Looking Back a Bit........

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends: they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.

Charles W. Eliot, 1834 - 1926
http://www.deblogan.com/quo2.html

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Looking Back a Bit

When I retired from the National Park Service at Carlsbad Caverns nearly three years ago (February 3, 2008 marks my third anniversary) I promised myself several things:

To spend as much time as possible with our first grandson born four months after I retired.

To take countless pictures of him (and whoever else got in the way) with my new digital camera as I tried to figure out how digital cameras operate.

To start a blog on that little guy.

To teach myself how to blog.

To write a blog about the Carlsbad Public Library--you're reading it--to promote its use, books, reading, and associated activities. Why? Because I love books and reading myself.

To volunteer some time doing some of what I did at the Caverns in my last job as the Park Historian and backup guide, public speaker, and trainer of some of the new Rangers. Also, to continue my Caverns History Blog

To read a lot in general and history in particular.

To find a way to maybe make some money by teaching others to blog or to use computers at a basic level--so far still trying to figure that approach out.

To watch very little television at night and almost none during the day.

TO really bear down to try to discover how I can improve my joke-telling skills. While I like and enjoy my jokes, I often seem to be the only one. Humor, I think Freud (or his next-door neighbor, said, "is the lubricant that greases the success of human relationships. Without humor, people fret and frown 46% more of their waking and sleeping hours and create wrinkles prematurely, if not sooner." My joke-practicing takes so much time each week that the total time that I can allot to housework duties shrinks fiercely.

To continue my forty year hobby of collecting Quotation Book collections and reading quotations and sharing quotations, when appropriate, in my blogs.

To continue my lifelong obsession with cheering for the Boston Red Sox. In case you have been living in a cave in October 2007, they won the World Series this year.

Obviously, I have created an ambitious plan for myself in retirement, no?

Some Results--

My wife and I spend as much time as we can with the grand-muchacho.

Taking and editing and publishing his pictures to the Internet--Priceless!

Learning how to blog and doing two other blogs beside this one (grand-muchacho and caverns history).

Volunteering at the caverns.

Reading frequently

Looking still for a way to make some money blogging.

Reducing my time for humor practice; perhaps my mini-audiences might read an article or book or see a PBS special on the art of humor appreciation and laugh more at my jokes without more effort on my part.

Doing the Library blog for 12 1/2 months. I would like more people to interact, do book recommendations, write short review, make suggestions for the blog.

Address of this blog is:

http://hoffatcarlsbadlibrary.blogspot.com/

Bookmark and add it to your favorites if you want to return to it

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There is no frigate like a book

To take us lands away.

Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson

© Bob Hoff, 2007