Happy Tuesday, dear readers! It is final exam week on my campus so I could definitely use some diverting fun today. So I thought I’d share a few interesting things that have come over the feeds in the last few weeks. Friday, I’ll be back to the usual news and notes from the library.

The official start to spring is this Friday and I’m totally looking forward to gardening this year, even though most of my yard is in the shade. I was excited to see this post by Lifehacker on the Top 10 Ways to Get Your Dream Garden Ready this Year. I know a lot of the country is still covered with snow (if you could send some to California, I’d be very grateful), but soon we’ll be able to garden and that makes me smile.

I wanted to share this post of photographs of timepieces with you, too. Somehow it made sense in my head as we are counting down the time to spring planting and also are now on Daylight Savings Time. Besides, sometimes it is just nice to view some beautiful photographs.

Also, as the days get longer, we have more daylight after work to do outdoor activities. I love walking and hiking after work, especially for the ability to find calmness after a busy day. Therefore, I thought this short piece on the importance of letting your mind wander to reset your ability to focus was especially appropriate this time of year as many of us try to cram even more into our days. Yay for nature walks!

I hope these pieces gave you a nice break or inspired you to get away from your phone or computer and take a walk. I’ll be back soon with more news and notes. Allons-y!

Happy Thursday, dear readers! Just a short post today on one of the weirdest and best experiences I’ve had at the reference desk so far in my time as a librarian. Yesterday afternoon I was on the desk and had a student come over and tell me that there was a turtle walking by the windows in our first floor study area. My reaction was, “Really? A turtle?” And she said yes so what’s a reference librarian to do, but leap into action by getting a box and going turtle wrangling.

Luckily, it was an adorable little one who easily fit into the box. (And we decided was more of a tortoise than a turtle.)

Turtle in the Library

But what to do now that we had the little one? No one answered in the affirmative when I asked students who were studying close by where we found the turtle so it was off to my colleagues in Access Services who usually have the answer to everything. Our Access Services Manager was up for making, as a colleagues wrote, “Best.Announcement.Ever.” over our PA system and asking if anyone had lost a pet turtle to come to the desk and describe the turtle so we could return him.

Happy ending to the story, the owner rushed over after hearing the announcement and the turtle found his way home, leaving us all to wonder, why did she have a turtle in the library in the first place?

Just another day at the reference desk. Allons-y!

Happy Tuesday, dear readers! I hope your week is off to a good start. Today I just want to share a couple of interesting things to provide a bit of fun for your day.

First, clocks seem to be ubiquitous in libraries. We have so many clocks around our library and none of them seem to tell the same time. Makes for interesting coordination of shift changes at our public service points. I think if our clocks were as pretty and clever as this clock, we wouldn’t mind: clock’s hour hand rings its own hourly chime.

Also, while I can’t see this fitting into most libraries, except maybe that one with the demonstration kitchen featured in the last issue of American Libraries, an aquarium kitchen island is still fantastically cool.

Hope you have a wonderful week, full of getting things done and some fun along the way. I’ll be back soon with some more news, notes, and writing. Allons-y!

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you had a lovely week and have a nice weekend planned. Instead of my usual news and notes this Friday, I just have a few photos to share. At the beginning of this week, we were down in Monterey and Carmel for a few days of vacation. It was beautiful on the coast. Of course we stopped by the public library in Carmel, but mainly enjoyed walking along the coast. So here are some photos to get you into a relaxed mood for the weekend. Summer vacation season might be over, but that doesn’t mean we have to abandon summer’s more relaxed mood. Enjoy.

tree on 17-Mile Drive

beach boardwalk

beautiful Central Coast of California

Have a wonderful weekend, dear readers. I’ll be back next week with some more news and notes. Allons-y!

Happy Tuesday, dear readers! I hope your week is going well. I have some lovely things to share with you today to help inspire your Tuesday workday. Today, let’s look at some beautiful, artistic, inspiring things. Let’s get to it.

I’ve always been fascinated by stained glass. As a kid, I thought it was absolutely magical and when I found out that my eight grade English teacher created stained glass projects, she became the coolest teacher by far in my eyes. So I was obviously taken with this Lord of the Rings stained glass lamp. It’s amazing and well-worth the click-though to the entire image gallery. Wouldn’t some literary stained glass lamps look lovely in your library? So much better than overhead, fluorescent lighting.

Also, although it sometimes seems weird to be sharing a lot about the printed word and handwriting on a blog, I couldn’t resist sharing the ink drop round-up by the Well-Appointed Desk. Such beautiful fountain pen ink colors. And who could resist the Ink Drop from the Goulet Pen Company? A monthly fountain pen ink subscription, sampling service? It’s like Birchbox for people who love fountain pens and writing!

I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. I’ll be back soon with more news and notes. Allons-y!

Happy Tuesday, dear readers! I hope you had a lovely weekend and have a good week planned. Today I have a trio of videos for your enjoyment today. They have nothing really in common, except that I found them interesting and fun and I thought you would, too.

First up, is this lovely video showing an extremely talented one stroke painting artist at work. Beautiful!

Then, check out this completely random, but wonderful clip of a person driving a batcycle around Japan in a Batman costume. I would enjoy rush hour traffic a bit more if I saw that on my drive home.

Finally, because if you are reading this blog you probably have more books than you care to count, I thought I’d share this video, “Making a Case for Books.”

Have a wonderful rest of your week, dear readers. I’ll be back soon with more news and notes. Allons-y!

Happy Tuesday, dear readers! At the end of another month, how did that happen? Today I have the usual assortment of fun for your Tuesday break. Today’s installment features pie crust, DIY couch sleeves, and a transforming bike. How could that not be a fun read?

So I know it isn’t fall yet, but with students going back to school and the summer winding down I feel like it will soon be pie season. I love baking pies and so was excited to see this video of 20 different ways to crimp pie crust:

So cool! I’ll have to try out at least a few of these when pie-making season rolls around.

Also, I think I’ll have to either get into woodworking or get my husband to start since I love these DIY wooden couch sleeves. These seem perfect for resting a cup of tea while curled up reading, especially with a cat in my lap.

Finally, a think this flippable bike frame is a pretty nifty idea for transforming a bike as kids grow and learn to ride. Plus, I like the animation so I had to share.

Hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, dear readers. I’ll be back soon with more news and notes. Allons-y!

Happy Tuesday, dear readers! I hope you are having a lovely week. I can hardly believe we are in the third week of August. Where is the time going? While we can’t make time go any slower, we can try to enjoy what is left of the summer. So today I have a few things that should make you smile when you need a break today.

I think that if a person is a librarian, it is fairly safe to assume that they are addicted to reading. In any case, it is fun to take a look at this list of 50 signs you are addicted to reading (some funny animated GIFs in the list, too).

I love typography and I love calligraphy, so I found this talk, Why Write by Jake Weidmann absolutely wonderful. I’m sending you to the video via this link instead of embedding the video so you can also take a look at a lovely site if you love writing and pens, The Well-Appointed Desk.

Finally, I think there should always be guacamole and chips to eat during summer. Therefore, I’m thinking that I will have to make this delicious sounding (and looking) recipe from Joy the Baker, roasted tomato and feta guacamole.

Have a wonderful rest of your week, dear readers. I’ll be back soon with more news and notes. Allons-y!