Cold Sheeping

Or, at the very least, trying to use up some stash this year. I'm not saying I won't buy ANY new yarn this year -- in fact I still plan to order the yarn I picked out as a birthday present very soon -- but I am genuinely trying to use up some of the yarn that has been languishing in my stash for years.

First up: some Malabrigo worsted! I have six skeins of the Indigo colorway that I bought years and years ago, and never figured out what to do with. What with all the snow and cold lately, I decided I needed a hat, so spent some time browsing patterns on Ravelry and finally settled on the Spiralini Hat. I'm fussy about hats -- I generally hate wearing them, because they're too snug, and make my forehead itchy, and do awful things to my hair, so I wanted something light and loose. The hat fits the bill nicely:

(Oliver the guinea pig helped me model it.)

That used up a little less than one skein. I'm using another to make the Bandana cowl, which I'm hoping will make a nice snug neckwarmer to tuck into the front of my coat, but that's also big enough that I can pull it up over my nose on really cold walks to work. 

I also want to finish some works-in-progress, including two pairs of socks, a scarf, and a sweater. Which means I should get busy knitting. 

Suberb Owl Sunday librarianing, oh my...

Well. Since it is the Day of the Superb Owl, I was hoping for a nice quiet afternoon at the library, but we've only been open for twenty minutes and I've already had:

One elderly woman banging on the back entrance, starting around 5 minutes before we actually opened;

At least three different people repeatedly calling the Reference line, hanging up instead of leaving a voicemail, and immediately calling back, over and over and over, while I am either helping a patron at the desk or on the other line; sometimes, folks, your friendly librarian is BUSY, and cannot answer the phone. This is why there is a voicemail box on that line. If you LEAVE A MESSAGE, your friendly, yet frazzled, librarian will call you back as soon as he or she is able to. Hanging up and calling back over and over not only won't make the line of people who requested assistance before you called magically vanish, but it will, in fact, make the already-busy librarian even busier, since he or she now has to go through and listen to all the damn empty voicemails in the box, and delete them, one by one.

More "Do you have tax forms?" questions than I can count. Nope, we don't. Not yet. And when we do, we won't have many. Don't get pissy at us, get pissy at the partisan bullshit the GOP pulled in Congress that resulted in the sequestration, which cut lots of money to various government agencies, which means the local IRS offices can't afford to send us lots of forms. Also, you can get them online very easily.

One woman who was shocked and appalled that the brand-new, highly-acclaimed best-selling novel she placed a hold on recently isn't available for her yet. It's so new, we don't even own many copies of it yet, and there are nearly 300 people in the queue. If you placed your hold within the last couple of weeks, ma'am, I'm sorry, but... it's gonna be a while. A month at least, but probably longer. Nope, I cannot move you up in line, that's not even remotely fair to all the other people who want to read it just as badly as you do. 

And while it would be lovely if the library could have a copy available for every patron that wants one, instantly and with no wait, that's not possible. We own two copies, and have six more on order. With the super-popular best-sellers, we buy even more copies than that. And then, once the demand dies down, those books just sit and gather dust until we put them into the book sale... where they gather dust because nobody wants to buy a battered, dingy copy of, say, 50 Shades of Grey, so we give up and chuck the books into recycling, and then someone finds out that the library is throwing away perfectly good books OMG the horror! And there are news stories and people complaining that we shouldn't waste those wonderful books! We should give them to the homeless! Or to the schools! Or ship them off to Africa, because those people over there would LOVE to read those books! Because sure, the local elementary schools want 20 copies of 50 Shades of Grey that have been manhandled by dozens of readers. And it wouldn't be at all cost-prohibitive to mail those beat-up old books to the poor people in Africa who don't want them in the first place. If YOU won't pay a quarter for it, believe me, nobody else wants it either. Why do people assume that the people they deem poor (like they assume every single person in Africa is) want their trash? Ugh. 

(I would say don't get me started on the subject of people who don't understand that libraries have to weed their collections, except I sort of already did. Oops.)

Whew, okay, we're an hour in, and it's slowed down a tiny bit. Clearly the local schools have projects coming up due, because there are loads of kids in here looking for books on various term-paper-ish topics. Not many helicopter parents doing the research for their kids, which is nice! I'm really just looking forward to going home, curling up with my knitting, and watching... no, not football, because I honestly could not possibly care less about the Super Bowl (which is damn near heresy, since I live near Boston and all. But nope, I still don't care. Even more heresy? I wouldn't be even remotely surprised if the Patriots did deflate the damn footballs to get an advantage, because I get the impression that they'll skirt the rules in whatever way they can get away with. But I think every other team probably does, too, and it's the least of the NFL's issues). No, I shall be watching some gloriously awful movies on the Syfy channel: Airplane vs. Volcano, starring Dean Cain and Robin Givens!! Asteroid vs. Earth, with Tia Cararre, whose name I probably spelled wrong! And Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies, starring a bunch of people I've never heard of, and which I am certain that Syfy doesn't hope people confuse with Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. I have a deep fondness for guilty-pleasure Syfy disaster movies, the cheesier the better, so tonight will be fun. And then tomorrow will be another snow day, since we're supposed to get another 8-12 inches or so on top of the two feet we got last week. And then I think I really shall just take to my bed until spring.

