And I Could See The Squirrels, And They Were Merry

Well hello again, my good friend Monday morning. So nice to see you- up and at 'em, ready to start the week off right. I just wanted to let you know that even though I may not be seeing you for a while, your memory will live on in my heart until September.

Did I mention this is my last week of school?!

All right, I suppose technically the above is not a true statement, as I do have to come back to school next Monday and Tuesday as penance for God flooding our state. But the students are all done on Friday and we will finally wave good riddance to the 8th graders, so Mon. and Tues. will be "staff development" days. I honestly thought these two days would be a breeze- you know, teacher keggers out back, get a couple of grills going, maybe some poker tourneys in the library.

Alas, it is not to be. My principal cornered me just the other day and asked me to do a presentation on the effective use of search engines. Umm, for real? On the second to last day of school? With teachers who think Google is some kind of new-fangled slang word? So now not only do I have to prepare a powerpoint presentation in my last week of getting things done, but I will be the most hated teacher in all the lands for forcing the others to sit through it on a 90 degree day in late June. Awesome.

Do they think there is nothing to do here in LibraryLand? This place has been a madhouse ever since the teachers decided they were done with actually teaching the kids anything and started assigning "research" projects. Even after I stopped checking out books, there's still an overwhelming pile of crap to do. For instance, tending to my stapler graveyard. Here in one of the wealthiest towns in Massachusetts, my library has been fortunate enough to receive an endowment of at least 53 staplers a year. What is unfortunate is that there is only one that works, and it is actually one of those mini-staplers that was left here by a student some time back in September. Despite their dysfunctionality, I've so far been unable to bring myself to throw away the taxpayer's staplers.

Well, sucker no longer. Today marks the First Annual Broken Stapler Sweepstakes. All you have to do is correctly guess what my favorite Dewey number is and you- yes, you- could win an entire box of brand-new, albeit defunct staplers. They may not be able to keep your papers together, but they sure do look pretty all lined up on a shelf.