Desk

Some of you asked about the stuff on my desk. It's an ever-changing collection of junque, but here's what things look like at the moment.

The pottery pencil cup has been in the library longer than I have, and I don't know who made it or how old it is. It's just always there.

The Stonehenge cup came from this trip I took with some high school classes back in 2022. One of the teachers bought some souvenirs to distribute to the kids, and the cup was left over, so it was mine by default. It usually has pencils in it too, but we seem to be momentarily low on our pencil supply.

The Beanie Baby parrot ("Jabber") I found among the holiday decorations in a cabinet in our conference room. I set it out on the desk so everyone could enjoy it. Hilariously, they are listed on eBay at prices ranging from £4.50 to £4,774.03! I'm pretty sure if that latter price was realistic Jabber would have been parrot-napped by now.

The wooden bird at left looks like a Latin American souvenir. I don't know where it came from -- again, I found it in a library cabinet. I used to have a little blue hippopotamus from the same cabinet but someone recently absconded with it. Hopefully it found a good home.

The gold cow is a game piece from the Hollywood edition of the game "Herd Mentality." I found it on the sidewalk while walking Olga.

The plaster "Happy!" face I found among some furniture being discarded by the school, and the artificial leaves and acorns are scattered around the library at the moment as a seasonal decoration.

Finally, the container of BYOMA (whatever that is!) was something a student left behind. I usually have a rotating collection of makeup, personal-care and school supplies sitting up there, depending on what's been recently lost. (Which is why the dinosaur pencil case was displayed there!) The BYOMA was reclaimed yesterday afternoon.

On the surface of my desk, underneath the ledge where all that stuff above sits, I keep pictures and some other random objects -- work-related books, my good pens that I don't want students to steal, and a bowl of debris I've picked up around the library over the years.

I've actually shown you the contents of this bowl before, though the collection grows and changes over time. Every once in a while I get motivated to find a home for the various game pieces or puzzle pieces that accumulate there, and then I inevitably find new stuff. It never ends.

So there you have it. Wasn't that FASCINATING?! I'm not taking any of this stuff with me when I leave in April, except the pictures. I bequeath everything else to my fellow librarians.