Niceville...So nice! :)

Had a fantastic weekend.  Ryan and I planned a roadtrip to Niceville/Destin area this weekend and had so much fun!  (And as the slogan all weekend...Ryan and I are just friends!! hahaha).  Anyhow, I looooooove his family and his friends.  

Friday morning I went for a 5 mile run along the bay and it was absolutely beautiful.  There were sailboats along the shore and the sun glistening off the water was so gorgeous.  The weather was perfect too!  Friday afternoon we went to Destin to hang out and the beach was so pretty!  We did a bit of shopping as well before heading back to Niceville to eat dinner (wings...yum!) and head to the high school football game.  I haven't been to a HS football game in so long.  I love when small towns rally together for football games on Friday night.  I sat with Ryan and his best friend Aaron and Ryan's parents and their friends and don't think I stopped laughing the entire time.  Afterwards we hung out at the Walker Residence and laughed some more.

Saturday morning I got up and went for a short run along the bay again and enjoyed some quiet time in the park along the bay.  And then...Football Day started.  Unfortunately, it wasn't such a fantastic football day for the Gators.  I even wore a Gator tshirt!!  Some good that did.  I got to hang out with the Walker family as well as a bunch of Ryan's friends and once again, I was laughing hysterically most of the day.  

We headed back today and stopped in some small town to get breakfast and found the most yummy donuts.  Then we headed to Gainesville to meet up with Ryan's friend Jess who had my stomach hurting b/c I was laughing so hard at her story.  We also got to eat at my favorite restaurant, On the Border!  (It's the closest one to Orlando).  

It was so nice to get away from Orlando for a weekend.  And I can totally understand now why people like Florida.  North Florida is soooo different from the rest of the state.  So gorgeous and so laid back.  And the Walker family is awesome.  I'm going to ask them to adopt me hahahaha.  

Not really looking forward to this week, but what can I do?  Oh well.

The Library

I became a library connoisseur in college. It started with my universities library system. Being an institution in the state of Ohio (GO BUCKEYES) we were part of OhioLink--meaning, if our library didn't have a book I needed, I just looked it up on the OhioLink database and requested it from one of the many universities in the state of Ohio that had it. It was great. Since I attended a Catholic institution, our library had a fantastic array of theology and philosophy texts as well as some a pretty good assortment of psychology and science materials. But of course, I went to a small school so there were often times when I needed to request materials (both books and journal publications) from other institutions. Even better, for those times when I procrastinated far too long on a project, the convience of location came in handy. THE Ohio State University was just a few miles down the road so on a few occasions I visited their ENORMOUS library and got the books I needed easily.

My love with the library system grew even more when I discovered how great the Columbus Metropolitian Library was. The downtown/main location was a great place to find books and movies or just spend the afternoon wandering around. It's huge! But on those occasions when I wanted to read a book and didn't have the time to make it to the main branch, I could request the book and have it sent to the small branch just up the street from campus. I could pick up and drop off books there whenever I wanted. Fantastic.

Now moving to Florida and settling in, I decided a few weeks ago it was time to get reaquainted with the library. Today I was somewhat bored (with it raining and my current book already read) so I decided I needed to look up the next book in the series to read. Here comes the sad part. I'm sorry to say this Osceola County, but your library system is sad, sad, sad. It had the book I wanted but not very many copies. Annnd, it didn't have some of the other material I was looking for. I looked over at Orange County's website and it seems like they definitely have you beat, Osceola County. It's a good thing I can become a reciprocal library card owner for Orange County. I have a feeling I may be frequenting them more than my own county's library. I did, however, request 2 books from Osceola County for me to pick up at the local branch. Let's hope they come in soon. In any case, Osceola and Orange...you got nothin on Columbus. Looks like Ohio wins again.