If you can't meet 'em, greet 'em...

Well, it's been about a month since I've been working out here, and I think it's going fairly well so far. There hasn't been too much that I haven't seen before, although I do learn something new at least twice a day...but it's finally starting to sink in. That is, the reality that I am here for at least the near future in more or less some state of permanence...and I think I can live with that. It is very busy more often than not, but it beats semi-permanent idleness any day. It's nice to feel useful and needed, and it felt so welcoming at the new faculty/staff meet and greet this afternoon. At any rate, the school year will soon be in full swing in the next few days, so I'm sure we'll not lack for things to do...

Go west, young man...

Well, I'm perhaps not so young as I used to be although I am not exactly old, but I do find myself going west again. The last time I did that I followed my heart as far as the great western ocean, all the way to the mare pacifica, and while it was great while it lasted, ultimately that didn't really turn out as well as I had hoped. This is a new beginning for me, one that couldn't have come at a more auspicious time. I'm really looking forward to this new job in an old and familiar place, and I just hope I can give something positive back. And maybe, just maybe I might save myself in the process. A change of scenery doesn't guarantee redemption, but it's a start. So here's to this new chapter of my life...may it be all I wish for and more. I've lost the friends I needed losing, and lately it seems like these deep emotional scars will never truly heal. They say time makes all memories good ones in the end, and I hope that's true. But what I can do is throw myself into the work and try and help as many people as I can with this wonderful opportunity that has come my way.

Insomnia

My job has a very odd shift. I work at two-thirty in the afternoon. This would seem to be awesome on paper, as me sleeping in is a gross abuse of the term. I mean, who can't make it in to work in the afternoon? It's not like I have any kind of grounds for an excuse if I'm somehow late for two freakin' thirty in the afternoon! "Uhh, I um... slept in." That just wouldn't wash...Unfortunately, it's really thrown my sleep schedule out of whack. I'm really not tired late at night or in the early morning anymore when I should be sleeping. I mean, theoretically, if I wanted eight hours of sleep (which is overly generous) and still wanted some wiggle room, I could sleep at four a.m. and wake up by noon. And so, I find myself doing a lot of thinking late at night, looking at my life, looking at myself, and whiling away the time with various entertainments (of which I have a lot, trust me) My backlog of amusements is so bad I forget what I have sometimes and never get around to watching this DVD or playing that game. I waste more time debating what to do than actually doing it some nights. Presently, I'm munching my way through a box of Girl Guide cookies. I wasn't paying attention in the mall and got cornered, and how can you say no to a little kid in a uniform? Vile pixies blink their puppy dog eyes and the next thing you know you're walking away with six boxes. Brilliant marketing strategy if ever there was one..do you want to refuse them in public? Suddenly mothers are pelting you with rotten vegetables and little old ladies are whacking the heartless man's shins with their canes. I think I avoid sleep as much as possible because when it does come, it's rarely ever restful. The dreams come, and they fade away so quickly upon waking, but the vaguely unsettling feeling in my gut tells me they weren't about fields of cotton candy and rivers of spice. At least I don't have an ulcer yet, so far as I know (knock on wood).

Oh Brother...

Tomorrow is my brother's birthday. He is twenty-seven, and that makes my thirty seem all the wearier...it's a cliche but the time certainly does fly. It seems like just the other day he was a little baby robbing my three-and-a-1/2 year old self of precious attention. To reward himself, this morning he went to his first outdoor paint-ball excursion, though it's definitely not his first time to dance by any means, they've just all been indoors up to this point. Apparently, it's a very different experience. He spent quite a lot of time preparing his gear "for deployment", as he says. Over the past month and a half or so, he's become quite the paint-ball ubersonderkommando. For this special occasion, he bought a crapload of gun upgrades intended to increase his lethality (at least on paper). From his account, it appears that he got his ass pwned big time. I don't imagine running around the green and brown woods in midnight black fatigues had anything to do with it. Needless to say, he will be investing in some decent camo gear very soon. But he had a lot of fun, and the weather cooperated with a really beautiful day, so at least he got the fun and the exercise. Later that evening, we went to Montana's for dinner but I didn't have that much of an appetite. It looks like beef rib leftovers for work tomorrow...Anyway, his present obsession has gone so far as to purchase an official Tony Hawk helmet cam to tape his games. As soon as I get my hands on it, I can think of all sorts of fun and practical applications. For example, I could tape it to my head and record my typical day in a very documentary, cinema verite tone. Or I could mount it on my dashboard and record a drive somewhere, oh, like work or the mall. Then I could post these undoubtedly boring videos on YouTube and be ever so famous...hmm, if only I could fasten it to a very large bird and let it go, only I suppose there'd be the issue of retrieving the camera. The large family of Canada geese at work would do. I hate it when they decide to march their family across the only access road in a very long, drawn-out single file line. I mean, I'm not so heartless as to run them over, you know. But they're sooo slow, just ambling across with all the time in the world. They're not even afraid of you in your car. Ah, those wacky antics of theirs...

