put away on Tuesday, and a third cart put together just in time to get off work at 6 pm.

Anyway, so it's been a frustrating week already dealing with a boss who passive-agressively makes it known that she doesn't like me and she seems to think it was a poor decision to hire me in the first place. Oh freaking well. I'm doing my job, and I'm going to keep doing it, and being as I'm union she can't fire me unless she also fires CF, and both EC's, and KO! She'd lose half of her pages, if she did that. But I'm no slower and I don't talk any MORE than any of those 4. And I'm a damned sight more thorough than both EC's or KO! And I make a heck of a lot less mistakes on the job than CF does. (Don't get me wrong, I LIKE CF, and I like one of the EC's, and KO can be ok when she's not being a total bitch. But I'm no worse than any of them. And yet at this point I'm the one the boss seems to be focussing her dislike on.)

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Yesterday morning I had to take DD to the dr's office. She's wound up with an ear infection. *sigh* Oh well. We've got her on amoxycillian for 10 days. She's taking "horse-pills" that she's got to swallow. She almost decided on chewables, but then decided that she's old enough to take pills she's got to swallow. I still have to cut them into 2 smaller sections (which they're marked for), and the first pill last night was funny. It took her 2 tries per section, and by the second try the coating was getting kinda slimy & yucky tasting. This morning she swallowed the pieces down with no problems. *grin*

The good news is that she's 114 pounds and 56 inches tall. She'll be 5 feet tall before we know it. (For what it's worth, I'm 5 feet tall exactly. So before we know it, she's going to be as tall as I am.) This means that she's now on the 75th percentile for height, and she's dropped down to the 95th for weight. YEAH!!!!! These 2 aspects may FINALLY be starting to even out as she reaches puberty! (She's never been BELOW what would be the 105th percentile for weight, and she's always been right ON the 50th percentile for height.)

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We're getting more snow. We got about an inch last night, and it's still coming down. I think we'll have another 2 inches before all is said & done. Makes for some yucky driving, though!

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DH and I will be even busier than normal over the next couple of months. We agreed to coordinate the ham & crab sales for DD's hockey team. This is one of their bigger fundraisers (and it's how DH and I can afford to put DD in hockey). It's 10 pound boxes of king crab-legs for $112, or a 10 pound ham for $50. We have 3 segments. Our first lot of orders have to be in by Oct. 30th for a delivery date of Nov. 14th. Then we do second & third lots in Nov. for a delivery in mid Dec. and in Dec. for a delivery in mid Jan. Nobody else seems to take as full advantage of this fundraiser as we do, and CERTAINLY nobody else on our team wants to actually take responsibility for being the coordinator (collecting all the orders, compiling the $$, placing the orders with the company, picking up the loads of crab & ham and delivering them to the player's parents, who then deliver the boxes or hams to the folks who ordered from them). Oh well. We've got about 16 people for this first round that want to buy crab. And a few more who are thinking about it. And several of those first 16 will probably order a second box in Dec. or Jan. It's a great fundraiser for us!

In fact, I've really gotta end this post so I can get my 20 minutes of exercise done, and check DH's email and see if anybody has responded back to him about getting HIS test-email last night. We want to make sure we've got everybody correct so we can get ahold of them when needs be.

So, I guess that'll do it for today. I know I still need to get those recipes typed up for y'all. But not this morning.

Oh, and Barefoot Gardner, email me with your email addy so I can send you the file with my bag-pattern.

Have a Blessed Day!