So we don't have HBO, and we wanted to watch 'The Gilded Age',

 and Lexington Public Library only has Season Three, inexplicably. Two copies.

In case you didn't know, anyone in a contiguous county (including Fayette) can get a library card at the Jessamine County Public Library and have full borrowing rights if they're an adult. Unlike the Lexington Public Library, they still have physical CDs, older books in series, Hoopla, and Freegal music, which I miss. It fills in some of the gaps. They're at 600 South Main Street in Nicholasville, so not far away, and they also have a studio and a Library of Things, where you can check out practical things like birding backpacks and telescopes. All you need is an ID with your address on it. Their website with full details is: https://jesspublib.org/

The library, as you exit

I also found the first book in the Amelia Peabody mystery series, which I dearly love. So, unlike LPL, they keep older books in series. We've had to request books from interlibrary loan because LPL no longer has the earlier books for the series we want to get into.

Also, JCPL has access to Freegal Music, which LPL used to have. You can download a limited number of songs a week to keep.  For as long as you want. Period. I managed to get several albums that way when I used it before. So that is nice.

                                                  I'm also really excited because they have Hoopla, which allows you to check out five items per month--books, audiobooks, movies, or TV series. I plan on checking out Life is Beautiful, a 1997 movie that is very highly acclaimed that will apparently make me cry, and the dramatised audio version of Crocodile on the Sandbank once I am finished re-reading the book.

Also, some time ago, LPS got rid of all their CDs, and they had some Shinedown ones I got to listen to. I know, I can stream them. It's not quite the same. 😊 So between the two libraries, a lot of service gaps get filled.

The library card is kind of spiffy

'The Gilded Age' Season 1
 (written by the same person who
 wrote for 'Downton Abbey'

My favourite mystery series, first book

My day

I had $1.50 in fines on my library card (hey, don't judge, I'm a librarian, but we like to keep books, sometimes a little long). Fortunately, the Lexington Public Library is doing a 'read off your fines' promotion, so for 15 minutes of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (my choice, which happens to be my current read, or re-read in this case), my fines were wiped. You still have one more day to do so--they're open from 1-5 pm tomorrow, Sunday, the 31st of December. It works for children or adults. I think you can erase $8 per hour read.

While I was there, the reference librarian was assisting someone on a call who obviously was interested in reading Sue Grafton's alphabet mystery series, and was putting the first one on hold for the caller. Mystery writing has lost one of its best-loved authors, and I think it's very sad that she got as far as Y, and didn't finish the whole alphabet. Perhaps there will a posthumous Z. [Hey, I didn't expect Elizabeth Peters' book The Painted Queen to come out, and it was an unfinished novel posthumously published with another writer who knew her finishing it up based on Peters' notes. So we could get a Z, who knows.] It does make me want to start the series, as I've never read it. In her obituary it was stated that as far as her family is concerned, the alphabet runs to Y, but who knows? Anyway, my condolences to them and to her fans out there.

Hope you are having a pleasant weekend. I have gone on a fruitless search for garlic at two Krogers, and so I came home a little frustrated, but I'm relaxing at home now with the dogs nearby and that makes everything better.

Which is good, as I need to work on the rest of the game notes. I'm about one-third of the way through the recording.

Have a great weekend.

I said I might have good news, and I do

So a couple of months ago, I was offered a PRN position with the scheduling department with which I'm currently working under contract. Unfortunately, it was determined that since I had been laid off from the company and received a severance, they could not hire me. Fast forward a couple of months. One of my co-workers left, and another took her position, leaving a full-time position open. I asked my supervisor if the prohibition had been for the PRN position only, or for any position, as I was interested in the open one. My boss said they'd been round and round on this, and that I should communicate my interest via e-mail. An appeal was made, based on 1) the fact that the position was in no way related to my former ones, being in a different department entirely with different duties, 2) the volume of work had increased exponentially since the move, so they didn't expect to need my help before moving, and 3) I've been doing the job anyway under contract for the entire summer and more. The appeal did work, yay, so we proceeded and I have been offered a full-time position with benefits, which I have accepted. Monday I sign some paperwork and do my drug test. So pending my drug test results and background check, I have a new job! Considering most of my severance has gone to paying for my health insurance (continued under COBRA) at $755 a month, this is great news. Also, I haven't been gone so long that my PTO will accrue at the same rate, giving me four weeks' time off a year. I'll learn about any other things on Monday. But I am very happy. In fact, Friday was a great day, due to that news and the fact that I did get paid, and could pay said health insurance, as I think I would have been down to about $10 after that otherwise.

