One of the more than 50 competitors in the dressage portion of the three-day eventing held this weekend at Rolex Kentucky, at the Kentucky Horse park in Lexington (one of my all time favorite places!). I was lucky enough to hitch a ride down there for 2 of the three events, with two good "horsey" friends of mine. We had a wonderful time; they go every year but this was my first Rolex, and I soaked it all in. The dressage, for those who are scratching their heads, is a competition of grace and control--the rider has to put the horse through a set series of "exercises" if you will, where they do different paces like extended trot or canter, in a set pattern in a fenced-in ring. The movements are the basics of what you may have seen Lippizaner horses perform--this test doesn't have all that fancy "airs above the ground," but similar side movements and the graceful "dancing" of the hooves in patterns. I'm no good at describing it, it just sounds flat. You have to see it to appreciate it, especially when you can see many entrants and see how they compare. A trio of judges watches the performance and submits their scores, and they're added up for a total. You want to get a low score, because the scores are given for faults (hesitated, or did not perform movement well, or switched at wrong time, etc, as well as purely subjective things like how well they flow together). If you watch the summer Olympics this year you'll see world class dressage in action. This was Olympic-caliber, because this event is used as a qualifier for olympic team riders. It was really really neat.

I just got back from a fantastic visit to Lexington KY for the Rolex Three Day Equestrian Championships. The technical name is the Rolex Kentucky CCI**** (the asterisks are the four stars that indicate the ranking and caliber of this competition) Here a rider urges her horse over one of the cross country jumps. I was in horse heaven: ever since childhood I've watched eventing on tv, either during the Olympics or the televised Rolex coverage (it's been around since 1978, which would have been right at the beginning of my horse fever period :-) but to actually walk the course, to stand next to a jump as the horse thunders toward it and sails up and over, oh man, words fail me. It was definitely a heartstopping day for me. Sigh...

A competitor races on the cross country course at Kentucky Horse Park, Lexington KY, during the Rolex Three Day Equestrian Championships. We were so extremely pleased with the weather; though stormclouds threatened in the morning, it only rained overnight on Friday, and the course wasn't even muddy. I am so lucky, I was fully expecting to be hiking all over the course in the pouring rain! I will have rider and horse names on these photos soon, I just can't get to this right now because I'm off on another adventure! But stayed tuned...

I just got back from a fantastic visit to Lexington KY for the Rolex Three Day Equestrian Championships. This is the creme de la creme of the "eventing" world, a sport that requires riders and horses to compete over three days in dressage, cross country obstacles, and stadium (or "show") jumping. It's amazing how challenging it is, and this event is one of only 5 four-star (top notch) events in the country (or world? I'm not sure, I just started researching this sport). Many Olympic hopefuls were competing (and are competing--today, Sunday, is the third and final event, the stadium jumping, but we only stayed for the dressage and cross country. I have to be somewhere else today, more about that in a later entry ;-) This is the stuff you'll see in the summer olympics later this summer. It was incredible, the speed and stamina and heart these horses possess. Here you see lil' ol 5'5" me standing in the middle of a two part "fence" (they're such huge obstacles, it sounds odd to call them fences. They're mountains!). The horse goes over one brushy fence and immediately over the next. I don't recall if they get to stride in between on this one, it looks close together. Anyway, I have a TON of gorgeous pictures to share, these are just a couple to show you a teaser of the gorgeous horseflesh we saw. And we were so close to them, it was unbelievable! At one point I even had one turn off from a fence and come right at me--all the spectators stay behind a string on sticks; not much protection from a 23-mph horse missile. :-) But they're very much under control by their riders. Oh I could just blab about this all day, but I have to go. So I'll put up these other pictures in a couple more entries, and please be patient with me as I will be away from a computer all week. By week's end I should be able to organize, crop and caption my couple hundred photos from Rolex (I kid you not, and I had hardly any bad ones!) and put them on Flickr. I just wanted to be a little more current and blog about this while it was still so fresh in my mind. As if I could ever forget...

