A bit of Library Love

I am in love with my library! I can get cookbooks, knitting books, cycling books, blogging books, audio books, movies, documentaries....The list goes on and on. Can you tell the library budget vote was this week?

When I was a kid we had access to a wee little rural library. Our library was so little you had to go outside to change your mind. Hey some jokes never die, you just wish they did. I hated the library when I was a kid! Not because it was small and lacked variety, but because they wanted the books back! When I love something I tend to want to keep it near me. When I read a book and enjoyed the story I thought it should be mine. I hated returning my books, just because the library thought they should keep them.

When we moved off the farm, we moved into an area that could not access the local town library. I still managed to spend some time there but I was not able to really fundamentally use that library.

After D and I got married and moved to Florida I was bored and alone much of the time. Till D told me about the library. You see I had been so long without a usable one that I had forgotten. I jumped in the pickup and hightailed it over to get a library card. I think I spent 3-4 days a week in that library till we moved 3 months later.

Then we moved to what I still think of as the mecca of the library system, Charleston County South Carolina. Our apartment complex was 6 blocks from a branch library. (Yes that was part of the reason we picked that apartment complex.) In Charleston, they pool all the money not by town but by county and have a strong base to buy from. I could borrow books from any of the county's locations and return to my local branch. I can not tell you how many late fees I avoided. Hubby would point out here how many late fees I did pay even with that but we will not talk about that! I loved wandering around the beautiful downtown Charleston branch. It was there that I looked into kinship and learned what a 4th cousin twice removed is. (Yeah I forgot about that one a bit.) I found out just how awesome it is to have a great library at your disposal.

Then we moved to NY. Our first library was in this great old church building, complete with stained glass. However it was small and staffed by people that treated you like dirt. Rude and aggressive, not my  ideal librarian! So I went to the next community over and found out I could use it but in a somewhat limited fashion. But the big bonus was the librarians were decent and polite! Imagine that!

When we started looking into buying a house I knew what library system I truly wanted to be part of. They have expanded since then and hold the second favorite library spot in my heart. We passed the budget by over 75% approval.

The thing I don't get is why people don't use libraries more. You're already paying for it, you should make sure you're getting your money's worth! I know that I am. I may even be getting several people's money's worth!

Biking

So it was a lovely day here so I decided the bike and I should make the first trip of the season to the library. Hubby had a friend over to work on his bike so I had the pedals changed out on mine. A friend is loaning me his old cage type pedals. We swapped them out and I loaded up and was off.

I quickly realized that I had not used the special "biking" area of my bum for the winter. My body was quick to point out we had not done this in quite a while. It certainly makes you aware of areas the you do not want to be aware of. I don't think I chose the right shoes either. My feet were yelling at me half way there. Something about new pedals and not feeling the same. Oh I pulled of a halfer run too. I could not get the left pedal to flip over so I could slide my foot in so I decided to ride that way. I figured it was safer that way while I'm learning the new pedals. Easier to just step down with one foot rather than having to figure out how to kick out of the cage while riding. One skill at a time.

I think I went at a good clip for the first ride of the season. 10-14 miles per hour was good enough to get me to the library before it closed. I do really love the feeling of biking. Such freedom, at least I feel free when I'm not surrounded by traffic.

The funny thing is that I have a beautiful blue bike but all my accessories (helmut and road ID band) are red. Does that mean my next bike will be red or am I just tragically unhip? I am planning to knit long cycling socks in blue but now I think I may have to make them red to match the rest of my gear. But you know how difficult it is to match shaded of red.

I have learned that it is very important what books you choose when you ride there rather than drive there. Your books go on your back in the first scenario, and in the back seat in the second scenario. Weight and bulk become my deciding factor. No War and Peace for me this visit. Well actually no Russian literature at all this visit, they seem to write a lot when telling a story.

Also I don't pick up any "just for the fun of it" books, as I never really get around to reading these books while they are in my house. You know library books that talk about subjects that you're mildly interested in, but not enough to really go out and buy the book, Poker, gardening, various cookbooks. Hubby just gives me a look when I pick up books like that. "Really honey you want to learn about fly fishing? Are you really going to read that?" Usually I do not, the book just has a nice vacation in my house for a month with no one bothering it. I think I am trying to make up for lost time when I did not have access to a good library. At least now I'm not paying late fees anymore, so it really does not cost us anything, other than taxes but we were paying those anyways.

Oh I forgot to tell you my current book on CD in the car is The Masque of the Black Tulip by Lauren Willig. I am enjoying it more than I thought I would, which is quite a bit. It is the second in a series but I have not read the first one. The story is moving along at a good clip so that makes me happy.

Happy reading and biking all!