ResQgeek

Many of my BC friends are already in transit to Charleston from points scattered around the globe. Today is my last day at the office before I, too, head south (though why I bothered is a different question, as my motivation to actually do any constructive work seems to be nil). I am terribly excited about this opportunity to meet so many of my friends from BC/LJ. I haven't made any firm plans for what I'm going to do while in Charleston...this is about the people, and I want to leave my plans fully flexible so I can enjoy the company as much as possible.

Let's see...I've already pulled out a pile of books to take along to share and/or release. I've made the necessary arrangements regarding stuff here at the office. I got my favorite coat washed (it really needed it!) and my hair cut (which also really needed it!).

Left to do (in no particular order):

- pick skyring up at the airport this afternoon.
- pack (yeah...this will only take about ten minutes)
- make sure the laptop and camera get into the car
- make sure the camera has fully charged batteries and a memory card

Hmmm...seems like I'm forgetting something. Ah, well...can't be that important, can it?

The answer is eight, but can any of you figure out what the question is?

Each spring, the Friends of the Arlington County Library have a huge weekend long book sale to raise funds for the coming year. On Monday, following the sale, they offer the leftover books, free of charge to anyone who can carry them off. We missed the book sale, as we were in Williamsburg over the weekend, but that didn't stop me from having my wife pick me up and take me up to the Central Library this morning. We spent about an hour filling boxes with books and piling them into the back of my wife's car. When we left, the car was filled from the back of the front seats to the rear hatch, up to the tops of the seat backs. The car was probably dangerously overweight, and I'm going to be registering books for weeks, I'm sure.

I did this last year, and registered over 700 books. I still haven't released all the books from last year, but my wife (no I'm not making this up!) insisted that we go back and restock. She has no problem with me releasing books that I get for free, and this way she doesn't have to worry about me feeling like I need to buy books to release. I would guess that we grabbed more than 500 books, but the final tally will have to wait until I finish registering them.

I was going to bitch about the busy weekend schedule I have to look forward to. We're going to be busy shuttling our daughters from place to place. On top of that, the hospital called my wife in to work tonight and tomorrow night, so it looks like I'm going to be largely on me own. C'est la vie!

Instead, I'm trying to look at this glass as half-full instead of half-empty. I'm going to take my camera with me as we bounce from place to place, and maybe I'll get a chance to take some fun pictures. I'm also going to load up a bag of books, each prepared for release, and I'll drop them like bread crumbs to mark our trail around the region. Nothing like a little BookCrossing fun to improve a bad attitude!

Besides, if I'm playing chauffeur for my girls, I can't be doing any of the labor intensive chores that I probably would spend the weekend working on otherwise. So, no, I'm not going to bitch. I'm going to make the best I can of the weekend, and see what happens.

After reading skyring's book "Bookcrossing Through Middle-Earth," I knew that New Zealand was a place that I wanted to visit. After signing up for our "ski" trip, I was hoping to visit some of the same places, but I wasn't sure how many would be accessible. However, the descriptions of Milford Sound convinced me that I HAD to find a way to get there. Luckily, our trip leader decided to organize a side tip to Milford Sound, and I eagerly signed up.

On our second morning in Queenstown, our bus pulled away from the hotel in the pre-dawn dark, in a light rain. Unfortunately, the early hour prevented us from enjoying the scenery as we drove south around Lake Wakatipu. A couple of hours later we stopped for breakfast at a tourist trap in Te Anau. I grabbed some food from the cafeteria, released a book (The Confession of Joe Cullen, by Howard Fast), and did some souvenir shopping. Soon, we were back on our bus, driving up through the Fiordland National Park to Homer Tunnel and Milford Sound. It was overcast, but light enough to enjoy the increasingly beautiful landscape. We left the farmland behind and moved into the mountains, with snow capped peaks surrounding us. It was strange to be driving through the middle of a rain forest, looking up at the mountains, which were covered with snow, only a few thousand feet above us.

As we drew near the Homer Tunnel, which passes through the mountains below the Homer Pass, we began to see signs of recent avalanche activity, and the roadside was lined with signs that read "No Stopping - Avalanche Zone." After passing through the tunnel, we finally arrived at the wharf at Milford Sound. We were running behind, and had to hurry to catch our boat to tour the Sound (though I still released another book at the wharf -- A Botanist at Bay, by John Sherwood). It will take me a long time to find the words to describe the beauty of Milford Sound. It is one of the most breathtakingly gorgeous places I have ever visited. For the time being, I have to hope that these pictures can convey at least a portion of the beauty of this place.

