Epic Conclusion (Moving Days R)

In the days since I left the "Liberry," life has proceeded as usual over in Tri-Metro. I know this because I've been back for several visits. Most of these were in the days prior to us fully vacating our house in Town C, when the wife was still living there as she wrapped up her medical residency, but I've made a few since. In fact, one such visit of mine was made specifically because of her residency.

Each year, the hospital holds a mini-graduation ceremony for all of its residents, giving out graduation certificates to each class as they either pass into a new year of their residency, or, as in the case with my wife, fully graduate and pass into the real world. Now, unlike most graduation ceremonies, which tend to be pretty boring affairs, these residency ceremonies are great because there's an open bar, massively tasty hors d'oeuvres beforehand, followed by a catered buffet dinner with dessert and then what amounts to about half an hour's worth of award-awarding, which is usually a pretty fun time because most of the people giving the awards are friends and colleagues and very funny people who know how to make such ceremonies interesting and fun. (Or, maybe I've just been to the open bar one too many times to know otherwise.) This year's ceremony promised to be very similar, only this year the wife was the major honoree when it came to graduating third year residents. Actually, she was the only graduating third year, not to mention she's also chief resident, so it was even more of a focus on her. Unfortunately, the graduation ceremony fell on June 12, a day I was already committed to being at a conference for a non-profit organization I am a member of, in another part of the state. Not only that, but this was a conference for which I did the majority of the planning and at which I was obligated to be in order to help get things set up. The date had been set in stone for literally the past year. The wife wasn't happy that I couldn't get out of it, nor was I, but she said she understood that that's the way things had rolled.

As the days went by and the conference date grew closer, it occurred to me that it would be the ultimate surprise if I was somehow able to get out of the setup portion of the conference and turn up at the wife's ceremony after all. I get so few opportunities to surprise her without her managing to spoil it in advance, so I thought this would be a great choice. I kept completely mum about it and didn't actually make the final decision on whether or not to pull it off until two days shy of the conference itself for fear of my big mouth letting something slip early. The longer I waited, though, the more I knew it would be gold. None of the wife's family was going to be able to come, so she would be there alone. I knew it had to be done. After making arrangements with a trusted colleague to take over my setup duties, and with a trusted colleague of the wife's to run interference if need be, I officially decided to slip in and surprise the wife.

On graduation day, I snuck out of Borderland and hit the road for Tri-Metro. I had to head over early, to pass some of my setup materials on to someone headed to the conference, so afterward I had a few hours to kill before the ceremony kicked in around 6. So I headed over to the "liberry." The alphabet squad was happy to see me. Mrs. A even had me go around and mark all the shitty shelf-ends with tape yet again in preparation for the delivery of the brand new non-shitty shelf ends. Mrs. J had already been given instructions not to touch the tape.

Around 5:15, the wife called me on my cell phone to ask how the conference set up was going. I told her that it was hectic but going as smooth as could be expected. She said she had just arrived at the hotel where the graduation was to be held and was about to start eating shrimp. She was real sorry I couldn't be there. I told her I wished I was, cause I could use some shrimp, too. We said lovey goodbyes and as soon as I hung up I jumped in the car and zipped over. I was already clad in my "going to graduation" finest and ready to go.

Much liken unto a ninja, I snuck into the ballroom to find the wife with her back to me as she spoke with the very colleague I'd asked to help. I slipped up behind her, then almost directly beside her and just stood there smiling, holding a bouquet of roses, waiting for my presence to be noticed. The wife followed her friend's gaze, turned, saw me, made a funny confused expression then realized what I had done and burst into laughter. She absolutely had no idea I'd been planning it and was, for once, truly surprised.

The ceremony was great, not only for the food and the open bar (which I was unable to partake of, as I had a two hour road trip ahead of me still) but because much of the night was devoted to the wife. It was fantastic to see the respect and love her colleagues and friends in the program have for her and to hear how much she had been a positive influence on the overall direction of the residency program. They even gave her an extra award she wasn't expecting for her work with the rural health system (which is part of the reason we went to Alaska last year). It was a great evening.

But I digress...

As I said, life continues on at the "liberry." Since my departure they've purchased a new photocopier to replace the devil photocopier we've had for years. They've also bought a new fax machine to replace the devil fax machine we've had for years. And they've continued sprucing up the place rather nicely, aided, I might add, by the arrival and installation of the good shelf ends, which, after a whole YEAR, the contractor finally decided to send.

My vacancy has even been filled with another guy, this time a high school student I'll just call Mr. R who belongs to one of the families of long-time beloved patrons (all together now: "Me belove you long time!") who I've known since I started working at the place in 2001. He's a great choice for the gig. And the last time I visited, a couple weeks back, I saw yet another familiar face behind the circ desk in the form of a seemingly long-lost former employee. No, not Ms. S or Miss E or Miss F, Miss Nightranger or even my prediction of Miss K. Instead, the long-lost employee is Miss Temp who left our fold for a more lucrative job in a southern state prone to hurricanes. I didn't get a chance to talk to her, so I don't know why she's back or for how long, but Mrs. A seemed very glad to have someone to plug into the job who was not only already trained but very good at it to begin with. Evidently, I've left the "liberry" in good hands.

And so we bring to a close the tale of the move to the new building. Naturally, there are other stories I could tell about the creation of the new building, being as how there was a a LOT of politics on both at state and local level that went into it, not to mention a handful of people who not only tried to stand in the way but, at one point, tried to stage an outright coup. I've decided it's probably best not to tell those stories, however. I've only been privy to peripheral details in the first place and, in the intervening months, have forgotten a lot of the solid facts I once did know. The way I see it, the "good guys" won the day, the "bad guys" had to suck it and in the end that's all that really matters.