 You can find a lot of details and the results here. I wasn't able to see all of the horses compete, because I was walking all over the course trying to just get a glimpse of each fence as a horse went over it. It's impossible to see the whole thing on foot. But I got around quite a bit and saw most of the competitors. There were some really scary moments when a horse fell right in front of me--as I was taking photos! Ack. But I don't see anything about him, Quiet Man, on the website so I am pretty sure he will be okay. He got up while I was still hanging around. (Everything stops and they hold up the other competitors when there's a loose horse or any kind of accident.)  But unfortunately later that night one horse had to be euthanized as a result of an injury sustained when he hit a fence wrong and flipped over on his rider. I did NOT see this happen, I wasn't even aware what had happened until we saw ambulances and life flight helicopters, etc. The rider is hospitalized. I knew this was a very dangerous sport, but it sure hits home when you are right there as it happens. It's a lot scarier than watching it on tv. Anyway, enough sad stuff!  I'm still basking in the whole event in general. A horsey high...

 I can't wait to get my little collecting hands on these: http://www.starwars.com/collecting/news/misc/news20080419.html

Tee hee and wocka wocka wocka! :-D Muppets Meet Star Wars--and I am Happy!!!

I love Martin Sheen. Okay, I especially love him as President Bartlett on The West Wing. So 

hklbry  and I went to the University of Akron last night to hear him give the John S. Knight lecture, which was entitled "Shining the Spotlight on Social Causes." And I got to know Martin the person and the activist as well as the actor. It was wonderful--he's a very warm, witty and comfortable speaker. I had no idea how funny he is. He had some prepared remarks, but he kept straying from that and throwing in anecdotes and family stories and really spoke from the heart. And it wasn't all about activism, although he focused on that, on giving back to the community, on bettering others, all that feel-good stuff. (In fact his honorarium fee was donated to his foundation, the San Carlos Foundation, which provides assistance to people in poverty areas, mostly Central America) He also talked about how he got into acting (as a child he went to the movies and realized, "I am one of those people up there! That's what I am!), and how he started being asked to give speeches only in the last few years, and it terrified him, until he was preparing for one and his brother said as they looked at the huge hall full of 3,000 seats where he was going to give the speech, "Oh that's just the room where they store the chairs." He talked about how he feels about Ireland, where he has family, and he even went to college for a semester there at age 65, just so he could know what college was like (many of his Irish stories he told in an adorable brogue, very funny)--and he even sang a couple of songs for us. So he's no Irish tenor but he was pretty good. (Apparently he made his singing debut on A Prairie Home Companion last fall with the same hymn he sang for us; I missed that show, gotta go look it up online, I'll bet he was funny.) I just had the best time, and apparently everyone else did too because it was going on 9pm and only a few folks were trickling out of the theater; he took questions after he finished his 45 minute speech, and he even acknowledged "I'm a windbag, so if you have to leave, go ahead, I won't mind, I'm an actor, I'm used to people walking out on me." The Q&A was almost as good as the speech because he'd take one question and tell 15 minutes of stories off of it! Very like Harlan Ellison, hklbry reminded me (another very very fun speaker to see in person if you ever can). It was also just weird listening to him because he really does remind one of JFK, the whole Bartlett thing is just burned in my brain now, I see him as a leader of our country and it's really cool. Oh, and his description of his wedding in 1961 was hilarious! The priest had to rush the ceremony, which already had been a last minute affair, because a funeral was about to happen there! So he's rushing them into his office, "Do you take? good, do you take? Say YES!" Snap goes the Brownie camera, "congratulations now leave by the back door...oh and by the way I've never had a divorce!" I was rolling with laughter as he pantomimed all of this. And his friends out front waiting to get inside the church, not knowing he was already married, saw a casket being brought into the church! 

I could go on, and I should jot more of it down while I remember it, but I have to go to work now. Sigh. But I'll have this good feeling with me all day. I saw the President! The "Acting President" as Martin says he was called during the run of the show--by staffers of the real West Wing. :-)

 Ever have one of those weeks where it didn't just rain but pour? Metaphorically speaking, I mean. (Although it did rain yesterday and today, and that was not so much fun to ride a bike in this morning. But I digress.) I just made it through a week of 6 library programs in a row, and lived to tell the tale. Some were more time consuming than others, but it was one of those times where I fervently wished I could have spread them out over the rest of the month to get more of a breather in between. This will give you an idea of what some of a librarian's workday is like, those of you who aren't already one. :-) To wit: last Thursday and Friday was the Virginia Hamilton Conference on Multicultural Literature for Youth, held at Kent State University. I'm on the advisory board so I attend meetings all year to plan the conference speakers, and spend the conference helping out, running errands, "hosting" speakers to their presentation rooms, chauffeuring them to the airport and hotel, etc. It's fun but a lot of work. The very next day I drove one speaker to the airport and then went to my library to supervise my practicum student's program--she had a Whose Line Is It Anyway? style skit program for teens, acting out "Worst Case Scenarios" like killer bee swarms or capsized boats in shark-infested waters. It was hilarious and the 3 boys who attended had a blast. I didn't do much for that program, it was all her idea and preparation. But on Monday I held an Open Mic Poetry Night for teens, and that one I did the planning and most of the setup (with Joan's help) and promoted it starting with booktalks in school in February. We had 41 high schoolers attend! Yee ha! That's a very good turnout for a teen program. Of course, having the English teacher give extra credit points to those who attended and participated, certainly helped. But they had fun and shared some poems, drank coffee, hung out in the public library for a change.

