This will give you an idea of how much there is to do in a library that's closing in less than three weeks. At one point today, I said to Colleague, "Oh, I have something for you to do ..." and she said "THANK GOD." The pointlessness of it all can be very somewhat debilitating. And from time to time, I get memos telling me some other stupid thing they want me to do when the library is closed, but once again, they really have no idea and have thought nothing through. "They", of course, are the school administrators. Here's the new one. Once we're closed, if a student has a medical excuse from gym, but the computer lab I'm assigned to has a class scheduled in it -- it virtually always does -- either the SCM or I is to escort the student in question to an alternately assigned room -- I got a schedule, a different room each period of the day -- and "supervise" the student there. The kid can't do an alternate gym assignment, because there will be no computer or hard copy materials. I will have no computer. One of the periods of the day, we are assigned to the cafeteria, where other classes will be going on because of the construction-related room shortage. If I told you how much money I'm making to spend potentially hours a day reading -- what else would I do? -- you would laugh yourself silly or throw up. I'm wavering between the two. I'm also a taxpayer in this town. Here, they have a staff of experienced professionals and all we want to do is work, and they're making it completely impossible. These people ought to be ashamed of themselves.
I'm not angry or upset, actually, just continually puzzled and confused. Whatever. Tomorrow I'm going to pull a dozen or so things out of the fiction section that I've always wanted to read, and put them on a cart to take with me to the computer lab. More, I guess. Here's an open-ended question: any suggestions? So far, I've pulled The March, by E.L. Doctorow, which is not old, but a new book about Sherman's march through the South during the Civil War; I hear it's very good. I'm starting to wish I hadn't already read John Adams by David McCullough; boy, did that take a long time to get through. But I will read his 1776. Tomorrow I look for classics. I must remember to pull a few individual Shakespeare plays that I haven't read. I have a half-dozen or so Complete Works at home that I've acquired over the years, but I want books that will fit in my bag, since it seems I'm going to be carrying them around a lot. Hey, maybe I should just bring in a laptop and watch movies.
My bedroom TV, which had no picture yesterday, is magically fine today. Chalk that up to one more thing that doesn't make sense and that I don't understand.
Okay, I'm posting before I let this go on any longer. I've been writing the same entry for the last hour, and if I haven't gotten farther than this by now, I'm not going to.
