Another Catch-Up Blog

I've got to change something. These marathon catch-up blogs just don't do justice to my life.

In my last catch-up blog, I missed mentioning that on Wednesday, July 6, I made it to a performance of Grease by Shenandoah Summer Musical Theater with a couple of friends. These SSMT productions always seem to be very well done. I caught Guys and Dolls with some more friends just a little over a week later--Friday, July 15. I enjoyed both productions tremendously, though my enjoyment of the second was tempered by a fever and sore throat.

Friday, July 15. I woke up in the morning with a sore throat, but tried to write it off as just dry and headed to work. By mid-morning, I could tell I had a low-grade fever--I couldn't decide if I was hot or cold. At lunch, a couple of friends advised I head home. As desirable as that sounded, I had spent the morning and continued to spend the better part of the afternoon needing to be available to the I.T. department. RS had vacated his library office on Thursday afternoon and now I.T. was in the midst of making all the arrangements--computer, network rights, phones and phone extensions--for two new library employees to start on Monday. Late in the afternoon, I did get away long enough to pick up some medicine to help me make it through the evening. Since I was carpooling to the performance with a couple of friends, I insisted that one of them drive and I was sleeping in the back seat. I ended up sleeping both on the way there and on the way home. The performance was still worth it.

Saturday-Sunday, July 16-17. I spent Saturday and Sunday at home and mostly in bed. By Sunday afternoon, my fever was definitely gone, but congestion remained. I had a runny nose through Tuesday and am still experiencing slight congestion, but not enough to affect anything else at this point. Just enough that my family ask if they woke me up when they hear my voice on the phone.

Monday, July 18. Two new library employees!!! JS and AC both started today. JS had to visit human resources and get paperwork done first thing in the morning. While he was out doing that, AC and I got started talking about ILL. When JS got back, I gave both of them an introduction to the library's software for cataloging. We had lunch together. We spent some time walking through the library and I tried to give them idea of what all the boxes are around the library and what needs to be done before students return. Most of the afternoon, JS met with the college's administrators involved with the accreditation process, to get started with that portion of his responsibilities. While JS was off doing that, I worked with AC on dealing with library mail, periodicals, and law materials.

In the evening, I attended the informational meeting about the Ireland trip. We are on the count-down! I took notes during the meeting that I later fleshed out to be sent to my parents and others in the group that couldn't make it to the meeting. I wouldn't have thought to take my laptop and take notes if my mom hadn't suggested it, but I was really glad I did. After a day of training and congestion, I wasn't feeling particularly well and doubt I would have remembered much of what was covered if I hadn't had my notes. And taking notes by hand would have felt like too much work.

Tuesday-Friday, July 19-22. More training. At this point, I don't remember exactly what was covered when. By the end of the week, JS and I had figured out the new cataloging software that I had never used. He has taken off with cataloging all the donated and other materials that are piled around the library. AC has picked up on handling the mail and most of the ILL processes. She's completed the processing for our new bound periodicals and has started updating the Circulation Desk Notebook, based on the scrawling added to the notebook over the past year. It was pretty obvious to everyone there that I wasn't feeling well.

Tuesday night at clogging, I was dragging. I sat out about half of the dances and wasn't putting much into the dances I did. Mary's comments made it obvious that she knew I wasn't feeling well and would cut me slack for all my bad dancing and laziness.

Thursday, July 21. JS and AC had the library to themselves for the day and seemed to get quite a bit accomplished. I headed down to Harrisonburg with SS for a workshop on "Disaster Preparedness." The workshop covered what can be done to prepare for a disaster--knowing what kind of alarm systems are in the building, knowing what and where the most important pieces of the collection are, and putting together a plan for addressing the disasters most likely to occur. The instructor had stories and pictures of damage from library fires, floods, mold etc. One of the things that I learned is that if the temperature is over 70 degrees and the relative humidity is over 55% for 48 hours, mold is practically guaranteed in a library. The instructor had examples of books that had been wet and then dried out by a couple of different methods. It was surprising how usable the books still are. Another thing that was apparent through her stories was how difficult to un-salvagable almost any other medium is--microform, video cassettes, photographs, papers. We did get a demonstration of how to air-dry books, how to dry photographs, how to wash mud off of books, and how to separate pieces of wet paper. We also got to try it, if we wanted. Now I need to work on making a disaster plan for the library.

I made it to clogging again Thursday night. I felt a little tired, but not sick, so went ahead and pushed myself to dance. Two weeks until we leave for Ireland.

Saturday, July 23. Second and final mandatory special practice for Ireland dancers. There are 16 dancers going, out of the 29 total travelers in the group. It became desperately obvious that I need to concentrate on Bluegrass Express and Fisher's Hornpipe and get them up to speed before the trip. I feel better about Fisher's Hornpipe than Bluegrass Express. At least with Fisher's I can dance all the steps when we do it at slightly less than performance speed. I miss a few steps at performance speed, but I'll pick them up with a bit more practice. For Bluegrass Express, there are steps in the dance I still need to break-down and practice individually. Then I'll have to incorporate them into the dance and get them up to speed.

Sunday, July 24. I was asked to be responsible for putting together a book for everyone going to Ireland that includes 1-page reports done by members of the group about the sites we will see and Ireland in general. I spent the weekend formatting these reports and other pieces to printed and copied. So far, the book is about 35 pages. The plan is to get a group of people together after the performance tomorrow evening and compile the books. With this project out of the way, I'll feel more free to spend extra evening and weekend hours trying to complete the projects around the library that have to be done before I leave.