Patty Cornhole and the Brimstone Clue

Mrs. A and Mrs. C were both out today, so Mrs. B and I split the day up between us with me opening. I must say, it was one of the easier shifts I've ever done. Even Mr. Kreskin failed to call despite the absence of Mrses. A & C. (I have no doubt he probably called to plague Mrs. B at some point today, though.)

I spent much of the time cross-checking our book database with the printed report concerning books of ours that are allegedly lost to the sands of time... (BEGIN BORING TECHNICAL LIBRARY BIT THAT YOU MAY FEEL FREE TO SKIP IN CASE YOU JUST WANT TO READ ABOUT MY MOST RECENT ENCOUNTER WITH MRS. CAROL SATAN) These are books that were checked out on our old VTLS system, before we moved to the new Millennium system, and may or may not have been returned to us in the intervening time. If they were returned, they've likely been checked out again in the last five months. If not, they will likely be missing from the shelves. Regardless, we have to look in the record for each book in question to find evidence of their status. If they've circulated in the last five months, we check them off the list as books we probably still have. If they haven't circulated we go look on the shelf for them and if they're not there we delete them. Fortunately, our paper record also contains the names of the patrons who last had each book, so maybe we can find them in the new system and put the hurt on them. I'd be happy to undertake such a lengthy and potentially fruitless task, just cause I have an overdeveloped sense of library justice. (END BORING TECHNICAL LIBRARY BIT)

So I'm searching away when a female patron approaches the circ counter. I'm so engrossed that I don't even look up at her right away. I just notice her peripherally and say, "Can I help you?"

"Could you put me down for the new Patricia Cornwell?" the patron said, sliding a book across the counter for return.

Ahh, Patty Cornhole, I thought. We meet again.

Having never actually read any of her fiction, I can't say that I really have anything against Patricia Cornwell. (I do kind of question her logic in blindly rejecting all previous research as to the identity of the real Jack the Ripper in favor of her somewhat forced view of it in her big non-fiction Jack the Ripper expose book from a couple years back. I didn't read much of that book either, but read enough to see that she didn't agree with the major points raised by Alan Moore in his graphic novel FROM HELL, nor with the research of other prominent Ripper-ologists. The New York Times book review of her tome was pretty scathing on this point.) However, despite having no real animosity toward her, I do think it's terribly funny to call her Patty Cornhole all the same. And it's especially fun to call her Patty Cornhole in a cheesy overly enunciated announcer voice, just like the guy who does I LOVE THE 90'S. Of course, I don't do this around the patrons.

Naturally, this particular as yet unseen female patron didn't know the title of Patty Cornhole's book, and since I haven't bothered to pay enough attention to Patty Cornhole's recent releases to know off hand, I had to look it up. It's called Trace. I mentally noted this, then scanned the barcode of the patron's returned book to bring up her account from which I could access the hold screen. At the same time that I scanned the book, my nose finally clued in that I'd been smelling something smoky and awful for the past half minute. It seemed familiar and in a bad way, but I didn't place it right away. I brought up the hold screen and added Trace to her list of books there.

"Do you need my card?" she asked.

Technically, I'm supposed to ask for it, but it's just as easy to bring up her record if she's already returning a book I can scan anyway. I explained this to the patron, still not looking at her. Then my eyes happened to fall on the Patron Name field of her record. It read: Mrs. Carol Satan. Only then did I finally look up at the woman herself and see that, yes, indeed it was her, standing there like the kiss of death. Actually, she wasn't quite as bad as the Kiss of Death. The Kiss of Something Foul to be certain, but not Death. In fact, Mrs. Carol Satan looked downright nice. Her hair was stylishly cut and she was dressed in a very pleasant ensemble and looked for all the world as though she were headed out to a nice restaurant or perhaps even to church. Sure, she wasn't actively smiling, but she was also not actively breathing fire and gnawing the heads off of infants, so it was a toss up as to her actual mood. I might not have even recognized her if she hadn't brought in a thick cloud of her usual stench of Brimstone and cigarettes. (They say smell is the sense tied closest to memory, but some memories are just too horrible and must be suppressed, so it's no wonder I didn't pick her up on radar earlier.)

What really burned me about this situation, though, is that by not paying attention to who she was in the first place, I had inadvertently been far nicer to her than I might otherwise have been. If I'd realized this was Mrs. Carol Satan in the first place, I would never have been so kind as to put her book on hold sans her "liberry" card. I'd have made her search through all the cigarette butts I imagine are clogging her purse and dig that sucker out. What's worse, now I've set a precedent in her head that she doesn't need her card for all transactions, which will surely come back to bite us in the ass in the future. My only real comfort is that she doesn't usually come in on days that I work, and it's only because I was filling in on this particular Tuesday that I saw her at all. When she bites in the future, she'll bite someone else. (Course, she'll likely bite Mrs. A or Mrs. C, who will then in turn bite me back later.)

New Old Music

I don't do a lot of music yammering here, but it's about time I started.

I was just reading Tangonat's blog and she mentioned Camper Van Beethoven has a new album out. Coulda knocked me over with a Dixie Cup fulla spit. Camper Van Beethoven?! I had no idea they were even back together, let alone releasing an album. In fact, the very idea that they might get back together was such a non-possibility to me that I'd never even had cause to hope it might happen. But it has come to pass. Their new album is called NEW ROMAN TIMES and was released last Tuesday.

Camper Van Beethoven was one of my favorite bands from late high-school through college, though not from the start. I bought their album KEY LIME PIE based on the cover art and the fact that the writers for the "alternate music" section of the Columbia House Record and Tape Club's monthly catalog were treating them like the second coming.  After a once through listen, I declared they were absolute crap and sank into a hateful rage that I'd shelled out good money for it. Buncha whiney outta tune garbage as far as I was concerned. What the hell, Columbia House!?!  Morons!  In fact, I hated it so much that I began playing it for friends just so they could see how horrible a band could truly be. Only, after playing it a few more times, I could feel my hatred softening even as I ranted aloud.

"Boy, isn't this just the shittiest band ever? Just goddawful. I really really can't stand this... whiney.... awful... garage country-soundin'... layered... quirky.... kinda catchy... sorta intriguing rock music. Boy, it's just.... starting to sink its teeth into my head. Here let me rewind `All Her Favorite Fruit' to hear that crap again.... Yeah... fourth time through, I'm really starting to feel the hate... um, lessening. Oh, and their version of `Pictures of Matchstick Men' is just so much... better... than the original... Dammit, I like them!"

Before I knew it, I was a Camper Van convert and played the album non-stop for months.

Unfortunately, around the time I decided I really liked them, they broke up. However, I was completely unaware of this fact until lead singer David Lowry's new band Cracker came along four years later. (By then I had started DJing in college radio, WMSV outta Mississippi State. This was the only time in my life I can truly say I was fairly well-informed about new music, since every record label in the country, from the mighty to the lowly, was actively trying to cram their wares down our throats. Heard an awful lot of shitty music during those years, but found a huge amount of great music I would otherwise never have been exposed to. Folks like Moxy Fruvous, The Waltons, Jason Falkner, Alex Lumelsky, Richard Barone, Ben Folds Five, the Subdudes, Jeff Buckley, Ben Harper, Southern Culture on the Skids, October Project, Sonia Dada and even the Dave Matthews band, back before they were DAVE MATTHEWS BAND!!!!)

This is very similar to the way I was completely unaware that Crowded House had broken up even after their core members, Neil and Tim Finn, released their first Finn Brothers album in 1995. Or how I had no idea Peter Gabriel had released a new album in 2002 until I heard a song from it on my old college radio station while visiting back home in late 2003. Or how I had no clue that the Finn Brothers had released a SECOND CD two months ago until I heard it playing as background music in a local gallery.

I'm so out of the music loop. I faithfully read Rolling Stone every two weeks and where does it get me? Apparently, nowhere.

So I've recently purchased a lot of new/old music. I bought Peter Gabriel's UP, Finn Brothers' EVERYONE IS HERE, and Neil Finn's ONE NIL which I had to buy a used import of since the original wasn't released in this country. (Yes, I do realize that ONE NIL was essentially released here in 2002 in the form of ONE ALL, but even that I only recently learned while researching what I wanted to buy.) All three are fantastic CDs, with the Finn Brothers new one earning top spot among my current favorite albums. I almost need to curse in order to convey how great this album is to me... though, again, not right away.

ME UPON 1ST LISTEN: I can't believe "Luckiest Man Alive" is the big single from this album. It's okay and all, but nothing great.

ME UPON 2ND LISTEN: Wow. I'm kinda liking the rhythm of this "Luckiest Man Alive" tune. Turkish Banjo, huh? That's kinda nice.

ME UPON 3RD LISTEN: Shit yeah, this is the single!

So now I gotta go get in line for Camper Van's new one. All the reviews I've now found say it's worth waiting 15 years for. Most of the song snippits I've heard are pretty Camper Van Beethoveny too.

The Return of Paranoid Rick James

I'd just returned from break, yesterday, when I spied Paranoid Rick James walking through on his way to the books on tape. (This is the same Superfreak patron who raised holy hell at having to supply a drivers license and physical address in order to get a new library card, who screamed at us claiming we were in cahoots with Homeland Security, who then stormed out, sans card, only to sheepishly crawl back a week later and apply for one, handing over all the information he'd raised such hell about before.)

