Friday, November 21, 2008

Holiday Slog Blog, Week 1

Motto: Fine Whines, my Speciality

Fri, Nov 21: As of 11am today the holiday slog starts. No, it's nothing to do with the usual holiday stresses -- family, meals, parties, gifts, money (as in, where are we going to get the money.) This has to do with the fact that as of 11am, I am the only librarian at my library until December 26. That puts me on the reference desk for 6.5 hours out of the 7 we are open, five days a week. Yes, the librarians are in an employee union, but no, there are no limits on the consecutive hours a librarian can be on the desk, and there is no minimum staffing requirement in order to open the library. Even with low patronage, the long shift is exhausting or stressful, apart from any special problems that come up.

What better way to cope than to whine? I'm going to update this post for the "week" of Nov 21 through 26 -- followed by two days off for Thanksgiving and then two-more for the weekend. Then I will do a new post for week 2, and similarly update it. I know my thousands of fans will want to keep up with all the breaking news.

So I started the day with a mall walk: I got to the mall in front of my library early enough to do a complete circuit of the two floors. This is part of my "exercise more" approach to stress. Then, hurrah, my boss gave me some chocolate, and, in line with "dark chocolate is good for stress" I ate some of it, but in line with "don't stress eat" I only ate two squares. I've got the rest tucked away, in the hope that I will forget I have it. Further stress pre-emptive plans to be undertaken as time allows: rearrange Netflix list to move all comedies to the top. Find funny books to read on the commute -- the ones I have at home, and, thus, may be too familiar with to laugh at too much, are Bill Richardson's Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast; Daisy Ashford's The Young Visiters (sic; my favorite line: "The Crystal Palace heaved into view;") Leo Rosten's The Education of Hyman Kaplan (asterisks between each letter of HK's name omitted) and later sequels; and Rosten's revised, or new version, of The Joys of Yiddish --but maybe mordant humor isn't quite what I want. Maybe a reread of Brigit Jones's Diary, and a first-time read of the sequel --- I recently saw both of the movie versions -- plus the Bachelor Brothers' sequel.
Monday, Nov 24: Relaxed, rested, I return to the library, to discover that the front door key won't work, because, yet again, the archive that shares our space did not fully close the door after letting someone out after hours. The good news: at least the door isn't openable without a key, as was the case several times before. I got in using a side entrance, thus setting off the burlar alarm, and then ran quick like a bunny to get upstairs to enter the code to shut it off. Then I phoned to call off the law enforcement responders. I shall count the quick run as part of my exercise to reduce stress plan.
Wednesday, Nov 26: The "week" -- Friday, Monday-Wendesday, has been pretty stress free. Entertainment was provided by the person who came in to the library via the mail room, then, when she was told that she is not authorized to enter that way, asked if it would be ok to leave that way.


Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Automatic generation and human fertilization

One of the blogs on my Feevy list is "Lords of the Blog," the site for the peers in the British House of Lords. (As the upper chamber in Parliament, that House differs in substantial ways from the United States' upper legislative chamber, the Senate, not least by being far more upfront about its members thinking they are related to God.)

The November 5 post by Lord Taylor of Warwick, Seek and ye shall Fund, summarized his speech in a debate on the British economy. Like all the posts on the site, it was followed by a heading "Possibly related posts (automatically generated.)" The top link was to "Human Fertilization and Embryology bill."

Precisely what that bill would have to do with the posting about the economy is unclear, (possibly because I didn't link to the bill to read it,) but it's pleasant to think that the machine's pick is a bit of humour related to the second sentence in the last bullet point in Seek and ye shall Fund.