birthday eve

so wednesday the kids threw me probably what was one of the nicest birthday parties ever. they all made me cards out of construction paper, decorated with feathers and flower decals. and inside the cards they wrote stuff about how helpful and nice i am, and how i "rock with a capital R." not to get mushy or anything, but when i walked into the program room and there were 20 kids sitting at the tables and they yelled surprise (even though i was sitting only a few feet away from the door while they were setting up and knew exactly what they were doing) and then sang happy birthday to me, it really made me feel all warm inside. i mean, a lot of these kids used to hate me. and now they all love me. because i put the time in and worked really hard to make the library a fun (and often educational), welcoming and safe place for them. and i know that part of their joy in my birthday was the excitement of getting cake, but they really were there to celebrate the greatness which is me. oh, and my favorite kid bought me a balloon and a fake rose that has a little teddy bear on it (i had told him that my little bears were my favorite animals. i don't actually have a favorite animal, but he wouldn't accept that as an answer). anyway, the whole thing was super sweet. and my fantastic assistant baked me a cake that was really yummy.

anyway, you might be wondering why my birthday was celebrated on wednesday since today is actually the eve of my birthday. well, that is because yesterday and today i have been at central being trained on our new ILS system. ohhh, i cannot tell you about our new ILS system. its all hush hush until we go "live." but pretty much, we are getting a new computer system, which in my humble opinion is long overdue. so i, for one, welcome the new ILS system with open arms! for instance, the new ILS system can do keyword searches AND boolean searches! yay! it's like we're a library or something. and this new system is windows based, so no more annoying codes to memorize. windows! whodda thunk it?!
so ILS Training is two days long. now, i am a computer savvy kinda gal and i tell you i do not need two full days to learn the ILS system (it's so user friendly! windows-based!). i'd say i could learn this in one day, preferrably broken up into two morning sessions. but alas i am stuck here. and what i am noticing is that an alarming number of librarians have no computer smarts at all. for instance, we were learning how to create new accounts for patrons (ie a person wants a new library card) and there is a very simple form that pops up and you have to add the patron's information into said form. there are no weird codes to memorize or anything like that. just put their info into the form. well! there were several people that just threw their arms up in exasperation at this. then there was someone who was very confused that the window on her computer screen was smaller than the window on the instructor's screen. now, first i thought that obviously the window on the instructor's screen is larger because she is working on a large projection screen which is ten to twenty times the size of our laptop screens. but then i realized that the woman didn't know that when working in windows you can resize your windows to be larger or smaller based on your own preferrence. urgh. its all very painful for me to watch. which leads me to my point:
i believe that with trainings, there should be a special "fast track" training for people like me who understand the nature of things and will therefore learn new things quickly. because as it is now, i am finding it hard to continue to pay attention. thank god for lunch breaks (and my $6 credit towards lunch in the cafeteria!)