Now, Rick's been pretty scarce since receiving his card. His girlfriend, Gladys Knight, has been in regularly, though, so we've been assuming that many of the books on tape she was choosing were likely for Rick too. Whatever. No crime there.  However, from the moment I saw him yesterday, I knew exactly how things were about to play out and this time my skills of prophecy were right on the money.

Rick made a few selections from the books on tape section and moseyed on up toward the circ desk. I saw him coming and suddenly became preoccupied with shelving books in an effort to appear too busy to help him, forcing Mrs. C to do it instead. Mrs. C, who was already behind the circulation desk, trumped me, though, by suddenly becoming too preoccupied in talking on the phone to deal with Rick, so I was forced to come over to do it anyway.

I picked up the barcode scanner and stood there waiting for Rick to produce his card. Here's where my prediction came to fruition.

"Oh, um. I'm in there already under RICK JAMES," Rick said, pointing at our circulation computer.

"Do you have your library card?" I asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.

"Uh, no. Not on me," he said, patting his pockets.

"Well, we do need your card."

Rick tried for a moment to look surprised at this, then seemed to think better of it. After all, Mrs. C, a witness to his original tantrum, was standing right there. Plus I'm the guy who issued him his card a week after his tantrum and he knows good and well that I told him he would need it every time he checked something out. He wasn't giving up yet, though.

"I, uh. I guess I left it at home," he said. Then Rick stood there and stared at me trying to look innocent, probably expecting I would relent and let him check his tapes out after all. Now, it is so completely against policy to do that, but we have given ourselves the option of checking books out on our own personal cards and allowing patrons to take them, provided we make a note in our own record as to who took what. We've also been known to confirm the drivers license number between their physical license and their patron record and proceed from there. Those were my options. However, I was not about to use either option for the benefit of this tantrum-throwing dickweed. (Nor anyone else, for that matter, cause I think checking stuff out on my card for other people is just a bad idea.) I just stared right back at him.

"Yep. Don't have it," he said, patting his pockets down once again.

"If you like, we can hold your books here at the desk and you can pick them up when you bring your card," I told him.

"Uh, no. No, I don't want to do that," he said, still remaining nice and polite.

"We could issue you a replacement card," I said. "We would charge $1 for it, though."

"I don't think I have a dollar," he said, now thrusting hands into pockets in a search. He eventually brought out 35 cents and held it out in his hand for me to see. "Looks like all I have."

"Well, like I said," I told him, not even looking at his sympathy bait, "we can hold your books here for you at the desk."

Rick decided he still didn't want that, sighed and made one last attempt to look pitiful as he trudged slowly back toward the books on tape section to put them away. It was all I could do to hold back the torrent of compassionate tears straining at the corners of my eyes.

A minute later, his gambit an obvious failure, Rick returned to the circ desk with his tapes and said he'd changed his mind and we could hold them for him after all.

I will now make a further prediction: If Rick does return for his tapes himself, he will not return with HIS card but with Gladys Knight's card. More likely, he'll just send Gladys Knight for them, all to avoid actually using his own card, further preventing the government from knowing the titles of all the chick novels he likes to read.

Not lumber

After laughing with Mrs. C about her recent groping, I went back to my work. Then the phone rang. The phone had scarcely stopped ringing since I arrived. In fact, it took Mrs. C nearly 10 minutes to tell me the original groping story because she kept being interrupted by the phone. It's like all the people who failed to call and pester us during my recent heavenly Sunday shift were making up for it.

This time the call was from my wife. She had arrived in Princeton and got word from a classmate of hers that their Board Exam scores were in. Her classmate was hesitant to call in to hear if she'd passed, but my wife had to know right away. She phoned up the school.

As she was telling me this, I was trying to gauge her tone of voice to see if I could detect sorrow in it. I figured things were good, cause if she'd failed her boards she would have just called me in tears to begin with rather than build up the suspense about it all. (Kind of like I'm doing now.)

She passed!  And she did much better on this set of exams than she had on her first round of boards last year. (Her classmate also passed.) It's yet another milestone in her quest to become a doctor behind her. I think after the week she's had, she needed the boost.

Honk if you're horny

We had crazy computer traffic this afternoon. Not even the regular Internet Crowd, either, (though I did have to run Parka off at one point before the real competition for computers began). Just patron after patron coming in the door for a computer until we were three deep waiting. Mrs. C said it had been a strange day, with sudden bursts of business and then equal stretches of down time.

"You need to hear what happened to me on Monday, though," Mrs. C said with a grin. "You can add it to your collection of stories."

(What the hell did that mean, anyway? As far as I know, she is unaware of this blog.)

Mrs. C related the following: On Monday, she was working the desk by herself when a gentleman wearing extremely dark sunglasses came in being led by a woman. From the look of them, Mrs. C assumed he must be blind. His guide led him into the children's room and sat him on the sponge kiddie chair for a while before eventually leading the man back into the front room and to the circ desk. Standing at the desk, the man reached out and began feeling along the top of our new flatscreen monitor while his guide and Mrs. C spoke. Shortly after this, the man asked his guide something in a low voice that Mrs. C couldn't hear.

"Well, you can ask her yourself," the guide said. The man seemed reluctant to speak, though, so his guide eventually had to voice his question for him.

"He wants to know if he can feel your face to see what you look like," the guide told Mrs. C.

"Oh. Okay, sure," Mrs. C said. She leaned forward at the desk as the guide reached the blind man's hands out to rest on Mrs. C's chin and jaw. The man felt her chin for a moment. Then, instead of moving upward to feel the rest of her face, his hands immediately reached down and honked onto her breasts. And not just a quick, Oopsie, wrong direction honk, but a good solid double-handed grope.

Now this is the point where, in an ideal world, Mrs. C should have shouted, "All right, Helen Keller, just back the hell off the cans there!" However, Mrs. C was far too shocked to say anything and instead reached her arm across, blocking further access to her rack as she picked up the barcode scanner.

What's truly outrageous about this, though, is that the man's guide said nothing. Didn't seem to notice it, didn't reference it, didn't apologize for it, didn't even try to come up with a polite fiction excuse for it. Nothing. Far from being offended, Mrs. C thinks this is terribly funny and hasn't stopped telling people about it yet. After she told me, she told another regular patron and friend of the library and we all sat around rehashing the details just to laugh about it.

My theory, which I expressed, is that the minute dude got in the car, those glasses came right off and he told his guide, "Well, that was fun. Where you wanna try it next?"

Rogue Sighting

The wife and I slept late and got an even later start preparing to leave for breakfast. Before we could depart, Mrs. C phoned me and asked if I would stop at the Town-C branch to check on their computers. We had a huge electrical storm last night and none of the computers were working there, including circulation. Complicating matters further, Town-C's librarian, Mrs. S, was out of town at a meeting with Mrs. A accompanying. A volunteer had been left to man the desk and nothing her instruction sheet was telling her to do was working.

Town-C's library branch isn't nearly as busy as my own in Town-A. It's not nearly as nice either, but is also 150 years younger and is of the prefab octagonal cookie cutter library design that was popular in the state some decades back, when getting cheap libraries into smaller communities was all the rage.

Sure enough, none of the computers seemed to be doing much. The patron computers wouldn't connect to the internet and the circulation computer wouldn't even let me into Win XP. The volunteer who was working thought for sure it was somehow her fault. It wasn't.

While I was trying to convince the circulation computer to load, who should walk in the door but Mr. B-Natural and his dog Bubba. We've not actually seen Mr. B at our branch since we banned Bubba from coming in due to the flea infestation that he allegedly caused. I thought, mistakenly it seems, that we were the only area library that would tolerate dogs, so I didn't see why Mr. B was so upset by it that he would refuse to come back to our branch at all. But we've certainly not seen any of him for over an entire month. There was a time when we would have paid good money to achieve that effect, but as it's being achieved at Bubba's expense, I'm not so happy about it. Neither is my wife. She thinks its a crime that we won't let Bubba in. She immediately began petting Bubba and telling Mr. B-Natural what a charmer his dog was. He beamed.

When Mr. B-Natural saw me at the desk, he smiled and said, "What are you doing down here?"

"Just trying to whip this computer into shape."

I finally did get that computer whipped into shape, but couldn't convince it to connect to the internet. Even after 10 minutes on the phone with one of our techs and some time spent turning the router, server computer, and battery backup on and off, we couldn't get it to come up. We finally chalked it up to being Verizon's problem and I was able to leave for lunch with my woman.

Intruders are not for fun, they are for learning and instruction.

The past 24 hours have been a cornucopia of both "liberry" goodness and real life drama. Far too much stuff for a single entry, so I'll just split it up as it happened.

Let's start with last night.

I went to bed around midnight and fell right asleep. Slept pretty hard too. Imagine my confusion when my sleep was disturbed at 1 a.m. by a sudden noise from elsewhere in the house. My sleeping mind registered it and began trying to wake me up, but it was having trouble. By the time I roused enough to know something was up, the noise itself had already passed, but I somehow knew it had occurred. Also troubling was the fact that my cat—the usual source of sudden noises in the night—was sleeping on my chest.

