Okay, so my blog is now moved back to brigittedale.com/blog, where it was prior to the mid-January meltdown. All of the posts and comments that were here are moved over there now too, and though that site will be slowly improving, the good news is that it will be staying put there, permanently. So, please update any bookmarks you might have pointing to this page — I’ll keep it around for about a week I think, and then close it to avoid any confusion. Thanks for bearing with me! : )

Hi! So, I just got an email telling me that I am one of six nominees for Yahoo’s best internet personality award for this year. That was a nice email to get.

There’s talk of prizes for the winners. I have no idea what the prizes are but I wouldn’t mind finding out. I really love mystery prizes. Maybe it’s a trophy.


PS- There’s no signing up or registering required to vote. You just click.

(Originally published on journalstar.com on 3/10/2008)

One of the things that made first grade different from kindergarten was that as first graders, we were allowed to check out books from the school library. We went as a class every Tuesday afternoon and everyone got to check out one book. Honestly, I wasn’t that impressed by this priviledge. The library was arranged by grades, and all the books recommended for first graders gave me the willies. You’d open them up and pages would be torn or there would be some kid’s booger in there sticking two pages together.

But one Tuesday I found a treasure on the shelf…

a brand new book. It wasn’t a storybook, it was a picture book to identify butterflies and bees, and I was the first very person to check it out. It was a hardcover, and it had super glossy pages with bright butterflies and bumblebees flying around over grassy fields with little names written by them in script. I could not believe my luck. I checked the book out and looked at it every night in my bed. I was so careful with it.

The book felt like it should be mine and I got very attached to it. They might as well have let me take home a puppy and then asked for it back after a week. I renewed it, twice. Twice was the limit on renewing.

This is kind of embarrassing, but I remember the day I had to return the bug book very clearly. I actually kissed it goodbye (eeks) before putting it in the blue milk crate designated for return books. I could only imagine what kind of crayon-scribbling, page bending, food-spilling horror was about to happen to it now. The librarian asked if I was crying and I was a little bit horrified that it was so obvious, and told her that I was not.

***

I don’t know why I’d never gone into a used book store before today; I wasn’t avoiding them on purpose. Maybe, somewhere deep in my subconscious, that whole bug book trauma had something to do with it?

But I finally went into one, on a mission to find some books I could make notes in for research purposes. I loved it. I loved it like I love coffeehouses and beaches and art shows.

There’s a whole used bookstore smell and used bookstore feeling that I never knew about! Plus if you fall in love with something you can take it home permanently.

I don’t want to ever be done finding new favorite things.

Yep, this is where I was on my way to in my last videoblog:

Attack of the Show – The Loop

You can tell I was kind of nervous (I had never done the satellite thing before), but it was really fun!