Author: Jennifer Kuntz

I have to go through my closet and decide which clothes I’m going to take with me on vacation. I think I’ll have no trouble with my sportswear and casual clothes but I’d like to make a nice “dressy” dress for the formal nights. I have some fab fabric to work with and a nice adaptable and flattering pattern. This means I can spend some money on shoes and not feel too guilty.

We also have to go out and acquire a suit for the Tom-ster. A chore I have been putting off as he has been somewhat less than enthusiastic about it. Maybe I’ll make him a deal. if he comes out to get a nice suit, we’ll buy something from the International Male catalog to go with it (my hubby wants to be a fabulous male model, or just dress like one).

I hope to get this done this weekend.

Decisions, decisions…

So, I’m re-listening to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and I realize that Ron is Harry’s Id and Hermione is Harry’s Superego. I expect one of the serious Harry scholars has already done a thesis paper on this, but it amused me.

Hooray. Now I can work instead of thumb twiddling. Spent most of today ‘figgering’ out the ILS for the library. Still trying to determine if this is a union catalog and if so how I will know what items are held by other libraries.

I am in the new job.  I am the Supervisory Librarian at the Womack Army Medical Center.

It is not completely without bumps.  But on the whole it looks to be a good thing.

I’ve been jetting around from office to office filling out and dropping off paperwork in the approved fashion, so that’s good.  It looks like it will be the end of the week before I get computer access, but as that’s pretty darn fast for an activity of this size (over 3000 employees) I’m not too upset.  I’m taking my time and being extra conscientious.

Now for the bumps…in addition to no computer, the guy who is my new boss is out this week on vacation.  Therefore, I’m in kind of a weird limbo which is complicated by the fact that the library is supposed to be moving from his activity to the library’s education department and I can’t talk to the Col. who will be the new boss until this transfer is complete.  

Also, the lady who has been out sick since May (and the absence of whom was the impetus to hire me in such rapid fashion) has returned from sick leave about a week ago and is squatting in the librarian’s office (both physically and figuratively).  This is a difficult situation for me.  I want to get in there and establish myself, but I don’t want to alienate her.  If they cancel the temporary girl who has been holding down the fort, it would just be the two of us, so I definitely can’t afford to have her P.O.’ed at me.  It’s a tricky thing and they DEFINITELY don’t cover this in library school (they should though, “How to deal with paraprofessionals who have more senority than you” would be a very useful class).  It’s not that I’m particularly covetous of the office, but I always feel unsettled in a place until I can set up my “space” and there’s a computer workstation in there that I will need to use for cataloging.  Maybe I’m territorial or something.  What I’d like is for the boss to come along and say “OK, the librarian is here now, so clear out the office and give her the keys.”  That way it’s a directive from above, not me trying to muscle her out.  She’s been doing a lot of little things to deny me access, locking the door when she leaves and “forgetting” all the passwords so she doesn’t have to tell them to me and saying that she has to get everything straightened up before she can pass anything on to me.  I’d like to just let her handle stuff and move on to dealing with the people who have already stopped by to request particular “librarian-y” things like pathfinders and briefings but I need to know what’s already in place before I start making changes and doing new things.  I hope that we’ll be able to meet with the Information Management Director soon and that he’ll be able to straighten everything out.

Ah well, change brings stress.  I’m just going to ride it out.

I am on the bus.  The short bus.  This is a military expression meaning that I don’t have to care about the people at work bitching about one another as after this weekend, it will no longer be either my responsibility or my fault if they can’t get along.
This is a very refreshing feeling.  As I have often thought, not unlike Randall’s comment in Clerks, “This job would be great if it weren’t for the co-workers.”  Nothing here is a bigger time waster than having to deal with the inevitable ruffled feathers that come with changes in the workplace.  Everyone here is CONVINCED that everyone else is getting away with something.  And they are.  Everyone gets away with something here because everyone has a card to play, either an “attitude problem” card or the “kids” card or the “I’ve been here for 10 years” card or the “I’m litigious” card.  We work for an exceptionally generous system that is hampered by lunatic rules.  If you know how to play the system, you can get paid for showing up and not doing a lick of work.  And when people complain about your slacking, you can claim you are being discriminated against.  And, as supervisors (being the ambitious types they are) generally change more often than their employees as long as you put forth a bit of effort for every new face, you can keep on slacking most of the time until you retire.  People who WANT to get ahead, do.  They look for new positions, they get the education required to advance.  But this mobility leaves most offices with a sediment of people who have settled and are exceptionally resentful when they see the other sedimentary types “getting away” with things.
It’s a lousy way to run a railroad.
4 more days.  