I've got another itch and the only thing that can cure it is more cowbell (Moving Days N)

Around nine months after we opened the new place, we had a pretty major incident of theft go down. We're not strangers to thievery at the "liberry," as seen in such previous incidents involving a member of the New Devil Twins' Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids, another involving such rogue patrons as Jimmy the Anonymous Snitch and the Amazing Bladder Boy, and one involving a former member of our staff, Miss E, who we're pretty sure made off with some money from the cash box four years back, but it's been a while.

The new incident came to my attention when I arrived for work on a Monday to find our cashbox empty of all cash. Ms. M was working the Monday with me and indicated that it was like that when she arrived for her shift on Sunday. She'd assumed that Mrs. A had taken it for some official reason, for the cashbox had been full and accounted for when Ms. M had left for the day on Saturday. This didn't seem at all right to me, though, because Mrs. A would have left a note had she taken the cash and there was not one. Ms. M then offered that perhaps the money had been taken by Mrs. C's kids, who had been in the library with Mrs. C Saturday evening when she came in with them to help set up our multi-purpose room for a Sunday program. She said Mrs. C's kids had been behind the desk at one point. They too seemed unlikely suspects, though, as they are toddlers and Mrs. C would surely have noticed them toddling around with $40 in cash and change.

This left us with a very unsettling probability; if the cash was present at closing on Saturday afternoon, but was missing at opening Sunday morning then it had likely been stolen in the interim. For that to have happened, the thieves either broke into the building somehow, gained access to the building via a door left unlocked, or they had found some place to hide in the building on Saturday, stole the money after Ms. M and Mrs. C had departed and then departed themselves. None of these were beyond the realm of possibility.

My best guess was that someone had snuck in after hours. See, thanks to some pretty shitty cost-cutting on the part of our building sub-contractors, the front doors of the new "liberry" were not of the strength and permanence one would hope for in exterior doors of a public building such as ours. The doors that were installed, you see, were actually doors designed to be used within the interior of a building and not as actual exterior doors. They were stout enough for interior doors and they work "okay" for exterior ones, but they're only passable at best. (And on that note, the interior foyer doors were none too solid, either, as the board that held one pneumatic hinge to the overall door frame was yanked from said frame one day by a 60-year-old woman. Turns out, when that particular board had been installed, the contractors hadn't used long enough screws to actually secure it into the foyer housing. "Thanks, shitty contractors!") Compounding the problem was the fact that these wrong doors had not been installed correctly to begin with, which made them very tricky to lock. They had to be aligned just right by hand or their locking bolts would not set into both the floor and ceiling shafts. If only one bolt was set, the doors could be popped open with only a little effort.

Once we realized the trickiness of our door's locking system, soon after we opened, we made it a point to teach and reteach all the staff the rituals involved in getting them properly locked. Even then, it still came back to bite us once in a while. Assuming that Ms. M had locked the doors correctly, someone in Mrs. C's function-setup-party might have exited that door and not known to double check it behind them.

The other possibilities mentioned were just as likely, but there was no real way to know how the thieves gained access to the money. Or so we thought. As it turns out, we now have a pretty good idea how it happened. And once again, our Junior "Liberry" Clubhouse Detectives' solution involves the bladder of one of our patrons.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

"A Liberry Ass. Called Juice"

It's very odd to me how certain books can suddenly become overwhelmingly popular. I'm not talkin' bout when Oprah adds Steinbeck to her book club and suddenly everyone's tearing extra holes in their butts running to read East of Eden. I mean how a perfectly normal book that's been out there on the shelves for a couple of decades can suddenly become the "sought after" book of the year. Or in this case, the day.

We had a run on the Dave Pelzer book A Child Called It yesterday. A minor run, but I think two unrelated patrons counts as a run.

The first one was turned away easy enough. Due to the fact that Pelzer's books do pretty high traffic anyway, I had already assured her that there was little chance they were on the shelf even before I looked it up in the computer to see. Turns out I was wrong. His second two books in the It/Dave series were there, but the patron didn't want them until she'd read the first.

Hours later, the second Pelzer pursuing patron popped in. I explained to her that she was now second in line for it. She didn't listen to a word I said.

"Well, when's it s'posed to come back?" she asked, adding, "I need it by tomorrow." She actually said that. Apparently, she wanted to write a paper about it for class and figured it was scheduled to return within the next few minutes. Before even trying to convey her shit-outta-luck-would-have-it nature, I brought up the book in our online card catalog and had a look. The catalog said it was due on October 20. That didn't make sense, though, cause our loan time is two weeks and all the books that went out today were due on October 7. This meant that a staff member had to have checked it out, as one of our staff perks is a 10 week loan time on all materials. Unfortunately, this meant that whoever checked it out did so at least two months back. And I had a feeling I knew who it was.

Sure enough, after I brought the item record up, I saw who had checked it out: Miss E. That's right, Miss E, our errant former employee who abandoned us without warning but who has yet to turn in a resignation or her keys.

I alerted the patron that the book was not likely to be coming back any time soon and suggested that she try Wal-Mart's book section, which often stocks Pelzer's titles.

I let Mrs. A know about Miss E's possession of our book. It isn't technically overdue yet, so we haven't sent out overdue notices on it. I suggested we phone her voice mail and leave a message saying she has an overdue book she needs to turn in and is scheduled to work the weekend. Mrs. A laughed and pointed out that the girl is technically still on the payroll. She said that if the state unemployment service ever phones to confirm that Miss E is unemployed before issuing her an unemployment check, Mrs. A will just tell them, "Oh, no, she's still employed here. She's on the payroll and everything."

