Timesheets and Invoices

In order to get paid for all of my various and sundry jobs, I need to submit timesheets and invoices.

Springfield City Library gets a weekly timesheet and I'm paid weekly.

The Massachusetts Library System gets a timesheet every two weeks and I'm paid the following Thursday.

I submit a timesheet weekly to the Donohue Group, but I receive a check every 2 weeks.

There's no timesheet for Simmons College. I sign a contract at the beginning of the academic year and they trust me enough to deposit money every month in my checking account.

When I give a Continuing Education workshop, I need to submit an invoice in order to be paid.

Even jobs for which I don't get paid need timesheets. RSVP, the coordinator of the Senior exercise class, wants to know how many hours I spend leading the class. The Hatfield Senior Center also wants to know those hours, so they can include them in their annual report to the town.

I'm hardly the only one volunteering at the Hatfield Senior Center. There's an assistant who is paid for a few hours each week, but works many more hours which are included in the volunteer report. Then there are the people who help serve meals, deliver meals, distribute monthly "brown bags" (supplementary food for income-eligible seniors), and far more activities than I even know about.

For those people who volunteer a certain number of hours during the year, RSVP holds a grand volunteer appreciation lunch held at the Log Cabin in Holyoke. I've been to many recognition lunches and dinners, and I can say that this one is the BEST. The food is excellent and there are a ton of door prizes as well as fun and interesting people to talk with.

The Hatfield Senior Center also has its own recognition event with food and gifts. Among other things, I received a screwdriver - but not just any screwdriver. This one has a handle that looks like a small, rectangular box that opens, revealing several magnetic screwdriver heads. Each one fits into either end of the handle. It's cute and it works really well. I've used it several times. It's now my favorite tool.

So who needs to get paid dollars for everything?

It Seems Like So Much More - Redux

Working all of these different jobs means that I receive a lot of different checks, or get money deposited in my checking account. It feels as if money is pouring in. Unfortunately, each check or deposit is not a large amount as it represents somewhere between 8 and 20 hours of work.

The Mass. Library System pays every two weeks. So does the Donohue Group. Their pay day falls on different weeks so there is a deposit one week from MLS and a check the following week from DGI.

The Springfield City Library pays weekly. That's another deposit.

Simmons College pays on the first of the month, although only during the academic year when I'm teaching. My last deposit happened May 1 and I won't get another until October 1.

And then there are the continuing education workshops I give for MLS, the Connecticut State Library and occasionally another organization. Those are checks that arrive a couple of weeks after the workshop.

While the total of all these checks/deposits does not add up to the full time position I had at CMRLS, they represent a steady income on which I can depend and that makes my life (and paying bills) a lot easier.

In or Out?

I love this time of year. The weather is getting warmer, the days are getting longer. I'm feeling energetic and motivated to do all the things I've been putting off all winter.

The problem is, the change of seasons means there are even more things to do! I've brought my warm weather clothes out of the spare closet and am putting the cold weather clothes away for a few months. I wear hats. I needed to unpack my summer hats and pack up the winter ones.

I'm more aware of the fingerprints on the refrigerator door and the smudges on the windows. I want to clean the house and have it be all sparkling. I want to give my office a thorough cleaning and reorganization.

But other duties call as well. This is the time of year that flowers and shrubs are growing. With them grow the weeds and other things I'd rather not have in my yard. If I let things go too long, I'll never be able to catch up. I always plant some annuals so that I can enjoy their color all summer long, and I can't wait much longer to do that.

Then there are the herbs. I love using fresh herbs when I cook. I buy a few small pots and transplant them into much larger pots that I keep on the screened-in porch off of the kitchen. It's so handy.

But which do I do first? Can I finish everything I want to do? It's best to work outside when the sun is shining and it's not too cold, but that's also when I want to vacuum and scrub.

I was able to get a lot accomplished this weekend. I crossed several things off of my to-do list, so there are fewer items vying for my attention.

I'll just have to do the best I can. After all, I want to do all of these things so that I can relax and enjoy the results (pretty flowers, a clean house). Driving myself crazy for not doing them kind of defeats the purpose. I need to continually remind myself:

1. Don't sweat the small stuff.
2. It's all small stuff.

Last Day of Class

Today is the last day of class for LIS415. It's been a great semester. The students were both interested and interesting. There were lots of questions and lots of discussion. Part of the requirement for the course is to post to a discussion board on various topics that we covered during the semester. There were some very thoughtful and insightful posts. They were a pleasure to read.

Even though the semester is ending, my schedule is getting more hectic as workshop season is in full swing. The hot topic? RDA. I've developed an introduction to the new cataloging code which I've presented twice and have 2 more presentations scheduled and also a session on the Dewey Decimal System.

