Oologist - noun - 1: one specializing in the study of birds' eggs 2: a collector of birds' eggs

Not as in oooh-did-you-see-that-chocolate-fountain?!

Technology is great in many ways and I love me some Google, but my memories of frequent visits to the local library as a child have embedded in me a great love for information that still can be found on paper. This includes anything made by my BFF, Webster.

I've always loved words and writing and have found that though most of the ways I use to express myself are through the images captured by my camera, words still play a vital role in telling the full story of an image, even help bringing the image to life when sharing the images through even a blog.

The other day a colleague of mine was in the midst of clearing out a few things from his desk and almost gave away what I consider a treasure everyone must have in their home. A Webster's Dictionary. Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, Copyright 1987, baby! Complete with an old library smell to it and EVERYTHING.

Again, it's nice having Google to be able to find a word's meaning in a milisecond, but even Google's milisecond abilities can't provide the thrill of leafing through paper thin pages on a hunt for the definition of a word, can't provide that grade school library smell, can't provide me with a childhood nostalgia of days when the Dewey Decimal system was how you found a book in the library. And just knowing

Needless to say, I carried that old dictionary home with a smile on my face and a feeling in my heart that I had just hit the jackpot for finding this. And, needless to say, my happiness over receiving an old dictionary for free confirmed my husband's suspicions that he did, in fact, marry an undercover nerd.

Cheers to words, their ability to bring the everyday stories to life, and the smell of old paper dictionaries.

Happy Wednesday!