September 21, 1999

I finally got a library card yesterday. It's really amazing that I've been in this city for going on four months now, and I just now managed to get a library card. When I was a kid I practically lived in the library.

I remember that it was one of my favorite things to do. The children's library was great. The carpet had all these games painted on it, like hopscotch and giant checkers, and the shelves were all just my size. It was wonderful. I think I must have read at least half of the books in the children's library by the time I graduated to the adult library. (Doesn't that sound sort of like a pornography shop? "The Adult Library".)

Anyway, as you might have guessed from my email address, I love books. I used to read just about constantly. The Internet has changed that, somewhat. I was talking to Keith the other night.

Me: I dunno what I used to do before the Internet.

Keith: ...?

Me: In my free time, I don't remember what I used to do with myself. I must have done something.

Keith: I think you used to read a lot.

Keith: Well, a lot MORE, anyway.

Me: (chagrined) Yeah... I guess I did.

It's true, I used to read vast amounts of books before I went to college and discovered the Internet. I still read a lot, but it doesn't take up every minute of my spare time like it used to. In a way, I miss it.

It was partly from nostalgia and partly from a real desire to get some new books that I went to the library last night. It was exciting, getting a new library card. (Oh, the places I'll go!) They limited me to five books for the first month I have the card, so I spent a careful hour wandering through the stacks, familiarizing myself with the layout, picking out my five books.

When I came home, Keith was still at the club and wasn't due home for another three or so hours, so I sat down to read. I was just finishing up Fantastic Voyage when he came home, and I rudely refused to talk to him until I was done with the last twelve pages. He didn't mind, though, when he realized what I was doing.

We'd had a discussion about Fantastic Voyage earlier in the week. I can't remember how it started, but the gist was that we couldn't remember whether somebody got eaten by a white blood cell or not. Keith seemed to remember that somebody had, but he thought he might be confusing it with the movie. I haven't seen the movie, but I HAVE read Fantastic Voyage II, and I thought I might be confusing it with that. So when I was at the library I picked up a copy of the original Fantastic Voyage (it's by Isaac Asimov, if you're curious) so I could read it again and answer the question definitively.

(FANTASTIC VOYAGE SPOILERS IN THIS PARAGRAPH) Yes, somebody DOES get eaten by a white blood cell. It's towards the end. The bad guy, who turns out to be the saboteur, punches out the other guy on the ship while everybody is out in the bloodstream lasering the clot. He shoves him out the airlock (considerately putting a diving suit on him first) and then aims the ship for a bunch of nerve endings, trying to damage the guy's brain. The doctor with the laser then shoots the ship with it, and the ship crashes into I forget what. Then a white blood cell comes along and engulfs it, complete with crew member inside. Everybody else escapes through a tear duct, and they manage to lure the white blood cell close enough that they get IT out too, so that when they all expand they won't explode the guy's body.

Whew! Did that make sense? At any rate, we were happy to have the mystery solved.

In other news. Is it possible to actually put on your contact lens inside out? They told me how to tell if it's inside out while I was at the doctor's office, but I thought they were telling me because it would be impossible to put it on inside out. Then this morning I had a lot of trouble getting the right lens in, and at work it fell out and I had to put it in again, and I'm wondering if maybe I had it inside out. Maybe I'm just a klutz.

In my opinion, the contact lenses are worth all the trouble. I'll get used to them soon, and it's just so nice not having to see through scratched-up murky glasses. It's great to be able to wear sunglasses on the drive home, too. When I come up over the hill before our turn-off, the sun is always blinding right around five or six PM. Now with my new sunglasses, I don't have to worry anymore!

Life is grand.

Back       Next       Journal Home