bye

I am off on vacation beginning tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. Yippee!! Excited to see family and a city I've never visited before.

Lots to do between now and then, but it is all good. Hey, even the new website looks like it will launch on time Friday morning.

Enjoy the day and see you in June.

Let the good times roll.

thankful

Looks like the votes are in and a county to the west of us has approved funding a large construction project that will keep hubby and his colleagues busy for the next 18  months. This is good news on many levels and gives us a reason to do a small happy dance.

After the big recession, construction projects were shelved, funding was hard to get, and things ground to a halt. In the last year, however, everything has started to turn around. This latest vote is a huge step in the right direction.

So, I'm very thankful today for the business getting back on track. I'm also thankful my work review seems to finally be complete and they are working on rewriting my job description in order to change my job title.

I may actually return from vacation to a raise and some new words to plop after my name.

It. Is. All. Good.

Happy Wednesday!

rachel

I seem to have a theme going on. I am now reading "The Undead Pool" which is the second to last in the Rachel Morgan series. My beloved series are coming to an end.

I picked up my first novel in this series based on the title, then realized I had actually started the series with the second book. Oh well! I was hooked. Each novel uses a Clint Eastwood movie as inspiration for its title. Fun stuff!

Rachel and Trent have mended fences in this latest installment and are taking on some force that is leaking wild magic from Rachel's ley line and using it to knock out all the undead vampires in Cincy. The living vampires are in a panic as their masters slumber away. Throw in some elven politics and some crazy demon magic and you have chaos in the Hallows.

While we had a cold and damp weekend, the week has been warm and dry. Work is still nuts and the website may now launch midweek. We are starting to work on the National Meeting program info and spent the day editing descriptions and reloading them into the abstract central portal. Lots of steps. Lots of &s to turn into "and."

And so it goes. Happy Tuesday.

flavia

I read the latest and perhaps the final Flavia de Luce mystery over the weekend. Alan Bradley did amateur sleuthing a big favor when he created Flavia.

While these books are often found in the adult section of the library, they are wonderful reads for YA and perhaps some more advanced 5th grade students. Set in post WWII England, Flavia, age 10, lives with her sisters, her father, and assorted 'staff' in an old manor house. Her mother has been missing for 10 years and the family is carrying on without her. The plot of the final book hinges on Flavia's relationship with her mother, a mother she truly doesn't remember.

I hope that this is not the final time we get to enjoy Flavia. I really hope that Bradley will continue on with this dynamic girl.

Monday has arrived and one week from today I will be waking up in New Orleans! This will be my first trip to a city I've read so much about.

Guess over the weekend some local brews were being tossed from balcony to balcony down there in the French Quarter by two of the world's most handsome men. Wonder if we will get to see any famous mugs while we are exploring the city?

Happy Monday!

learning

We have been working on our new website all week. It launches Saturday. Moving content, checking links, checking style, and then rechecking it all has made for short days and stiff necks.

I wasn't able to walk yesterday due to the rainy weather we had, but I'm already dressed and ready to go this morning, Just need the sun to come up a bit. The birds are singing and Duke is giving me the look.

I've learned a lot through this website project. I feel pretty comfortable now using the content management system. I've even dabble, a bit, with the code. I don't like coding. I had to do some a while back when I was building courses for the learning library on behalf of the Foundation. Ick.

Through all of this, I have a new appreciation for computer geeks. To sit all day and just check code, and write code, and load code...I think that is borderline hellish.

We also worked on creating the carousel images for the home page. While a bit more creative, that too became a bit old after the tenth one. I did learn that I can't use all of our color palette for the overlays as the yellow is the same yellow as the directional command widget on the page. So, I have to ditch four images and rework them.

Trial and error. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Yep.

Glad tomorrow is Friday! I know on Monday we will have pages of things to fix, but at least the lion's share of the work will be behind us.

name changer

It was time to change the blog's name, so I did. I've never intended this blog to be a huge traffic magnet. It truly is just a way for me to journal. I like to get my thoughts together, keep track of my reading for the year, and sometimes spout off a bit on things going in my world.

I guess the spouting off was read by someone who took my earned, educated, 6 years in the making, opinion on certain matters and construed them as 'bashing' a local group I once belonged to.

Oh well. Don't need the lurkers. Don't need the drama. So I've made it a bit more difficult for them to find me, in case they were tempted to keep lurking.

I could make the blog private and shut down access. But, I do have some people in my life who enjoy reading my short, off the cuff comments each day.

So, welcome to the new blog, or at least the new name.

Happy Wednesday!

just the two of us

The department is now down to just two. We have plenty of work to keep us busy. The magazine needs to be sent to print and the website launches Saturday. Oi Vey. My coworker will be back June 2 and then she leaves us for good the beginning of August.

Never a dull moment. It was a long day yesterday. Going to be a long one today even though I'm leaving early to take the boy to the orthodontist for yet another retainer.

Hot and sticky weather has moved into the area, but I did manage to walk for 20 minutes at lunch yesterday. It got up to 90. Crazy!! What happened to Spring?

Off I go. The dog is waiting by his leash.