It’s the Pennsic water, I swear.  It colors your fingernails and hair.

We had a delightful time.  We didn’t see everyone we wanted to see, unfortunately.  I set out to find Alfie on the only day it really rained, so I missed her.  And we were pretty much avoiding the entire north side of the campground for sanity reasons, so we missed a few other people.  I would have liked to get to more classes.  I did get to see a few cool rapier combats and cheer on the baronial 5 man rapier team.  We did a lot of looking in the shops, but not a tremendous amount of buying.  We also saw both Mike and Sue and managed to catch up with friscokitty and zenfencer so we didn’t neglect the people who weren’t at Pennsic either. 

I could use another day or two to unpack, but the kitties were very happy to see us, so it’s nice to be home.  Two more weeks here, then over to the new job (Yay!) and cruise with the ‘rents and we can start planning for War of the Wings.    

Tomorrow we go.
After Tom is done with work.
Driving to Pennsic

We will pack our stuff
Into Darrell’s big red Jeep
Tent and garb and things

Then we drive and drive
Through West Virginia Northwest
Boy, the gas is high

Home to Cooper’s Lake
Empty the Jeep and set up
Shop a bit then sleep

Pennsic, Pennsic Yeah
Pennsic, Pennsic, Pennsic Yeah
Pennsic, Pennsic, Whew!

FINALLY

kitkatkel the wonderful came over on Saturday to help me with mucho sewing and reducing the pile of fabric on my worktable.  As I was working I decided to change the needles on my serger and so I broke open the package of new needles (ones I had purchased, not the replacement needles that came with the machine) and stuck two new ones into the machine.  Then I re-threaded the machine.  It didn’t work.  So I re-threaded the machine.  It didn’t work.  It went up and down fine and all of the little metal pieces came out and went in as required, but the thread wouldn’t make the classic serger “chain”.  I just got long, unconnected strings of thread.  I fiddled and poked and fretted from about 11:00 until 2 AM.  Then I went to bed.  Then I got up and went to work and looked up all the serger troubleshooting I could find.  Then I went home and fiddled and poked and gave up and sewed on the other machine and Tom came in and fiddled and poked and then we went to bed and I couldn’t sleep, so I got up around 4 AM with the brilliant idea to take out the new needles and compare them to the old needes.  And what do you know…they were about 1/2 inch too short.  So, I put in the old needles again and the machine worked brilliantly!  I went back to bed and slept, then got up and came to work.

I’m very glad my machine is not broken and that I am not a big dummy who broke her new very important and useful tool.  But, I am now about a day behind in my prep work for Pennsic.  So, I’m taking my time back from this weekend and leaving early to get some packing done.  I just need to have something accomplished, packed and ready to go to stave off the impending feeling of doom.

Doom, doom, doomy, doomy, doom!

I love TAKING vacations.  I hate waiting and planning for them.
Pennsic, take me AWAY!

OK, I’m going to start this off by saying that I respect the religious views of my friends and readers and am not posting this in an attempt to mock anyone’s views or beliefs.  I merely find this particular story to be interesting and wanted to bring it to everyone’s attention.

Creation museum

The most interesting part of this to me is the fact that they were able to raise 25 million dollars in private donations to fund it.  A lot of other museums and libraries would have trouble raising that kind of money without a bond issue.

I feel bad for Newton and a lot of those other Enlightenment thinkers who represent the tip of the wedge.  They were (on average) devout men of science who looked at the way things are in our world and sought out the laws of Creation in hopes that understanding these would bring us to a greater understanding of God.  And now it seems like you can be for God, or for Science, but not both.  I know that’s oversimplifying the case.  A lot of modern people are able to be devout and pious Christians and still find room in their understanding for modern scientific theory and fact.  In a way, it’s really underestimating God as a Creator to think that instead of building the framework of the universe using the elegant and immutable mechanisms of gravity, energy and the nuclear forces that instead He just brought everything into creation fully formed, *Bampf*.  I’m sure there is truth in the tales of Genesis.  Why does it have to be literal truth, though?  I’m going to have to read some more on the Creationist side to see if I can understand the logic.   

I think I’m sleeping wrong or something.  Lately my neck has been killing me.  It feels like it wants to pull my head down to my chest and when I hold my head up straight or turn to the left I get stabby pains in my left shoulder and neck.  Also the muscles are really tight all across my shoulders.  Maybe I’ve gotten so smart that my head has become too heavy to hold up anymore…