bitchin' and moanin'

It's been a shitty week for pretty much no reason except that it's the end of summer reading. It wasn't this bad at GPL, why has it been like this here? Here's the deal, during the school year we are lucky to have a door count of 350-400 folks in the library, except on saturdays, when it's more like 500-600 folks. However, in the summer those figures are bumped up a bit and turned around. That means that Monday through Thursday it's average 600 folks a day, and on Saturdays it's average450 a day. That makes for a very busy summer, not to mention the storytimes, the craft programs, and the computers. This summer it has been "reading list" mania. Every kid in the FWISD got the same reading list by grade level. Can you guess what that did to our collection? and to those kids who were trying to read all the books from their list? Not to mention that some schools had other reading lists, and didn't check to see if the books on those lists were available at the library (or at all, one was out of print), so all summer I've been saying "I can put that on hold for you, but every kid in the whole school system has the same list" or "I'm sorry, that book is no longer in print, whoever put that list together didn't think about the availability of those books, you will have to try amazon or half-price books for those". Yes, I'm ranting and raving here. Then, yesterday being the last day of summer reading, Yeah! I'm trying to get out the door a bit early to go to my son's soccer party, since I'm one of the coaches, and we get slammed, right at 5. I end up leaving at 5:30, then call my dh for directions to where the party is, only to *not* get said directions and end up going about 10 miles out of my way, to then turn around and have to go back. So I finally get to the party, say hi to everyone, eat some crappy pizza, then go to leave, so i can catch up with the other children's librarians to have some drinks to celebrate the end of summer reading, and what happens but I get there and there are, no kidding, 150 people waiting in the line outside the restaurant I was supposed to meet them at. I turned around and went home. stopped at the grocery store on the way to get some wine coolers. ate some ice cream and drank my wine coolers in front of the tv, watching some Buffy. Man can that kid ever kick some vampire ass. Well, I think I am done bitching and moaning for a bit. I need some friends that are not 900 miles away! speaking of my friends, we are leaving Friday to go home and see miss Lillian Grace, the new neice. going to see my friends while I'm there too. Got lots of stuff done for the baby, saw a neat hat at the yarn store the other day, pattern was free, so bought some yarn and made it. it's very cute. has a leaf border around it, very elfin I think.