Take Refuge at Your Local Library

Well, I didn't lose power.

The library did, though, so two days off!

I was one of the lucky ones. People all over my area are still without electricity. The library opened again yesterday, and it was crazy. Here's how the day went.

9:00am...the library opens. I tweet out that our power is back on and we're open. Dead silence. We had a bunch of staff members there and no patrons.

10:00am...the library begins to fill up. Several people come in freezing cold from houses with no heat, and our director decides to put coffee out (oohh! coffee in the library!).

10:30am...bins from other libraries in the county arrive. A lot of bins. We start going through them and discharging material, but are constantly interrupted by more people. The circulation desk gets hidden by piles and piles of books, DVDs, and CDs.

11:00am...constant stream of people into the library. Coffee and cookies out. People exchanging stories of the storm - felled trees, roads closed, and of course no electricity.

12:00pm...I have fielded approximately 843 phone calls. "Hello, library, yes we're open...and we have coffee/heat/water/wi-fi!"

1:00pm...lunchtime! I'm exhausted, as people have been returning things all morning and everyone has questions. Busy, busy.

2:00pm...still chaos! I'm trying to run around and pull items off the shelves to send to other libraries for holds, and I'm climbing over people crouched next to every outlet. Cords are stretched across aisles, and everyone is charging phones and checking email.

2:30pm...should not have worn these boots today. Feet hurt! Saw some Halloween costumes, best one being a girl inside an American Girl doll box.

3:00pm...power goes out. Comes back on two seconds later. Computers never recover.

3:30pm...computer system still down. Apparently there was a surge when some other business in the area powered back up. Or a transformer down? Or something. Desperate calls to IT result in us climbing around in closets looking for black boxes to reset.

3:45pm...I create sloppy handwritten signs to fling all over the library to inform people that they are severely limited in what they can do today as our computer system is down. And guess what? It's not coming back up anytime soon.

4:00pm...patron informs me that the copier is out of toner. Which is impossible because we changed it that morning! I go back there and shake it all about to no avail. Fling out-of-order sign on top of it and charge back to the desk where people are lining up.

4:45pm...get excited because I get to leave in fifteen minutes!

5:00pm...still at work, trying to help with a few more things.

5:15pm...during a lull, I seize my chance and make a run for it!

Whew! What a day. I was very proud of my coworkers; we always work so well together and these rough days bring out the best in us. The children's librarian put together Halloween books and crafts for kids to occupy them while their parents were online. Our patrons were so appreciative of the warmth and coffee. And even when the computers went down, people were very understanding and we helped them as best we could.

It's always cool to see the sense of community when disaster strikes. How neat to see so many people coming to the library for help. Nice to feel like I was making a difference.

Crazy day, but I don't mind a little craziness once in a while.

A Gruesome Halloween

One time I carved a pumpkin.

That's right, one time.

It was a couple years ago. I thought it would be fun. My group of friends together and prepared to rip some pumpkin heads off.

Yes, it was gruesome.

I could almost hear the horror music movie inside of my head as I lifted my carving knife. Was that a faint scream?

By the end of it, we were tired, messy, and in need of police tape. Crime scene, anyone?

Wet newspaper was crumpled all over the floor, and a bunch of dull knives lay scattered about. We had pulled out juicy pulp and seeds, piling them up in soggy heaps.

I had cut and dug and carved and sliced.

My jack-o-lantern didn't even look that good. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to carve one of those guys? I can barely draw a smiley-face, let alone cut one out of a pumpkin.

Not sure if it was worth it. I surveyed the damage inflicted by my hands on an innocent pumpkin and thought, eh, not sure if I ever need to do that again.

And I haven't.

Guilty as Charged

Yes, I have been listening to Christmas music.

A little bit, here and there.

Every year I tell myself I'll wait until after Thanksgiving, but nobody's perfect. I'm only human. I have a crazy Christmas elf trapped inside of me, jingling to get out. Just like everybody else.

Even though I try to wait, certain circumstances require me to listen to Christmas music early. They are:

• Being stressed out. When I'm feeling overwhelmed by the world, relationships, my own irritating thoughts...I break out the Christmas music. When I'm worrying or obssessing, the reassuring voices of Josh Groban, Bing Crosby, and Michael Buble tell me that everything will be just fine.

• Shopping anytime after Halloween (sometimes before). Unless you'd prefer to bring earplugs with you, it's impossible NOT to hear the Christmas music stores start playing. I couldn't believe it when I heard it a couple weeks ago in the mall. I looked around guiltily, a smile already spreading across my face. I developed a spring in my step, a song in my heart, and a desire to buy everything I saw as Christmas presents. Hey...maybe stores are onto something here...

• When it's snowing. We had a freak snowstorm here a few weeks ago and HELLO, you just can't NOT listen to Christmas music! The situation absolutely required it! It's like when you're baking a cake and have to taste the batter. You can't always wait until the cake is done, dude.

• Going to sleep. Heh heh. All right, I'm super guilty of this one. After all, how many times in the last month have I gone to sleep? At least, like, thirty times! When I try to go to sleep, my mind sometimes decides that we have to rehash everything that bothered me or worried me throughout my day. Or I get to re-live conversations where I thought I said something dumb. Shut up, voices in my head! Calming music always helps me relax, and Christmas music is just a festive bonus.

I will unashamedly "officially" turn on the Christmas music the day after Thanksgiving. Or possibly that night. When do you start?

Happy Halloweeeeeeen... OoooOooooOOooo!

Well, this is it. Halloween. The big day.

I'm going to celebrate today the way any decent librarian would: I'm going to wear a Halloween pin on my cardigan!

We happened to have a bunch at work, all right? I don't typically buy decorative pins.

Now, the only question is, should I wear the black cat or the jack-o-lantern? The jack-o-lantern has blinking red eyes, by the way. I might have to switch off and wear both, depending on how long the battery lasts in the jack-o-lantern...

Hey - have a happy and safe Halloween. I'll be eagerly awaiting pictures on Facebook of everyone's costumes.

No Spookiness for Me, Thanks.

Okay, here's a quick Halloween quiz.

You see a commercial on TV, advertising some kind of frightening Halloween experience. Something involving loud noises, people with chainsaws jumping out at you, skeletons, demons, the works. You:

A) Turn up the volume and get excited about the trip you have planned to the haunted hayride.

B) Laugh at how lame the special effects are and get excited about the trip you have planned to the haunted house.

C) Get scared and change the channel because life is too SHORT to go scary places and do scary things, even if some people think it's funny because other people might get SCARED by loud things and sudden things I don't care HOW fake you think it looks!

I chose C. How 'bout you?

Let me just say that my idea of Halloween is definitely NOT to be scared by freakish things. NOT to enjoy horrifying movies. NOT to have to experience large quantities of fake blood.

Here are a few examples for you of what I would like for Halloween, as opposed to what I would NOT like:


Cute skeleton



Scary skeleton

  

Cute jack-o-lantern


 

Scary jack-o-lantern



Cute ghost


   

Scary ghost

Okay? Does everyone understand me and Halloween now? Just keep the scary away, please! And I will mind my own business over here by the cute chocolate Halloween candy.