That's cold-hearted, I know, but so is walking off the job with no notice. Plus it's likely the only thing that will get her to finally explain herself.

BUSTED!

When I went to work yesterday, having my secret identity as a "liberry" blogger unearthed was the furthest thing from my mind. It was about to happen all the same, though.

Nearly nine months ago when I first started writing this blog I knew in all likelihood I was eventually gonna get caught. Sure, I tried to be careful about who and what I wrote about. Well, a little careful. I did rename most of the people and places that showed up—sometimes thinly—to limit the clues within the blog itself that could lead back to me. However, I've been plenty sloppy in a lot of ways too. Sometimes this has been intentional. Sometimes not.

It's one thing, however, to not care if readers in other states and indeed other countries know my secret identity. It's a whole other ball of dung for someone here in the Tri-Metro area to find out and that's where the sloppy comes in.

I didn't realize just how sloppy I was in other less obvious ways until a few months ago when I started checking my stats and saw the kind of search engine searches that sometimes lead people in my direction. (And by the way, what the hell kind of person does a subject search for "Chris Farley's Dead Ass," anyway?) The stats showed me that even having such words as "West," "Library"and "Virginia" in proximity to one another on the same page could lead people right to my door if they were merely doing a search for something using those words. There are plenty of other words that, while innocuous enough on the surface, could lead someone local to the blog. So I went back and changed some references, eliminated others and tried to tart the place up a bit to further decrease the chances of someone accidentally stumbling in.

Still, there's only so much you can do to disguise yourself if you're writing a blog about working at a "liberry" in WV to keep those terms from coming up. Eventually, the state and the word library are gonna get together and someone is going to find them in a search. With that in mind, I figured it was likely that someone from library HQ would eventually find me. They may already have. If so, they don't seem to be inclined to rat me out to my boss, Mrs. A.

Frankly, though, I wasn't too concerned about being ratted out that way. I think most of my co-workers would really dig the blog and would quickly become some of my more avid readers were they to learn of it. I've even considered letting them in on it if only to get more accurate reporting out of them on the crazy stuff that happens while I'm not at work. I decided, though, that doing so would cause a chilling effect on what I could say. Granted, I've always made it a point not to talk too much trash about my co-workers, (except, of course, for those who abandon their jobs and make me have to pack up all their interlibrary loans on a day I would otherwise not have been at work—thank you oh so very much, Miss E). Still, I'd much prefer the freedom in which I have the choice to behave myself.

I figure they'll eventually learn of it, either by admission or by someone ratting me out. My hope is that if they're angry at me, it will be because I didn't tell them about it sooner.

No, my imagined worse case scenario was much different. In it, I would go in to work one day, walk back to the computer hall and find somebody there reading my blog. They would turn and look up at me with realization in their eyes and then either wink knowingly or give me the finger. Worse yet, what if they came up to the circ desk and yelled at me about it? Even worse still.... what if it was PARKA? That chest hair entry alone would net me at least a bloody nose. Hell, the rest of my rogues gallery practically rivals Spider-Man's already! Sure, I might do okay one on one with most of them, but what if they ganged up? Carol Satan would tear me to shreds with her talons! Wal-Mart Jesus would clock me with his cudgel! Ron the Ripper would try to rip me, or at the very least fart on me! And Cap'n Crossdresser would hit me with his purse!

No sir... I don't like it.

Like I said, though, when I went to work yesterday, I wasn't thinking about any of the above scenarios. And when I left to go on break, I still wasn't thinking of them. So when it happened, it took me by surprise.

As per my usual Wednesday afternoon routine, I ambled down to the local "mall" comic book kiosk, to see what the new shipment had brought. Garin the comic book guy was there at the desk as usual. For some reason, he seemed especially happy to see me. He just kept saying my name over and over, taking an unwholesome amount of glee at some unrevealed nugget of information. I was oblivious.

"You will NEVER guess what I saw... on... the... internet," he said with a devilish grin. Still, I was clueless. I was somehow picturing that he'd found stills from the new Sin City film adaptation, or the full script for Spider-Man 3, or clips from Catwoman: The Version that Didn't Blow Goats.

Garin continued, slowly letting out his verbal fishing line in preparation for yanking it back suddenly. "I found a website that mentions me and my shop."

That's when it hit me and I instantly knew I was busted.

I always expected such a busting to come with the requisite chills and stomach vertigo that usually accompany major revelations. I didn't get so much of that, though. I must have at least looked properly shocked for a few moments, because Garin just continued grinning triumphantly. Pretty quickly, though, I settled into my new role as the grinning little low-carb dieting kid caught with his hand in the Nutter Butters but who knows he's far too cute and adorable to be punished.

What had happened, as Garin explained it, is that one of his customers decided to look his shop up by name and see if it had a website. They typed the name into a search engine and came up with some ebay entries as well as a little blog entry called The Fix Is In. They took a gander at it and alerted Garin that someone was writing about him on the internet.

"So I see this Tales from the `Liberry' site that mentions my shop," Garin said. "I knew immediately who had to have written it! Just the language you used was SO EXACTLY YOU."

Not only did Garin read his own initial appearance in the blog, but read most of the other entries as well and liked them. (Hey, I told ya I was cute and adorable!) Even my slightly less-than-favorable early review of his store, ("I can't say this one ranks with the best of them. But then again, it's only a kiosk store—what can you really do with a kiosk store?"), written a mere one month after he opened for business was met with smiles and appreciation for my honesty. (And just for the record, I also predicted that his store had a lot of potential and in the ten months since then he's proven just what you CAN do with a kiosk store. It's become quite the quality comic retail outlet. *WAVES TO GARIN* In fact, Garin's search engine search also turned up an award he'd won from Marvel Comics themselves, but which no one at Marvel thought to tell him about.)