Before I could even calculate the ramifications of this realization, I heard a voice. It was a woman's voice, though I couldn't make out what she was saying. It sounded like it was coming from somewhere inside the house. Normally I would be alarmed to know I had an intruder, but my brain was still not quite awake enough to even register any emotion other than confusion. Was it the TV? No, I'd turned it off. I'd turned everything off. The image of some crazy woman wandering around in the basement popped into my mind, but I couldn't even work up any fear over it.

Then, I heard the voice again, this time more clearly. It said, "Hoo hoo."

"Hoo hoo," I said, responding to my wife. She had snuck home from her ER rotation and was creeping through the house quietly calling out our standard lovey-dovey greeting of "Hoo hoo" in an effort to prevent me from being startled awake and accidentally whacking her with the stout "brainin' stick" I keep under the bed. Good plan. She's a smart cookie.

Turns out, she'd had had a very bad evening in the ER.

At some point, one of her superiors on the floor had told her to go have a look at a dead fetus in a plastic bag. They said it was the sort of thing medical students should see. She didn't know how it had died, but she went and saw it and was unsettled by it. More unsettling than the fetus itself, though, was the way her superiors were so flippant about it. ER docs tend to build up some serious mental callouses when it comes to unsettling matters, like death. They see enough of it every day that they can't afford to come unglued about it no matter how affected they might otherwise be as a human being. She recognizes that and knows that it comes with the territory. We've both talked to plenty of docs who went into their careers thinking they were going to be the all-caring all-compassionate doctor who would never become jaded. Then about three months into their internship, they just realized that Shields Up was the only way not to go insane over the kinds of things they were seeing.

My wife is not a thin-skinned person. Last night, though, she wasn't prepared to be so calloused. It made her sad that here was this little fully-formed little baby lying in a plastic bag, reduced from the level of a formerly viable human being to that of a display item, a curiosity, something "medical students should see."

Knowing she was helpless to do anything else for the child, she instead shed a tear and said a prayer for it. (And this is every bit why I love her.)

Soon after that, she decided she needed to go home and sleep in her own bed with her own sweety. I was glad to have her home, though not for the circumstances that caused it. We snuggled up in our comfy bed and soon snoozed together.

She and I both knew that the ER rotation would not be an easy one and that she was going to see some disturbing things while on it. Sometimes those things can sneak up on you, though.

Sorry. I promise the rest of my entries will be far cheerier than this. And there's huge good news on the way...

Oranges and Lemons

Some weeks back a high school-aged kid came in looking for A Clockwork Orange. Amazingly, he wasn't looking for the movie, but the original book. Too bad we don't own it. I offered to interlibrary loan it for him, which took some explaining as his expression clearly said "I know not this Enter-Liberry Lone process of which you speak." I guess everyone has to start their knowledge base somewhere, though, so I explained, Well, we don't own the book. This other library does. We're gonna get them to loan it to us and we'll then loan it to you. See?

"Oh, sure."

He was still a bit frustrated that we didn't have anything on hand for him that met the criteria of literature he was searching for, which was, "Books that have crazy dialogue like that and stuff."

Ah, so he HAD seen the movie.

Of course, my brain farted about that time and nothing crazy came to mind, outside of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which was out. I tried to find him a Mark Leyner book, as I'd attempted to read one of those once and found it pretty EFFing' crazy. Unfortunately, we'd weeded the only one we have and it probably vanished in the book sale. Kid eventually left, empty-handed.

A week later, kid popped back in to see if we had his book yet. Oddly, it had just arrived in the mail. He signed for it and immediately slipped off the blue ILL cover wrap, which clearly has "DO NOT REMOVE THIS!" printed on it in bold type. While still standing at the circ-desk, he began a careful study the cover of the book.

"Anthony Burgess?" he said in a borderline disdainful tone. "I thought Stanley Kubrick did Clockwork Orange."

"Stanley Kubrick directed the film of A Clockwork Orange," I said. "Burgess wrote the original book, though."

"Really?"

"Really."

"So, this guy," he said, pointing to Burgess's name, "wrote it up as the movie too?"

"Well, I don't know if Burgess had anything to do with writing the screenplay. He probably just sold the movie rights to a film studio who then hired Kubrick to direct it."

Kid gave me a dubious look. Was I really going to have to explain to him how movies get made too? Come to think of it, though, I was starting to feel a little deficient in my Nerdness. After all, what kind of true film-nerd am I if I don't know every last detail about any given Kubrick film? Was Burgess the screenwriter? I didn't know off hand.

"Are you sure this is the real book?" the kid asked, as though I were playing a trick on him. "There aren't any others?"

"No. That's the only one," I said. Reluctantly, he took it.

Now that I've IMDBed it, I see that Kubrick himself actually wrote the screenplay as well as directed it, but he wasn't attached to it from the start. Seems Mick Jagger originally bought the rights from Burgess, very cheaply, and intended to let the Rolling Stones play the Droogs. Eventually, the rights were repurchased for more money and Kubrick was brought in. Some of the trivia about this movie is indeed fascinating.

Battered... Chapped... Patton

During my recent drive to see my woman in Princeton, WV, I kept my mind occupied by listening to the debut comedy CD of my favorite stand-up comedian working today, Mr. Patton Oswalt. It's called "Feelin' Kinda Patton" and let me tell you it's outstanding. Then again, I'm a huge Patton Oswalt fan.

If you're a fan of edgy, crass stand-up with lots of creatively-constructed cursing, I highly recommend this album. (Don't get it if you just like him from his role as Kevin's buddy on The King of Queens and think this is gonna be nice and wholesome fun for the family.)

Patton is my favorite comedian currently working. I first saw him on an HBO special back in `98 or so and could scarcely believe someone so attuned to my sense of humor could be working in standup. Mind you, I still love the classics like Cosby, Pryor, Bruce, Carlin, Murphy, Hicks, etc. and have profound respect for such current greats as Bernie Mac, Jon Stewart, Dave Attell, Kevin James, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, David Cross and others, but Oswalt just so completely presses my HA HAH buttons it borders on symbiotic. In fact, I've often said that if my pal Joe and I were in some kind of horrible transporter accident in which our molecules got scrambled, combined and put back together, Patton Oswalt would be the result. (Although, you'd still have to account for a serious loss of mass, but I'll leave that to the mathematicians.)

Oswalt works pretty blue for the most part. I appreciate that, being something of a connoisseur of vulgarity myself. Don't get me wrong, I truly appreciate it when a comedian can cause me to become dehydrated from crying my eyes out with laughter and not say a single curse word. That shows true talent and skill at their craft. However, there is also something to be said for a comedian who not only has a fantastic point of view to their act but can season it with creatively constructed vulgarities in addition to intelligence and a fine vocabulary to boot. Patton Oswalt, I'm happy to say, can do both. I've seen him do curse-free comedy in appearances on Comedy Central, Conan O'Brien and one of his basic cable standup specials and he was just as funny to me as when he curses. So while he doesn't need the cursing to be funny, I think he prefers to give it to us anyway as added bonus value. (According to his blog, he has another relatively curse-free comedy special in the can for broadcast on Comedy Central within the next year, so I'm looking forward to savoring that.)

"Feelin' Kinda Patton" is just great stuff, though. There were parts so funny I thought I was going to run off the road because I couldn't see through the laughter-spawned tears pouring out of my eyes. (He does screaming outrage every bit as good as Sam Kinneson did, only without the underlying menace.)

The album itself is wonderful for just what it is, but there are some Easter Egg extra tracks (one of which is actually called Easter Eggs) which are different recordings of some of his older material from his `98 HBO special, including his choice observations on public television painters like Bob Ross and William Alexander, Ice Cream Magnate Tom Carvel and Pissdrinker's Magazine. I'm a little critical of these, as I think his delivery on the originals was far superior to these cuts, but they're bonus cuts and are great for folks who haven't heard them before.

I'm now delighted to learn that Patton will soon be releasing a 2.5 hour 2 CD concert called "Patton Oswalt: 222" that shall be a required purchase for me.

In the meantime, my new .sigfile quote shall be...

"Every time you eat a steak, a hippie's hackysack goes into the sewer. Always remember that."

--Patton Oswalt, 2004.

...outcome.

Wow!

I could not have been more wrong in my earlier prediction of the suckage level of today's Sunday shift. In fact, I'd have to say that today didn't suck at all. I'd classify this as one of the most perfect "liberry" shifts I've ever had. Certainly in the Top10.

First off, when I rolled in and prepared to start my day without internet and circulation software, I discovered that neither the internet nor the circulation software were at all disabled. Sweet, I thought. Furthermore, the patron traffic was so exquisitely low I was able to sit on the floor and do quite a bit of work on the auction website for ten minutes at at stretch without interruption.

Well, that's not entirely true. Eventually, the net did start working a bit more intermittently than I usually care for, but we had been warned of this. The circulation program continued to function unimpeded, though, so no worries there. By 2:30, the internet had completely healed itself and worked just fine.

Also, my fears of the Internet Addict crowd storming the place and making my life miserable proved unfounded. Evidently, they'd all read the signs I put up and knew to stay away. Oh, sure occasionally, a patron would wander in and ask to use the internet. I would then check it on the circ computer to see if it was working and A) log them on if it was; or B) send them away. The one exception to this came when the Sweatiest Woman in All the Land came in to use a computer and I told her that that she couldn't have one because the internet was down for the whole day. Mind you, at the time I told her this I was seated on the floor at the webserver actively using the internet. How I can claim this was anything other than a dirty blatant lie I'm not sure. My only excuse is that I didn't want her overpowering stench to viciously maul my otherwise perfect day.

