Born, like other comic book characters, out of an otherwise trivial but life-changing animal bite, the Rabid Librarian seeks out strange, useless facts, raves about real and perceived injustices, and seeks to meet her greatest challenge of all--her own life.
over at Palumbo and Man O'War, the Eastside Branch of the Lexington Public Library. Here are some first impressions:
Pros:
Very light and airy, open and inviting.
More room for books and other materials! (The new building has 32,000 square feet, according to the bookmark I'm looking at. I'm not sure what Eagle Creek had, but it is much bigger).
They kept a stained glass window from the old building, which was a nice touch.
They did an excellent job of turning a former car dealership into a library.
There is a drive-up window for picking up holds. I think (although I'm not quite sure where it is yet) the book drop is also drive-up.
Cons:
There is at the moment absolutely no signage to guide you to where you want to go, not on the shelves and not above or around various areas. Now granted, that is probably going to change--it's only the second day of being open. When you first go in there are CDs and videos. The new books are in a hall going to the adult collection. The computers are tucked into an area east of those. There's an upstairs that contains meeting rooms and a maker space, but I have no idea at the moment where the children's section is, as I haven't completely made it through the building.
The parking, is well, a little weird. On the one hand, it's all one way, which the old one was, too, and that is actually useful. On the other hand, the building is situated such that the main entrance faces away from all the parking, including the handicapped parking, and you have to walk all the way around the building practically unless you are lucky to find one of the first spots as you come in. What makes this odd is there are two doors that say 'no entry' on them that actually face the parking lot, but that would take you into the former showroom/adult collection rather than through a true entry with a desk. Still, it's a little odd.
I honestly am not sure how I feel about this building and the set up. It will probably grow on me; I'm just attached to the old place, I guess. I'll reserve judgement for now, anyway. And I will miss living so close to the library that I could walk to it, even though on at least one occasion, when I was hit by the car, I proved that was not such a good thing. :) Okay, my legs are going asleep in this chair (although to be fair, I always had trouble with the ones in Eagle Creek, too.) I think I'll get up, explore a bit, check out some books, and go on home, as the library closes within the hour.
I finished my library book, Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got a Life, 3 hours before it expired! :) It brought up a lot of emotions for me, as I have an unhealthy relationship with food as well. A lot of it resonated with my own experience, even down to my use of audio to tune out the world and retreat in such a way as to hide from my problems. In the spirit of being more mindful, I plan on buying Intuitive Eating, the book which contributed to her experience (and which I had out from the library recently) and downloading it onto my Kindle tomorrow if I can spare $10. Also, I have been searching at home for a book that incorporates mindful eating that I have from a class I took probably 15 years ago called You Count, Calories Don't, and I finally found it today (next to a book on Eleanor of Aquitaine in the biography section--I have no idea why it was hiding there). Hopefully I can incorporate some of these principles into my own eating. I'm also checking the book UnDiet, which I had out about a year ago, again, as it's good for guiding you to a less-processed and healthier eating lifestyle.
after my dental cleaning tonight, because something more important came up, but I plan to go very soon and see the new branch now that it is open. The dental appointment went really well; no cavities or any other issues, which is amazing for me. I guess using the Habitica application on my phone to remind me to floss was well worth it (I’m up to 53rd level now). Because I have a fairly small mouth, my old hygienist had noted that I did better with a small toothbrush, so my little baggie of goodies actually has a sparkly pink Disney princess toothbrush for ages 5-7 in it. Yeah, I know. But hey, it really does help. I think the last was one with the Cars movie characters on it.
I’m home now and eating some hazelnut spread directly out of the jar as I have no bread to put it on, and I didn’t feel up to macaroni and cheese. I should have had a sandwich at my friends’ house, as A did offer. I was really hungry until I got home, and it’s like it evaporated after I had a couple of spoonsful of the spread, which isn’t particularly bad, I suppose.
I met my new next-door neighbour, Nathan, tonight. He has a little brown 7-week-old puppy that looks like it might grow up into a chocolate Labrador, or at least some sort of Lab cross. He was adorable. And Nathan seemed nice, too.
Last night I tried to put some very old software on my desktop, which YKWIA has borrowed for a little while. I managed to get one game on, but the other two were too old to run on the 64-bit Windows 10 system I have. I did figure out that I might be able to put on a virtual machine if I can get a full copy of Windows 95 or 98 on eBay or something [I have a Windows 95 disc, but it’s an upgrade one]. I asked the IT guys at work about it. They thought that was way too much trouble for a couple of games, but it would probably work if I could pull it all together. One of them suggested looking at the Internet Archive to see if those games are archived there, and could run in a simulator built into the website. I’ll check that out. He’s like me; he has a collection of old gaming systems at home [although he has modern ones as well, and I don’t].
A second bloom has opened up on the orchid. Yay! And my aunt sent me pictures of hers, which are over a decade old and bloom every year. They were a beautiful purple.
