I stayed up WAY too late last night study­ing pro­gram­ming. Yes, for fun. That’s my idea of fun, any­way. I’ve been yawn­ing all day as a result, and I should already be in bed tonight because I need to be up ear­ly tomor­row. So this will be brief.

I’ve been enjoy­ing cor­re­spon­dence with a dear old friend over the last few days. Isn’t love­ly how, with some peo­ple, you can be out of touch for a decade and pick right up where you left off as if no time at all had passed?

I got to vis­it both a book­store and a library today. I’m a hap­py bib­lio­phile 🙂

Plinky asked, “When was the last time you vis­it­ed a library?”

Library books.

About a month ago, when I renewed my Gwin­nett Coun­ty library card so I could check out dig­i­tal items from that library. Dekalb Coun­ty’s library does­n’t have e‑books yet, and they make up 99% of my book read­ing habits these days.

I adore libraries. I have good mem­o­ries of them that go back to being 5 years old or so and vis­it­ing a Cobb Coun­ty library branch that had a play­ground as well as a good chil­dren’s sec­tion. Mom was will­ing to take us there pret­ty fre­quent­ly over the next three years, since the books kept me busy and the play­ground kept my sis­ter, and even­tu­al­ly my broth­er, busy.

One of the first things I do when mov­ing to a new place is find the clos­est library and get a card. Any time I see a new library, I want to stop, even if I can’t get a card. I’m just curi­ous as to what THIS one will hold, what it’s like inside. I adore the peace and qui­et, the rev­er­ence for learn­ing in libraries. They’re love­ly retreats, but most could use more com­fy chairs.

The NaBloPo­Mo prompt for today:
What was your favourite part about return­ing to school?

That’s not an easy ques­tion. It was­n’t cool to acknowl­edge being hap­py to return to school each year, of course, so while I was glad, I did­n’t real­ly acknowl­edge it to myself. As a result, it is more dif­fi­cult to access those mem­o­ries.

Even though I knew there would be end­less amounts of review each year, I was always excit­ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of learn­ing some­thing new. After we left Gads­den, I was able to look for­ward to school library access, too. (The ele­men­tary school I attend­ed in Alaba­ma did­n’t even have a library, and back then, the Gwin­nett Coun­ty Pub­lic Library was­n’t the award win­ning facil­i­ty that it is now.)

I also had a secret hope that maybe this would be the year when I would meet some­one like me. Some­one else who did­n’t fit in. Some­one who pre­ferred books to most peo­ple, who either did­n’t go to church or was only there because his or her par­ents forced the issue, who would be will­ing to dis­cuss the ques­tions brought up by all the con­tra­dic­tions in the Bible and var­i­ous church’s teach­ings (and how preach­ers and oth­er church lead­ers actu­al­ly lived). Some­one who did­n’t think it was bad to be intel­li­gent, maybe even some­one who would admit to day­dream­ing and mak­ing up new sto­ries about peo­ple they’d read about, or com­plete­ly new sto­ries of their own. The kind of peo­ple you did­n’t run into just because your par­ents bought hous­es in the same neigh­bor­hood, or went to the same church, or worked for the same com­pa­ny.

I did meet some­one who became a dear friend in the first week of my Junior year, on the bus, in fact. She even lived in my neigh­bor­hood! I con­tin­ue to be amazed by the fact that I said some­thing to her first, as she’s far more extro­vert­ed than I have ever been. Dorothea is a trea­sure, and I will always be thank­ful for meet­ing her.