At the Library

Did my library volunteering this morning. It was very, very busy when I came in! Apparently, their children's story-time had just finished. Kids were rushing to the books and DVDs even as I finished organizing the dozens that just came in. I enjoyed helping them find DVDs, even as I organized them. After I finished and the library cleared out a little, I put the piles of adult DVDs sitting on the shelves away. I wasn't able to organize them as well as I would have liked, since I wanted to take books out, too, and I had to work at 3PM.

I wandered around for a while, but I finally ended up with two children's mysteries, an adult historical mystery novel, three CDs, Fodor's 2008 New England travel guide, and a Disney Vacation Parade comic book collection.

Sticking with the vacation/travel theme, both of the children's mysteries involve girls in the early part of the 20th century on vacations that turn dangerous. The Stolen Sapphire concerns my second favorite American Girl after Kit, late-Victorian-era Samantha. A fabulous sapphire is stolen on the same cruise ship Samantha and her family are traveling to Europe on. Samantha and her adopted sister Nellie are determined to find the real thief and save a friend from arrest.

Gangsters at the Grand Atlantic is literally set closer to home. Emily, a young girl from Philadelphia in 1925, is on vacation at a fashionable Jersey Shore resort with her flapper sister and her friend and friend's family. Things get ugly when Emily sees two men who look like the thugs who terrorized the old man who runs the grocery store under her family's apartment and worries that she may be their next victim.

I'm a big fan of Carola Dunn's Daisy Dalyrumple series, an adult mystery series set in England during the Roaring 20s. I was delighted to find the newest book, The Bloody Tower, at the library. Daisy discovers murder most foul at the Tower of London and survives a night away from her new twin babies.

I got in with enough time left to eat lunch, get dinner together, change into my uniform, and get to work. No major problems tonight, which is a good thing. This is the latest I've worked in at least two months, and I'm tired. I saw new cashiers in training during the middle of my shift, which is good news - bad news time. The good news - they were all teenagers and young adults who will likely end up with the late hours, which hopefully means more early hours for me. The bad news - that means fewer hours for everyone else until the kids go back to school.

The ride home from work was almost worth the late shift. I got to witness the tail end of a gorgeous gold and pink sunset as I rode in a nice breeze down the Black Horse Pike. I can't see the sunset from my apartment in the summer, thanks to the thick grove of trees blocking my view, and I usually work too late in the winter to catch it.