The Thing With The Librarian And The Bookmark

Last week I went into the library to pick up some books that I had on reserve. 

When the librarian brought them up to the counter she noticed that one of them had a bookmark in it.

She said something along the lines of “Oh, someone forgot their bookmark, happens from time to time,” and removed it from the book, presumably with the intention of setting it aside. 

I made a throwaway “One of life’s little bonuses, I suppose,” comment and went to pick up the two books she had just checked out in my name. 

Librarian (sounding odd): “Oh do you want to keep it?”

Me (all flustered): “Uh maybe, what’s on it?”

Librarian (still sounding slightly off): “… It’s a summer reading list bookmark.”

Me (feeling awkward as hell by this point and acting slightly too cheerful): “Might as well.” 

Librarian: “Uh well, there you go… Enjoy!” (there wasn’t quite a question mark at the end of this statement but it almost felt like there should be)

Me: Cheers!!! (the extra exclamation marks are there to show I was being needlessly enthusiastic at this point).


The whole thing was just… Well, I blame the librarian.

You find a random, generic bookmark that was clearly not lovingly crafted by anyone’s grandchildren or a hand-painted memento of the trip to Venice that someone saved their whole life to take and you should just go ‘oh hey, a bookmark; lucky you, you don’t have to find one when you start reading’ and move on with your life.

Instead we ended up with one of those ‘I just congratulated someone because they said they were enjoying the change in weather and now I don’t know how to take it back without making it worse’ kind of exchanges.

When I said ‘one of life’s little bonuses’ I wasn’t talking about me, maybe it was a bonus for the library, hell if I care.
I didn’t mean ‘score’ or ‘truly my life is blessed and this bookmark was meant to come to me, thanks karma’ or anything like that.
I was just trying to say something less bland than ‘huh, how about that?’ and things got weird.

I mean, did the librarian think that I had been demanding the bookmark?
Because I didn’t really care.

And did she have her own plans for it which I was thwarting?
Because she was welcome to it, it’s just a promotional bookmark that they printed off when they made up the summer reading list.

And why had I asked what was on it?
Was I going to reject it if it didn’t live up to my standards or was advertising something I found objectionable or dull?

As I walked out of the library was she thinking ‘the hell happened there?’ and planning to go find her co-worker who was shelving books and tell the tale of the exciting and confusing exchange she had just had with some penny-pinching nutjob who was determined not to get screwed out of a free bookmark that was obviously her birthright!?

The thing about all of this is I have not spent days rehashing these events or analysing them from different angles like a detective in a procedural show who just knows that the answer is staring them in the face if they could just work out the right way to come at the problem.

All of these thoughts zipped through my head in the time it took to turn around and step away from the counter.

When I tell one of these stories to people or, for instance,  explain all of the considerations that occurred to me when I realised that people who don’t routinely wear hairpins will be at a serious disadvantage if they ever need to pick a lock in a survival situation* the level of detail I can cram in will convince them that I have been thinking about this for days possibly in the place of all the sleeping and taking medication they assume I should have been doing instead but these thoughts** take place at the speed of light.

I could possibly comfortably spend an hour outlining the expanded universe of ‘what would happen if I got stuck in an elevator with my handbag vs what would happen if I got stuck in an elevator without my handbag’ but that doesn’t mean I’ve been mulling it over in my spare time, just that I took an elevator this morning and in the space of time that it took to blink I realised that I would never be able to Bruce Willis my way out of a stuck elevator to safety what with their roof hatches all being locked these days, and I certainly wasn’t going to do a Resident Evil and try to squeeze myself out of a hole that was clearly not big enough to fit an adult human through, even a slender one, so my choices going forward would depend on a multitude of variables including the resources available to me at the time.

One of the side effects of this is that I am constantly having people try to soothe or calm me down as they are convinced I am working myself into a tizz.

I’m not.

I’m usually just trying to make conversation.

I think of these sorts of things at all times about all things not because I am over-invested in working out what happened/will happen and my place in it all and what that all might mean, it just makes everyday events more interesting.

Because everyday events are usually dull, as are the conversations that recall them.

Everyone seems willing to engage in the world’s most boring theoreticals (eg, ‘what I would do if I won the lottery’, always the same answers: pay off various debts, travel, buy a house, buy a Tony Stark-esque garage full of classic cars, develop an addiction) but no-one wants to have a crack at the ones that actually require some world-building, thinking, or fun (eg, if there was an EMP event and all tech got knocked out for long enough for our various cities and suburbs to devolve into feudal city-states do you think that they would be able to go back to ‘normal’ once we got tech up and running again or would the shift to small local government be permanent?)

TL;DR, I got a new bookmark.



*I mean I don’t personally know how to pick a lock even if I did have a hairpin, but thanks to TV I’m convinced that a hairpin is technically a valid lock picking tool and that at some point some McGyver-esque person is going to turn to me saying ‘Thank god, there’s a woman here! We’re all saved! Miss, I need your hairpins!’ and I’ll have to explain that I don’t actually use them because my hair tends to spit them out like a toddler spits out vegetables and everyone will sit and stare at me mulishly for being a substandard woman until we all die, trapped for want of a hairpin.

**Like, should I start wearing hairpins just in case I’m ever in a survival situation? I would probably be better off putting a couple of paperclips in my pencil case because I already own paperclips and they’re actually a bit sturdier than some hairpins…***

***As a result of writing this blog post there is a possibility that I am considering adding a small number of paperclips and a packet of chewing gum to my handbag just in case. I would hate to a) die because I didn’t have them b) be a disappointment to McGyver.



