You would think people would be stretching their holidays to the max… but noooo… Semester 2 seems to have started just when we thought we had 1 more week before the onslaught.
Students or rather students-to-be (they haven’t quite matriculated), researchers, lecturers, librarians from far-flung campuses – all wanted something as TNL managed the Live Chat.
You would think that the old girl closetted in her little cubicle would revel in all that attention. But when you have 3 people asking questions that contain more than 10 words each all at once, all at once, mind you, the only thing she could say was “But school hasn’t started yet!”
Well, too bad. As far as these folks were concerned, they wanted to know whether they could borrow books when they do not have their library cards yet (no, you can’t), whether they could print from the PCs in the library if they do not have their computer IDs yet (no, they can’t), whether the photocopying room was opened (yes, it is), whether we had the 8th edition of a textbook (no, we don’t but we will buy it), whether there is a full-text to an article that is not free (yes, we do). …And could we just get a breather here?
By the end of it, she felt the tension in her right wrist slowly building up to a pinch. Ouch.
While massaging her wrist, TNL had an epiphany of sorts – she had croney hands. You know, as in hands belonging to an old crone? Since when did she have them? Why were there crater-size pores? Would they eventually turn sandpaper-like? Do dinosaur skin start off looking like this? Are those freckles? Why are there so many? Somehow, the pinch in her wrist seem less of an issue.
TNL had croney hands. And when would the croney arms, neck, face start revealing themselves? Can you get collagen from eating fish? How much fish? What about soya milk? Soya milk’s good, right? If she stretches her skin a little bit every day with one of those old book-binding machines tucked away in the library somewhere, would it help? Or should she just stop looking at mirrors and lead a happy albeit unkempt existence? Seriously, why not?
Sigh… 2012 – this is so not how it should start off with.
Oh well, Happy New Year and all that.
Readers new to this blog: Do ignore the old croney’s slightly neurotic ways. In real life, she’s a big-hearted, passionate-about-her-job, not-at-all-old gal who tries to get some laughs by using an audacious nick coupled with lots of mumbly grumbles. 🙂
You go gal!
Editor is way too kind (as always). TNL wishes she could post a pic of her croney hands but then, we don’t want to scare the estrogen out of them sweet young things, do we, Rubes? That’s it! The world needs more estrogen! More estrogen! Give TNL more estrogen!