Okay, so I'm just barely recovered from that, the next day I set up for our library's monthly kids' chess club meeting. No biggie, just time involved in getting snacks and setting up tables and chairs and chess sets. Then taking it all down afterwards. But it was the very next night! THEN, the next night after that (Wed. for those keeping track), I set up a library reception for a local author of middle school books, Shelley Pearsall. I wasn't expecting a huge crowd, we never get really big audiences for my authors unless they're very well known. (Shelley's books are so good, she deserves to be much better known; esp. after winning the Scott O' Dell award for her first novel!) But, 31 people from age 3 to senior citizen came out to meet her and hear her talk about her new book. Fantastic! I had just enough cookies. :-) They also bought some of her books from our local independent bookstore to get signed, so that was a good thing. The next day (Thursday!) Shelley was the featured author for the Reading and Writing Festival that's held every year for local 7th and 8th graders. This is one of the highlights of my year because I present a session on fantasy literature for teens, and I get to gab about cool books for a couple of hours with very bright enthusiastic middle schoolers who are big readers. It's fun. This year I jazzed up my session by giving away a free fantasy novel to every kid who came to my session! Granted, some of the books were classics like The Hobbit or Artemis Fowl, not the new shiny titles that they hadn't already read a dozen times, but it was still a surprise for them and I think they were impressed. I had been hoarding for months any donations of teen fantasy books that came my way at the library or through my book review and book group sources, and it was amazing that I had over 50 books to give away. At any rate, the festival ran all day, and then that night I did get to unwind while still on KSU's campus, at their library school Alumni and Awards dinner. I enjoy those for reconnecting with some of my library school colleagues, but it made for a 4th late night out in a row. Whew! Why do these things all happen practically at once?! But these are all reasons why I love my job. It's not just about the reference questions. :-D

You may be wondering--why, there are no photos in this entry! I must be slipping! No, I do have lots of photos of all of my events, but decided to spare you that here. I did put a few from Virginia Hamilton on my flickr page, with more coming soon, but the teen events I don't post there. They may pop up on our library webpage someday.

Got this from

redpimpernel  

Fun!

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next three sentences in your journal along with these instructions. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
5. Tag three to five other people to do the same. 

Here's mine: from Ptolemy's Gate, book 3 of The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud:

"The minister did not flaunt his status; he displayed few treasures in the reception rooms, and employed just two human servants to keep house. He slept on the third floor, in a plain, whitewashed room adjoining his library. These were his private chambers, which no one visited."

Gads but that's a boring couple of sentences from what is otherwise a really fun fantasy book! Sigh.