Garin's one complaint to me in the whole matter: "So why didn't you tell me about this sooner?"

I explained that I was trying to keep things on the Q.T. as far as local publicity went. As much as I didn't care that he knew about it, I'd much prefer most other locals NOT knowing about it. Particularly the mentally-unbalanced locals who occasionally turn up as subject matter. 

Then, as if somebody rang the crazy bell, who should show up at the kiosk right on cue... Doc Oc-Fetishist Woman!

This time she wasn't looking for the New Doc Ock or the Old Doc Ock or any Doc Ock. Instead, she had come to see if Garin had any other toys for her husband. Sure enough, a great huge Fantastic 4 Four Pack set of figures has been released, including figures of all four members of the FF plus Franklin Richards, Doctor Doom and even Robbie the EFFing Robot. This, apparently, is what DOF Woman's husband had ordered and she was overjoyed at its arrival.

Naturally, there had to be a wrinkle, though. In addition to the Fantastic Four Pack, a brand new Thing figure had also been released, which was a different sculpt than the version of Thing already in the pack. Garin just wanted to call her attention to it in case her husband was interested, as he knew the guy liked the FF characters. This completely threw Doc Ock Fetishist Woman into a tizzy, though. Garin had to explain to her several times that her husband hadn't ordered the extra Thing so she didn't need to buy it, but if her husband was interested it was there. I had to walk out of sight of her to keep from cracking up laughing as DOF Woman struggled with these concepts for a couple of minutes, dancing perilously close to but never actually crossing the line into understanding. Finally Garin took the extra Thing away from her and told her he would hold on to it and save it for her husband should he want it.

"You'll save it for him then?"

"Yes."

"You'll save it for him then?"

"YES."

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I cannot make up shit that crazy!

So guess what, Garin... If I do get drummed out of the library for this blog, I'm moving into your comic shop and starting a new blog there. Seems like it's just another station for the local Crazy Train.

Sunday Shift

So with our weekender Miss E effectively out of the picture, I hit the library at 1 today for my first Sunday shift in quite a while.

Sunday shifts are usually plenty boring, but I knew I was going to have a busy enough day. See, Mrs. H has now been recruited to become our new Saturday "liberry" ass. leaving Mrs. B and I to rotate Sundays. This is fine with me. Trouble is, Mrs. H doesn't seem to know how to prepare and pack up the week's worth of interlibrary loans, so it's fallen to the Sunday shifter to do that for the past couple of weeks. This is okay too. I'd rather have something to do. Beyond that, though, today's shift was far from boring.

There was, of course, a crowd at the door as I arrived at 12:55. Great.

When I went upstairs and flipped on the light switch, the lights all came on then immediately went back off as the breaker tripped from the surge. Double great. Even greater is the fact that I have no idea where the breaker switch box is. I looked around for it, but it wasn't in any of the obvious places like closets or bathrooms or walls. Damn, it was probably in the basement.

Mr. B-Natural was among the crowd outside and was the first to sign up for a computer. More followed, including Brent & Brice, two twin teenagers who have been making a nuisance of themselves for reasons which will become apparent. They're not related to the Devil Twins, of Rogues Gallery fame, but they probably should be.

The wife turned up around 1:30 with lunch for the two of us. She's on her way out of town, headed back to Clarksburg until later in the month. After lunch, I decided that while she was there and was able to guard the desk, I'd go to the basement and see about the breaker. I was headed for the door on that very quest when Jimmy the "Anonymous" Snitch came in and started signing in for a computer. Jimmy's been in a couple of times recently. One day last week, I actually had to ask a patron I liked to get off the computers just to give one to frickin' Jimmy's dumb criminal ass. And just minutes earlier, I'd had to bust another favored patron off to give one to Parka. At the time I thought, Who's next? Chester? The computers were all full, though, and not due for any openings for 16 minutes. I mentioned that to Jimmy on my way out the door.

Despite high expectations, I could find no evidence of a breaker box in the basement. I didn't want to spend a lot of time in there, though. Jimmy was lurking in the library and while the wife was standing guard on the cash box no one was guarding the upstairs restroom, where Jimmy's pal Bladder Boy once found and stole our laptop. I rushed back up to the main library and then upstairs. Jimmy was sitting in a chair at the top of the stairs near the periodicals. I walked behind him and into Mrs. A's office where I retrieved the restroom key from its hiding place then made a big conspicuous production of locking the restroom door as loudly as I could.

Back downstairs, a few minutes later, I was telling the wife what I had just done when she suddenly signaled to me to be quiet. Too late, I was still finishing my sentence, "...conspicuously locked the bathroom door" when Jimmy entered the room behind me. He had to have heard what I was saying and he would also have to know what it meant. I realized that I didn't care if he did hear me. I really don't mind if he knows that I know he's a sneaky little weasel. If I were really ballsy, though, I would ask Jimmy how his sentencing went this month. I'd honestly like to know, cause I haven't heard.

I had to tell Brice and Brent to relinquish their computers to let Jimmy and another patron have them. B&B, who are probably 13 years old, are infamous for coming in, using our computers, printing lots of pages and either leaving the pages unpaid for or, more often, taking the pages unpaid for. Mrs. A and I both have spoken to them about this and told them they had to pay for everything they print, but they don't seem to care. I figured with the wife still guarding the desk they wouldn't dare grab their prints and leave, but they did. They probably even felt safe in doing it, since they're not card carrying patrons so we don't have their home number to rat them out to their mother. Unfortunately for them, they neglected to remember that we do have their phone number on file as part of their parental permission slip. Unfortunately for me, I didn't remember that until just now, so I'll have to phone her up next time I'm in. Should be fun.

