Thursday, June 08, 2006

38%

I don't teach any classes on Thursdays, so I thought this would be the ideal time to go get my car repaired. I knew it probably wouldn't start, so I went and recruited some students to help push the car out of the driveway. Actually, I recruited one student, who recruited someone else, who recruited four blind guys. Anyhow, they pushed the car out of the driveway and halfway around campus, but I couldn't ever get the engine to catch. So I sent a student in search of jumper cables and texted someone to see if he had any. There were none to be found, but the student returned carrying another battery. We disconnected my battery and then came to the realization that the replacement battery was too big to fit into my vehicle's battery compartment. Finally, I went and got Pastor Alex, who was just leaving to teach a class; he dropped everything, though, and came with me, bringing along a length of electrical wire. With that wire and a couple of vise-grips, he improvised jumper cables and hooked my vehicle up to the battery sitting on the ground next to the car. After a couple of tries, that got me started.

I drove to Carmen, where the mechanics seem to have a rather unorthodox and, I think, unreliable method of testing electrical components. At any rate, they recommended a new battery, and, crossing my fingers and praying that my alternator is still good, I bought one. I had it installed and drove home. Tomorrow morning, we'll find out if that was the problem.

I finished the Powerpoint for my missions class tomorrow, and then headed back to the library for more work on the card catalog. The task is even more dismaying since the students have arrived. They disorganize the books as fast as or faster than I can organize them. I talked to the librarian last night about implementing a new policy. Currently, students are supposed to reshelve their own books. This is NOT working. Hopefully, we are switching to a system where the assistant librarians do all the reshelving. I don't know, though; some of the current reshelving seems to be more malicious, than accidental. The card catalog will be basically useless if we can't get the students to put the books back where they belong.

We had our first chapel service tonight, and it lasted about 2 hours. The faculty was supposed to sing the special song, but we didn't practice in advance at all. They announced what the song was as we were heading up to the platform. I had never even heard the song before, so I peeled off and watched Elijah instead.

1 comment:

Lenity said...

Four blind guys
Four blind guys
See how they push
See how they push
They all went out to push Chris's car
But even then he did not get far
Four blind guys
Four blind guys

We have malicious book-shelvers also. My favorite thing is when people (seminarians!) take books and hide them so that no one else can use them. Modules especially are a time of violence and insanity for the poor books. Sometimes it's hard to be a librarian.