Welcome back to the grind

Okay, I never should spend extended time with the retirement folks who are my age. It just makes returning to work so much harder. And hard it shall be. I have left knowing our new staff member might be stealing from staff, but no way to prove it. I, of course, check my email in between visits to cooking stores and afternoon teas, only to find out 2 staff members desk drawers had been broken into and some equipment had disappeared. Security cameras proved nothing other than late arrivals everyday from this guy, as well bike riding through the library. Issue was addressed-back to the interview process...
In addition, I am losing yet another staff member who is invaluable to us. I am happy for her-well deserved promotion, but sad for us. And it puts us in a cliff hanging situation when it comes to having enough bodies to cover public service.
The joy of coming to work is starting to fizzle. I needed to print a document in color yesterday. I have no color ink for my printer, nor can we order any. We have a public color printer, but we are asked not to use that for staff work reasons. We had one color printer in the workroom that had color ink, so I had to email the document to myself, walk to the back room, pull it up, and print it. Can't I just do my job? Can't we have more than 125.00 a year for programs when we are required to do 14 programs a month? Can't we have a budget like Baltimore County library? Can we have a staff the size of Baltimore County?
Well, it is Friday...that's a positive thing. Can't wait until Monday.

Road trip

I haven't been in the library this week, so I have no great library stories, but stay tuned....its never a dull moment-

Maddie and I are on a road trip to see some colleges and touch vase with the Carroll clan in Greenville SC. Started our trip visiting NC State University and staying with Nancy (friend and old colleague) and her hubby Mike. These folks got it going on. They live in Cary NC in a 55+ community where they offer just about anthing you might ever eant to do in your retirement-golf, tennis, games, dance lessons, swimming, fitness room, library, social activities, cooking classes, the list goes on. They are who I want to embody..that is what I think about when I retire. I might also add Mike laying 2 hours of tennis on Sunday morning with Maddie and a few other 55+ folks and he kept up with the young one. Guess 70 years of tennis might be useful....
Nancy's passion is food-cooking classes, books, kitchen stuff....so that all we shopped for. Okay by me-
NC State is big, but fun. It is trendy-up on technology. They just built a new state of the art library on the engineering campus which is indescribable.
Then off to Vech, whic has quite a different feel. Much more rural, campus is bis also, but has an intimate feel to it. Buildings are made of hokie stone-they look a bit like castles. Great engineering program here, but the presentation was riddled with tech issues...that i can't seem to understand.
We topped off the trip to a visit to Greenville..such a nice town. Great visit with Bingo and Auntie and the greyhounds-Chloe and J.W. They live a very different life than the Cary NC retirees, quiet, lots of walks, reading, crosswords, good wine...not a bad life either. Face it, retirement is everything it appears to be.
We return to MD this weekend, but it was such a joy to spend this time with Maddie, as I know these times are drawing to a close very soon. Thank god she still likes me and enjoys travelling...

Florida this summer.