I am fairly sure that I own over 250 books now.

Note: I forgot to allow comments. Oops. It's all fixed now.
     I love used book stores. I went to one with my neighbour today in downtown Toronto. From the outside it looked tiny, its width about that of my bedroom. We rifled through the extremely discounted books in a bin outside and laughed when we saw Twilight selling for a dollar. I picked up an interesting book I found there for a price that was still double Twilight's, then we entered the store itself.

French. The. Llama.

     Wall to wall books. Tables and tables and tables filled with books. The store stretched back way further than I expected it to, and there was a staircase. There -- there was an upstairs!

     So I began to make my way through my literary heaven*, picking up books which I was interested in here and there. They ranged from pretentious literature to philosophy to six word memoirs.** By the time I started to make my way upstairs the man working at the cash register looked slightly worried about the girl with unkempt hair and rainboots carrying a 1.5' stack of books around with her. (Yes, my rainboots were carrying books for me. Why wouldn't they want to help out?) My neighbour was just amused.

     Upstairs was the geekier part of the shop. Naturally, I felt in my element. Comics, then Steven Hawking-esque stuff, then the science fiction and fantasy. My pile grew and grew. Then I realized that I had blown half of my money on a gourmet jalapeno Havarti grilled cheese sandwich. I couldn't afford even half of them. Oops.

     So I cut down the books to a more manageable six, then still didn't have enough money and reduced my choices to four. At the end I walked away with Ender's Game, this weird artsy novel called What Was Lost, and two Discworld books.

     And that is how I completely blew off plans with my best friend for an hour in a bookstore and some really great grilled cheese.

Sorry, Jill.

*The only fault I could find with it was its utter lack of young adult fiction.
** The first six word memoir ever, by Hemingway, read “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”


-Gabi


Random sidenote of the day: "Its" is the possessive, "It's" is the contraction. You can remember this because "his" is possessive and has no apostrophe, so "its" does not have to. Kthxbye.

New Beginnings

     Starting a blog feels like when I changed schools. The opportunity to make an entirely new me. Complete with organized binders, well-groomed eyebrows, and fashionable shoes, I would parade down that hallway with confidence, picking up groups of friends here and there. I'd be less obnoxious, but more assertive. Quietly confident. I would never feel fat.

These are my (extremely bushy) eyebrows, AKA
a lame excuse to post artsy pictures of myself.

     Of course, my shoes were switched to sneakers the next day, my eyebrows grew back in alarmingly quickly, and my binders rapidly reverted to piles of paper. My main circle of friends became the Obnoxious Nerdy Kids.


     But some things I tried to change did. I became more confident, more assertive, and slightly less obnoxious. What did I learn from here? 


a)   Changing myself does work, but only if it's a change that I want. I never wax my eyebrows.
b)   I may as well give up on ever being organized. Even Wikipedia articles and tuning guitars are more pleasant to me. 


That last one might be an excuse to write a blog post instead of study for exams.


     So I have a goal for this blog. I'm going to try to write as myself to improve myself, not just for my audience. Instead of trying to achieve a new me, maybe I should go for a better me instead. Or at the very least a me-er me. 


The word "me" officially sounds like gibberish now.