Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's back to ...

... work I go. I knew ahead of time that today, my first day back from my school winter break, I had plenty of work to do. Sometime during the first weekend of the winter break a pipe broke and flooded part of our school library. I went in twice during the break to help assess the damage.

Originally, word had come down that water had come right down on my desk, but luckily that wasn't the case. On my way to work, at O'Dark Thirty, I stopped at a Starbucks to get my favorite flavored coffee, Caramel Macchiato. I don't stop there often, but a coworker had given me a $5 gift card. So armed with this dreamy coffee creation, I was ready to forge ahead to get my work done.

I tell you what, a lot of water came down thru many parts of the ceiling. Lots of ceiling tile was all over the place. I'm not done with my inventory of the damaged books, but so far it's 370 books. I have one more table of books that have been pulled, due to damage, that I must inventory.

Here's the damage...



and here...

and here...

The above photo shows new books that were on display and water never even touched them. They got damaged by all the moisture in the air. We tried to stack heavier books on top of the warped ones to see if we couldn't straighten them out. This is only 1/4 of the new books warped, ugh!!! We aren't even sure if we can even claim these books.

We also have damage under parts of the rug and I have a lot of shelves to clean. They have bits of ceiling tile and water residue on them. I will be very busy these next few days. Water had fallen on our tables, but luckily they are fine. That's great considering they were standing in 2 inches of water for a day or two.

On top of this, we came back to very bad news. One of our students had died over the winter break. He was very popular and well liked in our school. The students come back Wednesday and many of them will take this news understandably hard. Our school counselors are ready and the district crisis team is on standby. It's horrible when a child dies. I knew this boy some. He would come into the library every now and then. He was very nice. I didn't know it, but he had a health problem and things were starting to look grim for him in December before the break.

Sorry this isn't one of my more upbeat posts. Life isn't always roses, is it?

Here's hoping things are going better in your part of the world,

Biker Betty