Tag: hklbry mysterg elfrhys cannellfan</div>

Or not so unusual. This is Edna, one of a pair of eastern ornate box turtles that I'm turtlesitting for my friend Sandy this week. I know nothing about reptiles or amphibians, never had the desire to have any as a pet, so this has been quite interesting! I learned that they eat worms--ick! not surprising, really, but thankfully Sandy gave them that meal before she left, and I've just been giving them their strawberries and tomatoes. I put them in a tub for a little swim every now and then, and that's hilarious because Edna is very active in the water, constantly sticking her neck out like a periscope, trying to see above the rim of the tub for an escape route. While Gerry, the male, just sits perfectly still, nostrils just barely above water, looking like he's thinking "when will this be over?" and "Edna will you PLEASE just sit still for a minute!" Goldie has been very curious about them--I took some photos of her when she first met them--and unfortunately because they are not in an enclosed container I finally had to lock them away in the bathroom where she can't jump into their home and frighten them to death!! How embarrassing. I thought she was fine, the first day I kept an eye on her constantly and all she wanted to do was bat her paw at them a little through the plastic wall, or sit and stare at them. But I think she is attracted to the fresh hay that is in their container, because I caught her right after she jumped in on top of it. Bad cat!! I guess turtles are not the sort of pet for everyone, because I am still kind of grossed out by them (especially when they poop in their pool! eww eww eww! worse than any cat litter issues!) and though I know they don't bite people , I still am kind of leery of holding them even just to transfer them from tub to home. Give me a furry pet over the scaly kind any day. But anyway, this has been fun. It's also interesting to compare them to the painted turtle Spike who lives at our library. She's got a smaller flatter shell, among other differences. (yes, our Spike is a female; originally they thought she was a he and kids named her Spike) And that the females have yellow eyes while the males have red around their pupil. (You can really see this in my other photos) I don't remember noticing Spike's eyes, quite frankly... They're not the kind you stare adoringly into, like a cat's or dog's or horse's (er, doesn't everyone do that? or is it just me who finds animal eyes utterly entrancing, especially from the side, how they bulge out).

Today I rode on my MS150 team's first official team training ride for the 2008 season. Here you see the 12 intrepid riders who made it out for today's fun. (And I am realizing I should just stay out of the photo when I'm wearing tight biking gear; I'm the tubby in blue in the center. Sigh.) We had fun messing with my self-timer feature, which I used to know how to use but couldn't get to work. So I hailed a passing hiker and he took the shot: using the self-timer! It turned out I had turned ON the feature, but had forgotten that to use it you have to press the shutter. So Hiker Guy presses the shutter and is wondering why the picture isn't snapping; meanwhile we're all standing there like idiots staring into a flashing white light on the front of the camera: the self-timer is going! Doh!

The temp. was 40 degrees when we began riding, nice and chilly but much colder when you're zooming along at 10-15 mph. By the time we finished, an hour later (we just went out for a 12 mile ride on a bike trail in the park), it was more like 50-something, and the sun was shining quite nicely. By noon we got to 65 today, yay!! Spring!! Anyway, I did pretty well for a first time out; the spinning classes are definitely helping. Normally I would have had very very sore legs and butt, but none of that today. And despite the stiff headwind on the return leg, I sorta kept up with the pack, though it was a tough haul for me. I didn't get caught flatfooted on the couple hilly bridges we went over, at least I managed that okay. It's weird to be on the bike again after months of using a spinning cycle, where all I have to do is pedal and maybe turn a knob on the frame. I don't use my arms or hands much at all in the gym. But of course in the outdoors I have to shift and brake and steer and etc, and oh gosh, watch out for slow pedestrians and cars and stuff! Gack. You can't get as far into the "zone" on a real bike. :-) (I tend to get into a rhythm in the gym and totally space out to the music) But whatever, it was beautiful weather. We saw two redtailed hawks, geese, robins, and many redwinged blackbirds, which I was dying to stop and photograph but couldn't. This particular path runs between the river and the canal, so there are lots of waterbirds too. Now if I can just manage to keep going to spinning class AND riding outside, I might actually make headway on getting in better shape for sure. Stay tuned!

I just Flickr-posted some photos from an Academy Awards party I went to last month (er, month before last--is it April already?!), and I wanted to show you Trixie, the hosts' new pet. She's a sugar glider, which I thought was related to hamsters-squirrels-rodenty kinds of pets, but is actually a marsupial! (I should read up on them; think I'll start here.) And boy is she cute. Hard to take photos of, because she moves very fast and she's sensitive to bright lights, so I had to keep my flash turned off. Here she's eating some snacks from her owner's hand. And this was a big deal because at the time they'd only had her for a short while, so she wasn't yet entirely comfortable being handled by her. I'd never seen one of these before, and certainly not in person, so I was quite enthralled. She did a funny thing where she'd run really really fast around her exercise wheel--so fast that she'd lose her grip at the top of the rotation and WHOOMP! fall down to the bottom! Ow! But it looked so funny... If you look closely at some of the photos you can see the extra flap of skin on her abdomen that enables her to "glide", if she were allowed out with space to do that (and a handy tree, I guess). My friends also own a beagle/fox terrier mix, so Trixie doesn't go out very far from her bedroom; Velvet the dog is not happy with this new intruder. :-) Anyway, that's it for now.

These quizzes are so bizarre... I'd have never guessed I'd come up as Mal. Go figure! yay Zoe, though, I like thinking I'm a bit like her.
Thanks to elfrhys for the quiz.

