Under a Blue Moon

I was going to title this post bibliothèque and then began feeling like it sounded really familiar.  Yep – I already have a post with that title.  I’m starting to plagiarize myself.

I went to the Granite Bay library this afternoon and signed up for a library card.  We’ve only lived here for six years (hey!  Tomorrow will be our six year anniversary of moving here) and I’ve driven past it about a million times.  What prompted today’s visit was a hard look at my budget and trying to figure out where in the heck all my money goes.  Apparently it mostly goes to heating and cooling this house but Barnes & Noble get their fair share too.

So as long as I don’t rack up overdue fines my plan for curtailing my reading spendthrift ways should work.  During my childhood we (my family) were pretty much banned from using the public libraries because we loved reading voraciously but returning books ~ not so much.  It would be mortifying to try to check out a book and have the librarian peer over her glasses and announce "Oh.  One of the Shyne girls…" with a withering look.

I actually tried to run my own library when I was about eight.  My best friend and I gathered up all our old Little Golden books and made pockets with checkout cards and invited all the neighborhood children to check them out.  I think we lasted about two days before our inventory ran out and we abandoned the idea. 

Remember how when you used to check out a book the librarian would scan the card somehow and when she slipped it into the pocket it would be warm? 

I have always felt very at home in a library.  When I was 15 we moved across the country in the middle of the school year.  I knew exactly no one at the new school and after one or two desperately lonely lunch hours in the cafeteria I took to going to the library and eating my lunch there, getting lost in the stacks of books.  I don’t think I was supposed to be eating in there but the librarian took pity on me.  For four months she was the only friend I had at that new school.

When I was 19 years old I took a summer job at the Falconer library at Stanford University.  I can add understanding the Dewey Decimal system to my list of talents.  I would occasionally get lent out to one of the other libraries on campus when they were short on help.  Once I was dispatched to the engineering library and was given the task of calling a list of professors who were the worst offenders of checking out books and not returning them.  The first person on the list?  My very own father – professor of Material Sciences. 

Stanford has this creepy system of tunnels under the campus where you can go down into the stacks (creepy places themselves down in the basement) and enter a tunnel where you seem to walk for miles and then come up all the way across campus in another library.  I hated having to do that.  I was sure I would get lost and wander for the rest of my life trying to find the light of day.

So I have two new books and a book on CD that I checked out today.  I need everyone that reads this to email me in 2 1/2 weeks and remind me to return them.

Photos courtesy of istockphoto

*I’m hoping that says "Japanese goodness"

My niece just got back from Tokyo and, as is typical of her, came back bearing gifts.  I recieved Plum wine and a fabulous sheet of chiyogami. 

I love Japanese paper – I like to take just a smidgen of it and add it to a plainer wrapped package.  Kind of like an obi on a kimono.  It can be a bit dear so I tend to be miserly with it.

Sara said that there was a shop next door to the hotel they stayed in that was eight stories of paper and craft goods!  It was so overwhelming that she had to go back four times because she couldn’t make a decision the first three times she went.  I would go to Japan for that store alone.

This online shop has a good assortment.  I haven’t shopped there before but I’m thinking it’s probably my blogging duty to make a purchase and report back.

Then I’ll have to give someone a present….

To borrow a phrase ~ and from a few other bloggers who have had similar posts.  It really is the little things that make me happy.  The touches that just add a little bit of pretty to an ordinary thing.

I keep a little vase right my kitchen sink for a fresh bouquet of basil.  That’s the entire purpose of this particular vase.  I can pinch off a few leaves as I need them and it makes the kitchen smell really good at the same time.  I think the basil might last a bit longer in the fridge but it just isn’t as lovely.

This idea I actually did cop from Martha’s ‘It’s a good thing’ section of her magazine.  Probably about 8 years ago – maybe longer.  How long has her magazine been around anyway?  Take a pretty bottle, add a pourer (you can find them in bar section of a kitchen supply store) and you have a much better looking container for dish soap.   

This next one is really more practical but I do love the little butter holder.  I bought it at Crate and Barrel and it holds a half of cube of butter – just the right amount.  Plus if it gets hot and the butter gets really soft it can’t ooze out anywhere. 

I keep meaning to get another one for margarine (since someone in the house prefers it to butter) and etch each with an "M" and a "B", respectively.   Note to self:  Add ‘buy etching cream’ to todo list.

I do like sparkly, glass things – my sister thinks I was a magpie in a past life, drawn as I am to shiny things.

Thank you for all the lovely anniversary wishes – I really, truly am blessed.  And thank you for the kind words about the photograph – oh for the days of only one chin.  Where did that jawline go, I wonder?