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Monday, May 30, 2016

Visit to the Agricultural University

Last week I had to go to the storage five times. It's not my favorite place usually. In the summer it can be nice because it's always 18 degrees inside. The Friday wasn't a day I care to remember. Lots of things I tried to do went wrong. I cut myself slicing bread for the morning fika. I had to drive the storage round alone and it didn't go that well. It took longer than usual. We were three people trying to do six people's jobs and that was not an ideal situation.

Wednesday afternoon I went with about 80 colleagues to visit the University of Agricultural Sciences nearby. It's situated in a park area with trees and plants from all over the world. We attended a lecture where the librarians talked about their special communication systems and meeting techniques. It is a university with a difficult geography. It is located at 36 different places in Sweden, with libraries in three of them. It's a challenge to gather the staff so they have meetings via Skype and other systems. It was interesting to hear about their world. We also got to see the library. It was very small compared to ours and had its own call number system. Afterwards we got a light meal. The weather was wonderful and we sat out in the park under the trees. A very nice excursion.

This weekend I cleared out more clothes. It had reached the point where I had run out of hangers. It was definitely time to do something about it. I have accumulated two bags to give to charity so far. Sunday I went on a fleamarket round in Helsingborg. Only found a few things and then went on to the mall. No excessive shopping there either. It was a soccer game in the highest league  that afternoon and I have never seen so many police officers in that town before. They expected big trouble but I didn't hear of any. I was out of there before the game was over.

It's still warm and sunny here. There has already been quite a few complaints about the indoor climate. It's very difficult to concentrate in such hot and stuffy offices. It's the same in the stacks.


Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Bargain shopping in Malmö

It's warm weather here. 25 centigrades and partly cloudy. I am melting away. We are not used to this after that long winter. The fans are all turned on in the offices at the library. It's tough to work in the stacks because there is little or no air conditioning.

Last week there was a German Library Science student on a study visit at our library. He got to see all the departments. I showed him the stacks on Thursday morning. He even retrieved some books. I brought him to the shelf with books on German history and he was amazed by the fact that we had those.

Wednesday last week our lunch room on the fifth floor closed for renovations. We were slightly upset about this because that's also where the terrace is. We have all been forced to find other places to have lunch and by now I think most people have adjusted. I have eaten out often but also used the janitor's breakroom to have my salad lunch. We were also forced to move the Friday morning fika (sandwiches and coffee) that we have arranged for about 20-25 staff members for many years. I buy the butter, marmalade, cheese and cold cuts. Someone else buys the bread and buns. After some debate we ended up having this fika in the book bindery! It was the only place that had enough room for all of us and access to water.

Over the weekend the database was upgraded. It seems to have worked well. We have noticed one small detail that is causing trouble but we can handle it for now. I have reported it and the technicians are working on it.

This weekend the weather was rather nice and I decided to go to Malmö. I wanted to visit the large second hand stores in the outskirts of town. Meaning that I went to the suburbs. It was interesting, not only to see the stores but also to experience something else - the immigrant neighbourhoods. Where the shop signs are in Arabic and other languages and you as a white person is in definite minority on the bus. I made it to three large stores and one mall. At the mall I discovered that a clothing store had the kind of jeans I can wear half price off, so I bought two pairs (all they had in my size).

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Shelving at the storage

Last week at work was not that bad. I had to drive one extra storage round due to a colleague's absence. I also brought the newest colleague there one afternoon to do some shelving. We are constantly lagging behind with this. There has for many years been some shelves in the stacks with old material left by a former colleague. It was primarily small pamphlets he had written himself and various books he had been given. I decided it was time to clear that out and I got time to do that last week. It ended up being a large cart with materials we didn't need. I offered it to the staff but very few items have been taken.

This Friday we had the first social club board meeting of the year. There were four new members. The tasks as economist and secretary were unchanged. Also my task as chairwoman continues.

Thursday the Folk Life Archives had a Diary Day. Occasionally they ask people to write down what they do during a specific day and send it in to the Archives. The material will be used in future reasearch. This time I participated. It was fairly easy, it was an online form to fill in. Not that I think my diary would be incredibly interesting but the entire project aimed at getting material about people's ordinary lives. My day was very ordinary; I worked and then went to the grocery store on my way home.

The weekend was very slow. I did very little, apart from solving crossword puzzles and watching TV. It was the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday but I didn't see all of it. I found out who won (the Ukraine) the morning after. The weather has been quite good, especially last week was sunny and warm. So warm that I had to turn on the extra fan in my office. A little colder now, about 14 centigrades and cloudy. There has been a lot of pollen in the air, even I noticed it.

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Long weekend at the summerhouse

It was a short and intense work week. I crammed in two storage rounds, one meeting and one desk duty in three days. Thursday was a holiday and I managed to avoid working on the Friday. Wednesday evening I went by train and bus to the summerhouse in the evening. My mother and sister plus kids arrived later that same evening. We spent this extended weekend doing lots of things. The weather was very good with temperatures around 18-20 centigrades and a clear blue sky. My sister and I went to a fleamarket and got a few things (books, egg cup, oven tin). One day we went to a nature preserve fairly close by to have a picnic. We spotted some sand lizards and birds of prey there. Very nice to visit. Later we had ice-cream at Kivik further south. One day we visited my mother's friends, who treated us to a marvelous rhubarb pie.

At the summerhouse we also did some work. My mother wants to paint the guest cottage this summer and as a preparation for that we had to scrub it clean. It was an ordeal. My nephew sweeped the roof and the rest of us scrubbed with (very cold) water and brushes. My nephew also mowed the lawn. So it was sort of a working holiday. We did get the chance to relax in the sun and play with the kids too. I returned home around noon today by a different way than normal. It required three train rides to get home because the main train line was closed due to track repairs.

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Ergonomics

The week at work contained three meetings and two storage rounds. In addition to this, my department has a new boss. It's a guy who had the same job a few years ago, so we don't think it will be a revolution of any kind. We were also visited by a woman from the university who is in ergonomics. She wanted to know what our job is like from a physical point of view. She checked how we moved our bodies when we retrieve books and what equipment (carts, ladders, boxes) we have to assist us in the work. She went with us to the storage also. We already know what the challenges are but she wanted to get it down on paper. We get whatever equipment we ask for but we still have to lift the heavy boxes with books from the cart to the car and vice versa.

Over the weekend it was the number one drinking day among the students in Lund. They party in the city park on the last day of April and attendance is usually around 25 000. It takes some efforts from the police and city offices to keep everything and everybody safe. This year it was on a Saturday but the chilly weather meant that it was like a normal event (according to the police) and everybody survived. I made the wise decision to stay as far away from Lund this weekend as possible. I went in the opposite direction, to Helsingborg. I went to my favorite mall, Väla. I had lunch at Ikea and bought some house plants there. At the mall I did some clothes shopping, two tunics and a summer dress.

Today is May 1st (Labor Day) and it's the day for political speeches and demonstrations. I stayed indoors, because this doesn't interest me. I attended to my flowers and spent some time solving crossword puzzles. Up until about now it has been rather cold here. So cold that I had to get my winter coat out again. It was pretty wild weather last week with hail storms and high winds. It has become milder now, it was about 15 centigrades today and rather sunny.