Your results:
You are Malcolm Reynolds (Captain)

Malcolm Reynolds (Captain) 85% Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic) 75% Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command) 50% Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic) 50% River (Stowaway) 40% Inara Serra (Companion) 30% Alliance 30% Wash (Ship Pilot) 25% Derrial Book (Shepherd) 25% Jayne Cobb (Mercenary) 10% A Reaver (Cannibal) 0%

Honest and a defender of the innocent. You sometimes make mistakes in judgment but you are generally good and would protect your crew from harm.

Click here to take the "Which Serenity character am I?" quiz...
 

 I recently wrote about problems with my mail. Well, my landlord never installed the new box we bought, because it didn't come with a post, and he would rather fix the current plastic box! (Could have told me this before I went out and bought a new box, grumble grumble.) His solution was to put a tarp-strap inside the box: it's like bungee cords but made of a strip of solid rubber, with an S-hook on each end and roughly 12 inches long. One end is hooked via a hole he drilled in the rear door of the box, and the other hooks into a hole he drilled into the front door of the box (the side facing the road). I guess I should have taken a photo of this, it's hard to explain... Anyway, it kept the doors closed alright, but it made it very hard to open them unless you used two hands to pull down really hard! Grrr....and after only a day or two of that, we got a note from the postal carrier that the box was a "hazard" and "dangerous" and that if we did not fix it in two days all of our mail would be held at the post office. She even used the back of a "Dangerous Dog on Route" card, which I did not know they had supplies of--but I guess they must encounter an awful lot of those. I wonder how many jury-rigged mailboxes they have to deal with... !!!  So, with much grumbling, landlord took off the strap, and replaced the metal that the door magnet attaches to. So now it seems to be working fairly well. (Gee, he couldn't have thought of that in the first place??) I still want to tape the back door permanently closed, because if they both open from wind gusts, which they still could do at any time, then WHOOSH! goes our mail again. Sigh. Hopefully hopefully we've seen the last of this year's snow--despite the FOUR INCHES that arrived on Saturday--and we'll only have rain to deal with on our wonky mailbox.

I love The Onion! Got this from author lisayee , who got it from a friend of hers...

 <a target="theonion" href="http://www.theonion.com/content/news/novelists_strike_fails_to_affect?utm_source=Distributed&utm_medium=Embedded%2BHTML&utm_campaign=Widgets" >

Just a quick note to share my excitement: there's word that a new Muppet movie is in the works! Yaaaaaaay! I heard it at  http://www.muppetcentral.com/news/2008/031208.shtml and it's very exciting. Hopefully it will be better than their last couple of tv movies, which were so-so (Muppet Wizard of Oz, anyone? Anyone? Yeah, didn't think so).  I still wonder if they'll ever get a new Muppet tv show off the ground, after lots of grumbling about it, but one can always hope. Anyway, wocka wocka and good night!

This evening we had a bit of a hullaballoo--a loose horse! I was in the middle of feeding them their evening hay, and had stopped to say hello to some visitors. One of the boarders had his family along to visit, three young kids, and I was showing them Sammi the black and white barn cat, when all of a sudden there was a huge commotion just around the corner from us, at the indoor arena. Two horses were being led into the arena for some turnout time, when one of them got scared and bolted. His name is Cut, a quarter horse gelding, and he's one of our oldest and (usually) calmest horses. But the poor old guy is almost totally blind, and when he got in the arena he heard the sprinkler going off (they were watering it as it gets quite dusty) and maybe also saw the shadows of the water spray, I don't know, but he freaked out, ran around and went right for the open doorway back into the barn aisle. He knocked over our boss the farm owner, who uses a cane to get around due to a foot injury and so isn't the steadiest person around, just like a domino--I was really scared that he hurt him. Then Cut came straight for me--who's standing there like an idiot holding a fat cat in her arms, completely forgetting I still HAD the cat in my arms. I got out of the way and pushed the kids and their mom behind me as Cut came barrelling around past us; we were all talking to him but I had momentarily forgotten that he can't see well, and we were all probably scaring him a little. He calmed down and we caught him, and no one was hurt, thankfully. But Cut did do himself a little injury, he got so worked up that he bled from the nose a little. I don't know whether he banged his nose on the door or just burst a little vessel from overexertion (it could be the same thing that happens to some racehorses when they're raced while not in peak condition; he's pretty old after all and no one rides him much). But that was sad to see, I feel so sorry for the poor guy. They should never have led him in to the arena with something so noisy going on in there. It was really startling that it was him of all of our horses, because he really is a sweetheart who puts up with all kinds of stuff. Once when he was having a bout of colic, we let him walk himself up and down the aisle for relief, he is so gentle! He just walked up and down like a big shaggy dog, knowing he had to keep moving to make his tummy feel better. That was in the other barn, though, which just has one small paved aisle and nowhere else to escape to.

