Blogging Reference: Saturday, Jan. 31, 2009

Cold, sunlit morning. SE put out the tax forms on tables by the stair well before closing yesterday. AARP volunteers are having a planning meeting this morning to prepare for Tax Help, which starts Monday. People are more anxious than ever to get their refunds, if they've got one coming, so I expect our valiant AARP workers will be mobbed.

Working with MF this morning. She's found porn from a Yahoo image search for "porno" in one of the printers. Need to find out why WebSense isn't blocking this.

Cleaning crew did carpet last night. We go around taking the chairs off the tables.

Monitor for 36 has broken base. Ask MIS if another base can be scavenged.

10:00 Open.

Can sit down at PC and sign in? Yes.

"Do y'all have tax books? Is AARP here?"

Tax forms.

PC.

Can get card?

Inkpen.

Quiet.

Phone: The elegant Florida P. Is husband in Who's Who? Will check and call back. No. What about any other directories? Will check and call back. Not in Amer Nat Bio, Af-Amer Nat Bio. Is in WW Among Af-Amer 15 ed. Wow, did not know about husband. Offer to mail copy. She'd like that.

Man has looked up IRS form on catalog PC. "If I hit print, where will it pop up at?"

Tax Help?

What does "received" mean in catalog, being processed? Yes. Can reserve it.

Phone book.

Retired Air Transportation Man, (a regular): Copy of 1/26 WSJ piece, Obama Moves to Let States Set Own Rules on Emissions, and copy of Fl Statute 322.005, Restrictions on authority of Department of Transportation.

Book by Edwards Deming. No. Friend got it here. Sorry, use your univ. library.

Address of personal injury attorneys, address of Sheriff's dept.

Pencil.

Baseball Man: Recent stats for Oakland A's Jack Cust.

Air cond. & refrig. books? Nothing, all lost or missing. Check shelf. Offer to ILL. He takes cell phone call, turns away. Comes back to desk. Must have today. Suggest B&N, Borders.

M checks iPage for air cond. repair books. All too costly to order.

Phone: Who did Heather Tom play on One Life To Live? Kelly Cramer.

Replenish Updike display.

Tax forms.

Copy and mail bio from WW Among Af-Amer.

Phone: Test prep for Florida Teacher Certification Exam K-6. 3 copies, all out, one overdue, one hold outstanding. She'll buy her own, test in 4 weeks.

Returns pen.

Baby crying on 1st floor.

11:50 and PC's just now full.

PC for Linson.

Printer doesn't work. Is in sleep mode, wake up.

11:55: Lunch.

As I walk out to the Park Avenue steps, a funeral procession passes, led by a quartet of musicians playing Dixieland jazz. Trumpet, clarinet, snare and bass drum. They are followed by a horse drawn cart bearing a wooden coffin with a floral arrangement on top, with twenty or so men in suits in loose formation bringing up the rear. Women in dresses file alongside down the sidewalks. They are heading down toward the Old City Cemetery, two blocks away. They are white.

Odd. This isn't New Orleans. Jazz funerals are not a tradition here, even among black people. And the deceased must be of old Tallahassee stock to have a plot in the old cemetery. First Presbyterian or Trinity Methodist, (the two churches on Park up the hill)? Surely Methodist, but who knows, these days? Could even be Episcopalian, from St. John's.

Sitting on a park bench in the winter sunlight, eating a chicken sandwich and reading Unsworth's Land of Marvels, I hear a piper playing Amazing Grace. I can see the blue burial tent through the trees. Having processed riotously there, they seem to be piping him solemnly into his grave. Then the quartet strikes up with When the Saints Go Marching In. Mourners straggle back up the hill to their cars, ties undone.

Back at 12:25, alone and non-stop busy until now, (1:12). M is down in Media. Missed a half-dozen calls.

Another flurry, 1:33 now.

Lots of directory assistance, a reverse lookup, when is tax help, assign PC's.

Girl wanted primary sources for Ponce de León. Showed her chapter with bib in Samuel Eliot Morrison's The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, found 1935 Ponce de León number of Fla Hist Qtrly with good excerpts from primary accounts. Showed her how to get FHQ at PALMM.

Where to hook up laptop.

U of Oregon Law School number, res listing in Eugene.

Fl Bldg code.

PC for Darryl.
PC for Willy.

PC for Walsh.

Her PC is frozen, reboot.

PC gets "sys incompatible" w TurboTax. Too old, Win2K machine. Get her a new PC downstairs.

Woman wants public speaking book. Show her section. "Can I just sit down and look at these? I feel like I'm in a candy store!"

1:55 M back.

Girl wants Angler: The Cheney Vice-Presidency. Place hold.

Much needed cigarette break.

Phone: Grammar Man, (a regular). Adjective for "help"; valuable, special, or precious? Valuable, if must. Usage questions for "chairman".

Get refill for my pen.

PC for Greg.

Where are music books?

Daisy wheel on typewriter has "m" gunked up with Wite Out®. Swap out and try to clean.

PC.

Phone: Dead Certain, by Mariah Stewart. Place hold.

Pen.

Shelver calls in sick. M goes to pull some books for holds.

ILL renewal request for What God Wants, by Neale Donald Walsch. "It's not a christian book", she says. "You have so many christian books, and so few metaphysical books." Send request, tell her call Mon. p.m. about renewal. Put OCLC printout on J's desk.

Man can't get Spanish dance articles from our Gale db's. Explain we don't have humanities db like JSTOR. Suggest he use his TCC databases. Show good entry in New Intl Ency of Dance. Doesn't want to pay to photocopy it.

Amelia Earhart books for Hist. Fair. Mom & freckly daughter, who must do by Sunday night.

Dr. Robin Smith, Inspirational Vitamins, Lies at the Altar; ILL 1st, 2nd on shelf. DVD's: Something New, place hold, Tae Bo videos, 3 on order, place holds.

Help man w new card get PC.

Directory assist. for Henderson, Nevada.

Where is computer section? Wants Photoshop books. Explain latest ones are too costly for us to buy, but great documentation on Adobe site. Do we have wireless? Yes. Thanks me.

Tax help questions.

DVD's, Brokedown Palace, Vantage Point. How to see exercise DVD's? Show how to limit catalog search by coll.

Phone: Economic Facts and Fallacies, by Thomas Sowell. On shelf. Place hold, trap, take to circulation.

Man wants me to check Carnytown site for dates of Bluegrass Shows tour. Not there, and Bluegrass Shows own site still has 2008 dates. He takes print-out of 2008 info.

Mom wants help finding non-memoir book about CIA, how it functions as gov agency. Find good, if dated vol in Chelsea House series on gov agencies.

Phone: How to find mattress reviews in Consumer Reports.

5:00: Closed