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:

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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!