In the meantime, though, there's now an hour and a half left of the Sunday Librarianing. Wish me luck. Happy Superb Owl!

Ow.

So, this happened:

The snow was up over my knees in our driveway. It wasn't heavy -- it was too cold today for the snow to be very wet -- but still. I shoveled a path around the car while Jeff worked from home, and once my arms decided that no, in fact, they did not want to lift the shovel again, I gave up and went inside. Leaving the house is overrated, right?

Attack of the Library Vigilante, or How Not to be a Good Library Patron

Sunday library shifts are entirely different animals from weekday shifts, or even Saturdays. We're only open for three hours on Sundays, but with fewer staff members on duty than weekdays, so we're usually pretty busy. Today started off busier than usual -- the phone was ringing off the hook, and the local schools clearly have a project due soon, because the Helicopter Parents were out in force looking for books for their kids' projects. (Seriously, parents: make your kids do their own homework.) And, as usual, the Internet Folks flooded in to use the computers as soon as we opened the doors. I spend a lot of time on Sundays telling people how to make a reservation for a computer, since they fill up so fast. And there are always, always glitches with the reservation system, or someone will reserve the "next available" computer, and then see someone else leave a computer and another person sit down and start using it, and then they'll be all upset because that isn't fair, and... there's nothing I can do about that, really. Computer use on Sundays is crazy.

Aside from being busy today, though, everything was pretty much fine... until the Library Vigilante came along. She was well-dressed and coiffed, seemed pretty comfortable in the library even though she wasn't a familiar face to anyone, and appeared perfectly pleasant... until about 15 minutes before closing, when she approached the Reference desk to complain that a teenage boy on one of the computers was being rowdy. She said he was playing a video game, and kept cracking up laughing and shaking the table, and it was disruptive. So I told her I'd check it out, and talk to the kid if necessary, and thanked her for letting me know... and then she said "Oh, I already told him to knock it off, and he didn't listen, so before I left I tapped him on the shoulder, told him to take the goddamned earbuds out of his ears and told him 'you know, you're a real son-of-a-bitch!'" Then she smiled, looking very pleased with herself. I was aghast, but tried not to look shocked, and explained to her that, if there is an issue with another patron being disruptive, she should let a staff person know instead of trying to handle it herself, and that it was very inappropriate for her to call another patron names or to use profanity toward them.

Well. She was displeased! She insisted that "EVERYONE over there was yelling at that kid and it didn't do any good!" Which... yeah, I don't care. It's not appropriate to scold another patron, and it's especially not appropriate to swear at them. She argued that the kid would just ignore me, too -- I explained that we have procedures and policies in place for such occasions, and that it's our responsibility to enforce the library's standards of conduct. That's what we get paid for! She was having none of it, and threw up her hands and announced "Well, YOU just lost a customer!" before storming off. (Which was surprising, because again, up until that point the conversation had been fairly calm and pleasant. I mean, I was telling her that she'd done something inappropriate, but I don't think I was remotely argumentative or strident about it. If fact, I was pretty proud of how calm I was, since one of the things I've been trying to work on is keeping my cool during less-than-pleasant interactions at work.)

I noticed that she was headed toward the Circulation desk, so I followed her over to make sure her story didn't change on the walk over -- it's amazing how often that happens! So, the two staffers at Circulation (one of whom is actually my higher-up at Reference! She just fills in at Circulation on Sundays) had, essentially, the same conversation with her -- she again proclaimed that we'd lost a customer because I "gave precedence to that kid over me!!" Which, no, that's not remotely the point. The point is, don't take it upon yourself to try to correct another patron's behavior, because you never know what issues that patron might have. Or the patron behavior you think is wrong is actually permissible.

I suspect that was actually the case here -- I had been in and around the area where this woman claimed the noisy kid was off and on all afternoon, and hadn't noticed any issues. In fact, the only people in that area that I'd noticed being a little loud were an older couple who were working on something on a computer together -- they were talking, loudly enough that I noticed them, but not loudly enough to be a problem. And while I did go over and speak to the kid who was using the computer over there, I did so gently, and the older couple didn't react at all. I really think that, if the Library Vigilante had been telling the truth about the kid being so loud and crazy that EVERYONE in the Art Department was telling him off, the older couple would have reacted to my talking to the kid with a nod, or a smile, or something.

