Garden of Thought

Into a new chapter

2018-02-05T03:54:56Z

Sure been a busy year thus far and here we are only getting going! House repairs are continuing as I have new carpet coming in this week (the last bit of the damage from last years flooding) - it's meant a lot of furniture moving on my part but it will be SO nice to have it done as it will essentially complete that level of the house. I've started looking at real estate listings in the area we are targeting to move to just to get a feel for what is out there.

I got to dance again for a friend's church for New Years services which was grand fun, and now I'm signed up to dance at an event in April as well. I was once told that if you can just start dancing onstage it won't seem so fearsome and I think I'm getting there. It's still kind of nerve-wracking but at least I'm not legitimately terrified anymore.

I've just finished up my official time at my church, all I have left is handing off the library things to a lady taking it on (so weird to give up my rubber stamp with the church library info on it), singing up front one more time and throwing my peacock-themed 'farewell' party in a couple of weeks. I'm pulling out all the stops for the party, it's a ton of work but I'm loving it, wish I could invite my online ladies to come if y'all were just closer.

comments

Wet Library and other Adventures

2017-02-11T06:39:42Z

Where yesterday was spent in a never-ending cycle of battling the incoming rainwater, today was a never-ending packing, hauling and moving furniture to pull up the carpet. 36 u-haul boxes of books later we wrangled the bookcases into the garage and then started in on furnishings. More to do tomorrow. Every muscle in my body aches and I had to crawl up the stairs to go to bed, this is ridiculous.

Wherever I go in the future, I hope it will NOT have a basement. Or be by a river. Or under a waterfall. Or in a fishbowl.

comments

Finally got to see Enemy of the World

2016-12-08T04:32:18Z

AAAAAAaaaaa! My library got the dvd of Enemy of the World - I've just seen it all the way through (twice!) and it's...

;lsakejfd;lsjf;lsajflsjfdalkjf;ls! !!! ! :-D Yippie! Woo! Jamie is made of awesome! Two is made of Extreme Awesomesauce even as a bad guy! Waaaawoooo yip yip! Victoria is adorbs! Yoicks! Wooooo!

Or something like that.

I want to purchase a copy now, this is just lovely stuff. We expect an ice storm tomorrow, so I may just curl up with it for one more go before I have to give it back.

comments

The edges are getting blurry

2016-06-19T15:06:17Z

Hmm - combo of hubby out of work and kids all prepping to get on their own, kind of feels like a transition in the making. I can feel my deeper roots pulling up, the edges of my routine becoming just a wee, teensy bit blurry. We'd thought of downsizing our home in about five years, perhaps it will simply be moved up the timeline a bit.

Started fixing up my church library to slowly get it up to snuff for eventual handoff, also re-painting the church parking lot for maybe my last time as I only re-do it every 3-4 years.

Having a garage sale in July too, which is a good start in that whole process. Sort of like drawing a comb over my household to get out the tangles, amazing the things I have and don't need anymore (or never really needed in the first place). I'll probably be maundering about that here from time to time over the next couple years. If I must move, a slow and gentle drifting from the dock and an amble down the river is always preferred to a tsunami.

comments

A Bookless Future seems unlikely

2014-01-03T20:22:51Z

I noticed a news article about a 'library' in New York that was entirely bookless - they just had displays of e-books and allowed checkout of readers loaded with five books apiece. They were touting it as The Future, naturally. Like The Future is always supposed to be a *good* thing, and we should all accept it will inevitably come. Implication being that if we don't accept The Future we are backwards, knuckle-dragging 8-track listeners who still think digital watches are a pretty cool thing.

As for me, I see a phrase like "bookless library" and my entire inner being goes "Nope nope nope nope nope nope. Nuh-uh. Not gonna happen."

Too many strikes against the e-readers - like not being able to read with half of one eye open and the rest of your face buried in a pillow. And your brain processes the information on a lit screen differently than when it is on a printed page. Buying them for .25 at a garage sale. Reading an obscure story from the early 1900s that can't be found any other way. And then there's batteries (or lack thereof). And the scent and feel of books. And. And. And.

*hugs (paper) book* Nope nope nope.

comments

Repairing history with glue

2012-09-01T04:46:15Z

I'm gradually working my way through a stack of history textbooks for my daughter's high school, trying to help them eke out another year or two of use and abuse by students before they fall apart, they're so expensive to replace and it's a private school so every penny counts. Nice to have my somewhat obscure super-power of repairing books come in handy from time to time, though I can't do fancy stuff like complete rebinding or restitching, sadly - wish I had the tools for that, this is more like Book Glue, Tape and Contact Paper 101 with occasional bouts of scissor work and forcing books into rube goldberg contraptions I've positioned with fat rubber bands and bricks to keep them in their girdle until the glue dries their girlish figure back where it belongs.

*snip, tape, fold*

Nice thing is this counts toward my volunteer hours for this year. What do you do for volunteer work? Do you have schools or organizations that require some of you?

comments

Tunnel, comma, Light at End Of

2011-07-23T16:17:22Z

As of today, I have finally finished getting 1300 of my surviving library titles onto LibraryThing - all I have left is one bag full of new stuff to enter, some tweaking to do and a fat handful of dvds then I can get to work on the Other Things like shelf labels and finding a suitable new book return bin. The pastor wanted the new church library up and running in time for our open house in Sept. and here it is not even quite August! *pats self on back*

Gads, this has completely eaten my summer. Was supposed to have a book review written up for a meeting today and I'm just...not. I'm taking a huge vase full of flowers I cut from my yard this morning, however, which should provide sufficient positive distraction that I don't feel guilty. (Sorry, I didn't get that review done - here, smell these roses! Aren't they pretty?)