Happy Victoria Day

It's supposed to be the 24 weekend, as the kids say these days, but Victoria Day is one of those strange holidays that falls on a particular day rather than a date, which is odd when you consider that it's supposed to be commemorating Queen Victoria's birthday. Accordingly, you would imagine that she knew very well the definite date that her birthday fell on; but no, Victoria Day is like the third Monday of May, go figure. Yes, in other words it's actually gone and past as of last Monday the 21st. It is not unlike Labour Day in that regard, but at least they're both an excuse to blow some sh#t up, by which I mean fireworks. The fireworks magically appear from the extradimensional warehouse they've been sitting in all year, then come Tuesday they're all illegal again and poof! they're gone to the same place Christmas CDs go until next year. So I had a really long weekend, which for me is really saying something. As in, a four day weekend as opposed to three...at some point, that will become the week rather than the weekend...four days is more than half the week, after all. I didn't do too much, mostly relaxed (maybe a little too much, such a waste of time sleeping) and while on the one hand it's a nice break, it's also time I am not working and therefore not making money. That is not so good. Ah well, c'est la vie...

May your arrows always fly true and strike their mark...

You can't see my arrow in this photo, but trust me, nothing but bullseye...actually, it split another arrow that was already there...yeah, okay no it didn't. It did hit the target though, I swear. Actually, accuracy wasn't as important in a massed formation of longbowmen as sheer volume of fire was. There really wasn't anywhere to run from a mass volley of bodkin arrows raining down from the sky, "blotting out the sun" as it were. Actually, for ease of access you'd just stick your spare arrows into the ground at your feet. Now the soil of the average medieval European field is probably not the most hygienic of substances, seeing as how they fertilized with manure, but while you were waiting you'd probably need to pee. Where better to do so than right at your feet? So if you were unfortunate enough to be struck by an arrow, you were probably looking at some septicemia at the very least. That's just insult to injury, getting shot with an arrow soaked in pee and excrement...yum. Also, a real longbow is taller than I am so yeah I'm really just pretending with this target bow here. I don't think I could even draw a real bow properly, much less fire it with any degree of skill or accuracy. This is why we invented these newfangled compound bows. The nifty pulleys help shoulder some of the burden of a two hundred pound pull.

It's no webline, but it'll do...

Well, after this experience I think I have some small approximation of what Spider-Man must feel like every day swinging around Manhattan. With great power must come great responsibility, after all...although I'm more of the "crush your enemies, drive them before you, and hear the lamentations of their women" school of thought these days...although I must admit the world does look awful pretty from up there. How deceiving that is...

Michael Bay, eat your heart out...

Here I am going all tactical, fast-roping out of an ominously hovering Blackhawk, tightly gripping my Heckler & Koch MP5A3, filthy brown tangos centred in my reflex sights...gotta teach 'em freedom isn't free (cue thrashing guitar riff)...

Customer service...

Today, I received a rather unusual reference request. This particular girl was looking for a couple of textbooks (which is a whole other story, trust me) which she needed right away and here were the titles (which turned out to be nothing like the actual titles, not even close) etc. yadda yadda yadda. That in and of itself is nothing new. Ah, but here's the kicker: could I possibly mail them to her house...well, alright honey, I'll get right on that just as soon as I've detailed your car, shampooed your carpets, alphabetized your wardrobe and pleasured you orally. Because, you know, that's the level of dedicated customer service I'm committed to giving after all...sheesh, some people. Based on our exchange, I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume some sort of language/communication barrier, but I'm fairly sure no society on earth (with the possible exception of private libraries for extremely rich and/or powerful people) has libraries that do any of that. There is still some measure of resolve on your part to roll off your couch and at least come in to pick your stuff up. Well, actually I guess the Queen of England could possibly have her library books hand delivered to Buckingham or Windsor, she's got people for that.

