June 15, 2006
The Honeymoon is Over
Alright, yes, I know. I have neglected my blog to the point of abuse. I've had a busy month, and when it wasn't busy, I was amusing myself in other venues. It's been a pretty good month, though, in case you were wondering in the midst of the clamor for me to confirm my continuing existence. Anyway, I can already tell from the composition of the last few sentences that I have missed doing this, so let's move forward.
In case you haven't seen Rachel's blog, I had a wonderful honeymoon: relaxing, refreshing, entertaining . . . "etc." We were at Holly Lake Ranch, a bona fide beautiful spot in East Texas with all the amenities required to keep us entertained (you'll have noted, for one, the sidebar listing, which should be changing shortly).
I got back into Longview ready to tackle the disaster area in our apartment and start looking for a job . . . and was pleasantly surprised to find that a whirlwind (Paige and Morgan, actually) had flown through our apartment and given us room to walk around. We bought a few things, like a bed, TV, office chairs, and bookcases, and set about assembling and unpacking. A month later, I'm finding it pretty homey (thanks almost entirely to Rachel, of course).
Meanwhile, I was starting to comb the Longview want ads and building my resume since I hadn't heard back from the library in over a month. However, I was finally persuaded to call them back and check on things, and (after I left a message) they called me back the next day, very happy to have found me. I thought I'd given them Rachel's cell phone number, but I hadn't . . . and I was hired full-time, with benefits, and at a 15% higher wage than what had been listed when I applied.
I have now been working for the City of Longview since the end of May, so this is my third week. I am very happy here, very satisfied with the work, and ecstatic to have a job that I don't hate. I am in charge of library reserves as well as helping at the circulation desk, and all new books that the library receives come through me before going out to the shelves (extremely cool). I'm working 9 to 6 with an hour for lunch, and once I am fully trained I will move into the rotation to work one weekend a month and two "late nights" (until 9pm) a month. I expect to be here for the next few years (the estimate right now is 3) before moving on to graduate school.
This summer is gonna be weird for blogging, I expect. I won't be doing much in the blogworthy realm. The Texas Shakespeare Festival is coming up in mid-July, and I expect it to be quite noteworthy, and there might be another thing or two of that nature. Other than that, I'll pretty much just be working, playing, and sleeping in regularly-scheduled time allotments for the rest of the summer. There might be the occasional library anecdote, like the little boy who walked in and put a book on the shelf of a different branch and he and his mother thought that counted as him returning it, or the temperamental fire alarm that made us evacuate the building twice in 24 hours.
I'm typing this in short bursts between patrons and a woman just checked out To Kill a Mockingbird on DVD. As she walked away she told her son that she couldn't bring herself to read the book, so the movie would have to do. It made me sad.
Anyway . . .