Whew!
It's been a long couple of weeks. We had more upheaval at work, and some sad times there, too. Joe, who left the library in September due to illness, passed away a few weeks ago. I'd worked with him for at least five or six years, and I was really hoping he'd get better, but the cancer got the best of him and he didn't make it. The old library staff went to his calling hours and funeral. It was a sad time, and I'm still coming to terms with him dying. The guy my company brought in to work in the library in lieu of Joe is John. They'd been promising him to us since December, but he came over in April, right when Mike took a job with a different company at the lab. That still left the library with two workers when we previously had four, and that meant that I literally had to know how to do every job in the library. Mike trained John some before he left, and then I took over. After a week or two we got Kira. It took forever for our company to get the paperwork done to get her a computer account. That meant that while I was training her we were on my computer and I couldn't do any of my own work. Just when she got her own account and we were starting to hum along, John decided that he only wanted to work part time. Our company sent out an email saying that he was retiring, which was news to him. Of course, he should have expected something like that because they sent out an advertisement for my job to the local paper. I asked them if they were trying to tell me something, but they claimed that they periodically advertise other people's jobs to see what kind of talent pool they have in the area "in case something happens". Doesn't that just give you the warm fuzzies? So now John has left the library and we have Amy. Both Kira and Amy are pleasant to be around, and they seem interested in learning the job, so I think I can build up a nice team again, but it's been a tiring process. My company also told me that I can't take a vacation until I have some sort of backup, so I'm extremely interested in training them to do some portion of my job. I'm also extremely interested in finding another job, but so far no luck.
This past weekend I babysat my three nieces and my nephew. My sister and her husband wanted to take a mini trip because they hadn't had any time away from the children pretty much since they had been born. The oldest is 13, so that tells you something. I knew it was going to be stressful because I don't have any kids myself, plus I was going to have to bring my dogs with me and they hate being in a different environment. The look on my sister's face when she pulled out of the driveway and her relaxed attitude when she got back was worth it, though. The kids are pretty good kids, so at least I didn't have any temper tantrums or problem behaviour to deal with. Plus my mom was there to help out. We went back to her house on th 4th for a family cookout, which turned out to be a cook-in because of the weather. I got to see my Aunt Mary, Aunt Lorraine, and my grandmother, and it was really good to catch up with them for a while. Eileen stopped by with two pies her mom baked that morning. The pies were literally gone in 10 minutes. I got a berry from the blackberry pie (the other was apple) and a piece of crust that had fallen on the stove. That was it. Her mom is a good baker, and if I'm saying that you know she's excellent :)
I've been having trouble with my scrabble game lately. My level of play has gone way down and I can't figure out why. I played a game with Chris on the pixie pit and wrote down each rack, play, and reason for the play. He's going to analyze it and see if he can come up with some kind of identifiable problem. I think there are several problems. One is that I flat out don't want to memorize stuff. I don't play enough people to remember stuff, so something has to change there because I'm not learning anything and I definitely need to. Memorization just turns me off, though. The second is that I play people who are so much better than me that I just get outplayed all the time. It's very frustrating and discouraging. I've been encouraged to play some games on ISC, but the only time I'm on the computer to do so is about 30 minutes before I go to bed. My brain just isn't functioning enough at that time. I need a way to make what I need to learn less painful and formidable. Scrabble people are usually full of helpful and kind advice, so if anyone has some suggestions I'm all ears. I may be going to Toronto in September, so I don't want to shame myself any more than necessary :)
This past weekend I babysat my three nieces and my nephew. My sister and her husband wanted to take a mini trip because they hadn't had any time away from the children pretty much since they had been born. The oldest is 13, so that tells you something. I knew it was going to be stressful because I don't have any kids myself, plus I was going to have to bring my dogs with me and they hate being in a different environment. The look on my sister's face when she pulled out of the driveway and her relaxed attitude when she got back was worth it, though. The kids are pretty good kids, so at least I didn't have any temper tantrums or problem behaviour to deal with. Plus my mom was there to help out. We went back to her house on th 4th for a family cookout, which turned out to be a cook-in because of the weather. I got to see my Aunt Mary, Aunt Lorraine, and my grandmother, and it was really good to catch up with them for a while. Eileen stopped by with two pies her mom baked that morning. The pies were literally gone in 10 minutes. I got a berry from the blackberry pie (the other was apple) and a piece of crust that had fallen on the stove. That was it. Her mom is a good baker, and if I'm saying that you know she's excellent :)
I've been having trouble with my scrabble game lately. My level of play has gone way down and I can't figure out why. I played a game with Chris on the pixie pit and wrote down each rack, play, and reason for the play. He's going to analyze it and see if he can come up with some kind of identifiable problem. I think there are several problems. One is that I flat out don't want to memorize stuff. I don't play enough people to remember stuff, so something has to change there because I'm not learning anything and I definitely need to. Memorization just turns me off, though. The second is that I play people who are so much better than me that I just get outplayed all the time. It's very frustrating and discouraging. I've been encouraged to play some games on ISC, but the only time I'm on the computer to do so is about 30 minutes before I go to bed. My brain just isn't functioning enough at that time. I need a way to make what I need to learn less painful and formidable. Scrabble people are usually full of helpful and kind advice, so if anyone has some suggestions I'm all ears. I may be going to Toronto in September, so I don't want to shame myself any more than necessary :)