I got the auction page squared away and managed to finally move all the images for it off my own personal website and onto our webserver itself. (Our Win 95 equipped webserver computer is so old that it's damn near impossible to move mass amounts of data onto it in any kind of efficient manner. It has rejected CD's, USB cables, my portable USB based zip disk card reader, installation of Win Zip and while with a great deal of effort it finally allowed me to install and execute WS FTP, it refused to allow me to actually FTP out of the building thanks to the stringent security measures taken by home office techies. So I was forced to simply load each of the 62 images stored on my page and save them directly to the webserver.) I had time to make and print a binder page for each auction item in case non-computer users would like to bid on the items in person and make signs about the auction to tape up at all our computer stations. Largely, these activities went uninterrupted.

Only got one "What time do you close?" call the whole day and only a couple of other calls, one of which was a most welcome call from my sweet woman.

Meanwhile, outside, the sun was shining, the leaves were yellow, crinkly and fragrant and the world was just a joy to behold.

How good it is to be wrong.

Prediction...

I predict that my Sunday shift will contain more than the usual suckage. How do I know this? Oh, maybe it's that the state office techs are taking their servers offline to do some work, so we will have no internet access and will be unable to use our internet-reliant circulation system. (Allegedly there's a mode to set it to that allows us to continue circulating without the net, but we've not really explored how to do any of that.)

What does this mean for me? Well, normally it would mean having to write out patron barcode numbers along with those on their books, on paper. And with the 14 digit barcodes we're using, that would be a royal pain. However, I came up with the novel idea of just using our barcode scanner to put the numbers directly into a Word document, saving them for later cutting and pasting.  Nice.

The big worry, though, will be that our internet addict patrons are going to be royally pissed off at me that they can't get their fix. I tried to head this off by putting up signs to this effect several days ago. I've even confirmed that Parka's already read one, cause he commented on it Saturday before asking about our hours.

"Are you going to be open on Monday?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Are you sure? It's a holiday."

"Yes."

"You're sure?"

I glared at him. "Well, we don't have any signs up that say otherwise. So, Yes, we're sure we'll be open on Monday."

Probably won't see much of him, but he's hardly the only net-addict who'll drop by.

Maybe it would be more fun to just take down all the signs and watch the flames shoot out of their ears as they try and try and try and try to get the net to work for them. I could keep moving them from computer to computer to let them try again, then shrug and scratch my ass when it doesn't work. If I were a real bastard, that's what I'd do. I probably won't do that, though. Not unless Chester comes in. Frankly, though, I'm not sure if he'd notice any difference.

Ministry of Bread Part II: It's Carbin' Time

Our downtown festival event went very well today. My diet, not so good. But what are ya gonna do when you're selling nothing but loaves of raw empty carbs?

I bought several loaves of bread, including one of Mrs. C's pecan pie bread loaves and a lemon ginger bread Mrs. A baked that the wife had requested. Still, I didn't eat any of it. Not right away, at least. I remained admirably faithful to the philosophy of low-carb dieting, until about 1p, when I told Mrs. A I was going into the depths of the festival in search of food. I was trying to be good in my search too, but I accidentally walked by a fried apple pie booth and the sugary little dough pockets of piping hot apples in syrup cried out to be devoured. I burned the hell out of the roof of my mouth as penance for eating it. It was great.

After that, I figured what the hell, I may as well eat what I want. I finally settled on the German-themed booth, where the sign declared that I could get bratwurst on a hoagie roll, sauerkraut and German potato salad for $5. Sign me up! Only after the man in the line handed me my plate with the bratwurst and bun and a second man slapped some sauerkraut next to it did I learn THERE WAS NO GERMAN POTATO SALAD TO BE HAD AFTER ALL!!!!

"Um, where's the potato salad?" I asked the man.

"There is none. So we dropped the price by a dollar."

Well poop on me! That was why I went in there in the first place. After all, if I'm gonna stuff carbs in my gob, they should at least be in tasty potato form. It had all been a clever ruse! Bastards! (I will say, the brat and sauerkraut was very good--and I don't even like sauerkraut.)

While I was in the downtown area, I did get a chance to check out the location of Garin the Comic Shop Guy's new shop. He's been in business for just about one year as a kiosk shop in the local "mall" but even from the first day I walked in there I thought it had potential. (Heck, just check my commentary on it from back then.) He did some great things with the kiosk shop and really showed how much could be done with one, but I figured that he would trade up to better digs before long. He definitely has. This shop is downtown central in a prime shopping location and next door to my favorite coffee house no less. He's also sharing floor space with the local paintball/ski/scuba guy, in a store that has plenty of room for both. And the Billy-Mayes-Screaming-Oxy-Powered Added Bonus to this is that the shop is located a mere two minute walk from the "liberry" itself. This means I get to cruise on down during my break without having to fight traffic to race across town to the "mall." I could even go in and hang out before heading on in to work.

At the moment, only a portion of his inventory was on display, the decorations weren't complete and the store won't open full time until the first of next month, but damn it's nice to have a full fledged comic shop to walk into.

I spent the rest of my time there working the festival booth, hockin' bread to the masses. The masses were hungry, too. Much bread was sold.

Around 2p, I began trying to find ways to speed the eventual teardown of the booth cause I wanted to hit the road ASAP. The wife is doing an Emergency Room rotation in Princeton, WV and I had a bit of a drive to get there. She's living in student housing there, since her 12 hour shifts are so close together that she has no practical amount of time to come home.  If we're to see one another at all this month I need to drive to her, and I wanted to get over there to spend as much time with her as possible before her 7:30 p shift began. So I started consolidating the remaining bread onto as few tables as possible just to speed things along. I must have also looked pitiful, rushing to cart boxes and chairs and tables back up the hill, because Mrs. A let me go at 2:30.

The wife is doing pretty good in Princeton. I think we miss each other even more now that she's a little closer to home than Clarksburg.  She's at least sharing the student house with one of our friends from school, so she's not as lonely as she was last time she did rotations in Princeton.

We put away quite a few more carbs of brown food down at Ryan's. (For the record, the Princeton Ryan's is the best Ryan's we've ever been to. The service is great, the place is consistently cleaner than most others of its kind, the food is excellent and there's lots of it.) She told me about some of the cool things that have happened to her in the ER.

It was sad, though. We had very little time to spend with each other--even less than we thought, it turns out. She thought she was supposed to go in at 7:30p, but as we looked at her schedule to plan our next rendezvous she noticed she was supposed to be there at 7, a mere 10 minutes away. It was awful to have that half hour snatched away from us like that. So I walked her over to the hospital and said goodbye. Then I drove all the way back home again, with my Patton Oswalt CD for company.

Ministry of Bread & Fury

You ever have that feeling where you just can't seem to get your job done because of your job? Had one of those days today.

I thought my stress level would have ebbed after my Hitchhiker's speech was past me, cause that thing's been hanging over my head all month. However, now that it's gone, I can clearly see all the other giant weighty responsibilities that had been hanging there too.

A while back I mentioned here that I was putting together an online auction to benefit the local literacy group. Well, that got postponed twice because we didn't have any publicity arranged and is now due to start next week. Have we got the publicity arranged? Not before today, we didn't. (Competely my fault. I have to own that one.) So yesterday I wrote a piece about it for the library's newspaper column, which Mrs. A put in the column along with two other items she was already going to talk about and told me to edit the whole thing as I saw fit. She then fled the building never to be seen again.

Happy with the column, I took the disk on which the column was saved and used the information in it to write a press release. Only I managed to overwrite the newspaper column with the press release, closed it and reopened it so I couldn't undo any of my damage. Shortly after this, I noticed a huge glaring error in the supposedly camera-ready newspaper column I'd already printed, which had been my only backup saving grace. In order to fix my mess, I had to track down all of the additional material Mrs. A had gathered to reconstruct the column from the ground up.

That wasn't so hard.

What was so hard was not shitting out a monkey in my fury at all the interruptions to the task. Every time my butt hit the chair in front of the computer, someone came in or the phone rang. Who was calling? People who wanted to talk to Mrs. C, of course, who was also unavailable.

Why was Mrs. C unavailable? Well, see, tomorrow brings a big annual festival in Town-A. Area restaurants and civic groups line main street selling food items as a fund-raiser for themselves and a portion of the proceeds from each booth goes to benefit a local historic performance hall. We always have a booth and sell quick breads, which our loving patrons bake and donate to us to sell. We also bake quite a lot of the bread ourselves. Even me. However, quite a lot of the bread from the patrons does not come wrapped properly or labeled so Mrs. C had to go over to our activities room to see to that chore for a couple of hours, leaving me to run the desk alone.

So while I'm trying to get my shit together for the auction I was constantly interrupted by patrons coming in to bring us bread, or the phone ringing with people asking for Mrs. C, or asking what time we closed, or patrons with unholy thirsts for a computer, or books to check in or books to check out. (And on this front, I noticed today that, to a person, our patrons could pace the room for twenty minutes with an armload of books, but they would NOT make a move for the desk to check out until I gave up waiting on them and went to sit back down at the computer to work. Then it was suddenly a stampede to get out. And this happened EVERY time those circumstances occurred.)

