here in the neighborhood
It sure hasn't been a beautiful day, but then I haven't had to step foot outside so I can hardly complain. In fact, I'm tucked up in my magical antique bed, under the antique quilt from Aunt Susan, working on my laptop on the neat little table my Dad made for me. Loverly. I've been doing some reading for one of my classes; the other one hasn't started yet. Weird. The third, of course, is the practicum in book repair.
I realized yesterday exactly what a huge favor the Book Repair department guys are doing for me. I've been there for four days; Josh has spent most of his time for two days teaching me, and a couple of the other techs spent a day taking turns teaching me. So in other words, they have lost 3 person-days teaching me, and I've worked a little over one person-day without constant assistance/supervision. I have done 9 spine repairs plus one that I cocked up; it will have to be at least partly redone, but the others are pretty good. The cocked-up-ness was caught at a reasonably early stage so won't be too god-awful to fix. The techs been very complimentary about the quality of my work otherwise. Yesterday I started re-casing 5 paperbacks. Josh noted that if I were a new employee, they'd give me a bunch more spine repairs to help me solidify the learning process, but instead they're going to teach me a bunch of different things.
I think I was expecting more along the lines of my internship in architecture. Interns are given lots of boring things to do, over and over and over. Of course the difference I had not considered is that architectural interships last for three years, and this practicum is only 120 hours. They are really treating this as almost a sacred responsibility, wanting to be sure I learn enough for it to be a worthwhile class. Since the rules say that practicums are to be under the supervision of a professional librarian, (I keep wanting to say "licensed" like architects. Heh) I am to meet one day next week with the professional librarian in charge of the Preservation Dept. I'm in a bit of a swivet-- I feel like I'm supposed to have questions or something, and I have NO IDEA what to ask.
I have been making notes the days I work, describing the steps of the repairs I'm doing. When I get home I type them up so I'll have official documentation of what I've done. I realized yesterday that I have my nice new digital camera toy that I should be taking lots of pictures with-- oops! I did at least make a note of a couple of the SILS titles that I did, so I can pull them off the shelf and photograph the completed books. (One of them was The Lonely Carrot. I found that rather amusing-- what's next, depressed rutabagas?) I plan to take the camera next week so I can at least document what's next. Duh. If I can remember to do that, it'll make a nice presentation.
When I came home last night, Miss Lily was loading some stuff from her apartment into her car. She was impeccably turned out, as usual, but I was a bit taken aback to see that she was wearing a skirt that was mid-thigh length. Yikes. Makes me reconsider the short skirt that I wear occasionally. It's not that she has bad legs, it's just.... well.... she is a lady of a certain age, and an almost-miniskirt is disconcerting. Then she asked if I had heard the couple next to me getting it on a couple of nights ago. Well, yeah, since their headboard is against the wall where my headboard is, yes indeed I did. Turns out it disturbed Miss Lily far more than it did me-- she says she yelled at them and even went to their door one night. Yow. I always thought that if I ever was going to get lucky at Pennsic, I'd want to go to HIS camp so as to not have to deal with the knowing smirks of my own campmates. (You notice the IF in that sentence.) Seems like I should perhaps consider the same tactics here. Of course, Miss Lily also threatened to move somewhere else to get away from the racket of the current neighbors. Perhaps it's more to the point to worry about the my place/his place bridge if I should ever come to it? Because I do have a lot more likely things to worry about.
I realized yesterday exactly what a huge favor the Book Repair department guys are doing for me. I've been there for four days; Josh has spent most of his time for two days teaching me, and a couple of the other techs spent a day taking turns teaching me. So in other words, they have lost 3 person-days teaching me, and I've worked a little over one person-day without constant assistance/supervision. I have done 9 spine repairs plus one that I cocked up; it will have to be at least partly redone, but the others are pretty good. The cocked-up-ness was caught at a reasonably early stage so won't be too god-awful to fix. The techs been very complimentary about the quality of my work otherwise. Yesterday I started re-casing 5 paperbacks. Josh noted that if I were a new employee, they'd give me a bunch more spine repairs to help me solidify the learning process, but instead they're going to teach me a bunch of different things.
I think I was expecting more along the lines of my internship in architecture. Interns are given lots of boring things to do, over and over and over. Of course the difference I had not considered is that architectural interships last for three years, and this practicum is only 120 hours. They are really treating this as almost a sacred responsibility, wanting to be sure I learn enough for it to be a worthwhile class. Since the rules say that practicums are to be under the supervision of a professional librarian, (I keep wanting to say "licensed" like architects. Heh) I am to meet one day next week with the professional librarian in charge of the Preservation Dept. I'm in a bit of a swivet-- I feel like I'm supposed to have questions or something, and I have NO IDEA what to ask.
I have been making notes the days I work, describing the steps of the repairs I'm doing. When I get home I type them up so I'll have official documentation of what I've done. I realized yesterday that I have my nice new digital camera toy that I should be taking lots of pictures with-- oops! I did at least make a note of a couple of the SILS titles that I did, so I can pull them off the shelf and photograph the completed books. (One of them was The Lonely Carrot. I found that rather amusing-- what's next, depressed rutabagas?) I plan to take the camera next week so I can at least document what's next. Duh. If I can remember to do that, it'll make a nice presentation.
When I came home last night, Miss Lily was loading some stuff from her apartment into her car. She was impeccably turned out, as usual, but I was a bit taken aback to see that she was wearing a skirt that was mid-thigh length. Yikes. Makes me reconsider the short skirt that I wear occasionally. It's not that she has bad legs, it's just.... well.... she is a lady of a certain age, and an almost-miniskirt is disconcerting. Then she asked if I had heard the couple next to me getting it on a couple of nights ago. Well, yeah, since their headboard is against the wall where my headboard is, yes indeed I did. Turns out it disturbed Miss Lily far more than it did me-- she says she yelled at them and even went to their door one night. Yow. I always thought that if I ever was going to get lucky at Pennsic, I'd want to go to HIS camp so as to not have to deal with the knowing smirks of my own campmates. (You notice the IF in that sentence.) Seems like I should perhaps consider the same tactics here. Of course, Miss Lily also threatened to move somewhere else to get away from the racket of the current neighbors. Perhaps it's more to the point to worry about the my place/his place bridge if I should ever come to it? Because I do have a lot more likely things to worry about.