 This past week, one colleague and myself held down the fort at our library while all of our other colleagues were on vacation or using leave for life maintenance. While we do have summer sessions the first two weeks of August, there aren't many classes. We tend to pile a lot of our vacation leave into this time period because it's the least disruptive. The most exciting thing that happened this week was our building's fire alarm going off. Renovations are happening on another floor so this happens more often than we'd like. Weirdly, it turned out to be one of the library's smoke detectors that set it off. I was literally in the room with that smoke detector and didn't smell or see anything. Since the library was quiet, I walked around with public safety to puzzle that one over. We still don't know what happened, but I learned a lot about how our fire detection system works. We've got one more week of reduced staffing, but I'll be someone using leave this time. Cause we're fair like that. 
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 Not gonna lie, I am eagerly counting down the days until my solo week at home. While I do have a productive to-do list, I am also going to get to watch movies no one else is interested in while eating the foods that only I enjoy. Oh! And I'll be relaxing with an at home spa day. Sometimes, it's the simple pleasures that bring you the most joy.
Here's what else is making my smile:
I read a lot of books with my kiddo. Kid Reads is a biweekly look at what we've enjoyed recently.  The Dragon Kingdom of Wrenly
Jordan Quinn (author), Glass House Graphics (Illustrator) At her birthday party, the kiddo was gifted the first three books in the Dragon Kingdom of Wrenly. It's a graphic novel series that follows the adventure of an adorable scarlet dragon. I've only read a few chapters with the kiddo (dad has done the rest), but this series is fantastic. It's about friendship, bravery, and collaboration. The illustrations are practically cinematic. I really enjoy just how expressive the characters are. You can really read the emotions in the art. *Books shared here are affiliate links for Bookshop.org For most of the summer, I've been working on some accessibility issues discovered on my library's website. (All universities are going through the process of ensuring their web presence is fully accessible.) Back in May, my colleague and I met with a member of the auditing team. After the meeting, the auditor sent us an accessibility report that had been provided from a (free) three-party vendor. Some of the things were easy fixes. Other things I used Claude's coding capabilities to help with. But the vast majority of errors on the report were either lacking context so I couldn't find the problem, not actually issues, or just plain wrong. Time and time again, I kept trying to find and fix errors that didn't exist. I went to the third-party vendor and ran our website through over and over. It kept coming back with failures. Today, I gave my colleague an update on the things I fixed, the things I thought he could fix, and the many issues that seemed unfixable. About 30 minutes later he came back with a review from a different web accessibility tool that said "Aside from this one issue, you're good! The other tool is crap." (The tool my colleague used actually showed where on the page the errors were occurring. It also differentiated between have to fix and should fix.) I 100% support being fully accessible but if you're web audit sends me an error that says fix this code "<p></p>" with no context or page link or full code snippet, you're not being helpful. I can't wait until this project is over. 
This summer, I decided to clean out a lot of little projects from my work list. It took just over two months, but I finally finished all of them. It feels so good to have these things done.
Here's what else made me happy this week:
 The Odyssey
Homer (author), Emily Wilson (translator) I am one of the many (many!) people now reading this epic text. This is my first time and I’m excited to get to the story. I did some research and decided the translation by Emily Wilson would work best for me. But before I get to the story, I have to read through 81 pages of introductory material. (Because, academics!) That said, this scholarly density has been some rather useful context setting. *Books shared here are affiliate links for Bookshop.org This is content (books) I learned about from other content (podcasts and articles).    You can see my complete TBR list on Pinterest.
*Items featured here are Bookshop.org affiliate links. One of the productive things I did with my week off was clean out our storage cabinets, bookcases, and dressers. I try do this once a year because it gives me a chance to see stuff that is hidden and dust in all the nooks and crannies. After a few hours, I came away with a few items to donate and a full bag of trash. How is this possible? Our place is neat. We stay on top of our donations because our building does a pick-up every two months. Any time something out grows it's usefulness, it goes in our donation bin. I like clear surfaces so things like unopened mail, filing, magazines, and craft projects are handled regularly. We don't let things we don't need linger. And, yet, whenever I do projects like this, I always find more things to toss and donate. I'm beginning to think it multiples on it's own when I'm not looking.
I can't remember when I became a second computer screen advocate, but I can't live without mine now. During working hours, it makes it really easy to work on one screen and have our chat service up on the other. During play hours, like this morning while I'm on leave, I could peruse email on one screen while streaming the Tour de France on the other. There is no way I could go back to one screen.
Here's what else made me happy:
I read a lot of books with my kiddo. Kid Reads is a biweekly look at what we've enjoyed recently.
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