Sunday, July 13, 2008

Free Pass to Awesomeness


Yesterday, after a year and a half of living in Salem NH, Steve and I finally went to the Kelley Library and got ourselves library cards.

I don't exactly know what took me so long to get my hind quarters over there and get one. Growing up, my mom made sure that one of the first things we did when we moved to a new town was get library cards. I remember when we lived in Methuen and would go every 3 weeks on a Saturday (the lending period was 3 weeks) and refresh our book stock. My mom would get Stephen King and Danielle Steel books, my dad would get a couple of Louis L'Amour books, I would pull all sorts of books out from all sorts of genres, I don't remember what my siblings would get but they got lots of books too. During the summers in the Children's Room, my mom would make sure we had our checklists in hand for our summer books. Buy a book for high school summer reading? No way! We'd get it from the library. Missed "Anne of Green Gables" on its yearly PBS viewing? No worries! We'd get it from the library.

In college, I discovered that my library card wasn't just good at the Nevins Memorial Library (Methuen's town library). The Nevins is part of the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium, and my little card was good at all sorts of libraries - including the Chelmsford and Lowell libraries, which were right near campus. Need to read "Ethan Frome" for a literary criticism class? Need to read a million youth fiction novels for a youth fiction class? I didn't buy a single one; instead, I frequented the Lowell and Chelmsford public libraries.

I've always enjoyed and had a fondness for the library. For some reason, though, I just procrastinated getting a card when we came to Salem. Maybe it was because of all the books that I already had lined up to read and the Netflix account we signed up for. I foolishly thought "Library? Pshaw! I've got plenty!". But then Kimberly was getting all these awesome crochet and knitting books from the Chelmsford library, and Kristin was talking about potentially joining a book club at the Salem library.

I knew it was time. And I needed a quiet place to study anyways.

I filled out the form and the nice librarian lady gave me a packet chock full of information and a little white and green card - my free pass to awesomeness. After I did some reading for school, I went ahead and poked around. I got the following list of goodies:

- 2 audiobooks: George Carlin's "More Napalm and Silly Putty" and the autobiography of The Pythons (of Monty Python fame).
- A cookbook: Grill Pan Cook Book. This came on the tails of Steve and I discussing that I haven't cooked on my grill pan in a while. How convenient.
- 2 CD's: One from Michael Hedges (a guitarist that we became more interested in after seeing our friend Tony perform) and one from pianist Keiko Matsui. We've listened to the Michael Hedges CD and it's awesome, and will be checking out the other one today in our travels. I don't know which CDs I got, and I forgot them in the car.

I am so excited about having a library card again.

So here's my final thought: Everyone needs to get a library card. There are so many things at the local library just waiting to be discovered, and it's FREE!!!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was just thinking that I need to check out the local library here as well. Granted, I have enough books to keep me occupied for awhile but it's still nice to go and see what this library offers.

kSm said...

Yay Yellie!!! Welcome to the club. I heart libraries. If you ever want company, I could always use a new book ;-)

Maggie Moo said...

*sigh* I SO wish I loved libraries. I LOVE LOVE LOVE books WAY too much but I just don't like libraries. The smell, the thought of finding someone else's hair or food stains in a book...it kind of skeeves me out. Plus, I really love opening the new book and hearing the spine crack. *sigh*

On another note, AOGG was on tv today!!!! I love it so much, but also hate that it makes me cry like, every 5 minutes....