Had a crazy week. Sunday night had girls from work over - tres fun! I'm stoked to be building friendships with some of my coworkers, and I always like having people over to my house, because it's another way of opening my life to people and I think it helps deepen relationships. Plus I'm getting smarter - realizing that it's not about impressing people with my hostessing talents but just making them feel at home and comfortable in my house. So I don't experiment with new foods when I have guests coming over, and I keep the food simple and make it ahead so that I can hang out and enjoy time with my friends. Works great! Why did it take me so long to figure that out?
Wednesday was a big day. I worked a 12-9 shift because we had a library program planned. When I got to work I couldn't get in the parking lot - we share a parking lot entrance with a shopping center, even though the library is slightly removed from the rest of the center. There had been a robbery at the jewelry store in the shopping center. Two of the suspects were caught right away, but the third escaped to the gelato store next door and holed up in there for a couple of hours. No traffic was allowed in or out of the center during that time, and all the people stuck at the shopping center were sent up to the library to keep safe. Meanwhile, our Internet access is down, resulting in lots of cranky patrons. We had families buying snacks from the vending machine in the staff room and putting their kids down for naps in the storytime room - it was quite an adventure. They caught the guy, eventually - he went up into the ceiling to look for an escape route and ended up falling through...
That night my Teen Services partner Melissa and I ran a scavenger hunt for 4th-6th graders. It's hosted by our teens, which is why we were in charge. The library does these every year, but it was our first time and no one told us we'd need to limit the number of sign-ups, so we ended up with 57 kids (plus 13 teenagers)! It was chaos, but great! We had a costume contest and almost all of the kids came in costume. Very fun. We're really starting to connect with our regular teens, so I'm excited and feel really good about what we're doing. And we're lucky, because they're a great group of kids.
The city I work for has a big Halloween potluck, which was Thursday, so a bunch of us from the library went over. They had a costume contest, too, but the judging was pretty sucky. The department heads were the judges, and as best I can figure they were rewarding people rather than costumes. But it was still fun. My friend Julie went as Tippi Hedrin from The Birds - she looked so good! Very creative idea. Didn't win anything. I'll post a picture if I can find one. I was Death from the Sandman comics. We were supposed to dress as a character from a book (Julie made the cut because the movie is based on a short story). My boss, Susan, disregarded the book character idea and dressed as our jewelry robber - a very creative last-minute costume.
Friday night I went to another party with work people, and the weekend I spent moping around the house because I'm sick. My wonderful husband did the cooking and let me get as much rest as possible, for which I am very grateful. I did sneak out last night to take pictures of my niece and nephew in their costumes - super cute (a princess and a skeleton, in case you were wondering).
Today I'm at work, spreading my germs around, since I'm not eligible for paid time off until January. That'll teach em! I'm actually being as considerate as I can, toting around a bottle of hand sanitizer and trying to wipe off the phones and whatever else I touch. But the cold virus is already making its way through the ranks, so it's probably an empty gesture.
Anyway, that's been my week. Hope yours was good. If nothing else, I managed to get another post in before two months went by!