An object lesson in assumptions...

The other day at work I innocently assumed that we were keeping the exact same hours as we had during exam week. Now, had it occurred to me to actually check and verify the schedule, this would not have been such an issue. However, my assumptions were incorrect. We had in fact gone back to normal banker's hours, so to speak. Any change of this sort affects me a great deal as I close up in the evenings or afternoons, as the case may be. My contractual stipulations dictate a very tight leash on those hours, so when I come in and when I leave is more or less predetermined, I'm not getting any more than I am for showing up early. And this is indeed what my assumptions led me to do. I showed up two hours early to a lot of blank stares and puzzled looks. It was like one of those dreams where you show up to work or class naked. All the furrowed brows immediately tipped off my razor sharp mind that something (ominous music cue) was amiss!!! So yes folks, what your mother told you about assumptions is true. I felt like more than enough of an ass for you and me combined, especially since it was not that hard to check. Hmm, come to think of it, I should do so again this morning just to be sure...much as I love napping in the lounge, I'd probably be better served doing some more or less productive things, such as making blog entries. I think enough of interest does go on every day that I could have some thoughts on a daily basis. It's just a question of mustering up the will and the motivation. If nothing else, it will pass the time adequately, not that I don't have enough to handily occupy myself with for months, notwithstanding human contact at all. One of the worst developments of recent times is television on DVD. Now I can view an entire season of whatever comes to mind as an unbroken, seamless narrative. In most cases, that's a LOT of TV. But I feel compelled to go on for some reason...

Be vewy, vewy quiet, it's a library...

This week is finals week at my workplace, with all the chaos, wailing, and gnashing of teeth that implies. Here's a news flash, kiddo: unless you have the power to dilate time, you ain't squeezing everything you should know by now into eight hours at the library. It just ain't happening, son, I'm sorry. I've seen people trying to squeeze a whole semester's worth of videos into two class periods, and I can do little else but laugh. Openly. I've seen the exact moment of realization dawn on some poor fool's face when it finally clicks: "Hmm...maybe I'm not cut out to be a nurse/social worker/commercial landscaper/fill in your choice of vocation here." You can actually see their soul shrivel up and die as they next realize how much time and money they've been wasting. Then they get all contemplative, and you just know it would only take a little nudge to push them over the edge. My oh my, kids these days. The tutoring service is jumping like it never has all year, and while they are very good at what they do, sadly they're not miracle workers. They can only work with what they have, and sometimes it isn't that much, you know? How about we work on basic grammar or cutting and pasting documents, and leave surgical nursing for another day, whaddya say? But I suppose it's like a child's fingerpaintings in that it's rude to openly point out the deficiencies in public. The really amusing part is that all of a sudden we're trying to maintain a quiet study environment. All throughout the year so far: food and drink, cellphones, interpretative poetry jam sessions, orgies of destruction, anything goes. Now? Shh, not a sound. It must be really jarring for them, I think. What really gets me is that we ourselves are responsible for the loose tolerances. We can't very well tell someone not to eat in the library when we ourselves are chugging back the Tim Horton's and what have you in their faces. So, for the sake of some people's caffeine slavery, we have to be fair and consistent in our application of policy, only it's in the other direction of the lowest common denominator. This is why I have to straighten up at the end of every day like it's grade two, lack of boundaries. Some people just can't seem to afford public space the same respect they would their homes. Or if they do, then I shudder to think of their homes. Oh well, that's okay, I get to watch your souls shrivel up and die. Rethink that law career, genius, I think they still have some openings for pack mules and stevedores if you hurry.

The following takes place between 2 and 3 pm...

Well, this has been a quiet long weekend so far, but I'm not complaining as it's certainly relaxing if nothing else. It's nice to mix it up some, break the comfortable rut of my job up a bit. I was actually the only one around last Thursday, as everyone else either took off early or came down with convenient illnesses like longweekenditis, I suppose. I just realized that I cut it pretty close on the drive in every day. It's an awesome feat of precision timing when you stop and think about it. If someone were to trip me, for example, that would just throw the whole day off and poof! I'd be late. It's like on 24, if Jack Bauer stops to use the bathroom or tie his shoe, oh snap! there goes Los Angeles.

A trip, a trip...but to where...?

