Saturday, January 03, 2009

Sure, Canada won, but. . .

Did it have to be by shootout? How ridiculous. You play a game for 70 minutes and wind up tied so you play an entirely different game to find a winner. Why not play tiddlywinks or thumb wrestle for the win?

If it's a tournament game where a winner and loser must be decided, they should play it out until someone wins. If it is a league game, they should bring back the tie. If they want to have shootouts, then just have shootouts. Just don't mix it with an actual game.

In other news, I'm beginning to fall in love with used bookstores again. For the last while, I've generally just gone to one of the branches of BMV books. While the books are cheap, they don't really sell all that many used books any more. It's all remainders.

This week, I spent some quality time in both Seekers Books and Ten Editions books and it was a really nice change. There's something reassuring about used books - the pencilled notes and dog-eared pages, the softer feel of a book that has been opened many times, even the yellow tinge of the pages of an old penguin. A good used bookstore is a magical place, a place where treasures lie waiting to be discovered.

The treasure I found this week was The Shorter Pepys. I went looking for Yates' Revolutionary Road (I want to read the book before I see the movie) but found Pepys instead. It's a very detailed diary of life in the 1660s kept by an English Naval Administrator. It's filled with wonderful information about life in the 17'th century and will be on my bedside table for some time.

Even better, Seekers has a great kids section and it was nice to wander in there and see a whole wall of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew's and Bobbsey Twins. I loved the Hardy Boys as a kid. They were kind of the gateway drug that got me truly hooked on reading. Must return when the niece gets older.

Other than that, it's a low key weekend. Tomorrow, I will don my armour and wage war against the diabolical dust bunnies. Right now, I'm going to go read for a bit.

So long for now. . .

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