I spent the first two hours of my library day doing routine tasks. Catching up with e-mails, taking care of time sheets and purchase requests, dealing with book orders, quelling the occasional small fire at the front desk; the routine work filled the morning pleasantly. Then, mid-morning, I announced to those assembled in the kitchen at break time that I was going to be incommunicado the rest of the day.

My pronouncement was greeted with a complete lack of response.

Holly, who was poking at her cell phone, didn’t even look up. “Oh. Okay.”

“Sounds good,” Kelsey said, but since she was reading yesterday’s newspaper headlines, I wasn’t sure if she was referring to what I’d said or the article about a water main replacement on the other side of town.

Josh, stationed at the coffeepot in what looked like a stance to body check Kelsey if she came close, glanced at me over his shoulder with question marks in his eyes but didn’t say anything.

I nodded at him, trying to communicate solidarity, calm, and a pending solution to his romantic conundrum. Not that I had one, but surely I’d come up with something soon.

“You okay?” Holly asked me. “Your face looks kind of funny.”

Wrenching my face into a horrible grimace, I said, “Really? What’s so funny about it?”

Holly rolled her eyes, Josh turned back to the coffee, and Kelsey flipped to the sports section.

“Right,” I said cheerfully. “Well, it’s been nice talking to everyone. Tomorrow’s a bookmobile day, so I probably won’t see you until Wednesday.”

I received three vague murmurs of acknowledgment and, coffee in hand, went back to my office, thinking about the effects of heavy cloud cover in combination with what had been forecasted by Weather People Who Should Know as a long and cold winter.

“A lunch-and-learn series,” I said out loud, sitting and typing into my computer. “Maybe that will perk us up in January.” Without too much thought, I entered a list of possible topics ranging from personal finance to public speaking to home repair tips. This was fun, and I soon turned to the Internet for ideas. It wasn’t until I took a sip of coffee and squinched my face at its tepid temperature that I realized how much time I’d spent on a task that didn’t need doing. At least not today.

Sighing, I closed the list and turned my attention to the task of the day: how to staff the bookmobile for extended hours without ruining my health or destroying library morale.

Just before lunchtime, my boss stopped by my office. “How’s it going?”

I leaned back in my chair. “Hey, Graydon. Do you really want to know?”