yawn

Damn, I'm tired. I worked at the book repair lab today for six hours and then spent three hours doing research. Don't feel too sorry for me, though (as if you were going to, anyway); I stopped at Akashi on the way home and treated myself to sushi. I got my back pay check today for three months worth of disability payments so I could afford it. Yay!

I was a busy little bee at the lab today. I wasn't too happy with some of the results, but the woman who was working with me today was reassuring; she was very impressed with how much I got done, says everything is fine and nothing needs to be redone. It's just not perfect, is all, and as you all know, if I do it, it's supposed to be perfect. (Unrealistic, much?)

I got smarter about doing the research, too. I looked up source books ahead of time to find the call numbers, which made life much simpler. I have this set of questions all done except one; if all else fails I'll look up Marie Leveau in a plain old encyclopedia or online on Google or something. Geez. Wouldn't you think she'd be in the Biographical Dictionary of American Cult and Sect leaders? Or, failing that, you'd think that Swami Sivanandra would be in some sort of reference, like maybe the Historical Dictionary of Hinduism? Something, somewhere?

I will admit that I'm learning stuff I didn't know from doing these assignments. I've never been a big student of religion, so didn't even know that Yoga was part of Hinduism, nor did I know about Demeter and Persephone; I'm picking up all sorts of new stuff. I will say, though, that I was bemused to find that if a Muslim doesn't face Mecca when praying it doesn't count. And by "face Mecca" I don't mean just generally east somewhere, it's gotta be exact. Only if a man is completely out in the wilderness alone can he use his best judgement and certain guidelines to determine which is the correct direction. The book didn't say what a woman should do in such a case. I hereby affirm that I now have even less interest in becoming Muslim than I did before I read that. I mean, that is one persnickety almighty, who won't even listen if you are facing the wrong direction. Damn.

I'm starting to fear that despite my preference to NOT do reference work, I might wind up doing it anyway; for one thing it probably doubles my chances of finding a job. If we assume (and I have NO idea about real proportions here) that there are reference librarians, children's librarians, and "readers services" librarians (I think that's what they're calling the people who work in circulation, popular fiction, etc, nowadays.... I should know this, right? Sigh.) in approxmiately equal proportions. That would mean two of the three instead of just one of the three are possibilities. Wonder what proportion tech services is? Very small, I'm sure. Anyway, there are six jobs open in Durham County right now, and three are reference, and three are children's. I'm gonna have to think about this.

Not tonight though. I'm too tired to think about anything tonight.