So that's my news. I don't expect any kinks, but I can't say I'm officially hired until I go through those two things, and that may take a couple of weeks. But in the meantime, I'll still be doing my job every day under contract. :)

So, I've obviously been amiss at writing/blogging

I've been pretty much coming home, having a great meal, and relaxing a bit before bed, maybe listening to music, rather than getting on the computer. Sorry about that. But I've had to recharge well because we've had a lot (and I mean a lot) of patients come in this week, and it's been very, very busy. Today, though, I had an appointment and so I left at 1:30 pm. After the appointment, I made a couple of stops, came home, spent quite some time talking with a neighbour who is a co-worker's cousin and trying to organise a neighbourhood watch, and she told me about a meeting they're having on Monday nearby. Then I went in, ate a little something, and by 5 pm I was headed out to an appointment with my insurance agent, who likes his representatives to see clients at least once a year. That went well, I got a little refrigerator magnet out of it :), and then I stopped by the library to pick up a book I put on hold for YKWIA along with a couple for me.

Last night while looking up the said book on the library website, it reminded me to try using an application on my phone that they have partnered with, Libby, by Overdrive, which is a sort of one-stop shop for library e-Books and audiobooks. It was then that I discovered that there was one more, last, instalment of my beloved Amelia Peabody mysteries by Elizabeth Peters, called The Painted Queen. It had been finished by another writer, I presume, as the credits are for both Peters and her. So I borrowed it in Kindle format. Here's hoping I have some time over the next two weeks to read it. Of course, I have all the others, mostly in paperback but the later ones are in hardback. So eventually I'll buy one.

Okay, I know it hasn't been exciting, but I really should turn in for bed. However, I may have some good news to share in the next few days, so be sure to stay tuned. Good night!

Bleh

Last night I got home fairly late and pretty much went straight to bed without blogging. Tonight I've been home, and at times I've been busy, but mostly I've just felt bleh and didn't get around to writing. I have, however, been fairly productive up to a point. I worked, went to an appointment, ran by the pharmacy (for the second day in a row), ate dinner with a friend, returned my library books, did all the hand-washable laundry (21 pieces that are now drying on the new rack with a fan on them), and so that's not too bad. I do plan on doing the regular laundry as well by getting up early in the morning. My back has been giving me trouble tonight with all the stooping and movement with the hand-washables, so I've been lying down trying to get it to ease up, and I took some ibuprofen, too. I also played some 'Joining Hands', an addictive game I got the other day for my phone when it was the free application of the day on Amazon.

Yesterday I came late to some news that made me sit in my cubicle at work and cry. Barbara Mertz, who wrote under a number of pseudonyms, including Elizabeth Peters, and who among all her many novels wrote the 19 Amelia Peabody mysteries, died on August 8th at the age of 85. I didn't know her, of course, but she touched my life and fired up my imagination with her strong female characters. I watched Amelia and Radcliffe begin their life together, their son grow up, their grandchildren born, and every year 'another dead body' as their foreman on the digs in Aegypt would lament. I felt like I'd lost something very special, much like when you've been entranced by a good book and you come to the words 'the end' and have to close the cover. Here is her obituary in the New York Times: Barbara Mertz, Egyptologist and Mystery Writer, Dies at 85. According to it, she wrote nearly 70 books. I have read about 32 of them, and have about 30. I have read her Aegyptology non-fiction under her own name, all of the Amelia Peabody books, several of the Vicky Bliss ones, and all of the Jacqueline Kirby ones, plus a few more sprinkled here and there and the guide to the world of Amelia Peabody. I have most of them in a coveted shelf near my bed. Oh, she will be missed.

I love this passage

from Elizabeth Peters' Borrower of the Night:

In recent years, students have done a lot of complaining about 'relevance.' No one can quarrel with the basic idea: that education should have something to do with real life and its problems. The trouble comes when you try to define the word. What is relevant? Not history, according to the more radical critics. Who cares what happened in ancient Babylon or medieval England? It's now that counts.

They couldn't be more wrong. Everything has happened before--not once, but over and over again. We may not be able to solve our problems through what are pompously called 'the lessons of history,' but at least we should be able to recognize the issues and perhaps avoid some of the solutions that have failed in the past. And we can take heart in our own dilemma by realizing that other people in other times have survived worse.

Amelia* would be so thrilled

Egyptian pyramids found by infra-red satellite images

Seventeen lost pyramids are among the buildings identified in a new satellite survey of Egypt.

More than 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements were also revealed by looking at infra-red images which show up underground buildings.

Initial excavations have already confirmed some of the findings including of two suspected pyramids.

"To excavate a pyramid is the dream of every archaeologist," says Dr Sarah Parcak.

*(For those not in the know, Amelia Peabody is a fictional Victorian/Edwardian sleuth created by Elizabeth Peters, aka Barbara Mertz. She has a weakness for pyramids and murder. It's a very enjoyable series, my favourite of historical mysteries. I must say, the author has been very prolific, and she's 83 and still writing.)