I also had to work on the auction website during all this, trying to get it whipped into shape enough to deserve publicity. Working on the website when I'm alone at the desk is often infuriating and the cause of more monkey shitting. Our webserver is located at the circ desk, but is on the floor in the bottom of a small cabinet beneath the desk itself. To use it, you have to sit on the floor with the keyboard resting on your lap and the world's dirtiest mouse suckin' up the dust bunnies every time you move it. It's nearly useless to try and get anything done with it when you're alone, though, because as soon as you sit down the door opens and needy patrons start pouring through it, or the phone rings, etc., and you have to get up to take care of it. I hate it, and I long for the day when we can have a REAL computer in a REAL office dedicated to the task with a damn lock on the door and no phone!

Of course, you can't have Mrs. A and Mrs. C both effectively gone without an appearance from Mr. Kreskin, our board president. He rolled in around 3 with a goodly number of pages he wanted me to photocopy for him. Oddly, he didn't even ask about Mrs. A or Mrs. C or their whereabouts. And he insisted on paying for his copies.

Finally, around 4 p.m., Mrs. C returned, saw the demented gleam in my eye and the fact that I was air-stabbing patrons behind their backs and told me to go on break. I grabbed the finished press release and column and walked `em down to the paper.

When I came back a half hour later, Mrs. C left for good, failing to alert me that Wal-Mart Jesus was in the building. He didn't have a lot of time to hang around, though, so I didn't have to teach him how to use the internet again. He only had me photocopy four pages from the encyclopedia for him before he gathered up his cudgel and bag and left.

The FAFSA Conundrum!

We thought Chester the (potential) Molester might be taking a class at the local community college across the way, because he's been parking his Ford Fugly in our half hour parking for over an hour every Wednesday around 4 p.m. I was determined to call the cops on him after he'd overstayed his time this Wednesday, but Mrs. C was hogging the phone for most of the day and it was nearly 5 by the time she got off. I know full well the meter-maid leaves work at 4:30, and after 5 it's legal to park there as long as you like, so I didn't call.

Yesterday, however, he was back and this time at least had the indecency to only get three of his tires in the parallel space. He wasn't exactly blocking the road, but I figured I might be able to use his poor parking job as grounds to get him towed. Unfortunately, Mrs. A saw Chester's parking job and decided to go leave him a threatening note instead. It said something to the tune of: "This is half hour parking. If you continue parking here for over an hour at a time, as you have been, our next call will be to the meter maid."

Of course, if Chester's Fugly had been towed, I would just have to deal with him coming in to borrow the phone to try to get a lift back to his own home county. Then he'd have all the excuse in the world to hang around until that ride arrived. Probably best he wasn't towed.

About the time the rest of the staff left, in Chester walked. I don't think he'd seen the note yet. More likely, he was looking for an excuse to come in since two early-teen girls had entered ahead of him, (one of whom was the same one he'd been staring at before I invited him outside to give him "the speech" this summer). As soon as he was through the door, though, he saw me at the desk and stopped still.

"Um, do you have any FAFSA forms?" he said with a worried glance at our floor shelf where we keep such forms and local free publications.

"No," I told him. Which is true. We don't have any FAFSA forms because he had already taken them all.

"Um, do you think there might be any, um, upstairs by the newspapers?"

"No," I told him. Again, it's because HE TOOK THEM ALL as an excuse to be near the magazine racks where all he really wanted to do was steal a copy of Teen People.

Chester gave me a doubtful look.

"We haven't had any for a couple of months," I told him. "Other people have asked too."

"Oh," he said. "Do you know when... *mumble mumble mumble* "

"Pardon?"

"Do you know when you'll have any more?"

"No."

Chester didn't leave immediately. He went back and had a wee in our toilet, probably ogled the girls at the computers on his way back through, and then left.

Only after he was gone did it occur to me that I should have just said, "No, we don't have any FAFSA forms, cause you took `em all! Have you tried looking at HOME?"

Hitchhiker's Guide to Tri-Metro

My Douglas Adams Retrospective talk went far better than I could have hoped today. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, cause I did prepare for it; I just kept thinking that I could have somehow prepared for it better. In the end, it still worked out terribly well, so I should shut up complaining.

I agreed to do the talk a month and a half ago as part of a book discussion course for a local seniors center that offers classes to their members every Thursday. Judy, the group's organizer, a friend of mine from church, had approached my boss Mrs. A to see if anyone from the "liberry" would be interested. Mrs. B and I were the only ones who agreed to do it.

I asked Judy what sort of books might be appropriate for the seniors, but she didn't want to limit me. She said they were a very receptive audience and would appreciate whatever I wanted to talk about. She did suggest I choose something I was passionate about. Trouble is, I've not been passionate about a book since Life of Pi and I didn't want to do that one because I would almost have to spoil it to stretch it into a 40 minute talk. Instead, I looked back at books I'd been passionate about in the past and decided that the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series was probably the spot on choice as far as my life's book passions go.

When I was trying to think of how exactly I'd come to read the book in the first place, I realized that my love for it had actually spun out of a love for a different British science fiction institution: Doctor Who. See, I came to Hitchhiker's by way of its TV series in the early `80s. I'd been flipping channels at a friends house one night and stumbled on it. At first I mistook it for Doctor Who itself, my then all time favorite show ever (and still in the top ten for me now). It had the same BBC video look to it, with a big robot that looked like a windup toy. Had to be Doctor Who, right? It wasn't til the end credits that I knew what it really was, recognizing it from a book in the sci-fi section of a local bookstore. It was still around 5 years before I actually sought out the first book in the series, but once I read it I was a whole hog convert.

Now, not only did I discover Hitchhiker's by way of Doctor Who, but I discovered another favorite writer, Neil Gaiman, by way of Hitchhiker's. I bought Neil's Hitchhiker's biography, Don't Panic, in a bookstore soon after it was published. A year or two later, I began reading press about a new comic series called Black Orchid written by Neil Gaiman. Only I couldn't remember where I knew his name from, only that I owned something by him. I went through my entire comic book collection (considerable even back then) trying to find a book he'd written and came up blank. Finally I gave up, allowing my head to flop back in frustration. From that flopped position, I spied Don't Panic by Neil Gaiman on my bookshelf. Ahh, mystery solved. Needless to say, after reading Black Orchid, I was a Neil convert for life too.

As usual, I didn't start preparing for my talk in until last Sunday. I then spent three days writing out verbatim what I was going to say and choosing excerpts from Adams's work to read for the group. (My theory is, the less of me yammering on about the books and the more of me giving the audience a taste of the material itself, the better off everyone will be.)

This morning, at three minutes before I was supposed to start my speech, I was still the only soul in the room. A little old lady had wandered in briefly, but decided it wasn't the class she was looking for after all and left. Then, about one minute til, the flood gates opened and between 15 and 20 middle-aged to little-old ladies came on in.

While they were getting seated, I heard one say, "I can't believe we're doing Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

At first I thought she was unhappy about it, but it turned out she and her family were big fans of the radio series and used to listen to tapes of it whenever they went on family trips.

For a visual aid, I brought every Douglas Adams related thing I own, including my dog-eared paperback copies of the Hitchhiker's books, my pleather-bound collected edition of them, the radio series, the TV series, the unabridged books on tape as read by the author, the Hitchhiker's radio scripts book, the Hitchhiker's comic books, the Dirk Gently books, Neil's Don't Panic, Adams's non-fiction Last Chance to See and the posthumous Adams's essay and fiction collection The Salmon of Doubt.

The crowd seemed to enjoy the talk. I have no illusions that I produced 15 octogenarian Adams converts by the end, but one or two may seek these out.

Fortunately, I've made sure we have them all at the "liberry."

Actual Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #8

ME: Can I help you?

CONSISTENTLY IRRITABLE PATRON WHO'S GIVEN US LOADS OF SHIT IN THE PAST: (Wearily) I don't know.

ME: (Raises eyebrow, preparing for worst)

CIPWGLOSIP: I'm looking for a book on a variety of artists. I'm looking for information about Jackson Pollack.

ME: Ah, okay. (Types "Jackson Pollack" as a keyword search. Nothing comes up.) Hmm. (Types "Pollack, Jackson" as a subject search. Still nothing comes up.) Errr.

CIPWGLOSIP: (As though explaining something to a small child) He was a painter who used to splatter paint on his canvas in order to...

ME: (Interrupting and adopting an irritable tone myself ) Yes. I'm familiar with Jackson Pollack. But we don't seem to have any books specifically about him.

CIPWGLOSIP: I know. The other lady already told me that.

ME: Oh? (I then realize I've been operating on a mistaken assumption, and that CIPWGLOSIP did indeed ask me on a book of various artists and not for one about Pollack specifically, so I should probably not be quite so pissy.) Okay. I see. (Do subject search on Artists. Lots of vague and unhelpful records come up.) Er. (I search under Painters, Art History and a few other things to little avail.) Well, searching under artists and painters seems to be too broad a category and we don't have a lot of books on painters themselves. I'm trying to think of a way to narrow my search down. Wasn't he impressionist? (I meant to say expressionist, but couldn't remember the word.)