UPDATE: You guys probably won't believe me but I swear to all that is sacred and/or delicious that when I got home after writing this post I found a hairpin on the floor of my bedroom!
WHERE DID IT COME FROM!?
I honest to Glod do not own any hairpins! 0_0

Fiiiiiiiiiiiinally!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I have my laptop back again!

It had been with my friendly neighbourhood IT guys for an entire week after it went completely mental.

Around the 17th of May my antivirus software calmly announced that it hadn't received its scheduled update.

'Bloody thing,' I thought and clicked on the manual 'Update' button.

The update failed.

I tried again.

Fail.

I tried a bunch more times.

Fail fail fail.

I ran the antivirus software scan.

It found a couple of things.

I deleted them.

I tried to update again.

Fail.

OK, let's click the button that gives you more information on why the update is failing.

Oh good, now it's failing to open the Microsoft Help Website, that's not weird at all.

Let's see what happens when I try to validate my genuine copy of Windows.

Ah. It won't do that either.

That's not suspicious at all.

I asked a friend what else I could do.

She suggested a couple of websites that offer open source antivirus tools.

I tried to visit them.

I couldn't.

Yep.

Perfect.

Oh and look at that, my computer has failed a scheduled validation of my genuine windows software and if I don't rectify this - which I can't - my antivirus software will lapse altogether.

That's. Just. Excellent.

It was at that point that I disconnected from the internet and handed it over to the tender ministrations of the IT clan.

The virus took some eradicating, then they tidied up the files and deleted any extra unnecessary faff, ran a few checks, found some corrupted segments of drive, saved all my files elsewhere, reformatted my computer, updated everything, put my files back onto it and delivered it back into my loving arms.

I've survived alright without it seeing as I had my swish new phone to check in on emails and social media and even websites if I didn't mind them being tiny but my laptop has all my music, all my photos, all my files...

I already had copies of everything on a terabyte drive for safety but it's not the same as having them on a laptop that you can just open and access anywhere rather than having to wait until you're at work and plug your drive into your work computer.

Welcome back, little laptop, I missed you.

Adventures In Plumbing (Not The Sexy Kind, Sorry)

#@*%$&@*!

Alright.

OK.

I'm OK.

I just... #@*%$&@*!

This morning I boiled the kettle, grabbed the little coffee pot and started taking apart the plunger in order to wash it properly before using it again.

The little nut bit at the end slipped out of my hand, bounced across the bench and fell into the sink.

'Maybe it'll just sit there!' I thought, desperately, 'Maybe the plug is in!'

Plonk! went the stupid little nut bit as it fell down the plug hole and came to rest in the U-bend under the sink.

There was some swearing.

Quite a bit of swearing.

But fine, I'm an adult, these things happen, I'll now use my adult human brain to rectify the situation.

It's not brain surgery after all.

All I need to do is unscrew the U-bend section from the pipe, empty it out and find the nut thingy.

So I emptied out the cupboard under the sinks, unscrewed the top and bottom connections for the U-bend section, went to remove it and...

... are you shitting me?

Are you, in fact, shitting me?

What genius decided that it would be a good idea to cut a hole for the U-bend to rest in that makes it NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE to ease free a working part of a plumbing system that could quite routinely need to be accessed?

You know what would have been smart?

CUTTING A LARGER HOLE!

The only way to get the U-bend out is to unscrew the entire array.

So I do that.

I remove the pipes that are screwed to the bottom of the sinks and with a lot of wiggling and jiggling and some more swearing, I finally get the U-bend free and tip it out to retrieve the little nut bit.

Oh. My. God. The. Smell.

Ugh.

And what is this gunk in here? UGH!

OK, where's the bottle brush, I am scrubbing all of this stuff out before I put it back together and WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU IDIOT, DON'T RUN THE WATER INTO THE SINK WHOSE PIPES YOU ARE FIXING! OH NOW THERE'S WATER EVERYWHERE!

Fine, just throw down a towel, worry about that later. The pipes are clean and now you have to stick them back together.

Stick the U-bend back into its stupid hole... into its stupid... just a bit... GET IN THERE YOU BASTARD! WHY IS IT SO HARD TO GET THE SHORT END BACK UNDERNEATH THE WALL FIXTURE OUTLET BIT? ARGH!

OK, done that bit.

Now I just have to get this cross-section-y piece back under the right-hand sink... just... go on... WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO FIT YOU BACK IN THERE? YOU CAME APART EASILY ENOUGH AND NO YOU ABSOLUTE BASTARD! NO YOU DID NOT JUST KNOCK THE WASHER FROM THE TOP OF THE U-BEND SECTION INTO THE TOP OF THE U-BEND THAT YOU JUST SCREWED BACK IN!

OK, calm down. Take a big breath. You're just going to have to unscrew it.

Unscrew the damn thing, wiggle it free again, reclaim the washer, wiggle it back... wiggle it back... wiggle it.... wiggle- AAAAAAAAH GET IN THERE YOU BASTARD AHHHHHHHHH!

OK, U-bend back in.

And if you move it like this you can fit the rest of the array where it needs to go and - AH NICE TRY WASHER BUT NOT THIS TIME - then you just have to screw it back together nice and tight and run water into both sinks to make sure that nothing is leaking.

It isn't.

Excellent!

Job well done.

Bleh, now just to clean up the mess.

And try to air out the smell.

And bring down your blood pressure.

Maybe a cup of coffee would be nice.

Let's put the plug in the sink before washing the plunger and re-boil the kettle, which is stone cold again by this point.

Firstly, I am never ever emptying coffee grounds down the sink again - that pipe was disgusting and all silted up and ugh.

Secondly, I hate whoever crafted this under-sink shelving arrangement so much I could almost start a religion about it.

The rage will drain away quite quickly because I am almost medically incapable of holding a grudge but for now... I hate you, shelving/plumbing atrocity.