Christmas in South Florida

We had a warm and merry Christmas in Fort Meyer's Beach, Florida. We went to the Everglades, spent Christmas Day fishing on the boat (I caught a catfish and a grouper), and spent the next day on the beach collecting shells and swimming.

Had to leave my menagerie of pets and animals with Amanda, Caroline & my mom. Ducks, rabbits, chickens, dogs & cats. I'd like to get a milk goat, but we have to really think about who will do the milking when we are away.

Happy Holidays

From the disturbingly talented people I work with, nothing says Happy Holidays like The Addams Family:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORJ7ocQUwss

One Green Summer

We're gearing up for a summer of green activity - Our children's summer reading crew decided to go green, then our YAs, then our adult summer readiing as well. We're keeping track of our wild and wonderful ideas for our branch activities on our new blog, One Green Summer. http://onegreensummer.blogspot.com/

Anna has the best clothes, including this fabulous child's sweatshirt.

Football!

We have an obsessed boy in our house. The other night, Leif had a bad dream. He brought his blankets and pillow and laid down on the floor next to my side of the bed. We went back to sleep. Next thing I know, I hear what I think is my alarm clock. I wake up to a local radio station, so when I hear talking I think that it must be time to get up. I look at the clock, but it is only 5:30am. It is my son, still asleep, talking in a loud voice saying, "If he plays running back, then I'll be quarterback . . ." Dreaming about football.

Nondenominational Nostalgic Village

Hmmmm, we want to work with our East State Village neighbors who have asked us to decorate with a "Nostalgic Village Theme." At our library, we always do a non-denominational spot of decorating for December/January.

How can we combine non-denominational with a nostalgic village? Any ideas?

Howl-O-Ween

What do you get when you cross a butterfly, a pirate, a newsboy, Madame Pince and a lovely young lady with a moustache? Our branch on Halloween. Strangely, the patrons didn't comment much.

Lettie's ArtCar

WOW! We had a program yesterday on Art Cars and Lettie allowed our patrons to paint her white Subaru. What a success! We had little kids, teens, and grown ups from the neighborhood collaborating together to beautify the car. I saw it this morning in our parking lot as I approached the building, yelling and laughing (at 8am, maybe the neighbors didn't appreciate this?). Nice work, Party People of the Tecumseh Branch Neighborhood!

more woods

Late October, good woods-walking weather. Things are still green here in Indiana, but should turn to red and orange very soon.

What is Leif doing? I don't know. Searching for enlightenment?

Now Reading

The Last American Man, by Elizabeth Gilbert, as recommended by Nick. First you fall in love with this amazing person who can survive in the wilderness with nothing (though if you give him a knife, it'll help). As you read more, you learn about his conflicted childhood, and then about the ruins of his personal life, and you begin to wonder if madness and genius are actually the same thing. Even for a fiction reader like myself, this book raises questions that keep you reading.

Wouldn't change a thing

We've lived in our rural 130 year old farmhouse for a year now. When we moved, I was terrified that I would hate it - The house that needs work, the drive. I don't hate it. Whenever I feel overwhelmed, I just walk around the yard. It takes maybe 3 minutes to remember why we moved - The birds, the trees, and the quiet.

It's not Women Who Run With Wolves, but Boy Who Runs With Spaniel.

Must Read

Pair this book with last years' Omnivore's Dilemma, and you've got yourself all the food-for-thought you can handle.

Kingsolver's book is amazing on audio, with her soft southern voice narrating, and the voices of her family members sounding in from time to time. The author makes her family's year of eating locally sound less like deprivation, and more like a culinary adventure.

Saints Alive!

I had a young woman, about 11 years old, come to me for help with her saint report. She's been assigned Agnes, and she needs to know how she died. OMG! Saints do not die in G-rated ways. Agnes devoted herself to God, and refused the attentions of a young man. Spurned, he ordered her to a brothel, and once she was no longer a virgin (it was illegal to kill virgins), her head was cut off.

Reticent to kill a virgin, but willing to send a girl-child into prostitution and then behead her.

On to RSS feeds today as I work through my 21 things.

Twitter

So what's the purpose of Twitter? I like that it can post to the blog, but why is it "better than"? Is it the brevity - The fact that I can only type 140 characters, so I must distill to the most basic element of what I want to say?

I've decided that I like Twitter for keeping track of what I'm reading, so that how I'm using it.

Add this to the list of books that read like an action movie. If you liked Fight Club (the movie or the book), give Swierczynski's tale of a bank heist gone wrong a try.

Gotta love the hammocks. We spent the weekend - 80 in late September! - fighting over the two hammocks in our yard. I sprayed down with mosquito repellant and settled in to enjoy the shade, the bit of sun that fell on my legs, and the quiet. Of course, with two children, there was no quiet, there was only fighting over who got to lay in the hammock with me and who had to be all alone in the other hammock, but I pretended not to hear it.

Trailer Park Soda

Our small town doesn't have a store, but we do have two soda machines at the trailer park where you can get a .60 can of soda.

My favorite for 2007

It may be premature, but I think this is my pic for best adult fiction 2007. From first time author Tana French (www.tanafrench.com), the mystery is interesting, but what is more compelling is the relationship between the main character male detective and his female partner.

2.0 so far

We're having fun with our 21 things at Tecumseh Branch. So far I've managed to complete about 5 things on the list. (I can't wait to add audio content!) I've discovered that I'm going to need to have one "presence," (this blog), and the other services will alert me by email when I need to check them. That is, I can't maintain a blog, myspace, facebook, twitter and ning. I'll just have to include the url of this blog on each of those other services.

Mr. Abram's presentation had so much content, I've asked to view the DVD when it is available. He has me thinking. As a motivational speaker to get staff excited about 2.0, he was very good. I'm still struggling with how libraries allocate resources - How do we do more with the same? It's the second law of thermodynamics - No such thing as a free lunch.

Happy Birthday, Girlfriend!

Nick, we're sorry we didn't know it was your birthday until you told us. Glad we got the "Happy Birthday Girlfriend" candybar to make it up to you!

No, we haven't seen the chocolate

Rosie called us from New Haven Library to see if we had the Chocolicious program box at our branch. No, no, whatever would make you think that, Rosie?

Finally Nick opens his mouth, but I still haven't heard why he doesn't support HP as a literacy tool.

Then she takes her research to Nick in our workroom and demands that he read it.

Here's Deb prepraring her research to prove that Harry Potter improves literacy among children.

No time to post

. . . because my garden has been overtaken by grass. I have discovered the joys of the hoe, and am trying to beat the grass out of the soil. The good news is that I will have tomatoes, carrots, peppers, cilantro, basil, chamomile, mint, sunflower seeds, and beans despite the grass.

You've Got Chickens

This photo shows our beautiful new bantam chickens in their brooder. The two yellows are Lucy and Omelet (my child chose this name, I know it is disturbing!), and the black and yellow is Frisco, and the all black is Sara. I've read that chickens are great for organic gardeners because they eat table scrabs, turn them into manure, and provide eggs. Any animal at our place has to be able to do more than one thing for us, so these guys should be great.

Winter has finally arrived, with temps below zero. Our dog goes out to the deck, does his business right on the deck, and runs back inside for warmth. Cleaning frozen dog-doo off porch, priceless.

We didn't get to the woods at all this weekend. We've been freezing in our home and spending $400/month on propane, so we spent the weekend hanging curtains. This spring, we'll be doing a whole lot of insulating.