The Gift of Friendship

God never loved me in so sweet a way before.

'Tis he alone who can such blessings send.

And when His love would new expressions find,

He brought thee to me and He said—"Behold a friend."

–Anonymous

Friendship is a wonderful thing, isn't it?  The more I go about life, the more I realize just what a difference it can make to have good friends to see you through each different phase.

I haven't actually come here to ramble about friendship itself though-- my intention is to ramble about one particular friendship.  Which I know, I've talked about before... I have a special place in my heart for each of my friends, but one has a profound connection to blogging that makes it more natural to ramble here.

“There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one’s self, the very meaning of one’s soul.” 
–Edith Wharton

The Janeite Tag - My Answers

My dear blogging friend Miss Jane Bennet (of Classic Ramblings) has invented a tag where the crazy Janeites can do their favorite thing: talk about all things Jane Austen.  For no particular reason, just as a form of entertainment.

I find this rather nice because although I enjoy filling out tags from various blogging events, I sometimes feel that I don't have time to participate fully and shouldn't really fill out the tag if I'm not going to do anything else.

...rambling there.

Anyways, moving on. :D

Help! The Historical Fiction genre is suffocating me!

That ought to get your attention. Haha.

Well, folks, it's like this.  I always used to consider myself to be a fan of historical fiction, until I tried reading more of the stuff that's come out in the last decade or so, and found myself getting more and more fed up with the whole genre.  (Before, you see, I read children's books, which were better in some ways.)

But here's the other thing.  I really love the IDEA of historical fiction.  I like to read about eras gone by, and if it can't be actual classics, it has to be set in a long-ago time period.  And there's tons of it out there-- it's hard for me to believe that none of it would be suited to my tastes.  I mean, this one's great.   But I had 'inside knowledge' that led me to that, haha.

As hardly any of you probably know, I've been working at a library for the last two months.  (I know-- swellissimus, right? :D I've really been enjoying it. Boooooks.)  I'm what they call a "page", and my #1 task is shelving the books.  And keeping them organized on the shelves.  Which takes work when there is a perpetual stream of people messing it up.

JA Book Giveaway and Screencap Website

First of all, the lovely Miss Laurie is hosting a giveaway of various Jane Austen-themed books, so do go check that out!

And when I have one announcement to make I often think of another I've been meaning to do... you all should also check out this website, it has period drama screencaps and links to other ones, all in one place. :)  Some of the links to Grande-Caps site won't work but that's because said site is undergoing a change of domain right now and the person who runs Period Drama Screencap Source will correct the links as soon as she can. 

The Four Temperaments, As Explained By Characters in Period Drama

In recent years I've grown somewhat fascinated by personalities and studying them and knowing what makes people the way they are.  Which sometimes leads me to try to kind of pick people apart and figure out 'what they are', and I tend to ramble on and on about the subject to the possible annoyance of certain people I talk to a lot.  Ahemmmm.

I saw the Myers-Briggs personality test thing when it was kind of flying through the blogging world a while back, and that did interest me a lot.  I'd never seen it all divided up that way before... and from that I started thinking a lot about extroverts and introverts, too... I can get a bit... energetic discussing that. Heehee.

The first time I ever took a personality quiz was when I was around twelve-- my brother had found this personality book that had a quiz in it and we made everyone in the family take it.  It was covering the four temperaments-- Melancholic, Phlegmatic, Choleric and Sanguine.  I found it quite interesting to learn about each one and detect different mixes of them in people.