Handbasket Update

Well, Miss E is now DEFINITELY no longer an employee of the "liberry".

As of closing time Friday, she still had not returned any of Mrs. A's calls further convincing us that she was trying to quit through sheer neglect. This would seem to be the case as Mrs. A has spoken with Miss E's mother and learned that Miss E has taken a factory job two towns over and has actually been working it for the past week and a half. It's a second shift position, meaning she doesn't leave work until 1 in the morning. This further indicates that the story we were told about her being very sick last weekend was a lie.

This is very disappointing to us all, but primarily to Mrs. A, Mrs. C, Mrs. B and Mrs. J who have known Miss E for most of her life. They were her friends as well as coworkers and say that this sort of behavior is not what they would have expected from her--or at least not from the Miss E they used to know.

Miss E has been a common sight at the library since she was a small child. She practically grew up in the summer reading and story-hour programs and was among the students in Miss E's first Summer Reading group. Eventually, she outgrew the programs and began volunteering to help out with them. It was because of this formerly good relationship that Mrs. A offered her a job as our weekend library assistant last year when she was only a junior in highschool. She was already among the handful of high school aged kids who we practically consider library staff, so it made sense to bring her in part time. As an employee, Miss E had been fairly decent. Weekend shift is never the most exciting, but she usually did a good job of it. Sure, she's been guilty of doing so using less than her whole ass on occasion, but what can you expect? She was in high school!

Unfortunately, things haven't gone so well for Miss E's personal life this year and they weren't that great to start with. There are a lot of things I'd like to write about it, both bad and good, but I won't go into it here. Ex-coworker or not I still don't care to spread around her personal business no matter how pseudonymously.

I still think Miss E is a good egg at heart. However, she's a good egg who comes from a carton full of spoiled and otherwise cracked eggs. Despite her best and half-best efforts, theirs is an influence that's proving to be very difficult to escape.

Here's your handbasket, now get in line.

Well it was plenty peaceful at the "liberry" Thursday. The computer traffic had calmed down and the final day of Summer Reading went splendidly. Unfortunately several other things went to hell at work.


It appears Miss E may no longer be with us as an employee. It's not that anyone wants her gone or even wants to fire her, but she's not leaving anyone a lot of choice at this point.

Last Thursday, her mom called in to say she'd be out for all of her weekend shifts due to being sick. No prob. We covered just fine. However, an anonymous male also called shortly after her mother's call and told us the same thing. We assume this is her boyfriend, but we don't know for sure. And neither call mentioned anything about her missing the rest of her shifts for the remainder of this week. It's now been a solid week since she's been in and she's not phoned or returned any calls or messages.

We've checked into it enough to determine that she is still alive, but her refusal to call Mrs. A is more than a bit odd. There are other circumstances that may shed light on this, but I'm not going to go into them now, if ever. Most of what we think we know about the situation is gossipy speculation at best, which Miss E would not wish to be repeated. Rest assured, there's Drama O' Plenty at every turn.

Meanwhile, I'll be picking up some extra hours as I fill in for Miss E's Sunday shifts.

Without your space helmet, Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult.

Today was to be a day off for me, but Mrs. A asked me to come in and close with Miss E, who hasn't had as much experience with our new computer system and who might need questions answered. Miss E did fine, but if she'd had any questions she would have had to get in line. The whole day was one question after another from a wide variety of sources and everyone seemed to think I had the answers.

Mrs. D, from a neighboring county library, called five times and two of those were for the exact same question. I don't know what she thought would have changed about my answer of "I don't know" between calls, but nothing had.

In order to celebrate finally going live with Millennium, we held a patron appreciation day and brought in food and lemonade. The food mostly consisted of a box of Nilla wafers, some home made chocolate chip dipping sauce, a few brownies, some mixed nuts, meringue cookies and scones. We figured the food would distract patrons from our taking forever to make them a new library card. It may have helped, but to hear Mrs. A tell it the whole morning was a series of chaos explosions.

We keep learning new and unsettling things about Millennium and each day brings yet another item to our growing list of "Things We'd Better Pay Attention to if we want to Prevent Massive Headaches in the Future."

Mostly, my part of the day went fairly smooth right up until Mrs. A and Mrs. B departed for the day and Miss E and I were left to man the ship. That's when our blessed new circulation program went all Hal 9000 on our ass and started offing people. We were probably lucky to escape with our lives. Several patrons were not so lucky and they began disappearing.

Here's how it went down: A patron would fill out our application, we would input that information into the computer and save it, the patron would then check out several books with their new card, but as soon as we closed out the patron record, according to instructions, that patron record and all evidence of their existence would vanish into the ether.

We didn't discover this until we went back to try and put one new patron on hold for several books he asked us to save for him. When we did, we couldn't find his record. I chalked it up to Miss E possibly not having saved it or spelled his last name wrong, but she insisted neither was the case. Then the next two patrons we entered also vanished without a trace, taking the record of several of our books with them.

Soon, Mrs. D was calling back to ask if our patrons were disappearing like hers were, so we knew it was an epidemic.

Our solution was to start writing down the new 14 digit patron barcode and the barcodes of all of their chosen books just so we'd have some kind of record should the computer eventually start behaving.

My theory was that they were being saved, but that the database just wasn't updating to reflect the new data. Don't know if that's right. I just know that none of my usual computer repair techniques, such as switching the damned thing off and starting it up again, had no effect. I phoned Mrs. A to let her know, in case she wanted to call for the computer cavalry. I'm just glad I wasn't the one to have to deal with it all day tomorrow.