Wow, it's been almost a month since I posted anything new...not that it really matters since it's not as if I have throngs of adoring readers waiting with baited breath in eager anticipation of the latest pearls of wisdom to drip from my lips...but as to the why of it, I guess you could chalk it up to me being busy with various things, mostly insignificant but necessary busywork. The day-to-day minutiae of what I do adds up, and it's not difficult per se, but it's certainly not the most mentally stimulating stuff. I see the best and the worst of human nature in a never-ending cavalcade of absurdity. I guess it all depends upon your perspective, but the pessimist in me sees far more of the latter than the former. There is very little that this exalted student body could do to surprise me these days. It definitely confirms my decision to not become a teacher. If this is the calibre of collegiate people these days, I shudder to think of their secondary age contemporaries...sorry, it's getting a bit old being cooped up indoors. I'm getting as jaded and cynical as some of the older people I work with, although that was never too much of a stretch by any means. Spring fever has bitten me, methinks, and this nicer weather makes me want to take a trip. I'm really not sure where I'd go, but I know what I'd do: wander the earth like Kwai Chang Caine or the Littlest Hobo, righting wrongs and dispensing justice. It doesn't help that the travel commercials are starting to gear up for summer asking you to "experience this" or "discover that". I've been something of a homebody for a few years now, and I feel that old wanderlust stirring. Alas, I'm a bit tied down to my job at the moment, at least for the foreseeable future. But I will make it a point to get out somewhere just as soon as I possibly can.

The rhythm of the seasons

Anyone who knows me knows I spent a LOT of time in school. The long and short of it is I got sidetracked a few times for various reasons, as one distraction or another reared its insidious head. Some of these distractions were more pleasant than others (at least at the time), but that is neither here nor there. I DID eventually manage to matriculate more than once, and now I've got a neat little pile of credentials and a couple of degrees out of the deal. I might go back at some point, but I'm definitely all schooled out for the time being. Anyway, it recently occurred to me how easily your life can slip into a comfortable rhythm. Anyone who's still in college or university knows what I'm talking about. There's the big drive or flight out in September, whirlwinds of stress and activity until the next thing you know it's midterms with Thanksgiving in there somewhere, then Christmas vacation and New Year's with possibly another drive and/or flight (like, say...oh, to California for argument's sake). Then you come back and try to get back into the groove in time for spring break, and all of a sudden it's finals and summer when you start worrying about a job or other gainful activity to tide you over until it's time to start over again (let's say...herding goats or heck, keeping bees). Rinse and repeat, hopefully not longer than four years. Now that I'm on the other side of the desk as part of the faculty/staff, it's funny how these once-familiar rhythms are no longer meaningful to me. We stay open during breaks, such as the reading week we just had last week, so the sameness of days is striking to me. I mean, there's days with less people and days with more people, but regardless I'm there as a constant fixture like the furniture or potted plants. We also have summer school, so I'm kind of stuck there too. The hours we keep may change, but I'm still kind of tied down. I've tried to look ahead into the immediate future, and I can't imagine when I'll get to take a proper vacation again. On the plus side, I have a solid three day weekend every week. As soon as I get off work on Thursday evenings, I could disappear off the face of the earth until the next Monday afternoon. That's not so bad, I guess.

Old man winter

We've had some really crappy weather lately, although I guess it would all depend upon your perspective. Let's say, instead, that we've had our weekly dose of winter. Last Thursday they actually shut down our school, naturally only an hour after I had arrived...but we still got paid for the day, so that's always a plus. When the weather acts up to that degree, I usually forgo driving and let the bus do all the heavy lifting precisely so that I can avoid ending my life prematurely in a frozen ditch. But even the bus was skidding and sliding around like Brian Boitano, only less gracefully and to a much lesser degree of skill. Visibility was way down as well, maybe ten feet between the sheets of snow. So there were a few dodgy moments there, and admittedly I was not able to nap as peacefully as I would have liked to, which is another perk of the bus. Besides, with this alleged refinery fire taking all the gas off of the market, the less driving we can do the better. Station after station is closed and sealed off in an ever-increasing radius, and it's a little unnerving. Deserted gas stations make me feel all post-apocalyptic, I'm just waiting for the dune buggies loaded with leather bondage fetishists to come storming over the horizon because they want my gas and/or water. Bring it on, I say. I'm prepared for the gas wars. Car tires make decent armour (proof against blunt trauma and low-calibre rounds, you know), and I can jury-rig some spears and rudimentary firearms, although I suspect it will ultimately come down to a question of decent melee weapons.