Gone to the beach this next week (yaaaaay), then I intend to start at least putting in some serious Lurk Hours to catch up on my dear flister's bloggy lives, I've missed you!

comments

Christian book recs?

2011-06-01T14:03:41Z

As a part of rebuilding and giving my church library a new life, I would love to have a short list of really good books to add gradually over the remainder of this year, though I haven't any budget I'm always an optimist. ;-)

While I have some favorites myself, what I really want is *other* people's favorites (fiction or non-fiction). SO - My dear flisters who are *also* either Christian or have encountered an exceptional title that had a Christian message or focus, go ahead and let me know what they may be - especially if they are newer works as the last time we really had nice, new titles added was over a decade ago, though timeless classics are also boffo as they never get out of date. We're non-denominational and I keep a variety of doctrinal views available.

Rec, rec away!

comments

In which Library Thing is Win

2011-05-30T03:08:25Z

Hope everyone's Memorial Day weekend is a good one - cold and wet here (what else? Someone apparently forgot to pay the Sunshine bill this spring).

Watching over the very last of my grade-school library being boxed up, found three schools that were happy to give them a good home - doing better with it as time passes, stiff upper lip and all that, and I've made some progress in sorting things out with the tiny number of people who have expressed the opinion that churches no longer NEED libraries anyway, as "everyone just looks things up online nowdays". (To a librarian, them's fightin' woids...)

I'm hoping to have the new church library up and running by September.

It was about this point that a Bright rainbow of Library Happiness came in - www.librarything.com

BookishSquee! Oh bless the fellow who came up with this - I am so incredibly tickled with it! Got a lifetime account set up for my church, and one for me as well, added a random handful of books I had near my computer to give it a test drive and am SO pleased with the layout and ease of use and... everything! I love how you can even note what you are currently reading and find others reading the same book and talk about it to make a book discussion group. Coolness and delight!

I can even use the direct link to the collection on our church website to direct people to it and they won't need a password or anything to browse from wherever they are. *boing*

comments

Library amoeba

2011-05-11T19:05:18Z

The meetings are over - my library is being split into two like an amoeba, with the preschool library downstairs and the adult/teen interest and church reference library upstairs - the room upstairs is a classroom that I can only have two walls of. At least it's something, rather than having it entirely axed. I only have two weeks until they start coming in to move walls and re-do electrical work for the food cupboard's freezers.

I'm wiped. Taking a break from packing books and such - I've found two private schools who will be taking the lion's share of the fiction I have.... I've managed to spare one bookcase's worth of fiction for kids and adults, the rest is being boxed to go away next week. Still don't know what to do about the nonfiction, so I'm throwing myself into what I *can* do for now.

My big READ poster with Yo Yo Ma holding "Goodnight Moon" is going to the music department of a college - nice to find that a good home, it was one of my favorites. I said goodbye to my collection of soft stuffies for the kids to cuddle while they were read to as well, the beanbag chairs are going to the children's ministry.... etc.

Was doing pretty well until about halfway through, clutching an armload of "Hardy Boys" when I suddenly just burst into tears and had to go regain composure. I'm not particularly concerned with the Hardy Boys, so the timing kind of made me laugh at it after. It also helps, in a weird way, to know there are other people out there who are dealing with things far worse than just having to give up books... I'm trying to keep this in perspective.

Off to measure the classroom to see what I can do with it.

comments

Death of a Library

2011-05-09T03:11:20Z

It's been a hard year for a lot of people and our church hasn't been exempt - one of the things going on at this point is we found out the old grade school people, who already caused us so much misery in the past that ended in our abrupt and traumatic closure of the school, have come back to haunt us. Turns out they never completed the permits for their two classroom modulars.

Now the county refuses to let us keep the modulars unless we pay a stunning $90,000 and "bring them up to code" and dig a drainage pond. This is a number so far into the stratosphere for our little congregation that it's simply impossible - especially as we've been scraping to just try replacing our aging furnace this year (it was used back when it was installed...in 1967...). We're now looking for someone who will take the modulars off our hands for free if they will do the work to move them because we can't even afford to move them.

Because of this, our very active Food Cupboard that feeds so many people in this community that was filling those modulars has to move into the main building. And the only suitable room for it is... my library.

So I'm bracing myself to lose most of the library that I spent the past 15 years building and maintaining.

I expect we'll keep the preschool books by making a little 'preschool' library among the preschool classrooms, and I think I can keep the adult/reference stuff in a room that has built in bookshelves that aren't being used. The rest....well, I just have to keep repeating to myself that feeding people is more important than books that are, truthfully, only occasionally being read. It's important. I admit I'm still somewhat in shock, but I'm trying to roll with the punches. Though yes, this really hurts.

No matter what, we have a heck of a job ahead this summer, as neither books nor refrigerators nor bookcases nor cases of applesauce are lightweight objects and we've a limited number of people with strong backs. The county is only giving us until July. :-(

comments