I feel pretty conflicted about having spoken to the kid, in fact -- again, I did so gently, and didn't accuse him of anything, I just told him that we'd had a complaint, and that sometimes it's hard to tell if you're being loud when you have headphones on, and to just be aware of that. And I really only did that because my colleague indicated that I should. I honestly don't think the kid was doing anything that rose to the level of a rule violation. He might have been laughing, but if he had been disruptively loud, I'd have heard him, since I was putting out magazines on the shelves about two feet from him (and again, only heard the older couple talking quietly) and had been in and out of the area helping patrons, etc. As for shaking the table, well, that table is a little wobbly. It's old. And really, I don't care if the kid was swinging from the rafters, don't try to handle it yourself! And for crying out loud, don't cuss at people! (She said she thought the kid was 16. I don't think he was that old; he was tall, close to six feet, but his face and demeanor read younger to me. I think he was maybe 13 or so.)

Honestly, after the second time she told us we'd lost a customer, I wanted to thank her! And on our way out after closing, we were wondering what her actual problem was: was it that the kid was playing a video game? Because they're allowed to do that. In fact, there were at least a half-dozen adults whiling away the afternoon playing online games on Facebook and such. As long as it's quiet, we don't care. Maybe it was that the kid was African-American? If so, then I feel worse about talking to the kid if he really wasn't misbehaving. Maybe it was just that he was a kid? Maybe she was just a nutjob?

What would you have done? Talk to the kid, or not? I still can't get over how pleased with herself the Library Vigilante was after calling a kid a son-of-a-bitch. Who does that?!

Things that do not help job searchers, part 1

One of the things I do a lot at work is help people who are trying to get their resumes together and apply for jobs. A lot of people aren't terribly computer-savvy, and maybe have been out of the workforce for a long time, or they're just starting out, or whatever, and it's stressful for them, so I spend a fair amount of time talking people through the basics of resume writing, cover letter writing, showing them how to apply for jobs online, etc. And one thing I've learned is that the people out there who teach classes on job-hunting and resume-writing give out a lot of really useless information that isn't helpful and just bogs their students down, and it drives me batshit, because job-hunting sucks enough all on its own! Don't add more stress to the process by telling them to worry about things that don't matter!

Today's example: a woman in her 20s, fresh out of one of the vocational schools, who was trying to get her resume and cover letter polished up to send out. She needed some help with the computer, just figuring out how to get the files from her email to the computer, then to save them to a Flash drive, so I walked her through that. Then she needed to tidy up her resume, and we hit a little snag when it came to the formatting: she was worried that the headings weren't fancy, and thought her resume looked bad because of it. I assured her that no, simpler is better, and as long as the different section of her resume were clear, she was good. Plain headings in the same font are fine, as long as you bold them. So, she finished the resume, and then needed to re-type her cover letter, and that's when we hit the major obstacle that she just couldn't get past.

The cover letter example she had from her school had been set up with a specific template -- just the basic business-letter style, but with weird spacing in the address sections and such. she wanted to know how to do that in Word... and really, I almost never get into messing with templates in Word with patrons, because Word sucks, is non-intuitive, and half the time the templates just completely screw up what you're trying to do. And frankly, when a patron has trouble just managing to get to their email, I'm not going to muddy the waters with advanced Word stuff. And you don't need a template, anyway! It doesn't have to be complicated! So I explained that she didn't need to worry about using a template, she could just type it up: She could put her name, and then Enter for a new line, then her address, etc.

"No, that's not right. Look at the space between the lines. It's too big, and that's wrong." So I went in and showed her that she was typing single-spaced, and it can't go any closer together, but her best bet was to just type up the letter and print a copy, so she could see what it would look like on paper, and it'd be fine. "No! My teacher said it has to look EXACTLY like this! If it's not exactly like this, they won't read it!" Which, no, that's not true! Employers do not care if the line spacing in your address is single-spaced or 1.15-spaced. Double-spaced would be weird, but they probably wouldn't give a shit about that either. They care that you spelled everything right, that your grammar is good, and that your letter sounds professional and clear. They aren't taking a ruler to the margins, and they aren't going to throw it away if you use the wrong font. (Well, okay, don't use, like, Papyrus. Or Comic Sans. They won't ding you if you use, say, Veranda instead of Times New Roman. Or vice versa.)

