Be Prepared and Let it Roll Off Your Back...

 are the mottos I am trying to implement in my life. I want to be prepared for what comes my way, but I also want to make sure I'm not so uptight that I can't let things just roll off my back. Anyways, I guess I'm falling into the trap of writing a wrap up of the year on my blog...Oh well.

2011 was a pretty good year! I'm going to sum it up with some bullet points.

• I moved out of the condo that my parents own and into my own apartment. I'm paying my own way on almost EVERYTHING (except my cell phone) and it's the most freeing/grownup/awesome/lame/stressful feelings ever. 
• I live in a city that I LOVE. I'm close to family and friends and close to at least one of my works.
• I started two new jobs. One that I LOVE and the other one not so much. The job that I love has opened my eyes to a different sort of librarianship that I might be interested in pursuing and the other job is an open door that will hopefully allow me to grow in that organization. Fingers crossed.
• Even though I'm working like crazy I spent more time trying to say "yes" this year. When and if people asked me to go out I really tried to say "yes" and follow through. It allowed me to be more social and I'm really grateful for that. 
• I read 61 books. That's more than a book a week. I didn't hit my goal but there is always next year. 
• I spent more time with my family this year than I have a in a while. My sister, my brothers, my cousin!,  my nieces and nephews, my parents... I love them all so SO much and I am so grateful that I live closer to everyone now and can see them more often.

Things that I want to accomplish in 2012

• I want to cook more. Actually I want to learn to cook, I'm not very good at it and would like to cook at least 3 nights a week. 
• I want to learn to play the banjo. 
• I want to travel somewhere.
• I want to make sure that I am prepared for an emergency. This includes making up kits for both my house and car and making sure that my parents are also prepared. :) 
• I want to pay down my credit cards. I have 3 major cards that I have debt on and I  would like to pay down at least one this year. 
• I want to build up my savings to have at least 3 months worth of expenses put away (I know they say more, but this is what I can afford). 
• I want to take a summer class.
• I want to become financially set to take more than one class in the Fall. 

This entry is mostly for my own records, but I really like that I'm becoming more focused and aware of my finances. I feel so grown up!

I hope everyone has a happy, safe, and fun new years eve!

Happy New Year!!!

Poop at the Library

We've been dealing with poop at the library. I know, I know, you're all wondering why a hallowed institution such as the library would be dealing with feces, but we deal with it more often than one would think.

Our main issue right now is that our bathroom drains are backing up and sewage is spilling out onto the floor in the public AND the staff bathrooms. Now I could give a flying hoot about the public bathrooms but the staff ones? I like working in a place where there is a functioning toilet. And running water. It's the little things you know?

Anyways so our bathrooms have been shut intermittently for the past few weeks because every time they "fix" the bathrooms, they magically become "unfixed" soon after and the RAW SEWAGE comes back. Lather, rinse, repeat.

It's gross. It's yucky and it's times like these where I'm am STOKED I am not in charge. :)

Now the plumbers tell us that the culprit is the massive amounts of toilet paper/paper towels/newspapers/soda cans that are being flushed down. This makes us librarians (or in my case, librarian-in-training) suspicious of all of our patrons. We are carefully eyeing each and every person who enters the facilities to see if they look like a paper towel flusher or not. Needless to say, we came up with a plethora of suspects, but NUMERO UNO on our list was....

PURPLE SHIRT MAN

He's older, he lives out of his car and we think that perhaps he is not able to afford diapers and is not making them out of newspapers and/or paper towels. Which is sad, but NOT OK. He was very eager for our bathrooms to reopen and once we had identified him as our culprit I'll admit I took a little glee in denying him access to our bathrooms (note: there are public restrooms in the next building over from ours, we were directing people there). BWHAHAHAHAHAH.

But, unfortunately, the problems still persisted even though our bathrooms were closed. The plumbers came to fix the bathrooms, they fixed them, and the next morning they would be backed up again. This was perplexing because no one was using the bathrooms between the time they were "fixed" and the time that they backed up. So, we librarians (or librarian-in-training), put on our Sherlock Holmes hats again and started looking for clues as to the next likely subject....

THE JANITORS!!!

We've been having some issues with our janitors. They break things. Lots of things. Our goose, our vacuum.. it's been an on going issue. So when we had to call the plumbers (and the facilities guys) back out to our branch to fix the problem AGAIN, we mentioned our next likely suspect to them and they decided to snake the janitors sink. And what do you think they found? Rags. Cleaning rags, down the drain. It  was the janitors the whole time. We felt kind of guilty about suspecting PURPLE SHIRT MAN. But we got over it quickly.

So, in summary, don't let cleaning rags go down the drain. It backs up the sewer lines. Also, I learned what an "oven mitt" refers to. I was horrified and will now be using the phrase "pot holder" because "oven mitt" now has a negative connotation to it.