Poor Miss E.

The Parka Adendum (yet another unpublished Robert Ludlum novel)

Now that Parka seems to be back in full force, I guess I can finally share the following tale without the risk of jinxing his departure.

Miss E, our weekend warrior "liberry" ass., recently told me that she had to bitch Parka out for being an annoying patron a couple of weeks ago.

It was a Saturday afternoon and the library was uncharacteristically eat up with patrons. When not checking out books to them, Miss E was in the midst of wrestling with the Devil Copier for a guy who kept insisting on trying to copy the same dark single page despite the fact that the copier was jamming with EVERY SINGLE ATTEMPT. Right on time, through the door walks Parka.

"MAY I PLEASE SIGN UP TO USE A COMPUTER?" he robot-droned, still 15 feet away from the sign-in sheet.

Miss E told him it would be a while because the computers were all full and there was a lady upstairs who was already waiting ahead of him. So Parka paced the floor while Miss E continued to pull accordions of paper out of the copier's guts.

One of the internet users left shortly after that. Much to Parka's dismay, though, Miss E continued to wrestle with the copier rather than immediately hunting down the lady with dibs on the open computer.

"Um, don't you think you should go find the other lady?" he asked impatiently.

"I will when I get a minute," Miss E said, unjamming the copier for the umpteenth time.

"I'll go look for her," Parka said. He went upstairs to search. Never mind the fact that he had NO IDEA who had signed up nor what she even looked like; he only knew she was a woman and was allegedly upstairs. He returned mere seconds later to claim, "I don't see her anywhere upstairs. I don't think she's here anymore. Can I please sign up for..."

"LOOK, YOU'LL GET A COMPUTER WHEN I GET A MINUTE!" Miss E screamed at him.

Wisely, Parka backed down. Miss E is not someone to be trifled with and, as her ex-boyfriend can attest, you DO NOT want to have her as an enemy.

This may seem like unprofessional and non-service-oriented behavior for a library assistant. However, I assure you that had "Liberry" Director Mrs. A herself been present Parka's stupid ass would have been verbally handed to him a long time before that.

Days of Whine and Hosers

When I walked through the door of my house following work this evening, I still wore the brilliant shining grin that I'd been wearing for most of the day.

"Ah, the day I had at work today," I told my wife.

"Why? What did you do?" Ashley asked, I might add with a somewhat concerned expression.

"Oh, it's not what I did... it's what I learned."

There's no real organized way to do this, so we'll just take each item in the order I experienced it today.

Started my day hanging out with Mrs. A at the circulation desk today. I love hanging out with Mrs. A. In addition to being a great boss, she knows all the best stories and always has an ear to the ground for news. I had heard a bit of news about her myself and asked her to share with me the tale of her confrontation of our new buddy the Parka.

Seems last Friday, just one day after I had difficulty getting Parka to get off the computer and stop chatting online to his poser-underage "date", our weekend staffer Miss E had equal difficulty getting Parka to relinquish his computer so another patron could have it. She asked him to get off, and ten minutes passed with him still there a typin' away. Miss E complained to Mrs. A about it. Mrs. A, never afraid of confrontation with a belligerent patron, marched back to the computers and told Parka that when Miss E or any other staff member told him it was time to get off, he was to immediately get off. She told him that this was the third time she'd heard complaints from staff members about him and if she heard any more he would be banned from the computers. Parka got off then and there and fled the building. And when he next dared return, on Monday, and Mrs. C had to ask him to get off, she only had to ask him once because he was up and out the door in a flash.

I chuckled about this and looked forward to my chance to put this into action myself.

In exchange for Mrs. A's tale, I told her about my proposed "If you make stinky in this restroom..." sign for the back of the restroom door. She thought it sounded like a good plan.

Oh, but the fun was not yet at an end. Far from it.

Mrs. A was about to head upstairs when suddenly her eyes widened and she gave me a smile. "I almost forgot. Have you heard about Chester yet?" she asked.

"Chester?" I said, inwardly bemoaning the fact that she had used the real name of the Patron Who Must Not Be Named, thus insuring his eventual appearance. She was referring, of course, to Chester the (potential) Molester.

It seems word about Chester has been slowly making the rounds among our local and even far-ranging public libraries. I chalk this up to the fact that Chester's a pretty wide ranging guy himself. He doesn't even live in the Tri-Metro area at all, but is from a small town over an hour away from here with plenty of public libraries in between. Each one has come to recognize him and has set up similar security measures to our own. They've also begun sharing remarkably similar tales about him.

For instance, one library not far from Tri-Metro has an unofficial policy that when they see him coming they run to put an "Out of Order" sign on their public restroom because Chester evidently "messed" it up at some point in the past. The director of that library hadn't even noticed Chester's usual stalking of preteen girls behavior. She was just afraid of him having another poo-festival in the bathroom.

Other libraries have begun reporting Chester's traditional "pedophile walk-through" as he cases the entire library inventorying the pre-teen girl population. The each describe how he first goes to check the bathroom than makes the same circuit walk-through of the whole joint before either settling to ogle some poor girl or leaves. So far no one has reported any magazine theft, but we probably just haven't heard those bits yet. Almost to a person, though, the staff of the other libraries have been faithfully checking the sex-offender databases for an appearance by him, just like we have.

However, there is one truly ripe bit of Chester news that has floated down the grapevine to Mrs. A...

Sometime in the past few months, Chester T.(P) Molester, was arrested in his home town for exposing "Li'l Chester" to a girl in a public park.