Anyway, I'm going to go check on Cut before I go to bed, make sure his nose is looking better. These photos are from 2005 when Cut got to be a movie star! :-) We had a film crew here to film a scene for a quarter horse charity film (that evidently still hasn't been finished, because we haven't heard yet about any DVD or premiere).


The movie is a comedy about a couple of inept horse thieves, and here they are leading Cut out of the barn to "steal" him.


In this photo you can see the director/cameraman shooting the scene, at far right, as the two bumbling crooks bring out the horse.


And here you see a better shot of Cut as he is led toward the "getaway trailer." :-) I have been looking for photos of him tonight and realized I don't have that many, not scanned at any rate, so I'll have to start taking some more. He's one of my favorites, and we have daily bonding time when he sticks his neck out for his chin to be scratched while I fill his water bucket. He really gets shaggy in the winter. Hopefully he will forget all about that arena being so scary...

Earlier last week, before the blizzard hit, we had a big ice storm. It lasted a couple of days, which is unusual; normally the ice melts by the end of the day or surely the next day, but this ice stuck around on trees and signs for several days, as the temps wouldn't warm up. I took some photos of various icy things, trying to be creative--it's hard when there's not much light available, it so rarely is SUNNY and icy at the same time ya know. :-) But one morning there was some nice sun that made all of the ice very sparkly.

This image is of our street at sunrise after the ice storm. You see the ice on the telephone wires? Well, we had a lot of major power outages because the ice brought down so many trees and wires. In fact, several places still had no electricity several days later, on Friday, when the blizzard hit! I felt really sorry for those folks. We lost power for a few hours in the middle of the night and morning (see my earlier entry) but it was restored fairly quickly.


The fickle fingers of fate reach out....heh heh. Just some icy tree branches. Thankfully the roads were kept pretty clear of this stuff; we've had days where you just can't walk or drive anywhere for the ice.

I've been literally "under the weather" for a few days now, buried under a blizzard of 18 inches of snow AND suffering from bronchitis. It's been a crappy few days. I blame the illness on Hillary--all that walking door to door in cold wet weather to stump for her certainly didn't do me any good, other than mentally. But Ol' Man Winter is to blame for our lovely blizzard on Friday and Saturday--it was incredible! Snow fell fast and furious all day long, both days; we got 8 inches the first day and another 10 the next! Thankfully I didn't have to go anywhere except out to the barns, and Sandy helped me with those chores, she did all the shovelling and heavy stuff. I wouldn't have been able to go to work on Saturday even if the library had been open, which it wasn't--pretty much our whole state shut down for a day. They're saying now that we've gotten the highest snowfalls in our area in decades. This photo I took from the comfort of my living room, where I pretty much lived for five days, shows the snow drifted on top of my car. It was fascinating to see how the winds tossed it around so that the entire driver's side of my car stayed free of snow, while the other sides got the brunt.

This is a closeup of the snow that stuck to the overhang on the barn roof--I love how it got sculpted by the wind. I took this in the evening as the light was almost all gone, so it didn't turn out quite the way I wanted it to, but you get the idea. If I'd been feeling 100% I would have loved to go out hiking in all of that snow and take some really great snow pictures, but I had to settle for what I could see within my limited boundaries. I tell ya, I hate being sick in any event, but especially when there is over a foot of beautiful snow lying there for me to play with! Ugh. And I've never had bronchitis before, I must be getting old; it was really scary. (Don't worry, I've been taking antibiotics and tons of meds and I'm well on my way back to good health now, whew.) I read some, and watched a little tv, but probably more listened to than saw, since I kept nodding off at all hours, then waking up every couple of hours too. Very annoying. My parents even came over to bring me, you guessed it, homemade soup! (Plus other food and a humidifier and more meds, bless them) I couldn't even thank them properly because I haven't had a voice for three days! I really hated to miss working on Saturday, odd as that sounds, because it was going to be a busy day for me--in addition to Anime Club, which I love (I have a great group of teens who come faithfully every month and are a lot of fun), I was scheduled to give a talk and a library tour to a library science class from Kent State. I do this same presentation every semester, and it's always so rewarding. They're all enthusiastic future children's and teen librarians, they're excited about what they want to do, and I get to gush about my job and my library to them. We usually get a few new library card registrations out of it, I often get a new practicum student interested as a result, and it's just a really satisfying thing to do. Hard to explain, but I love my library and I love being able to show it off. But university classes were cancelled as well as the library and everyone else shutting down. And of course, had I gone in I was going to have to pantomime or use American Sign Language anyway, so that wouldn't have worked... :-) We'll reschedule it for as soon as possible.