CIPWGLOSIP: No. He didn't live during the impressionist period. He was modern.

ME: Ah ha! Modern. (I search for Modern Artists. Three unhelpful records come up, including a book called 19th Century Painters.)

CIPWGLOSIP: There, what's that? 19th Century Painters.

ME: No, that wouldn't be him. He didn't live then either. (I toggle back to my original search screen)

CIPWGLOSIP: No, wait. What was that one at the bottom?

ME: What one at the bottom?

CIPWGLOSIP: Go back.

(I go back to the Modern Artists Search Results)

CIPWGLOSIP: Yeah. 19th Century Artists.

ME: No, that wouldn't be him. He didn't live then.

CIPWGLOSIP: But he was big in the 1960s.

ME: Which occurred during the 20th century.

CIPWGLOSIP: But the 1960's...

ME: Were in the 20th Century. Not the 19th.

CIPWGLOSIP: Oh... (Looks confused. Blinks for a bit. Still doesn't seem to believe me. Finally seems to do the math.) Oh, yeah.

Baby Got Back

My lovely wife returned home to me on Thursday afternoon, after having spent three months away on medical rotations in Clarksburg. That's the longest we've been apart since our wedding day, though in truth the longest time we ever went without seeing one another during that three month stretch was for 3 weeks back in August.

She popped into the "liberry" on her way back in Thursday afternoon to surprise me and laugh at my hair, or the lack thereof. It was great to see her. It felt strange, though, because she smelled different to me than I'm used to. Not bad at all, but definitely something different. I thought maybe it was residual 60's Smell from having lived in that Brady Bunch house for that long. Turns out, though, it was because she'd switched to Gain laundry detergent and my nose is used to Surf.

As an added bonus to my Thursday, my copy of the Firefly DVD box set FINALLY came in, so we spent our weekend watching episodes of that show, among other activities.

It's been an ordeal getting that DVD set. I originally ordered it back on September 8, from Amazon's Marketplace. The seller, (Media For Less out of Gulf Shores, AL), described the set as brand new and unopened and the price was right so I ordered it and expected it would be in my hands within a few days. A few days turned into two weeks with still no Firefly. I finally went back to Amazon and looked at the seller's feedback rating, which I should have done in the first place. There were lots of complaints against them. Of course, there was also lots of high praise for them, so they seemed to be an intermittently bad seller at worst.

My theory on this was that Media For Less was the on-line outlet for a retail store. If their stock sold in their store, they might not remember to remove it from its Amazon listing and would subsequently ignore any inquiries about those items from the people who ordered them. Pretty crappy business ethic, but again it was only a theory based on the kind of negative feedback they were getting. Most of it spoke of receiving no merchandise and either no replies from the seller or rude replies from the seller. I figured I was going to have to file a grievance. Even so, I wanted to go ahead and try to contact them just so I'd have a paper trail. I sent them an e-mail asking the status of my order.

For a week I heard nothing from them, which made me just as mad as you'd expect. I wanted to just go ahead and order the set again, figuring there was no way Media For Less would actually send it. Then again, as soon as I ordered it from someone else, I knew what would magically appear in my mailbox. So I stewed for a week, irritated that according to Amazon I had to wait until October 3 before I could even file a claim. Then, on Sept 23, Media For Less wrote me back.

They wrote:

"we are closing this business . we are located in gulf shores alabama, and just took a direct hit from hurricane ivan , we are just now able to answer any emails, besides extensive damage we were without power until today and all our product has been lost - if you have not made an a-z claim at amazon on this yet go ahead and do that , we will be refunding all lost merchandise due to the hurricane from the a-z claim."

I was sorry to hear they'd lost their business, but was actually rather happy that they weren't sending the order cause now I could order it again. I checked all the Marketplace listings for the Firefly set, but most of the least expensive ones were located in Florida. Not willing to take another gamble on Ma' Nature, I just ordered it from Amazon directly.

The wife and I have only watched six of the 14 episodes so far, but I'm even more in love with this series than I was upon first seeing it at Dragon Con. The wife likes it a lot too. Unfortunately, we won't get to watch any more of it until she comes home again. See, even though she just spent three months away from home, she also scheduled a near month-long rotation in Princeton, WV, starting today, so she had to leave again. (That's okay, though, cause after she gets back she'll have at least 6 months of rotations here at home and has several weeks of vacation time scheduled in Nov, Dec and Jan.) She made me promise I wouldn't watch anymore episodes without her.

I did promise that.

I did not, however, promise not to watch the commentaries.

JUST OPEN IT ALREADY!!!!!

While making a new library card for a patron, last night, there came a sudden noise at the front door. It was the sound of the door handle being turned repeatedly in an effort to get it to open. The patron I was helping noticed it and turned to look toward the door, but the door did not open as one might have expected.

"I know who it is without even looking up," I told the patron at the desk. Just to prove it, I didn't even look up.

After nearly ten more seconds of struggled twisting, the door finally opened and Little Kevin Martin came tumbling into the "liberry" followed closely by his mother, Mary.

Little Kevin Martin is perhaps the most uncoordinated child I have ever met. Don't get me wrong, he's a terribly sweet boy and it's not like he's stupid or touched in the head or anything; he's just eight kinds of awkward. He can't even claim natural teenage awkwardness is responsible cause he's only about 9.

Every time Little Kevin and his mom come to visit, at least one of the following things happen, usually both:

A) Kevin stands on our front stoop and twists at the handle of the door for upwards of 30 seconds in an effort to open it. This actually happens EVERY time they visit. And it's not like it's a difficult handle to open. In fact, most of the time you don't even have to turn it, you just have to pull. Not Kevin, though. He twists that handle like it's gonna spout candy.

B) Kevin falls off the step stool in front of the circulation desk and busts his ass. It almost never fails to happen. He steps up on the stool, which is only two steps high and about a foot and a half wide, puts his books up on the desk to check out. Then at some point before the books are finished he loses his balance, falls off and busts his ass. Fortunately, Kevin is not one of these children who immediately bursts into tears and starts a wailin' at the first bruise. He just dusts himself off and steps back up, ready for round two. Often, he gets it.

Beyond those regular annoyances, Kevin is also not the most observant of children and seems to operate in his own little world for much of the time. For instance, last night I was going back to log someone on the computer and found that Kevin and his mom were standing directly in front of the door leading to the computer hall, entirely blocking it. They were looking at the Young Adult shelves, adjacent to the doorway. I said, "Excuse me," and Kevin's mom moved aside. Kevin remained in the way, engrossed in the book spines.

"Kevin, move out of the way," his mom said. Still Kevin remained.

"Um, excuse me," I said from directly next to him. Kid still didn't budge. After two more verbal attempts to get Kevin to move, his mom finally reached over and gently pulled him out of the way. Again, the kid's not stupid or anything, he's just a little spacey and one track. Or perhaps he's still suffering from the near concussion he gave himself by running headlong into our front door a while back.

I guess it was just over a year ago that it happened. I was on my own at the circ desk, round 5 in the evening, when I heard a tremendous BAMM!!!!!!! It sounded as though something large, say, a bowling ball, had struck the front door. I rushed to the door to see what had happened and found Kevin lying on the front stoop clutching at his head and crying. What had happened is that Kevin had been running full out from his car to the library door, probably in the hope of getting the full thirty seconds worth of handle-twisting before his mom could get there and stop him. However, being terribly uncoordinated, Kevin had tripped on the edge of the stoop and plowed his head into the door. Fortunately, he'd struck a wooden section of the door and not driven his head through one of the glass panes instead. His mother was instantly in a panic that her child had nearly brained himself and began frantically demanding ice from me. Trouble is, we don't really have a machine capable of producing ice cubes. Sure, we had a little dorm fridge in the activity room, but the freezer portion of it could only be set to Broken or Overzealous and had long since filled itself up with frost. So great was her demand for ice, though, that I figured I'd give it a try. I rushed to the `fridge and used a fork to chip some of the frost into a baggie which I then ran back and gave to Mrs. Martin.

Last night, while checking out their usual selection of 900 books, I noticed Kevin had some kind of dragon toy. Being a nerd, I'm a big fan of toys even to this day, though I will say I almost always refrain from buying them anymore just because I have enough useless plastic in my life as it is. Still, the dragon looked sort of cool.

"What kind of dragon is that?" I asked, hoping to learn the name of the toy-line. Kevin immediately began reciting a dissertation on dragons, their origins, habits, likes, dislikes, body measurements, mating rituals, common coloration, favorite foods, turn-ons, ideal evenings, etc. His mom gave me an embarrassed sort of look that also conveyed how unfortunate it was that I had opened this particular dragony can. She began trying to coax Kevin toward the door. Soon this turned into dragging Kevin toward the door. Kevin drug his feet the whole way out, so as to allow him enough time to spread his knowledge of dragon lore.

"Probably more information than you actually wanted?" his mom shouted over Kevin's continued soliloquy. I think the kid talked all the way to the car.

Brownie Points

I have to give Parka some props here.

The other night, he had a poo in our restroom and actually used the spray.

They got Capone on tax evasion, after all.

I called the cops on Chester today.

Yeah, I've wanted to type those words for a long time now, but it's nothing to get excited about. See, technically, I only called the cops on his car.

