I'm so happy

I'm not the president of our bargaining unit anymore. We had a meeting today of our newly-formed health insurance committee, made up of reps from management and the bargaining unit. All went well, swapping information, good feelings all 'round, lots of camaraderie, etc., until the newly-elected president presented two proposals that suggested maybe management should give something to the unit members in return for the decrease in benefits (i.e., increase in amounts for co-pays and prescriptions--by quite a healthy sum) for one of the two carriers we are bound by the contract to have available. Well, first you could have heard a pin drop, then you could hear the shit hitting the fan. I was so happy not to be the bearer of that request, I sat there quietly, saying nothing for a little while and just listened to the back & forth-ness of the exchange. The newbie kept looking at me. Management wanted to know what we wanted them to do with the two proposals next: the president of the unit didn't know. Well YEGADS! you never go into a situation like that unless you have an outcome in mind. Anyway, I offered a more cogent explanation of proposal #2 and mgt. at least understood the rationale for our request. We left the meeting barely on speaking terms, but at least they understood what we were asking for and why. And I felt so happy that someone else was making demands and being scoffed at and being called selfish and demanding. Whew!

Other than that this week has been uneventful. I have 4 of the fastest swimming fish I've ever seen. I'm trying a new kind: rasboras. They are "hardy," according to the salesperson at PetsMart. Why didn't they tell me about these fish before? Anyway, I have 2 harlequin rasboras (who are very cute, with red fins and big black triangles on their back halves) and 2 danios, and the 4 of them seem to race each other around the tank constantly. Number 5 fish is my dwarf coral platy, bright orange and yellow, who seems to be intimidated all the activity and liked it better when there was just one danio and him/herself in the tank and it was serene. This fish hides a lot, coming out once in a while to swim with an attitude across the tank. I'm not sure it's really relaxing to watch the others, they swim so fast.

I spent Tuesday afternoon weeding the non-fiction collection in the AuSable Forks library, the library my ancestors were involved in the governance of. There's a picture on the wall there of one set of board members, and there sits my grandfather and his sister, looking very old an tottery, but as if they could run the world. I like going to that library to work, but I always feel as if I should be more involved in that town.

We're supposed to get some snow this afternoon and tonight. First they said 6", now they're much more vague. 3" maybe. It was incredibly warm yesterday, about 65 at home. My house was very warm. I had a fire in the stove overnight and kept it going all day. Boy it got hot last night. This morning I was really late so I didn't pack the wood in the stove as I usually do, so I'm hoping there will be good coals when I get home.

I let "The Boys" drop their garbage off on my deck on their way out of town on Monday and I put it in a big plastic barrel, snapping a tight-fitting lid on it until it stopped raining enough for me to go to the dump. Tess has been fascinated by this barrel and this morning I let my guard down, wondering why they weren't asking to come in after their morning pees. Stoopid me, they/she tipped the barrel over, pulled off the top and chewed a hole in the garbage bag. If only we could channel that creativity into something productive, like an invention of some sort or a new doggie plaything, I could be very wealthy.

I spent yesterday cataloging books for one of our smallest libraries. They're coming online soon so we have to get their collection completely converted quickly. These people make me laugh and scream with frustration. They fill out forms with bibliographic information when they don't find records for the books in our data base, then we find records in other data bases and either download those records or I catalog them manually. They often take great liberties with the titles: now, honestly, they have the books in their hands. How can they NOT see what the title actually is? Yesterday I had "Elizabeth" for Elisabeth, "The gunslingers" for The gunfighters, and "The best plays of Chekov" for Chekhov: the best plays. And forget the copyright dates, I think she made those up. We can't find records for these books but I refuse to believe that no library in America (or Europe, or Canada) owns them. But we work with what we have, and I do original cataloging when I have to, gritting my teeth and listening to songs from the 60's and 70's to calm myself down. Hey, it's a living.