Home Sweet Home

Today has been a rather bland day. I'm still looking for office space for the church. We've got a lead on a place but I'm still thinking it through. Aside from that today I thought a little about the City of Chesapeake, VA and the quality of life here.

Today I was driving back home from an appointment and thought "I've never been to the main city Library even though I live less then a mile from the branch (where the center of our medium sized city has many of their main offices).

I decided to stop and get a library card for the Chesapeake Public Library system. I don't frequent many libraries but I've seen my share. I must say that I was immediately impressed with our own city library. I'm an involved citizen in my community but I am prone to think as many residents would think that city services would be run-down and sub par at best. I'm thankful to know that the library in my town is one of the nicest places I've seen. A very large clean building with many architectural lines greets you as you walk through the doors. The carpet, walls and displays all seem brand new. There are several levels all viewable to one another, each with their own purpose. The computers are brand new Dell machines and checkout was a painless process. I looked at a clean and well organized DVD collection, VCR collection along with the typical fiction and non-fiction sections. There was a Barnes & Nobel-esk Children's library area as well as a periodical section. Some of the highlights for me were 1. The Library has Wi-Fi and 2. The library offers meeting space with modern luxury. 3. They have approximately 50-75 public-use computers equipped with the Microsoft Office 2003 products (excel, word, ppt, etc.)

The Wi-Fi runs throughout the whole building and the meeting rooms were top-rate. As I walked on the Periodical level, I saw through the glass wall (yes, glass wall) the meeting rooms which each were encased in glass (with blinds if the attendees wanted privacy). The meeting I observed looked to be about 12 professionals working on a project together at a very nice table. All of this at a public library?

Anyway, I did check out a book and some music as well as a DVD.

I hope your city is up to par with public facilities. My tour today made me feel pretty good about our city. If you're ever in the Virginia Beach/Norfolk/Chesapeake area of the world, let me know.

I'd also like to hear if any of you have recently used the library or recreation centers offered by your town and what you think of them in general.