Warming trend

All the way up to 8 this morning, which felt very reasonable.  Yesterday it was 2, but the bitter wind was just nasty.  It's supposed to be so warm that we'll have rain this weekend, which will then freeze and make our lives miserable again.

The horrible, cold wind of yesterday reminded me of my childhood in northern Illinois.  There's nothing to stop the wind in that part of the country--no mountains or tall buildings, so it just sweeps across the countryside.  Very, very cold.  When I was in grade school we were "patrol girls," the early equivalent of today's crossing guards.  We wore really cool white belts and got to escort little kiddies across the street.  There were 2 of us at each intersection and boy were we ever wonderful.  In 6th grade I shared a corner with one of my best friends and we really did have fun.  Winter wasn't so great--we had to be out there no matter what the temperature was, but if it got below zero we'd get hot chocolate.  As if that would make much difference, but it made us feel pretty darn special.  At the end of our shift we would yell "Let's peel," whatever that meant, and the kids on the next corner would hear us and repeat it for the next corner, and so on.  Oh it was a smooth-running operation.  Why in the world they trusted goofy girls like us to monitor crosswalks will forever be a mystery to me, but it was a highlight.

Not much going on in my life right now.  A deer ran into my car recently, cracking the bumper and disabling an airbag sensor (and the deer), so I'm having it repaired next week.  What a pain in the neck.  The deer ran right into the left front of my car when I was going fairly slowly on skid-y roads, so I couldn't get away from it.  Very icky.  Yes, I suppose I was lucky not to have been hurt but the whole thing happened so slowly that there wasn't much fear of that happening.  How stupid are these deer, anyway?  They're really on the move these days--pretty much every morning and every evening I see them crossing the road on my way home.  As my friend Linda says, I should think of it as my way of culling the herd, since I don't hunt.  Yes, OK.

We've been getting donations (of $$$) from member libraries to purchase e-books, since the amount we have budgeted is so miniscule.  This is great and makes me feel very good (and popular).  Now we just have to figure out how to spread the wealth across the year without disappointing the libraries that their books haven't shown up yet.  Almost all of them want me to select the titles, so I've been spending time trying to come up with purchases that equal almost exactly the amounts of their donations.  This is called what?  Collection management by what formula?  Fiduciary?

I also started writing an informal history of the Library System.  I've been here nearly 30 years and have seen amazing changes and developments.  It will be fun (some) and stressful (some), remembering the past.  Lots of turbulent times but always enjoying what I do, and being able to believe I'm doing something worthwhile.  Lucky, that.