A Siamese Cat, a Lion, a Monkey, and a Caterpillar Come to Visit!

   Santa (and a few other guests) arrived at our downtown square tonight.  As I wrote about in an earlier post, my town had its annual day after Thanksgiving parade and the library's entry included several storybook characters accompanied by our library lion mascot.  I didn't take pictures during the actual parade because it was dark and crowded and the characters were constantly moving, but I got some shots to share with you from at the library after the parade was over.


   My older son helped out by wearing the costume for Skippyjon Jones, the Siamese kitten who thinks he is a chihuahua because he has such big ears.  In addition to bringing their children to meet "Skippyjon Jones" after the parade, some people even brought their pet chihuahuas in to meet him!

   My younger son wore the costume for our library lion mascot in the parade and for the after party also.

   They had a lot of fun getting their pictures taken with lots of little kids and also clowning around a bit afterwards.

   My younger son's girlfriend gets a hug between the two brothers in this picture.

   She wore the costume for Curious George during the parade, but another high school student (seen in the pictures below) wore it for the after party.

  And yet another student wore the costume for the Very Hungry Caterpillar.

   Here's the whole gang together!

   There was only one minor mishap.  I believe the Very Hungry Caterpillar may have eaten just a little too much for Thanksgiving dinner because she had a bit of trouble squeezing out the door when the party was over!

Simple Soup Bowls (Truly Grateful Series)

   Last Friday, the students and teachers from our local high school hosted an event called the Soup-er Bowl.  Yes, that is the way I meant to spell that.  This is the second year they have had this event.  Over 200 soup bowls were made by hand by the high school art classes as they studied pottery-making.  These bowls were donated and brought to the kitchen of my church.  Members of the community made and donated gallons of homemade soup which were also brought to the church.

   Volunteer teachers and high school students then used these bowls to sell and serve delicious meals of hot, homemade soup to the members of our community in the fellowship hall at the church.  The meals, sold for $10 each, included your choice of all-you-could-eat chicken noodle, chicken tortilla, chicken rice, potato, chili, or vegetable beef soup, bread or crackers and butter, beverage, and your choice of numerous donated desserts.  When my husband and I were done eating, one of the high school students washed our soup bowls for us so that we could take them home with us.  Our son and his girl friend were two of the student volunteers working that night.


   The money made from this event was then donated to our local homeless shelter here in town just in time for Thanksgiving.  Yes, even in a town our size, there are those who are homeless.  The meal was delicious and the crowd enjoying it was a large and friendly one.  


   So now we have these two bowls.  

   They're pretty, don't you think?  The bowls were all individually made and each has the special creative touches of the student that designed it.  


   I'm grateful for these bowls because they are a reminder to me of many things. They remind me that I live in a town full of people who care about one another and who try to help those who are less fortunate.  These bowls remind me that I am one of the very fortunate ones who has always had a home to go to.  I am one of the fortunate ones who has always had food to eat and clothes to wear.  These bowls remind me that I have much for which to be grateful.

   I hope you have much for which to be grateful too.  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Dear Lord, for these simple soup bowls which serve as reminders to me of how lucky I am, please let me be truly grateful.

TIMBER!!

A couple of years ago a very large branch was broken and blown down by the wind from a tree in my back yard.  That tree seemed to have some sort of disease because over the last several months, more and more of it has been dying off.  It had gotten to the point that anytime a wind or ice storm came through we stopped wondering if, and instead, wondered how many, more branches would be knocked down out of it.  We finally decided that the tree was too far gone to come back and needed to be cut down.  I don't like the idea of cutting down trees much at all, but it was necessary.  We consulted a tree specialist who agreed that the tree needed to be removed.


So yesterday, when I came home for lunch from work, I found this going on at my house.  I had to take pictures from inside the house looking out my kitchen window because I didn't want to get hit in the head by a falling branch!

I wanted to stay and watch them take the whole thing down, but my lunch hour was up, and I needed to get back to work.  So I returned to work and when I got back home again, this stump and a lot of sawdust was all that was left of the tree.

It makes me a little sad to have the tree be gone, but I am already planning to plant some new trees this spring in the back as replacements.  I won't be planting another maple as we already have two large maple trees in the front yard.  I would like to plant two cherry trees or perhaps an almond tree.  Maybe I'll plant all three!  They are all much smaller trees than the maple tree that was there, and I think they would fit nicely in the back yard.


As happens so often, this whole tree cutting business put a song in my head.  And, as so often happens, the song in my head has very little to do with the actual event of the day.


When I was a young girl, both my mother and grandmother listened to a great deal of country music.  I can't tell you how many old country music (or country and western as they called it back then) songs are drifting around in the cells of my brain.  I can tell you that the lyrics and melodies of these songs pop into my awareness at the oddest times.  This tree being cut down from my back yard was one of those odd times that made one of these songs resurface. 