I'm thinking of applying for a position at a local public library (in a neighbouring county). It would mean a pay cut, but it's still decent pay. I have aspects of my background, both educational and practical, that would work for it, but not a lot of actual actual experience reading to children, which would be one of the main duties. But I've taken classes in children's lit and storytelling, am familiar with children's and young adult books and programming, and have run an early literacy project for about 16 years. It's an assistant children's librarian, so I could learn from someone else with more experience. We'll see.
I’m looking around and there is so much stuff I should be doing on the house, but I’m already kind of pooped from the rest of the day (which was gorgeous, sunny, with temps in the 70s), and so I think I’m going to do a little reading and turn in early. A couple of my eBooks from the library are coming due and while I don’t have to return them in any way, they do expire, so I want to do what I can to finish them, as I think tomorrow and the next day they go poof. Well, in theory. Actually, if you don’t connect a Kindle to either WiFi or 3G Wireless, it doesn’t pull them off as expired until you do so. It’s a glitch in the system, I guess, and one that I’m sure gets exploited at least a little bit. But I’m going to try to finish tonight, as one book has holds on it and can’t be renewed.
To that end, I think I’ll get off the computer, turn off the radio (Passenger’s ‘Let Her Go’ is playing}, and curl up on the couch with the Kindle, as I have the fan in the living room because I’m warm, and I don’t want to pack it back to the bedroom just now, and besides, I’d just fall on to sleep and skip the reading if I try to read in bed. (I read best when I’m out and about, rather than at home, which is rather sad, being the introverted person who has always felt comfortable with a book in my own little space before. But even as a kid, I didn’t really read in bed.)
Oh, one more thing. We saw the trailer for Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children today. So apparently Emma has air powers in the movie rather than fire, Miss Peregrine doesn’t look anything like I imagined her, and the evil antagonist is suddenly female. I don’t understand why directors have to muck with books, especially ones as delightful as this one. I will say Jacob seemed a good casting choice. I’ll probably watch it, but I really am afraid of what they’re doing to it. I like a couple of things Tim Burton has done (mainly Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas). But I was a little wary of him doing the adaptation to film. Still, at least Johnny Depp doesn’t appear to have found his way into it. I’m not a fan of him, and he’s in so many Burton movies.
Okay, that’s enough for tonight. I hope you’re having a good week. Good night!
that I've been playing for almost 25 years. Wow. 25 years. That's scary. We started back in July of 1991 and while players have changed and storylines have taken bizarre turns, I still remember that first adventure, 'The Auction', where we went from normal folks at Miskatonic University to became ninjas with mystical powers there in Arkham. We're still going strong, and our characters have kids and mundane issues that are far worse at times than tentacled horrors. But it's fun to role play (really role play, not the stuff you do in a computer game or for that matter in some dungeon-crawling paper-and-dice games). The game master is brilliant, and he has meshed dozens of games into a coherent whole while maintaining the spirit of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, which is one reason we keep coming back week after week to some new horror. Or maybe it's masochism. Same difference. But most importantly, it's fun, and a great creative outlet for which I am very thankful.
It's been a decent day so far. I did laundry, worked on my friends' house, and then Brenda came over and we played till about 8 pm. I did pretty well with the whole Daylight Savings Time in terms of getting over there in time, especially considering I had my laundry, my book bag, a lunch bag, a two litre of soda, the laptop, and a very heavy bag with two 6.6 lb weights for A, some ankle weights for him to borrow, a book on fitness to borrow, a tote bag for him, and some envelopes for YKWIA. That bag was pretty darn heavy. Hopefully I will be able to get up on time tomorrow when I get ready for work. I've been getting up earlier lately anyway, so that may help.
That's it, I guess. We're planning something big for next game, a ritual to remove some conditioning from a non-player character who has been psychically programmed to kill her husband (one of Brenda's characters). And probably in the next game or two my character will find out she is pregnant with twins. Ah, good times. I think I'll go read for awhile; I have some books due at the library tomorrow and the new Eastside branch won't open until Tuesday, so I'll either renew or take them to Tates Creek, which I'll be near anyway. I'm going to look them over and decide which to do. Good night.
I know YKWIA and I both have degrees in history and classics, and we both studied a lot of graduate ancient and mediaeval history but surely we are not the only ones to realise that the 'stick' is, something each of us came up with independently. What else do they think Templars would be guarding? (And incidentally, neither of us is Catholic, or for that matter, even Christian.) Great 100th episode, even though we had already figured out the direction this was going in terms of Renard and also some of the other subplots. But 'Grimm' is always fun. Gute Nacht!
Our security guard greeted me with a picture of it as I came through the back entrance, and I alerted the lady who gave me the orchid when it was ailing two years ago, and there has been much oohing and ahhing throughout the day. Hey, it's the little things in life. I've never had an orchid re-bloom for me, although they're all healthy with good leaves and abundant roots. Maybe this is the beginning of great things.
I noticed that my front door was slightly ajar just now, especially as I was going to go take a nap after playing some Civilization IV. Must pay more attention!
