Stuck at work...

While daughter Laura blogs her romps around Memphis and treks to Kentucky, I am stuck at work.

Normally I would have switched days and gone with her, but I already had scheduled to take a bunch of days off two weeks from now for a trip to Charleston, Savannah and Hilton Head. THEN I'll take off another couple of days to have my BGF Gail come to town for Bluebonneting.

I really felt like I should not take even more time off from work.

Laura made it a goal to visit all fifty states before she turned fifty. She beat her time by twenty years. I so wanted to go with her as she crossed the state line between Tennessee and Kentucky and check state number 50 from her list.

I mean, this is the competion of a GOAL, like getting a degree, or buying a house. Something worth celebrating! We talked this morning and she had a blast last night in Memphis, staying up until 1 am having fun with people she met along the way. I am happy that she is happy.

I am trying to tell myself that what I am doing here at work is important too. Finding a book on Scarlatti, showing someone how to research abortion, helping people (waaayyyy too many people) learn how to buy a print card and use a print card to print their paper.

That last "help" is the main activity of the day for me.

I explain that to print something from any computer in the library you either need a student ID card, that comes with a dollar's worth of print on it's magnetic strip, or you need to purchase a print card, which means BUYING from a machine a piece of plastic with a magnetic strip for a dollar, then putting the card back into the machine and adding "value" or a money amount to the card.

I point, walk, explain this process over and over.

Students still want to give me money for printing, or borrow a print card, or claim they have no money for printing. Mind you, we give them a dollar's worth of printing (10 cents a page) just for being a student to begin with.

Students also ask me to find text books in the library collection. They come in looking quite pleased with themselves for being so clever to think of just using the library's copy of the text book instead of actually purchasing a copy for themselves.

We don't have text books in our library collection.

I point out that if we did have a copy of the text book being used for each class on campus, ONE person would check the text book out, and the other 59-250 people taking the class would have to go buy the text book anyway.

That doesn't seem quite fair to everyone now does it?

SOME times a nice teacher will put a copy of the text book in the reserve room, where a student can use the text book in the room, but NEVER take it out of the room. This leads to discussions about the idea of copying pages from that book....and guess what?

We are back to "I don't have money to print, can I borrow your card?"

Sigh.

Then I have the people who ask me to look up a book for them. They can't remember the title, or the author. Something about history, or trigonometry (um...would that be a text book? Yes? We don't carry text books...)

I also have people who have found a great article on a database, but can't find it again. Could I help them?

Sure...we have about six hundred databases, let me get started....

People would like to know when we will close tonight. And where the bathroom might be. They need to use our headphones. They need something to write with, and scratch paper. But mostly they have questions about printing.

So in between helping them (about 20 people in four hours time) I sit and check blogs, scan ebay, and read a book about where we will vacation all the while thinking about Laura achieving her goal.

I remind myself that these students all have a goal in mind too. They hope to get a college education. Right now they hope to just finish their current class assignments. They also check their email, read myspace, watch Youtube and sports.

It is much more interesting going through life with a goal. Having an interesting goal is even better. (Much better than so many typical goals, like to lose weight or repaint a bedroom before guest arrive...) Dreaming big keeps life exciting.

Sometime though, you just have to be excited about the fulfillment of other people's dreams.

OK....

Now for the fun stuff:

Video directions on how to make a large scarf into a bag to hold a small purse! Whoo hoo! I can put my small purses inside a scarf and save myself a ton of weight when tromping around.

And more crinoline hats from a millinery site of hats created by Nigerians who sell in Charleston!
This crinoline/horsehair hat thing is getting to me in a good way. I think I am going to actually have to make one soon. I'm going to make it a goal...

And so it goes with milliner me. So tell me: What is your BIG goal?