This is not the first time Chester's had a run-in with the law. He's been questioned before after being caught behaving in his usual manner on the grounds of an elementary school. However, this is the first time we've heard of an actual arrest. Unfortunately, from what Mrs. A hears, the charges were eventually dropped. (I cannot, for the love of all that's holy, imagine why!!!!) Still the arrest stood and that was enough to give the librarian in his home town, Mr. X, reason to confront Chester about his unwanted behavior.

This tale Mrs. A got this from the mouth of Mr. X himself...

Recently, when Chester shambled in to his home town library and began his usual stalking of preteen and teenage girls, the head librarian there, Mr. X, pulled Chester aside and gave him the very speech I've been dying to give him for years now.

Mr. X told Chester that they knew good and well what he was up to there, with the whole ogling young ladies and being generally sick and creepy, and they wanted it to stop. Chester evidently protested this and said, "But I haven't done anything." To this, Mr. X responded that Chester had indeed done something: his behavior made the female staff of the library uncomfortable and it made the female patrons uncomfortable. Mr. X then said that while he didn't have women's intuition himself, he understood it was quite an accurate sense and he was prepared to listen to it when it came from his staff and patrons. He said that if he ever heard of any more lascivious behavior out of Chester he wouldn't hesitate to call the cops. After that Chester left and has yet to return.

Mrs. A and I shared a huge joyous laugh about the matter and much celebratory pumping of fists were had. Even though we had very little to do with the whole thing other than helping to spread the word on Chester, we felt victorious.

Fifteen minutes later, a patron came up and asked where our restroom was. I directed her to it and she went off to use it and afterwards left the building. Minutes passed by before I detected the faint smell of... of... Could it be?... Could it truly be?... YES!... Yes it is!..... Country Fresh scented Airwick air-freshener!

The unprecedented event had happened! A patron had taken a shit in the library and actually used the spray! And without a sign to tell them to! Glory be! Hallelujah!

I had to run right back and have a gander at the bowl just to confirm that my greatest wish had finally come true. Sure enough, it was clean and flushed.

Five minutes later, of course, Ron the Ripper marched right in there, used the toilet and completely failed to flush.

Oh, well. At least he only took a leak.
So the rest of the day passes by with few worries.

We were pretty busy, sure, and my arm got a charlie-horse from pointing people in the direction of the tax forms, but it wasn't bad.

Chester did not appear despite Mrs. A's cavalier use of his real name. We were paid multiple visits by a decidedly non-grumpy Mr. B-Natural and one extended visit by the Dufus, but he didn't even touch a computer and spent most of his time reading upstairs. Very odd. This continued to be an odd day.

Around 4:45 or so, our door opened and the familiar white puffy Michelin Man shape of Parka came through it.

"I'd like to use a computer," he loudly announced, a little closer to the sign-in clip board than usual. I log him on one.

Around 5:15 or so, one of our regular patrons, O. Susannah, charter-member of the "liberry" internet crowd, came in to find her daughter, Patty. O. Susannah didn't see Patty on the computers or anywhere else downstairs. Instead of actually walking up the stairs to search the next level--which O. Susannah is never keen on, being kind of a big gal--she just stood at the bottom of the staircase and bellowed her daughter's name up the steps. After a few such loud bellows, I came over to see if I could help, or barring that get O. Susannah to be quiet. I finally went upstairs and found Patty at one of the tables, her school stuff spread out before her.

"Your mom is downstairs," I told her.

"Yeah, I know," Patty said, still not moving to get up.

"I'm pretty sure she wants you to come downstairs too."

"Yeah, I know," Patty said with a little rebellious smile. I returned the smile and went back down to tell O. Susannah that I thought her daughter would come down eventually. O. Susannah seemed okay with that and immediately signed up to use a computer. When Patty finally came down she signed on for one too so she could work on a school paper. O. Susannah said she'd relinquish her computer to her daughter so Patty could have one with a desk and she'd take the tiny little deskless-wonder system by the stairs. O. Susannah told me that if someone came in for a computer to just bump her off that one.

Oh, no, I thought. I won't be bumping you. I'd be bumping a certain Parka-clad figure who'd been on far past his half-hour already. I wanted to see Parka jump at my command. I returned to the front and set O. Susannah and Patty's timers to a full half hour and started their countdown.

Sure enough, within five minutes a guy came in to use a computer. I told him it would be just a minute and went back to tell Parka the bad news. Parka didn't jump, though. In fact, Parka lingered on the computer for three minutes after I told him he needed to get off. Apparently, he didn't know I'd gotten the memo about Mrs. A's threat to kick him out if he didn't get off. So I grabbed my computer timer and went back and stood directly beside his computer and gave him the stink eye. Only then did he stop chatting with his e-skank and logged off.

"Can I sign on for another half hour?" he asked.

"Sure. But, it may be a while before we have a free computer," I told him.

Parka went up and signed in at the clip board again, then took a seat at our card catalog computer, turned his back to the computer and slouched down to wait for his next turn.

"How long is it gonna be?" he asked.

"Nineteen minutes," I said. "If you like, there are comfy chairs upstairs. I'll let you know when one comes open."

"No. I'm just fine right here," he said with what I detected to be some degree of self-satisfaction.

Oh, so that's how he was gonna play this, was it? He'd heard O. Susannah tell me to bump her if anyone came in for a computer and he knows that I'm giving him the shaft by not bumping her for him. So he's gonna sit right there by the circulation desk and make a nuisance of himself for the full 19 minutes just to be an asshole. Well, I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction. If he wanted to sit there, fine. It hardly affected my job. I just went about my duties and ignored his big puffy white ass.

Parka sat there for the full time too. Every minute or so he would grunt frustratedly and shift in his chair. Sometimes he would lightly stomp his foot on the floor. I was just left to imagine the turmoil in his noggin at being so close to his e-skank chatroom, yet so far.