( Milford Sound Pictures )

After a stunning cruise, one that included dolphins frolicking in our bow wave, seals sunbathing on the rocks, and penguins working their way over the rocks to their breeding grounds, departure time inevitably arrived. During the long, drowsy ride back to Queenstown, I happened to look to the left and saw one of the most impressive rainbows I've ever seen:

( Kiwi Rainbow )

It was a long, tiring day, but it was one of the highlights of the trip. Milford Sound, by itself, was worth making the long trip across the Pacific. The amazing thing is that this was only one day out of a two week trip!

As I noted in an earlier post, I recently came into possession of LOTS of books. My initial haul was increased later that week, when my week when my wife went back and grabbed all the remaining books, roughly doubling the size of the pile of books for me to play with. I've been registering them at BookCrossing.com steadily since then (about 350 registered, so far), which has pretty much eaten up all my free time for the last couple of weeks.

I meant to post something over the weekend, but somehow, the opportunity never really presented itself. Saturday vanished in a blur that included my daughter's tee-ball game, working to get the pool cleaned up for the summer, and a PTA fundraising event in the evening. Yesterday was supposed to be a "chill out" day, but my wife finally convinced her mother to commit to our summer travel plans, so I spent a good bit of the afternoon filling out paperwork and getting the payment ready to mail. I'm thrilled to say that we are now officially booked on our ski club's trip to New Zealand and Sydney in August. This should be a terrific trip, and one of the highlights should be a chance to meet up with skyring in Sydney.

We ended the weekend with a family movie night. This was something my wife had been considering, and our older daughter suggested something like it earlier in the week. We picked out a family-friendly DVD (The Princess Diaries), and I made a food run to KFC. We all sat in the big room downstairs and ate fried chicken and watched the movie. It was a fun way to end the weekend.

One of the old traditions here in Washington is the Annual Easter Egg Roll. On the Monday after Easter, the South Lawn at the White House is opened to the public, and the children line up to roll eggs on the lawn. I'm not sure of all the history, but the kids roll Easter Eggs with spoons down a twenty foot track on the lawn. They also have lots of other activities, including face painting, egg coloring, book reading, and much, much, more.

We've taken our daughters a couple of other years, and my wife has been planning to take them again this year for months now. At first, I thought I'd have too much to do at work to be able to join them. However, things worked out, and I was able to make time to make it a family outing.

Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate, and by the time we made it through security and got onto the South Lawn, the rain was coming down in torrents. We immediately got in line to roll eggs, which moved quickly, and the kids got to roll their eggs. We then took some pictures of the kids in front of the White House, and I released a small pile of books (here's a BookCrossing forum thread that lists my releases).

I turned out that we were among the very last people allowed onto the lawn. About ten o'clock they decided to cancel the event because of the weather. We soon found ourselves being herded toward the exit, as the guards and volunteers tried to clear the grounds. By this point we were all complete soaked and ready to head home.

This event is a great deal of fun on a nice day. Still, even with the monsoon rains, it is cool to actually be walking on the White House grounds! These are the things that make me glad I live in the Washington area.

( Some pictures from this morning )

As a member of Bookcrossing.com, whenever I finish a book, I try to write a short review of the book in the online journal for that book, so that the others who might read that book later can compare their thoughts/reactions with mine. About a year ago, I started posting these reviews at Amazon.com as well, because many of the books I was ready didn't have many, if any, reviews there (I've been reading a lot of older books and many new ones that have received limited release or publicity). It seemed like a good way to provide other readers with a little extra information about the books, to make book buying decision a little easier. Since then, I've managed to post over ninety reviews at Amazon.com, which is pretty startling considering the limited amount of time I have available to read. Of these, 29 books have five or fewer reviews and my review is the only review for ten books.

This morning, I was looking at one of my reviews at Amazon.com and noticed that it had been chosen as a "spotlight review" for that book, meaning that it will always appear at the top of the reviews, rather than in chronological order from when I posted it. Intrigued, I dug a little further and discovered that six of my reviews have been chosen as "spotlight reviews." I have no idea how they choose these spotlight reviews, but it is actually flattering to find that many of mine chosen. My goal was simply to share my thoughts and impressions, without a great deal of concern about whether my reviews would be well received or not. I guess I'm doing a better job than I thought I was. Cool!