It’s been an unusually wet couple of months here in Colorado. In fact, the National Weather Service says we had the wettest May in recorded history. After several years of intense drought, I’m grateful for all this rain, at least intellectually. However, summer is my favorite season of the year and I welcome the sun and heat with open arms.

Marvin and I took advantage of the first dry weekend in weeks (or so it feels), by going on a treasure hunt.

This weekend, the Denver Public Library Friends Foundation held their semi-annual used book sale on the north lawn of the main branch of the Denver Public Library. The sale, which started Thursday and ran through today, helps fund a bunch of worthy causes, including the children’s summer reading program, adult and child literacy programs, and technology assistance training for adults. Each year, the foundation also purchases thousands of new books, CDs, and DVDs for the library’s general collection. The sale is a bargain for anyone who loves to read, with books selling for as little as fifty cents.

Every couple of years, when my bookcases get so full that I can’t fit anything more on them, and my office starts to resemble a horder’s nest, I pare down my collection of books. I donate anything that’s badly worn, or that I don’t plan to read again, to my local library for their sale, and then I enjoy the process of building my collection back up.

Anyway, Marvin and I spent an enjoyable couple of hours digging through the stacks, and came away with a handful of books, as well as several vintage CDs and a DVD boxed set of the fourth season of Smallville. We didn’t find everything we’d hoped for, and our haul wasn’t as large as in previous years, but we had fun. Afterward, we enjoyed a picnic lunch outside the Denver Art Museum, and left satisfied that the twelve dollars we’d spent had gone to a good cause.