Back to the Library

We finally made it back to the library, paid an embarrassingly large fine, and promptly took out 48 more books.

 It really had been a while, as you can tell since one of the overdue books was The First Thanksgiving. 

Still, it was less than 50, so I considered that a win (although, I also didn't bring two kids, so maybe that's cheating).

At any rate, my poor book starved children were enchanted by the stacks of new books: there was nothing but blissful reading and, "Hey, look at this!" for hours when we got home.

Crazy Day

On Wednesday, we started doing our usual Wednesday field trips again.  This time, we went to the BMI.  No, not the place to measure your Mass Body Index, we went to the Baltimore Museum of Industry!

This is always a fun trip.  The museum is set up as an indoor town where you wander through buildings (stores, canneries, garment factories, print shops, and smithies) looking at (and trying out!) the machines used in different places.

Here are the Zoomlians at the port (harbor) section.

My favorite was the bakery, where we saw a gigantic rolling pin used to cut out donuts.  The Zoomlians preferred the TV sound stage where they staged a talent show the like of which I have never seen...

Then it was off to the bizarre alien playground.

I don't know who designed this, but they were a twisted genius. 

And I'm pretty sure they were not human.

But it's a great place to visit!

They have this ring thing.  It's exactly like a merry go round (except there's no center, you can't sit down, it's on an angle and, if you have more than one person on at a time, you are likely to kill each other)

And they have a slide like object (the blue thing extending to the left) that is convex, grooved and without sides.  It also wobbles.

My kids, being Zoomlians, have a fabulous time!

I think what's fun about it is that there is no obvious, per-determined way to play with the stuff, so the kids just make stuff up. Also, it has not been "child-safed," so we have a distinctive thrill (right before the "Aiiieeeeee! THUMP).

Next, it was off to the library where I reached my long cherished dream of escaping the library with less than 50 books (47!), mostly because it was a long walk back to Blue Streak (parked at the playground).  My true dream is to escape with less than 50 books in less than an hour, but we must take our victories where we may...

I should dream for all that AND finding all the books the first time I try to return them, but even my imagination can't stretch that far!

Then it was home to make dinner and collapse in a book besotted heap.

Culling the Herd

No, the herd is not the kids! The herd is the crowd of nearly 4000 books in my house. Some mind their manners in the library, some jostle in the assorted book shelves in other rooms, but many perch insolently from any horizontal surface they can find, daring us to find more shelf space.

It was time to thin the herd.

You can't toss any book that any child, adult or near relation ever loved. You can't get rid of a book that might be hard to find again if, say, your 6th child develops a fascination with wombats. You can toss a book that was loved to death, but only after ordering a replacement... Really it's a ticklish job. Home schooling makes it all worse: you can't toss a book of superior educational value. Did I mention that we buy library tape in bulk?

This messy business took most of the day, but I think we may find ourselves some 300 books or so leaner. On the other hand, the library looks like a herd of cattle stampeded through it.

We ought to be embarrassed by our, er, lack of restraint when it comes to books, but really I had no shame... until I realized that we were taking out 1000 items a year from our public library since we didn't really have enough books of our own...