3:30 – 5:00
- Kids’ craft books
- Both copies of today’s paper have been stolen.
- Signup for kids’ CD-ROM station, oops, it needs rebooting yet again.
- CD-ROM mom wants a recipe for playdough. No books, but I find one online. She's pleased. She also needs cookbooks.
- While helping Playdough Mom, I overhear a women asking the On-Call for Stephen King books, including The Shining. Then I hear her ask for Les Miserables, which is about a writer getting stalked, she thinks. I let them know that it’s Misery.
- Books on seasons for children and teens, and maybe poetry about them. All we’ve got is the easy nonfiction on seasons for wee ones. Oh, after she leaves the desk I find one children’s poetry book about seasons and take it to her.
- A child asks the On-Call for pop-up books. No, sorry. (We horde them in the storytime cupboard, otherwise they’d get destroyed.)
- The CD-ROM headphones that I replaced on Thursday are already broken.
- The pop-up boy’s sister comes and asks me for pop-ups. No.
- A girl asks for books on art. On a particular artist or on arts and crafts? Arts and crafts. Man, families must be getting cabin fever already with the bad weather, we’ve had a real run on kids’ crafts books this week.
- A boy needs a video on the planet Mercury. Nope. His mom says that he needs either a video, tape, or CD for this project. Happily there’s one video on the planets in, and it’ll have to do the job.
- Would a video be in the catalogue under its title, with the books? Yes.
- Methadone Man asks for Michelle Remembers. Nope. And there’s another book, written by a girl in the States whose family was in a Satanic cult…. A search for cults – biography doesn’t give anything and he says it’s okay, maybe it’ll come to him.
- Books on crocheting
- The evil project on Asian cultures continues. Luckily this girl can pick any country and we actually have a bunch in on Japan.
- Is this the first Harry Potter book? Yes.
- Help with Internet printing for her brother.
- 2 preteen girls ask if I’m the lie-berrian. Yes. They’ve found awful words written in a Where’s Waldo book. I erase and correctional tape them out. What kind of horrid person writes stuff like that in a children’s book?
- They then ask for a colouring sheet and then want every other Thanksgiving page in the photocopy masters binder. I go and make copies, only to have a paper jam and have to hunt for more paper. (Note to self, hide binder when looking for colouring sheet masters, it always happens that kids want every damn one they see in there.)
- Halloween cookbooks. All out.
- The girls want a pumpkin colouring sheet, too. No, I’ve just given you 3, that’s enough for today. They must have been abandoned by their parents and are bored. It’s not that I mind them colouring, but I'm not colouring-sheets-on-demand woman.
- The library closes early today? Yes, at 5:00.
- A very tiny, very cute little girl, who barely comes up to the top of the desk is clearly asking for something in baby talk, but I think it’s baby talk in another language. She comes up 3 times and then sneaks around through the desk gate that I’d left open. I end up lifting her over the desk to her mom after she sneaks away again.
- Did anyone turn any sunglasses in? Check over there for the lost and found.
- A girl needs information about the career of a lawyer, as well as a magazine about it. No books, just Job Futures and the encyclopedia. And definitely no magazines. I wonder if she needs the actual magazine or just a title. Information about it will do, so I print her out a blurb about Canadian Lawyer.
- A woman calls up and wishes me and all the staff a Happy Thanksgiving and then has a question about a phone number in Edmonton. I wonder if she’s the lady who was in for the phone book earlier. I can’t find her friends in Canada411, their number must be unlisted. Then she tells me the tale of losing touch with these friends and asks me to look them up in our city. It's the same nonworking number she already has, alas. I hear more about how she's been trying to find them without success. She again wishes us all a Happy Thanksgiving.
- Closing time, hooray!