I'm Watching as Fast as I Can

Tonight my priority will be to watch New Moon and get as far as possible into season 1 of The Sopranos. Two of the four items due tomorrow. There are only 14 episodes and if I push hard enough I might be able to return it before the library closes at 4 tomorrow. I might even watch them slightly sped up so as to shave a few minutes off each episode. If I can get both of those returned tomorrow I can cut my guilt feelings in half for I'd be keeping 'only' the novel Boneshaker and Season 1 of West Wing until Tuesday morning.

The pressure won't be off by much though as there are 200 pages and 22 episodes to rush through by Tuesday morning. With more itmes coming due on Tuesday and Thursday next week.

Plus avoiding the fine is avoiding less than half the negative consequence of returning items late. My own guilty conscience for keeping items I know someone else is anxiously awaiting is more punishing than the fine.

Usually, an item due on Thursday has to be back before the library opens on Monday to avoid a fine but because of Memorial Day I have until Tuesday this time but that increases the guilt factor because any item I returned tomorrow has a chance of reaching it's next patron's library by Tuesday whereas not returning it tomorrow means it would just reach the inbox here by then.

I used to shy away from high-demand items from the library, willing to wait until the demand fell off enough that waiting my turn was a matter of days not weeks and renewal more likely and thus the pressure of the due dates much lessened. I'm not remembering clearly the progression of my change of attitude--when I began to get in queue earlier and then earlier and then get into more of them. I'm betting it was related to my involvement with blogging though. All that exposure to other's enthusiasms and the various debates and controversies had to have played a role. I know that I often head to the online catalog after reading a review or discussion about a book, author, movie or TV series.

But now I am beginning to realize the original wisdom of waiting.

Not only am I swamped by books that I can keep for only 3 weeks after waiting for months and DVD that I can keep for only one week after waiting for months, but I have the request quotas maxed out on both mine and Ed's cards so that I can't even request items which I wouldn't have to wait for. Many of them items important for research related to one or more of my current creative projects (writing, sewing, crocheting, web site building and management, etc.).

I can either travel to the branch where they sit on the shelf, wait until I've claimed enough requested items to make room for more requests or cancel requests. The first is physically difficult to do, the latter is emotionally difficult to do and speeding up the claiming by allowing more requested items to remain active after I've reached first, second or third place in line, risks what has happened this month which is a deluge of items arriving all at once.

Last week I had six movies and documentaries and one TV series season and two books with queues that had to be returned between Monday and Monday. This week there are two TV series, one movie and one book due tomorrow. But I have five such books out coming due in the next ten days. And more waiting to be picked up at the library--several books and several DVD--that must be claimed by the end of next week or forfeited; a few must be claimed by Tuesday.

I was planning to pick most of them up tomorrow (our library is open only M, T & Th) but did not get as much done with the items I have here as hoped. Partly due to over-high expectations but a good deal due to the hullabaloo of the remodeling of the bathroom here and the resulting moves out to Ed's brother's and back--the disruption, the interruptions and the fact I did not take many of the items with me last week because the stay there was supposed to be 2.5 days and turned into 7.

Well, if I don't stop talking about it and get to watching, I'll have to have to have Bella and Tony sounding like Donald Duck in order to make the goal I set as I began this post before dinner. Four hours ago now.