Interesting how the light was tinted blue during this time of day. This shot is of the storm raging around us. Again, shot through the window of course, I am not that big of an idiot. :-) Okay, I guess that's all I have to say about snow and being sick. Enough on those two topics. I have one more entry to make before heading in to work a short shift this evening, now that I'm recovered. Goldie will be glad to have me out of the house, she's been wondering why the heck I haven't left her side in so long! Totally not like me!

ugh. I had a crappy day yesterday (despite the post-Ohio primary buzz--yay Hillary!), because our power went out in the middle of the night thanks to an ice storm. So I was late getting up--and once again, Goldie decided to let me sleep in; why can she never do this when I WANT to sleep in? Honestly!--and had to feed the horses via flashlight (thankfully I had help from my neighbor). And could not take a shower, because with no electricity comes no water (we have a well system). Grr. And by the end of the day I'd started to develop a sore throat, from lack of sleep--I kinda stayed up really late watching election returns :-D So today I am grumpy and I sound like Kathleen Turner. Which would be great if any sexy young single guys happened to come in to the library today, but so far, no such luck....

If you don't want to read about Hillary Clinton, you can skip this entry. :-) (Not that I actually talk politics here much at all) But I've admired Hillary for years, I happen to think she'd make a great President, and I was very happy to finally be able to get to one of her many campaign stops in Ohio yesterday. I saw her speak at the University of Akron back in 1996 when she was stumping for her husband, and I remember how thrilling that was. Little did I think I'd one day get to vote for her too.

So, yesterday I arrived at Garfield High School in Akron early enough to beat the crowd, and got a nice spot just one person deep behind the barricades on the floor of the gym. I'd brought a book with me, because I had two hours to kill, but only read a little. I ended up having a great time talking to the nice women in front, next to and behind me, plus one young man (probably just turned 18 or maybe 19, he was there with his mom) who was even more enthusiastic than they were!

The crowd of about 1,000 people was totally jazzed. This is only the third time I've ever gone to a candidate's appearance--I'm not really that politically active--and I was surprised again at how much energy and camaraderie you can feel in a crowd like that. There were the usual lame cheers led by one of her campaign staffers ("Whose house? Our House! Which house? White House!"), people outside hawking buttons and other Hillary stuff, other people giving away free "Clean Coal" tshirts and hats for some energy group, even an Obama sign on a truck circling the school like a waiting shark...


One woman up front held this bizarre Hillary doll, which I guess was meant as a sign of affection, but I actually thought it was kinda scary looking.
I tried to get an autograph after her talk, but hoo boy, it was all I could do to keep from getting trampled by the press of people behind me. I was happy enough to have gotten great closeup photos and to know I was helping to support her in Ohio. For two hours during the morning I'd gone door to door with another Clinton volunteer (who is on vacation from her home in Michigan!), not getting a whole lot of people to answer their doors, since it was Sunday morning after all, but those who did were about evenly split between her and Obama, even within one household, or were undecided. So although that was hard (icy unshoveled sidewalks everywhere, lots of dogs on electronic fences who came *really* close to attacking me) and I sometimes get tongue-tied trying to talk politics off the cuff, it was still rewarding and I felt like I had done my part to help out. But boy was I tired by the end of the day, having walked a few miles and then having to stand for 3 hours in one spot. (Today I nearly fell off the bike at spinning class, LOL!)

I love that Ohio finally allows early voting with no strings attached; it was very satisfying to be able to cast my ballot on Friday already and have tomorrow (primary day) free for more election volunteering or whatever.
If you care to see other photos from the rally, including some of other speakers, and interesting homemade signs people had, follow the link at top to my flickr album.