She would not be convinced. And since I have no earthly idea how her teacher set up the sample letter, I'm unable to exactly replicate it. I was only at work for a couple of hours today, and so she was still trying to wrangle it into looking the way she thought it absolutely had to on the screen when I left. I hope she figured it out! But mostly I wish they wouldn't teach this stuff. It doesn't matter! Hell, most of the time now you apply for jobs online anyway, and they have you copy and paste your resume and cover letter in, or upload them as attachments, and then all the fancy formatting gets stripped off on the employer's end. Telling people to worry about the tiny details doesn't help. It makes the already-daunting task of finding a job even scarier, because it adds the fear that you'll be rejected for some tiny mistake you didn't even know you made.

Thank heavens for careful moms!

Because without my mom's careful over-packing of Jeff's Christmas present, there might have been a catastrophe!

I had my mom order Jeff's present, since there was really no way I could do it and still keep it a secret (which it still is, so....) and she mailed it to me the other day. It arrived today, and thanks to our mail carrier being... not so careful, shall we say... the package ended up sticking mostly out of our mailbox, where it got thoroughly rained on all day. (I had some yarn suffer the same fate recently. I was NOT happy.) Luckily, Mom put the present into a padded envelope, which she them stuffed into another, larger padded envelope, and so only the outer envelope was drenched. Contents all nice and dry! Yay!

And now, since I'm fighting off some sort of bug, I am off to cuddle a cat. 'Night!

Post-Thanksgiving, and lovely surprises!

I hope your Thanksgiving was lovely, if you celebrate it -- if not, I hope you had a very nice Thursday! We drove up to my mom's house in Vermont on Thursday morning, bringing the turkey with us -- uncooked, in a cooler, of course. Mom's got some back problems and can't really lift the turkey, plus there's no Trader Joe's near her, and their brined turkeys are really good. So, we packed up the turkey and a couple of pies, and hit the road. The weekend was too short, as always. But there was a ton of food, and lots of relaxing, and this cute face:

mom's cockapoo Shania is SO sweet. She loves to cuddle, and is passionately fond of string cheese. She kind of looks like a little sheep. (Especially her butt, with its little stumpy tail. I wish I'd gotten a picture of it.)

There was also yarn shopping, and an early birthday present for me from Mom:

It's not the best picture, since I hadn't taken it out of the bag yet, but it's a set of five little skeins of Wonderland Yarns' Cheshire Cat fingering weight yarn, in a lovely gradient set of purples. It's 640 yards total, and I need to find just the right pattern for it.

There was also knitting! The mini-things-marathon continued. I made this crowd:

There are two cupcakes there, a dragon, a unicorn, a baked potato (alas, you can't really see the little embroidered pat of butter and chives!!), an ear of corn, and a chicken. Then, I made this guy:

A wee lobster! (With Hershey Kisses for scale.) It turned out cute, but man, was it a pain in the butt to make. The tail alone took me a few hours -- the pattern directions weren't all that clear, and were incredibly fiddly. They called for knitting the tail in five tiny, separate pieces, then somehow overlapping them and sewing them together, then sewing that onto the end of the body. Along with not-very-clear directions, the photos with the pattern were blurry, so they didn't help. After a couple of awful-looking attempts, I finally threw the little pieces away, and improvised -- I picked up and knit eight stitches at the end of the body, knitted a triangle-ish fin, then bound off. Then I picked up stitches on either side, cast on a few additional stitches so that the little tail fins would overlap, and knitted two more little triangles. Then when I stuffed and sewed the body, I made sure to tack down the overlapping bits, and voila! I couldn't get it to not curl upward, but eh, it's fine. (And I know live lobsters aren't red. I didn't have dark green/ black yarn.)

Then, there were a few more Tiny Things, like another cupcake:

A pear (which turned out so stinking cute it gave me the giggles for a good twenty minutes):

And lastly, a tiny, somewhat goofy-looking pink elephant:

Those were all for Metafilter's own version of Secret Santa, the Secret Quonsar exchange. The person I drew loves miniature things, especially miniature food, thus the many tiny things! She also loves tea, so, she got some handmade strawberry shortcake tea (hand-blended by Jeff! Look, we have an online shop! All fair trade and organic!! Plus, we make awesome cold-brew coffee bags! Plug, plug, pluggity plug...)

My Secret Quonsee got her package today, and loved it, which was nice. And then I got home to find my Quonsar present awaiting me! And it was a lovely package, full of gorgeous yarn from an indie dyer (Dyeabolical Yarns) and fancy chocolates!! 

I can't get a photo that does the yarn justice -- it is BEAUTIFUL. It's fingering weight, 60% merino, 20% yak, and 20% silk. The colors go really well together, too, so I'm thinking a shawl. (The guy who drew my name in the exchange said he went to Knitorious in St. Louis and got help from the staff picking the yarn. They did a great job, and I wish I could go to the shop!!)

And now, there is a small calico cat loudly demanding my attention, so I must stop typing and start petting. Good night!

"Stop computering and pet me!"