I returned from break today at 4 p.m. and Chester's Ford Fugly was parked in front of the library. I didn't even notice it, as I'm still tuned to recognizing his old compact pieceashit and not the new lameness. In fact, it was a good five minutes later before the subject of The Patron Who Must Not Be Named even came up among my fellow staff members.

Seems Chester was in yesterday and may actually have tried to speak to a young lady in the children's room. (And by young lady, I mean probably junior in high-school aged.) The alleged incident may or may not have even happened as Mrs. C was the only staff member in the building at the time and she was severely tied up at the desk with patrons and the phone and was hard pressed to get away to witness it. (Damn I hate EFFing Chester!) She thinks, however, that she heard him say something to the girl. He left almost immediately so she didn't even get the chance to go see what he was up to. The girl in question didn't seem at all upset so chances are good that Chester didn't say anything untoward. Still, he's just too creepy.

The whole reason the subject of the Patron Who Must Not Be Named came up at all, though, was due to the fact that the same girl was in the kid's room today and Chester's car was parked out front. Granted, he hadn't put in an appearance in the library itself but had parked there so he could roam the neighborhood and/or foot-cruise the community college across the way.

"How long's his car been out there?" I asked, rushing to a window to confirm its location.

"I'm not sure," Mrs. C said. "I just noticed it."

I grinned.

"You do realize that if his car stays out there for more than a half hour I'm calling the police on it."

Chester, in his infinite wisdom, had parked in one of the half-hour parking spaces. He'd even done a good job of parking, for once, so we couldn't just call the cops right away. Parking in a half hour space is usually a safe thing to do. We rarely call the police on folks parking there and the meter maid rarely has the energy to make it up the hill to check any of those spaces. However, for Chester, I would be willing to make an exception. Mrs. C told me to go for it. I started a timer.

At 4:35, I called the cops. Amazingly, one answered. I told them who I was and that we had a car due for a ticket. I figured they'd rush right down and issue one, but the policeman said the meter maid had already gone home for the day and she was the one they let take care of that sort of thing. He promised they'd send her up tomorrow.

Grrrr. Thanks a lot guys! Just how the hell am I supposed to dole out justice on the wicked when you won't come give the wicked's Fugly a ticket? Why couldn't he have parked half in the street so we could have had him towed?!

Chester's Fugly remained in that space well over an hour. At some point, Mrs. C called me from home to ask a computer question. I hadn't even mentioned calling the cops yet when I spied Chester himself walking along the sidewalk outside.

"Hang on a sec. Someone I don't like is about to come in."

Our eyes met through the glass of the door, then he'd walked out of sight and was presumably about to hit the front steps and the door. He'd picked a fine time for it too; there were loads of kids in, including the girl he'd allegedly talked to yesterday.

A few seconds later, I saw him in the side window walking to his unjustly unticketed Fugly. He got in and drove away.

"False alarm," I told Mrs. C.

Later, just before we were about to close, I noticed the Fugly had returned and was parked a bit further up the hill outside. Chester himself never came into the library, but he was definitely lurking in the area.

Sick bastard!

Parka On Fire

We think Parka may have been fired from his job.  This came as kind of a surprise, as we didn't know he had a job in the first place. We've been operating under the assumption that he's just been sponging off his elderly mother for the past several months, when he's not on our computers chatting with e-skanks. Apparently, though, he has been working in some capacity for an area resort.

The reason we're pretty sure he's been fired from the resort is that two other employees of the resort happened to come in today, saw Parka and then had conversations with him concerning his firing. I managed to overhear portions of both.

I can honestly say I was not eavesdropping; our library is just really small and Parka is just really loud. It actually took a while to piece the theory about his firing together, though, as these conversations took place several hours apart. This is because being fired really opened up Parka's schedule, allowing him to spend THE WHOLE EFFING DAY at the library, chatting with e-skanks and breathing up our air.  I didn't even realize he was fired based on what little I heard of the first conversation. Instead, it just sounded like he was complaining about work. I heard him tell the first former fellow employee who'd recognized him that he'd been written up by his supervisor for eating something he wasn't supposed to (big sin at the resort from what I hear) and for paying "excessive attention" to the female guests (huge surprise there). Now I would be embarassed enough about at least one of those write ups that I would keep it to myself. (Actually, I'd probably just blog about it, further eroding my carefully-crafted reputation as a really together guy.) Not Parka. He was practically shouting it to the world, which is how I could hear it from an entire FLOOR away. I doubt he was even fired for either of those offenses, though. It's far more likely that he was merely seasonal help and the resort is entering its big slow down for the year, so lots of folks are laid off. But, again, I didn't even know he'd been fired at this point.

Hours later, the second former fellow-employee came in. This woman was truly frightening. She was still in her resort uniform, but had let her mostly bleached blond hair down. I say mostly because her hair was very long and very bleached except for about five inches near her scalp, which was colored the most strange and disturbing combination of hues I've ever seen in supposedly natural hair. I immediately christened her Ms. Rusted Roots, as THAT's what color those roots were. Well, one of the colors anyway. There were actually shades of rust and gold and gray and brown and baby-crap. I have no idea how she achieved it either, as most of the time when bleached hair grows out, the natural color shows up to replace it instead of a damn rainbow wig. Considering the Doc Savage look I'm currently sporting, I realize I'm not someone who should be lobbing insults about other people's hair... but, damn.

Ms. Rusted Roots went to look at books on tape and ran into Parka. I didn't hear specifics on what they were saying, but the general tone was one of complaint and lament. I was amazed at how much of a Chatty Cathy he was being.

After finishing up their gab-session, Ms. Rusted Roots came up to the circ-desk with her selections. She must have assumed I'd heard everything and that I somehow knew Parka had been fired because she told me, "They're getting rid of some of the best-looking people from over at the hotel."

I thought my head was going to explode from the sudden rush of implications in that statement. Everything I'd learned throughout the day suddenly added up in my head. If I understood her correctly, she not only meant that Parka had been fired from the resort but also that she, Ms. Rusted Roots, had classified PARKA as one of the "best-looking people from over at the hotel."  (Insert Scooby Doo "HrruuuuhhHH?" exclamation.)

Had the bleach affected her eyesight? Could she not see the shag-carpet of body hair straining to break free of the confines of his shirt? Did she not notice the pictures of the half-naked girls on his monitor while they spoke? And just why the hell did she feel the need to involve ME in any of this? Owww, it hurt to even think about!

"Well, whut can you do when you're at the bottom rung of decision-making?" she added, then thankfully left, taking her chemical-burn of a scalp with her.

So it looks as though we'll be seeing even more of Parka than usual for a while.

Joy.

Return of the Net-Neophyte

On Friday, about 45 minutes before closing, the door opened and a semi-familiar looking woman walked in.

"Oh... You're here again," she said dismally. Now, her tone did not suggest that my presence was necessarily a bad thing. I think instead, her tone actually meant that she would have preferred to have found someone on shift who didn't have quite as much dirt on her as I did, but that I would do in a pinch. I came to this conclusion a few seconds later, after I heard her next words and realized why she looked so familiar.

"Could, um... could you help me set up an e-mail... again?" she asked.

Oh, no, I thought. Not her!

Yes indeedy, the Internet Neophyte had returned. This was the patron who drove me nigh unto insanity back in July by taking damn near an hour to sign up for a Hotmail account--WITH my help! This was the same patron who refused to stop using her dog's name as both her username AND password despite both my and Hotmail's insistence that she cease doing so. This was the same patron who had then refused to write down either of her final username and password choices, despite my repeated entreaties that she do so, and then had that fact bite her squar in the taint when she couldn't get back into her own account after having JUST CREATED IT! Yes, this was the same patron who then had to use Hotmail's I'M A DAMNED MORON AND FORGOT MY PASSWORD link, then, when faced with having to choose a new password asked me to choose one for her. I chose the word orange, the same color as our internet signs, which I hoped would be easy for her to remember. As you will soon see, I was WRONG!!!!!

Ms. I.N. Phyte had just asked me to help her set up a new e-mail account. What she was REALLY asking me, though, was: Would you just do all the work for me since I'm incapable of doing it on my own?

Nuh uh. That was not going to happen.

I told her, "Well, I can put you on a computer and show you where to go, but..."

"But I'd have to do it myself," she finished for me, returning to her dismal tone. "Do I have time?"

I looked at my watch. "You've got 45 minutes."

On the way back to the computers, Ms. Phyte explained to me that she had not been faithfully checking her e-mail at all over the last two months so her Hotmail account was no more. I thought this unlikely, as Hotmail usually only puts accounts in drydock when they've gone unused for a time, but they will allow you back in if you jump through a couple of minor hoops. So I logged her onto a computer and brought up Hotmail for her to try and login anyway. It booted her out saying either her username or password was incorrect. Why were they incorrect? Oh, maybe because she had NO CLUE what they really were! She tried again and again to no effect.

"Errm. I just can't remember my real password," she said.

Barely able to keep the deep levels of frustration and loathing out of my voice, I said, "I do."