Snowcave

Most of my pastimes are solitary ones like reading, and most of them are sedentary at best, not athletic ones by any stretch of the imagination. But every once in a while I do get out. One winter at university I helped dig a snowcave with a couple of college buddies whose business is actually to do things like this. This thing took days to build, but it was cool. It had a large central chamber with several radial wings extending in various directions. And it was surprisingly warm in there, to tell the truth. I believe that's me on the left.

More images

As you can see, we also have the awesome responsibility to rotate through the tedious but necessary job of circulation. At its heart, circulation is all about charging and discharging; making sure we know who has what books, where those books are at any given moment, and more importantly when they should be back. It's a fast-paced, dynamic environment where split-second decisions can mean the difference between life and death.
Okay, so it's not quite as glamourous as all that, but it is one of those things that needs to get done on a daily basis. Thankfully, I don't do too much of this, as this is by far where the lion's share of complaints come from. Everyone needs to remember that you CANNOT GRADUATE with outstanding fees and/or fines. So if you owe me, you ain't marching anywhere except straight to the nearest unemployment office. IN OTHER WORDS, I am the final arbiter of your academic future (and thus by extension of your future in general). So be nice to me, okay? I don't bite.

Images in the sand

You know, the other day I realized with a start that I do not have any recent pictures of myself. I could drop off of the face of the earth tomorrow and my loved ones would be hard pressed to find a recent image for the search parties and scent dogs to use. Well, I guess the scent dogs wouldn't really find a picture all that useful after all, but you know what I mean. I was trying to find some nice ones to post on my various blogs and found a large void running through about 2003 where it's as if I don't exist anymore, at least in a pictorial form. That's understandable as it's a safe bet that I wasn't alone in most of those pictures and for various reasons they contained memories best left buried and forgotten. Quite literally, as I'm fairly sure they're Michigan landfill by now.
Anyway, here's me recently on a typical day at work, making the world a better place for reference. You see, that's what I am, the night reference technician. I answer all sorts of compelling questions running the gamut from simple directional (bathroom's down the hall on your right, or left depending on your personal plumbing) to high-order, third-tier reference that require a LOT of deep analysis and interpretation. "I need books." Oookay. Where to proceed from here? By the way, that's a serious question I get almost every day. I say it like I'm kidding, but there are a lot of people who just don't have the first clue where to begin with the resources available to them. The effective reference interview is as much art as it is science, because digging what they REALLY want (vs. what they told you) out of their skull is like pulling teeth sometimes. I have a whole lot more patience for this than some of my colleagues, but I suppose I haven't been doing this long enough. It does get tedious sometimes, especially with people that don't really want to do the work and would rather have you spoonfeed them and hold their hand the whole way. But so far I'm still naive enough to believe that's it worth it.

Quality glasses in about one hou...um, ten days...fine, two weeks

Some time ago I ordered new glasses from that magical purveyor of "quality glasses...in about an hour." Apparently, that guarantee doesn't apply to the legally blind and the coke bottle kids amongst us, as my prescription proved to be a bit much to handle. Now, more than two weeks later, they finally came in from whatever classified top secret optics lab they were forged in. Don't get me wrong, they're perfectly wonderful glasses. They do exactly what they were designed to do; that is, enhance my vision. So in that regard, a remarkably bravura performance all around, and I commend them for it. It's just a little amusing that they took so long. I could have just as easily cloned a new set of vat grown eyes from my private stock of stem cells in the same amount of time. I just have to wonder what they were doing. I mean, they're perfectly competent spectacles, but it's not as if the lenses are carved out of pure Swarovski crystal with a twenty four karat gold-filigreed frame of refined mithril, after all. They don't even have any special powers or extra features. I can't see in any other bands of the visible spectrum, and alas...I cannot peer through the well of time. I can simply see, and that's good enough for me.

Snap, it's cold...

Now, I know it is part of the cold (no pun intended) reality of life that we face here every winter in Canada, but it is BLOODY COLD!!! The mucus in your nose is not supposed to freeze solid once you step outside. The other day, I forgot my gloves and as I was driving home, I could feel my body panicking and drawing back all my blood from my extremities like it was saying "Screw this! You limbs are on your own, the torso takes priority!" It was actually physically painful on several different levels just to be outside. It almost makes you want to hibernate, or move somewhere warmer. Almost. I've done those warmer climes, and while they have their charms, such pretty poison can lurk beneath a warm exterior...