So the song that has been stuck in my head for the past two days is this one by Ferlin Husky.  I have a feeling that very few, if any, of my readers will be familiar with it.  My brother and I (as little kids) would sing along to the record of this that my mother had.  My brother liked to sing the deep voice bass echo part while I sang the melody.

Performers Showcase

   I had an interesting and unusual day today.  I drove to Bowling Green, Ohio for a Performers Showcase by video conference.  There were 22 different people in the showcase.  Each of these people travel around to libraries to present a program or to put on a performance of some sort.  They each gave a twelve minute snippet of their performance via video conference for us to preview.  The purpose of this conference was to give us new ideas for programs that are available for booking at our libraries.


   My favorite presenter today was a man named Jeff Nicholas who is an illustrator and author.  He demonstrated how to draw one of his cartoon characters, a kangaroo, and then recited a story he had written about it while showing his accompanying illustrations.  It was quite clever and funny, and the story was written in the form of a rhyming poem that made it even more whimsical.  I really enjoyed his presentation and would  have liked to see more of it.  I'm sure our patrons, and especially the children who visit our library, would enjoy his work as well.  You can read about him and see some of his fun cartoon illustrations here.


   The other acts included musicians, storytellers, magicians, jugglers, and a scientist.  Many of the acts were quite good, but by the end of the day, I have to admit, I had seen quite enough. Twenty-two acts in one day may have been a few too many.  Actually, there were to be twenty-five acts, but three of them didn't show up.  It's pretty easy to cross those three names off the list as possible ones to hire!


   By the time I was on my way home, the sun was already beginning to set, so I took pictures of it, of course.

   When I drove into town at home, it was just a little after 5:00 as you can see by the clock in the courthouse tower, but the sun was rapidly setting.  I don't care at all for these shorter days with less sunlight, but at least the sunset was pretty.

Knights in Shining Armor and a Few Other Shiny Objects That Caught My Eye

On Tuesday this week, I went with four of my co-workers on a three hour drive (No, not a three hour tour.  That's something else entirely.) to Dublin, Ohio.  We went there for a one day conference for work at OCLC, the Online Computer Library Center.  


OCLC is "a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing information costs".  This from Wikipedia, "OCLC provides bibliographic, abstract, and full-text information to anyone.  OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat—the OCLC Online Union Catalog, the largest online public access catalog (OPAC) in the world."  Basically, OCLC provides the cataloging for our books and for just about every  other library book worldwide.


I took a picture of their main headquarters building.

Our meetings were held in a nearby building in their conference center.  The conference was on Wednesday, but we went down on Tuesday afternoon and spent the night so that we would already be there early in the morning when things got started.


I liked my hotel room.  I had it all to myself.  It was nice and quiet and very comfortable.  It was actually much bigger than I needed just for me overnight, but no complaints here!


It had a kitchen which I didn't use except to make myself a cup of tea.

The rest of my room was quite nice too.

My room was on the fourth floor, and this was the view out the window.  Not a lot to see there really, except the parking lot, but it was a different view from my window at home.  Every once in a while, it is nice to go someplace new and gain some new perspectives.

We went out for a nice dinner and then went to a store called Garden Ridge to do some shopping.  Garden Ridge is a crafting and home decorating retail chain.  I didn't really have anything I needed to shop for, so I just wandered around and took pictures of shiny, pretty, colorful things that caught my eye while my co-workers shopped.


I remember when Christmas trees used to be green, just green.  Now you can have any color or size that you'd like to have.

I found a plethora of poinsettias.  (No, not a plethora of pinatas!)

What color do you like?  I think they had them all there!

These wreaths were colorful and shiny too.

Oooooh!  Sparkly!

This aisle looked like it might be a good place for that Where's Waldo guy to hang out, but I didn't find him there.  

I loved this aisle.  Gingerbread men, elves, Santa, and snowmen--what's not to like?

I guess I'd call these minimalist trees!

This snowman and Santa were up high on a shelf.

Pink flamingos with Santa hats.   :-D

These scarecrows and other Halloween and fall items were all marked half price, but I didn't buy any of them.

These pigs with wings and bright colored ducks made me smile.  "When pigs fly!"  Do you remember Flo from the show, Alice, used to say that?

These other wire and metal sculpture animals--giraffes and such were whimsical too.

I found a knight in shining armor there.  Actually, I found several,

and in more than one color.

I also found these.  

I'm not sure if they are supposed to be turkeys or peacocks, but when I saw them I immediately thought of this:

Finally, I saw several shelves of urns and vases and bottles and pots that pulled me right to them.  I have absolutely no use that I can think of for any of these things, but they were very pretty, in a loud and showy sort of regal way.  Made me wonder if King Midas had been there, touching everything.

These ones with the blue butterflies on the side made me think of my friend Mildred who likes butterflies. 

I didn't take any pictures the day of the conference since the day was spent in meetings listening to speakers and looking at Power point and video presentations.  They fed us a grand lunch, and I found the experience overall to be both informative and entertaining.  Although it was nice to get away for a couple of days,  it was also quite nice to come home again too, as it usually is when I've been away.