I'm seeing more and more bibliographic records created using RDA and I know that I cannot put off using it much longer. One of my summer projects will be to go through all of the training materials for RDA on the Library of Congress web site to that I can tackle the new code in style.

Something else I'm hoping to tackle during the summer are all of those dust bunnies that have been lounging in the corners of every room in my house. They've been getting bolder an moving into places I can easily see. I've been too busy working to worry about them, but my priorities will be changing soon and those bunnies are about to face their demise.

The Money Group

It's not polite to talk about money. But for 18 years, that's what 3 other women and I have been doing - and talking about many other things, too, since money permeates every aspect of our lives.

In 1995, I attended a one-day conference at Smith College called Women & Money. There was a plenary session which included an exercise where we decided how we would spend $2 million. It's not that easy to do when you've never had anywhere near that much to spend. Then we broke out into different workshops which addressed money from a variety of perspectives from the very practical (like planning for retirement) to the more psychological (like writing about our feelings about money) to the more esoteric (like moving to the thought of money).

During the lunch break, different women shared what had occured in different workshops and everyone agreed that we wanted more of this sort of thing.

A few weeks later, I received a letter from a woman who lived in Greenfield (I was living in Greenfield at the time) that had also been sent to other women living in the area who had attended this same conference. The letter suggested we could meeting periodically and continue the discussions started at Smith College. After a few meetings, 4 of us agreed to meet monthy over a potluck supper and talk about money.

Those monthy meetings continued for over 2 years. During that time all of our lives changed dramatically and two of the women moved far away (one to Maine and the other to California). We continued our discussion via a Round Robin letter where one person writes a letter and sends it to the second person. Person #2 also writes and sends both letters to #3, who adds her letter and sends them to #4 who adds a letter to send back to Person #1. That person writes a new letter, removes her old letter and back around the 4 letters go.

In the meantime, we continued to meet once in a while when our California member returned to the east coast. The last time all 4 of us were together was about 12 years ago - until last week when we all met in York, Maine for an afternoon of catching up, walking, eating lunch, and talking about money: How financially secure we do or do not feel, how we are planning for the future, how our attitudes toward money have changed, and just about everything else we could think of.

It was a refreshing day, despite the long drive and I thank the women in my Money Group for being available to discuss so many important things that are not otherwise polite.

It Feels Like So Much More

I work 6 days a week - or at least parts of those 6 days. Sometimes it feels as if I get up, go to work, go home and go to bed, get up, go to work, ...

When I total the hours that I work each week, though, it's not 40 or even 35.

There are other factors, however, that make it seem as if I'm working all the time. One is that many of the work days are not "full" as in 7.5 or 8 hours. The remaining hours get absorbed by unmemorable things like food shopping or running other errands.

Also, prep time for the Information Organization class is several hours and then I arrive on campus early so that I can do some photocopy and get set up before the students arrive. I spend time on "background professional stuff" like reading AUTOCAT posts so that I can keep up with what's going on in the cataloging world.

And there are the senior exercise classes. Only 2 hours each week, but again I arrive early to set up the room and stay until it's put back together again. Even with exercisers always helping, I feel that it's my responsibility to make sure it's done well.

Other activities to remember include serving as Chair of the Hatfield Library Board of Trustees (monthly meetings) and serving on the Board of the Friends of UMass Amherst Libraries (meetings twice a year). Both of those offices involve more than just attending the meetings. As Trustee Chair, I spend some time preparing the agenda and making sure it is posted according to Massachusetts Open Meeting Laws.

All-in-all, it looks as if I easily work (including volunteer work) a full work week.

So that's where all the time goes!

What's in a Name?

This week in LIS415 we're tackling Authority Control - specifically Name Authority Control.

The topic is rather auspicious since the Pope stepped down on Thursday and there has been a flurry of email messages on the AUTOCAT discussion list about what's going to happen to the Pope's authority record at the Library of Congress.

Overall the class is going very well. This is the most vocal group of students I have had to date. They ask lots of thoughtful questions and have lots of thoughtful comments.

When I teach this section on Authority Control, I often think about names in general and how they ebb and flow. I sometimes compare the names of the people in the senior exercise class in Hatfield where everyone is older than 55 (and most are older than 65) with the names of the people in LIS415 where most are under 35. In the former, there are two Carols and two Virginias along with a Helen, an Edith, a Frances, an Irene, a Sandy and a Bernice. There are no Susans or Lindas although they were very popular names for the time period.

In the latter there's a Jenn, a Jackie, a Beth and a Leah. This semester there are no Saras or Sarahs, but there often are. Interestingly there's an Amanda in both Senior Exercise and LIS415. Also in LIS415 is an Emma which is another old-fashioned name making a comeback.

So now it's time for me to get ready to travel to So. Hadley and demonstrate LC's Name Authority File to my eager students. I'll leave the final disposition of Benedict XVI's authority record to LC.