I can’t get my full certification in librarianship until I take one more college course, and since I don’t have a certificate, I can’t really get the on-going education credits that the State Library is requiring of all licensed librarians in the state. They’re called LEUs, and even Dad has some LEUs from attending workshops with Mom. I attended a workshop that was hosted at the Jasper Public Library back when I was a page and it likewise didn’t count. Several of the other librarians at Jasper think that I should be able to at least attend some of these workshops because they’re on interesting topics that will help me out in the long run, even if I don’t earn LEUs. It was with this in mind that I went to a workshop yesterday with Martha in Nashville, Indiana at the Brown County Public Library. It was a workshop on problem patrons, and since I am in charge of the collection agency accounts at our library, I have no end of “problem” patrons. So Martha signed me up to go with her yesterday.

We looked up directions to Nashville because I haven’t been there since I was a teenager and had been driven at that time. I must’ve read the map or the print-out wrong because I thought it said it was an hour and a half or so but when Martha checked again later, it said two hours and fifteen minutes. Well, dippy. So we had to leave a little earlier and couldn’t eat beforehand, but we should still have made it on time…if not for a horrific tanker truck accident just outside of Bloomfield that slowed us down around noon. Luckily, while we were stopped for a while, there wasn’t a lot of traffic and it wasn’t too long before we passed, and we made the meeting only five minutes late (ten minutes, actually, because we both went to the restroom before the meeting). It was an interesting meeting, and I got some good ideas from it that I’d like to try working out for our library. The meeting was over by three (started at one), and Martha and I hit a Subway on our way out of town.

Here’s where the fun started. Mind you, it had been raining all day–a steady downpour that was sometimes foggy in places–so we’d been driving a little slower than usual because Martha was unfamiliar with the twisty, windy, hilly roads despite being from Kentucky where the hills are worse, in my opinion. I guess the rain really didn’t help. At any rate, we stopped once for gas, then we got stopped by the same traffic for that same accident that had been there since around seven in the morning (one of the women at the meeting passed it on her way to Nashville around that time). This time, however, the traffic was horrific. The line was backed up like crazy, and we decided to take a country road to see if we could avoid it. Martha called her husband to see if he could look up directions for us based on where we were located, and she gave me the phone to talk to him. We managed to get back out onto a highway which her husband said should be 157. Unfortunately, we had somehow gotten back onto the same highway as the accident but in the opposite direction. Yeah, when the line of semis and cars around us began moving and taking us with it, we found ourselves moving north past the scene where a CAT ‘dozer was moving piles of dirt around.

Obscenities ensued en masse. In the end, I told her to screw the map, I was getting us back to Jasper another way. We headed back along 54 until a turn-off for 45, and when we reached Cincinnati (not Ohio, the little one here in Indiana), I knew immediately where we were and navigated the rest of the way back though Martha had no idea where we were going. We were supposed to be back in Jasper around 5:30 or 6:00… We got back around 7:30. I normally work 12-8 on Thursdays, so that left me a half hour to work when I got back. Yeah. Four hours in a car on a trip that shouldn’t have taken much more than two. To say the least, we were both tired, exhausted, and cranky as hell by the time we hit Jasper, and she still had a half hour drive home and I had a half hour of work. It had rained the entire trip except for when we reached Dubois County. Miserable experience, but at least Martha’s an awesome person and fun to hang out with. I think next time I go on one of these workshop excursions, I’m insisting upon bringing my Indiana road map along. I’m an excellent navigator without one, but I’m awesome with a map. I just wonder where we would have ended up without me knowing some of the other routes around Greene and Martin county. I don’t want to think about it. It’s been a stressful couple of days, and all I want to do is focus on the novel and crochet some of the adorable little creepy critters that are in the book Katie and Sarah sent me. I’m nearly done with the corporate zombie Sarah wants, and I’m thinking about making an Amazon warrior for Katie (grrl power and all that, hehe). Thanks again, you two, for the awesome book and all the yarn to go with it!

And on a final note, happy birthday, Katie! I’ll probably text you or something later once I’ve gotten some caffeine in my system (didn’t sleep well last night; see previous post) and am more likely to hit the right keys than sending you a text of gobbledegook. 🙂 Hope you have a great birthday today and a great weekend!