Happy Birthday to Me

Today is the day that I start pushing 40. Actually, I don't start pushing until 3:47 p.m. when I officially turn 39. I just checked my profile on this blog and saw, in print, my age as 39 for the 1st time. I have seen it on cards for the past couple of days, but the blog profile is the first "official" announcement. I am also wearing my special birthday socks. My mother sent me this pair of socks for my birthday when I was away my freshman year of college (1987) and I have worn them every birthday since. This is their 20th year. They are soooo 80s, aqua and pink, but they are my special birthday socks and unlikely to wear out at one use per year.

Fountainhead Discussion Blogging

Sally's comment raises a very interesting point about the actual plans of the Librarian Boulevard Book Club. This whole group reading project started from my desire to catch up on some reading I should have done years ago. After all, you expect your doctor to be healthier and your personal trainer to be in better shape than you. I don't want my patrons to feel their librarian isn't well read. So reading War and Peace was personal and Smashler jumped on the bandwagon and then she felt she should read All Quiet on the Western Front, so I did too, to help motivate her. Now we have The Fountainhead to read and Sally, at another library location wants to join us. We have the opportunity to try out a book discussion in blog format. Both Sally and I lead book discussions at our respective locations and this will give us the chance to see how an online discussion would work. I think we can all read at our own paces and post comments as we see fit. I doubt there will be any spoilers in this book. Now that we'll do this online, anyone else want to join?

Viewing the Internet at Work

At my job I am online all day wherever I am sitting. We all are. Last year I learned about a Web site that streams live video from a game preserve in South Africa. The camera is on 24 hours a day and pans 360 degrees looking for animals, even at night with night vision. We call it the "Watering Hole" but it is really Africam. We have seen zebras, elephants, monkeys, all sorts of antelopes, giraffes, and even lions. If someone sees something awesome, emails are sent or calls are made from desk to desk. One day someone in the "the back" called the Reference Desk to say, "Elephant at the watering hole." Our on-call librarian, scrambling thinking it was some sort of emergency code she didn't know, looked surprised as the others at the desk simply maximized their Africam windows to gawk at the elephant half a world away. The next best moment occured as a group of librarians stared closely at one computer monitor behind the Reference Desk. One of the librarians, a female no less, finally proclaimed, "look at the rack on that one!" The view, of course, was a herd of gazelles. Someone almost always has the site up or minimized. You never know what you will see. It's basically nerd porn. The Web site, is out of Canada and is pretty nifty. They have 4 different nature cams. We also have been keeping an eye on the Grizzly cam on Grouse Mountain and today I found the Eaglecam up and running. The other cool thing about this Web site is that there is a music feature that plays indie artists from around the world. I found my favorite new artist here. He is a Finnish DJ named Slow. His Web site is really cool with awesome features and his album Pronto has become my favorite album.

Birthday News

Tonight officially kicks off my birthday celebration, albeit a week early. I admit that I have been having a rough time with this one. If you have not checked my profile, I will turn 39 next Saturday. Actually, my turning 39 is completely independent of your actions with respect to my profile. My 30th birthday and my 35th birthday seem like they were just yesterday. The 4 years since 35 have been terrific, just fast. Plus, I don't know if I feel almost 40 or if I know what that should be. I remember when other people, adults I knew, turned 40 and they seemed much more adulty. Perhaps 40 is very different now. There are 3 of us turning 39 this year. ScheduleMaster already tumbled. So far she is doing okay. Maybe by next April I'll be so used to the idea that 40 won't be such a shock. For now it's just really weird.

Final Answer

I did what any librarian in a quandary would do...a literature search and I believe that, despite receiving full support to switch to Atlas Shrugged, we will stick with The Fountainhead. In the course of my search I read a review (this link will only work to those of you reading this blog inside an LCLS library, sorry, membership has its privileges) of a book devoted exclusively to The Fountainhead called The Fountainhead: An American Novel that made me want to read that book as well. So...The Fountainhead. Final Answer.

Rand Revisited

I was looking at the amazon.com listings for The Fountainhead to get a better idea of which editions we have in the library and I realized that I never took into account Atlas Shrugged. Maybe we should read that. The amazon.com book description states, "Atlas Shrugged is the 'second most influential book for Americans today' after the Bible, according to a joint survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club." My feeling was that we should read Ayn Rand and The Fountainhead just popped into my head. I never even thought of Atlas Shrugged before the decision was made. I emailed the knitters to seek their opinions.

The Ayns Have It

After a little discussion over knitting this afternoon (I was not knitting, but rather organizing a binder) we came up with the next book for the Librarian Boulevard Book Club...The Fountainhead. This is one of those books that you might feel like you should read and probably have not. At least that's how we felt about it. Of course, we can't start until Smashler finishes War and Peace because then she still has to read All Quiet but she is anticipating an early May wrap up with Tolstoy. The plan is a May start on The Fountainhead.