Come here! Look at this!

The Ref Desk was either silent, or I had 5 people in front of me. All day. Feast or famine. Most of it was the usual stuff: Where's the bathroom? The elevator's out, how do I get upstairs? Where's the copier? How can I get on the wifi? Why does this public internet computer want a password?

Then there was the woman who, with great excitement, came up to me at the desk and asked me to go back to her internet computer. "You have to look at this! Come see!" Expecting to see her computer on fire or porn on her neighbor's screen, I was stunned to see Facebook pictures...of puppies. Her niece's 4 hour old chihuahua puppies.

Did ya miss me?

Been on vacation the last couple weeks, which has been nice, but I was back to the grind today, back to Ye Olde Reference Deske.

And so glad I was, too. I got panhandled by one of the homeless guys. While sitting at the desk, no less!

Also, got into a 10 minute debate about whether listening to an unabridged book on tape counts as "reading" a book or not. I say it does, and that, if anything, it expands the listener's imagination. My sparring partner maintained that the only way to fully expand one's imagination was to read the story from the text. This was from a professional filmmaker.

And, I sheepishly confess that I had a stumper for a while. I ended up taking the caller's name and number, doing some research, and calling back with my findings. The entire time I was searching, I could hear my partner in the back of my mind saying, "What, you don't know this???" It took me far too long to determine if the US budget for fiscal year 2011 has been passed yet. (It hasn't, we're on a continuation through the 3rd, then it's anybody's guess.) The whole experience made me want to go find some high school Civics class and sit in on it. For about 20 years.

Had another one of those heartbreaking-but-this-is-why-I-do-this moments. Helped a young woman find her mother's death notice from the newspaper. She was 6 when her mother died in a car accident, and had never had any of the newspaper clippings. So, we found the death notice, the obituary, and a couple of articles about the hit-and-run drunk driving accident. She had tears in her eyes the whole time, but also a smile. She printed out copies to mail to her sister who just started college.

Busy, busy!

Too much going on just now for me to share everything, but trust me, I've been taking notes & I have some goodies to share. Including about 97 bajillion more flushes to add to the count.

There was one stand-out moment worth noting.

As I was sitting at the desk today, a man I've seen around the library a couple of times walked past the desk saying, "Wanna play footsie?" And he kept going. No eye contact, no pause in his stride, no cell phone tucked up to ear.

Still trying to decide if he was asking me or the desk.

Welcome, November!

Been a quiet week at the ol' ref desk. The weather has been wild--unusually warm followed by unusually windy. I figure people have been outside to enjoy it, followed by being outside to clean up from it.

On Saturday, my would-be hockey coach came back, and wanted my assistance in checking his email to see if he got the job. Except for one thing: He can't remember where his email is. Is it Yahoo? Is it Gmail? Is it Hotmail? We never did figure it out, trying his screen name and password on all three without success. He said he'd check with a friend who helped him set up his email in the first place.

Spent half an hour trying to find books that would help a high schooler do a paper about why countries sent out explorers and, more specifically, why some countries didn't. That's no small subject, and the student couldn't narrow it down to specific countries to be explored. It was also not about specific explorers, their journeys, or the lands 'discovered' or the empires that followed. Eventually, we found a few, then I went back to the desk to do some more searching. Found a gorgeous atlas (in the Reference collection) about the age of exploration, and took it back upstairs to where I'd left the student. And proceeded to startle the heck out of both of us when I put the book on the desk. Hadn't realized my approach was so stealthy, and I jumped at the student jumping!

Only other thing that's really standing out from the last few days: A tremendous surge in the ongoing counts:

~~~~~

Nose Picking: 3 (no change)

Boarding Passes: 5 (no change)

Toilet Clanks: +2, total of 7.

Toilet Flushes: +9, for a total of 10. Heard NINE flushes in 4 1/2 hours. That's impressive work!