Special request

I must have been tired last night, because I left out many of the most important aspects of my blog. So before I go any further here's my porthole picture from yesterday:

Breakfast was a very cheesy ham and cheese omelet and some good fresh melon. Lunch was fish and chips (I had fish but not chips), and dinner was thai spicy beef.

I slept in some this morning and ended up missing breakfast just by a hair. Then it was off to global studies (I don't know if I mentioned but EVERYONE has to take global studies) which is a little hard to do after staying up late in the library. I really felt like ditching, but now that I'm a fancy-pants faculty member I feel like I need to set a good example. Or maybe, now that I'm a fancy-pants faculty member I can hang out in the teacher's lounge and drink coffee instead... hmmm? At any rate I put on my name tag that has a bright red ribbon on the bottom that says "FACULTY" and went and set in and yawned and rubbed my eyes.

After that, I went back to my room and slept for awhile. I really feel like I'm back in college again, barely getting up for my first class going back to bed after it's over, working the circ desk at the library. It's fun. I also can't help thinking about how this is like being in a science fiction TV show. Being on the ocean is a lot like being in outer space, at least in the way that Star Trek the Next Generation has made me imagine being in outer space. I might just be in the mood for analogies because this mornings global studies lecture included a lengthy analogy about how political systems are like bus parts on a gymnasium floor.

So basically this experience is like being in college again, only in space.

I've started weeding the collection, this is very easy, because there's a lot of obvious choices. Namely, old out-of-date textbooks. I think I'm going to get these as a first pass, and then maybe go through again a little more carefully as time permits. Our student assistants are wonderful. They're learning everything very quickly, and seem to really like it in the library. Three of them have gone through LC easy (thanks Todd) and have decorated their certificates and hung them in the library. I can't say that I've ever worked with a more impressive, friendly bunch. As I suspected there is A LOT of male traffic in the library, mostly asking questions of the assistants like, "So, uh, what kind of books do you have."

Right now I'm in the library, it's about an hour till close. I'm feeling much more rested than yesterday thanks to rolling the clock back an hour and the post global studies snooze. I also chatted with Chris on the IM today. He's laid up with a painful ankle, and I get the feeling morale is low. If anyone feels like walking the dogs or taking him a casserole, I think he could use the company and assistance. But don't tell him I mentioned it.

Tonight I'm taking a special request from Todd, who asked for a cast of characters so you can picture who I'm talking about. That's way too much for one blog, but I thought I would do this as a regular feature. Tonight I'm introducing you to the most important person on the voyage Mary, the other librarian. She's traveling with her husband Kelly, and the day we get to
Honolulu it will not only be the 50th state they've travelled to together but also their twelfth wedding anniversary. So, that's pretty special. She was the librarian for the NCAA for years before going to the State Library of Indiana. She is an amazing librarian, and I would be a mess without her support. She's in the picture with our assistant April.

The porthole picture is special today, because the day was very grey starting out, but around 2:00pm the sun came out just enough to turn the water the most amazing blue I've even seen.

missed breakfast, like I said, but for lunch I had vegetable casserole (whenever you see me write casserole or stew this means yesterdays leftovers with sauce, but it's usually just as good if not better than the previous day) and greek salad which was good, but gave me onion breath big time. I had dinner in the dining hall on the fifth deck today, which is the first time I've done that. I was under the impression that it was not as nice, but actually it's much nicer. There's much more seating and an Omni-Hotel-brunch atmosphere. The Garden Lounge on the sixth deck is more like Ponderosa. It's the same food in both places, only I suspect when they serve ice cream it's only in one or the other. Mostly dessert is different kinds of cakes, which aren't a big temptation for me, so I usually don't have a problem passing it up. Tonight dinner was some kind of chinese chicken, mixed veggies, a sauerkraut salad that had cheese and roast beef in it (trying to hide leftovers I suspect), and clam chowder.

Tomorrow I'm doing a library instruction session in Mark Peterson's British History class. I think it's going to have to be brief so I'm going to try and focus on what you CAN do and not necessarily HOW you do it. But I have a couple of good searches to do in InfoTrac and Historical Abstracts if the internet is behaving.