It's raining, it's pouring the T.Triumph is roaring...

It wasn't raining on Monday morning, just a damp road, so I rode. It was raining on Monday night, but I don't soak up water, so I rode. My wife had used my van on Monday, and I rode in the rain on Tuesday to meet my replacement, and show her the library. Still lightly raining in the evening and back I went, knowing that hot seaweed soup and coffee to wrap my dampened cool around would be waiting. Wet roads waiting for me Wednesday and the next big meeting with the Program Manager, the CUS, the incoming Library Keeper and myself would be at eleven - so I rode, straight to the dock and two dollar parking for the bike, and just made the ferry. Crew and inmate patrons are testing the new library lady - just like students in Junior High school when a substitute shows up, testing just testing. Those that knew her before stop and chat, she and the program manager work on her work schedule two libraries sixty miles apart, keeping both open each week. The local IT guru shows up and takes one of the online computers out of the office and library, leaving three library staff to share one computer - that won't work forever. But I will be alone again today, and only six more workdays await my attention. The meeting took place, no issues but lots of good exchange, the new schedule has been produced - starting the sixteenth (like you need to know) McNeil Island Corrections Center (Camp) branch library will be open from 11:30 AM to 7:45 PM on Tuesday and Wednesday, and from 7:45 AM to 3:45 PM on alternating Fridays. The other branch library has her attention on Monday, Thursday and alternated Fridays. She works hard and fast and lives between the two locations and this assignment has cut sixty commute miles off her normal day from where she has been working (listening to the mileage of commuters makes me wonder if this is California North sometimes). The crew is a bit disgruntled, she doesn't wait to want and start changes, and I am just smiling. The library will be open and will do well. I expect the entire crew to be gone by October, but she will be getting and training replacements, and there are some hidden former workers in the population that might come back to work for her.

I got a card of farewell and thanks from some of the reading club - there are several reading clubs - nothing formal but they have worked with me for more good stuff and sharing the news about books. But it is nice to have the card and thank you messages for my retirement, something to look at while sitting in that rocking chair on the porch. Damp this morning, the Trusty Triumph calls, needs fuel on the way to work, and the walk to the dock awaits to wake the memories of Spring in Pennsylvania woods (sylvania!) although I expect that real cold and snow will return before the end of March - just to remind us not to pay attention to Al Gore's fears and Nobel prize efforts. Only one thing to fear, really fear in life, all else is so much noise about nothing.