Finally, O. Susannah's timer went off and I went back and told her we had someone waiting. I returned to the front.

A minute passed.

Two minutes passed.

O. Susannah's no stranger to taking her time at getting off the computer either, but this was stretching on into Parka's territory. Now, granted, I didn't care because Parka had just made someone wait for three minutes too. But after three minutes of waiting I went back to see what was taking her so long. I didn't want to give Parka something to justifiably complain about. O. Susannah got off shortly thereafter and I put Parka on the little computer by the stairs.

We got plenty busy before the day was out and it was 6:54 before I could get away from the desk to go back to warn our internet crowd of our impending closing. O. Susannah, Patty and Parka were the only ones left.

"We're closing in six minutes," I told them before dashing back up front to finish my closing duties.

At 7 p.m. I went back and said, "The library is now officially closed."

Not a one of em moved. Parka kept typing. Patty kept typing. O. Susannah was flipping through the first draft of her daughter's paper that had been printed earlier. I went back up front and began timing them. Within a minute, Patty began printing a final draft. These things happen. I'm usually very sympathetic to school kids printing papers, as they're usually done at the last minute and are probably due by the next morning. I'm willing to stay a little late if it means the difference between a kid getting their paper finished and printed or not. But I hated it that it was happening now when I needed moral ground to stand on in getting Parka out. I longed for the chance to go back there and say, "Excuse me, sir, but you are obviously operating under some definition of `closed' that doesn't involve you actually having to LEAVE!!!" So long as O. Susannah and Patty were still there, I couldn't do that.

At 7:02, with still no sound of any movement from the computer hall, I went back and announced, "It is now TWO MINUTES past closing." And I stood there staring at the three of them. Only then did Parka begin shutting down his chat session.

Parka left and O. Susannah came up to pay for Patty's prints.

"Sorry we had to take so long," she offered.

"I'm completely cool with you here. I understand how these things go," I said gesturing to Patty's prints. I wanted to say something about Parka, but thought it wasn't really nice to talk about other patrons to patrons. I just left my comment implied. O. Susannah didn't mind, though.

"I think that guy was having himself an online date," she said.

"Yeah," I said with a sigh. "We know. Believe me, we know."

Snow, Sickos and Spectres: The Three Dreaded S's

I'm stuck at the liberry on a Sunday, it's snowing again and there are potential perverts wandering through our doors.

The weather will NOT make up its mind. Sure, it's cold, but it's not yet cold enough for anything to stick. It's also not snowing enough to keep people from venturing out. I'd expected to see less than 10 patrons the whole day, but it's actually been fairly busy for a Sunday. Granted, I don't normally work Sundays, as that's Miss E's job, but she's out of town so I'm doing the fill-in thing.

There's a fat hairy guy who keeps walking through the library. I don't know what his deal is. When he first came in, he asked if we had a periodicals section and I told him it was at the top of the stairs and up he went. I didn't see him leave, though, so it was something of a surprise when I saw him walking up the hill outside a half hour later. He came in and went back upstairs. Then he left a few minutes later. Then he came back an hour or so later. Then he left almost immediately. Then he came back. Then he left again for good. Don't know what's going on, but he doesn't seem to be interested in reading periodicals.

Hmm. Maybe Chester's sending him in to test and see if we follow other patrons up the stairs when we know they're headed for the periodicals and not just him.

Shortly after the fat guy came in for the second time, I was headed back to log-off a computer and caught the smell of incense in the reference room. It smelled exactly like burning incense, but there was no smoke that I could see. It seemed to definitely be concentrated in the reference room, though. I went upstairs and could smell it faintly there, but it may have just wafted up the staircase. I asked the three people in the reference room if they could smell it too, but they said they couldn't. Maybe the smell is being created by the paint-chip ghost....

See, we think we have a ghost. It's the only way we can yet explain the paint chips that have been appearing on the landing of our staircase for the past several days. We clean them up and then they return. And the odd thing is, there is no chipping white paint to be found anywhere in the vicinity of the stairwell. I don't actually believe it's a ghost, mind you, though you might expect to find one in our library. After all, the building once served as a field hospital in a nearby battle during the Civil War. We have Civil War era graffiti drawn onto one glassed off section of our main-room wall to prove it. So believe me, I've been on the lookout for ghosts. Haven't found any yet.


Our last sicko of the day is a recent addition to the collection of potential perverts who come in the library. I call him The Parka, as that's what he wears: a great big puffy white parka that it's not near cold enough outside to justify. He's either passing through the area or is just new to the library because he's terribly green as to how we do things and to our hours. Just about every day this week, though, he has come in and said "I need to use a computer" in a slightly louder than necessary voice before he's even reached the desk. I'm not entirely sure, but I think he's using the computer to sign in to some kind of on-line dating service. At first I thought he was just cruising for porn, as I would occasionally see thumbnailed faces of blonde model-types on the screen when passing through the reference room. I even heard him grunting in what sounded like frustration a few times. I chalked this up to his inability to see anything better than faces due to our Porn-Filter. (We installed the porn filters last year to comply with state regulations. When people try to visit porn sites, a message screen pops up saying they can't access that site unless a library employee turns off the filter first. The screen invites them to see us at the desk if they would like us to turn the filter off. We have yet to receive even one request to do so, and certainly not from The Parka.) Today, though, I got a slightly better quick glance at his screen, when telling him his time had run out, and saw that he seemed to be searching some kind of dating service instead of porn.

I still don't like the guy. He just seems a bit creepier than necessary and he makes it a point to ask our hours every time he comes in. In my imagination, I see him counting down the minutes until he can next come in, but this is probably just a false vibe.