I pointed at the orange internet sign, then leaned over and typed "orange" into the password blank. Still, she was denied. This meant either she'd changed her password--not likely given her inability to login in the first place--or she'd gotten her username wrong. I was pretty sure the later was the case, as she'd gone through five username choices when she'd set up the account back in July. I should have just gone up front and re-read my original write up of the event and then I would have remembered it was her dog's name. As it stood, though, I only recalled the password and only because I had a memory-link to it taped there on the monitor itself. Still, I was pretty sure her original one, whatever it was, had three numbers affixed to the end of it and the one she kept trying then didn't.

"Are you sure that's the right username?"

"Oh, yes. This is it," she said.

"Didn't you have numbers in it?

"Oh, no. This one is it."

Yet, wonder upon wonders, it still didn't work! In fact, Hotmail gave no indication that there was any sort of account with that particular username. It didn't even give us the I'M A DAMNED MORON AND FORGOT MY PASSWORD link, cause the password wasn't the problem.

After a few more unsuccessful attempts, I suggested she would be better off starting from scratch. I loaded up the New Account page and then I hauled ass for the front to get a pencil and paper, which I brought to her and, yet again, told her to write down her username and password AS SOON AS SHE HAD CHOSEN THEM. Then I got the hell out of the computer hall so as to avoid any accidental chokings.

I knew running away was futile. Throughout the oh-so-lengthy Hotmail signup process, Ms. Phyte kept coming to find me and drag me back to answer obscenely simple questions for her. Like: "What time zone are we in?" and "What does it mean when it says `Type in the characters you see in the security image'?" While answering these and many other questions, I took a gander at the paper I'd given her to write everything on. She'd written a username on it all right, but it didn't actually match up with the one I saw on the screen which had a _wholeotherword affixed to it.

Dammit, why can't people figure shit like this out? You have to write down the WHOLE USERNAME!!! Not half of it!!! ALL OF IT!!!!

With admirable restraint, I told her this in far more polite terms and with less verbal violence than I really wanted to use.

"I hope I'm not keeping you from anything?" she said after finally writing the whole username down.

"Oh, no," I said. "I have to be here until seven anyway."

At ten minutes before closing time, a full thirty-five minutes after she'd begun the Hotmail sign up process, Ms. Phyte finally finished up. I checked over her work, told her to hit continue, then I personally skipped through all of Hotmail's Spam Sign-Up pages and showed her the new account...

...again.

...and on the third day, God created Airwick.

I tell you, there's nothing I love more than when I come in for a Sunday shift, unlock the door and the very first patron through—Sunday Bob, a regular Sunday morning patron, hence the name, and a guy who had been pounding on the door to get in mere moments before—immediately goes into the restroom, spreads his cheeks and lets fly with a turd so stanky that our previous supply of fresh air flees in terror, leaving behind a sudden vacuum that instantly spreads the stench throughout the entire building.

Now, I am fully aware that the human ass can produce some pretty rank odors. I also realize it's hardly this guy's fault his ass fumes stank so bad. However, that's why God made air-freshener and that's why we keep a stock of said air-freshener in a VERY obvious location within the said EFFing restroom. I hardly need add that our particular can of said air-freshener went entirely unused by said patron.

Upon getting a whiff of dude's fumes, I experienced the sort of instantaneous anger one gets when punched in the back of the head unexpectedly. I wanted to march in there, grab the Airwick from the restroom and empty the contents of the can while goose-stepping up and down the computer hall, reciting "Ode To A Stanky Patron" in a German accent. I imagine that had I actually done this, it might have offended the patron. Well, so what? I'm offended that he had no more common sense or consideration for others than to turn my library into a hot zone!

Fortunately, I didn't have the sac to do that, nor to merely go back and spray down the restroom.

Perhaps I need to revisit my idea about putting up a sign in the restroom.

Oprah's Psychic Balls!

Fook a moonky! I just experienced some serious cosmic coincidence action raining down on my head. (And I don't have enough hair to soften the blow, daddgummit!)

I was just sitting down at my computer to pen an entry about an encounter I had with an Oprah Winfrey fan, lo' about two years back. I was gonna tie it loosely to the mention of Oprah from yesterday's blog entry. Before I fired up Blogger, though, I figured I'd read some of my favorite "liberry" blogs and see what was up. Imagine my shock and amazement when Daisy reported a disturbingly similar experience with an Oprah-fan down at her blog I Have A Snake.

Go and read her version of it now. (Don't worry, it's not near as long-winded as I usually am.)

(EDITORIAL NOTE FROM THE FUTURE, 1/20/05: Because I Have A Snake is no more and has been transformed into I Have A Phoenix, I will just reprint Daisy's original story here, with her permission.)

FROM: I HAVE A SNAKE, SEPTEMBER 23, 04
TITLE: A guy walks into a bar....
A woman of rather large proportions enters the library and approaches me.

Woman: (unintelligible)

Me: I'm sorry, what?

Woman: (unintelligible) Oprah Winfrey (unintelligible)

Me: I'm sorry, ma'am, but I can't hear you. Can you speak up and slow down a little bit for me?

Woman: I need to get the address for the Oprah Winfrey show.

Me: Okay, well, I would go to switchboard.com if I were you, and just type in...

Woman: (unintelligible)

Me: I'm sorry; what?

Woman: I don't have my library card with me. Can you just find it for me?

Me: ....Sure, why not? (I go to Oprah's Web site and browse around for a couple of minutes.) Well, ma'am, it says here that the show no longer accepts letters or packages from fans, probably because they're afraid of terrorism or something. There's an email address here, though, if you want it.

Woman: No, no. I need to mail her something.

Me: I'm sorry, but the Web site doesn't have that information and they don't accept mail at the studio.

Woman: What I'm gonna do?

Me: I can give you her email address.

Woman: What about her 800 number?

Me: It doesn't look like that's on the site, either. They pretty much only want you to contact them via email.

Woman: What I'm gonna do?

Me: I'm sorry. I don't know what to tell you.

Woman: Now I'm in trouble. I'm really in trouble.

Me: I'm sorry.

Woman: How am I going to find a therapist?

Me: .......Um, you could, um, ask her about that via email.

Woman: No, just in general, how do you find a therapist?

Me: Okay, see over there where the phone books are? Look in the Yellow Pages under therapists or psychologists.

Woman: No, no. I'm not going to do that. What I'm gonna do?

Me: Well, at this point I officially do not know how to help you.

Okay, ya back now?

All right, my Oprah-fan experience was EXACTLY like that except for a couple of variables.


About two years ago, a middle-aged lady came into the library seeking a book with Oprah's address in it. We had no such book, but I offered to look it up on Oprah's website. Just like Daisy, I too discovered that Oprah's snail-mail box is unlisted, but she's all about the e-mail. I tried to explain this to my patron.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am. I know it seems weird that there wouldn't be a mailing address, but if there is one it's not listed here." I'd spent damn near 10 minutes searching Oprah's site and was pretty clear on that conviction.

The patron gave me a sad look that tugged at my heart. She stood there clutching a stack of eight notebook pages, with the ragged-edges still attached, on which she'd penned a near illegible missive to Oprah. It wasn't a letter asking for a free session with Dr. Phil, or anything. Instead, as she explained, it was a letter to Oprah requesting money for her sister's cancer treatments.

"Oprah gives money to people all the time," the patron said.

"Well, you could send it to her in an e-mail if you like. You would have to retype it."

Unfortunately, Oprah doesn't have an e-mail address listed either. Instead, her site has a little Plea to the Crown form-field which turns into an e-mail when you finish and hit send. This lady was going to have to type in her whole 8 page letter. I could smell tragedy before it even began.

At the patron's request, I logged her onto one of our systems, loaded up the e-mail form page on Oprah's site and showed her what to do. After about half an hour's worth of work, I went back to see how things were coming. The lady had typed in nearly all of her letter and seemed fairly proud of herself. She wasn't the fastest typist in the world, but she had made admirable progress. I told her to let me know when she finished and I would come back and give it a proofread if she liked. I went back up to the circ-desk.

After a minute or two, it occurred to me that I should really have had the lady compose her note in Microsoft Word, then cut and pasted it over for her. She could have saved it to the desktop, so if anything went wrong (like, say, Oprah's form having a damned time limit or something) her letter would still be there to recover.  And I should have listened to that inner voice and gone back to paste the lady's letter into a Word file, for not one minute after I thought this, I heard a loud "AHHH!" from the computer hall followed by a very quiet and pitiful, "oh.... help..."

I rushed back to the computers. Her screen showed the desktop and no IE windows. Upon seeing me, she stood up and began ushering me into her chair saying, "Here, here... you can fix this." I sat but I knew it was useless. There were no program shutdown warning windows or anything to indicate what had happened. It looked like she had just X'ed out of IE.

"I don't know what happened," she said. "I was just typing and then it all disappeared."

"What were you typing... um, exactly?"

"This right here. I was starting this sentence." She pointed to it on her notebook pages. The first word of the sentence began with a W. I knew instantly what had happened. She had tried to capitalize it by hitting SHIFT W, but had mistakenly hit CTRL W, the command for closing out the window. I then had to delicately break the news to her that all her work had vanished into the ether never to be seen by us or Oprah again. I was afraid she'd start weeping, but the lady didn't. Instead, she decided she'd had enough of computers for the day and would attempt this at some future date.

I suggested she bring or buy a floppy diskette from us in order to save her work and prevent this in the future. She numbly agreed that would be a good idea and left.

"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.