The Library, Baby
Yesterday Stacey and I accidentally discovered that the Glendale Central Library is about one hundred feet from the parking ramp where we park all the time. Hell, I practically park there every single day; it's right by the Starbucks where I write for two hours every morning. We've been living adjacent to Glendale and coming regularly to the development in question for about a year; the library's only a huge concrete building with "Glendale Central Library" on the side. No wonder we never noticed it before.
We had recently rediscovered the relatively feeble Eagle Rock branch of the Los Angeles Public Library and had been going there from time to time, but the L.A. libraries are a particularly feeble shadow of the fine Hennepin County library system in the Twin Cities, and we had always basically avoided them to avoid being reminded of how a library should be and how we didn't have one because of the legion of lockstep idiot California no-taxers.
But the Glendale Central Library? Outstanding. Many comfy chairs, all kinds of tables, loads of deep book stacks, nearly a foot and a half of Lovecraft. Heaven.
For the last couple of months I've been less productive, writing-wise, than I could be because I had to leave Starbucks after two hours because I didn't want to pay for parking above the two-hour validation that comes with your coffee. Now I can just drive across the street, park at the library, take a quick break to read the trades, and do another two hours or so before returning home, where the laws of physics dictate that work must proceed at a slower, Internet-distracted pace. (Though today was a 2,000 word Fireborn day on top of the three and a half hours I spent working on Whisper Lake at Starbucks and the library.) Proceeding distractedly after three or four hours of writing? That I can feel good about. Doing that after only two? Not so great.
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