We had some dicy weather this afternoon and I was a bit worried about making it home on my bike, my confidence from earlier in the day (the weather forecast is never right) quickly dissolving as the sky turned black and the severe weather sirens went off. But as another cycling coworker reminded me, we only needed a 20 minute window to get home in. Lucky me, it had all blown through by the time I left work and I got home safe and sound with nary a sprinkle. Now it is cool and humid and cloudy and all I want to do is curl up with a book.
And that is what I will do after I say yay! for my city’s Central Library! This is the library I volunteer at and we just passed the one year mark of the big beautiful new building. A little anniversary news event reveals that about 870,000 people visited the library since its grand opening. Even better than that, total circulation was close to 1.5 million items! If that’s not enough for the city and county to realize how important it is to fund libraries then I don’t know what will get through to them.
For those of you who are feeling lucky or want to gamble without risk and possibly win books, the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize is having a contest. All you have to do is guess who will win the 2007 Best Book award and the 2007 Best First Book award and then be one of two people who guessed both right drawn from the pot and you will win all eight books up for the awards. Your odds have got to be better than winning the Powerball and instead of lots of money and relatives and friends you never knew existed, you win books, which is what you’d buy with all the money anyway and the odds of friends and relatives showing up to beg you for your books is slim to none. So what have you got to lose? You must enter my May 24th. That’s tomorrow, so don’t waste anytime. Go, on, go guess. I’ve already guessed so now I’m going to go have a lovely evening finishing up some of those books I mentioned yesterday.
Glad you made it home without the weather getting you. I walk from my workplace to the train and I was caught completely off guard by the weather on Monday. We’ve been having temperatures in the 80s and all the sudden it was raining and in the 50s.
Unfortunately it seems that many people never realize how important it is to fund libraries. I think I’m pretty lucky though to live in an area with a good library system.
We must be experiencing some of the same weather. This morning it was raining so hard and so windy my umbrella broke!! It is a poor pathetic looking thing now. And poor Don Quixote got wet as well. Glad to hear you made it home safely. It sounds like your library is a happenin place–and they get in good speakers–you are really lucky to have such a nice library!!
So glad you got home safe and sound – I feel for you having to face the elements on a bike! It sounds like something out of a Margaret Atwood novel. And yay for your library too – let’s hope the tides are turning…
Matt, our temperatures have been up and down too and the rain Wednesday was not supposed to arrive until that night. We’ve closed three libraries here “temporarily” and my city library system is in the process of merging with the county system in the hope that it will help keep all the libraries open.
Danielle, I used to think most of our weather came from the Dakotas, but now I think it blows in from Nebraska
I am very luck to have such a good public library.
Litlove, I was thinking more along the lines of The Wizard of Oz with the mean lady pedaling her bike into the wind since my face was all scrunched up and I was concetrating on making it home. I like Margaret Atwood much better
Since you are officially attached to the new library I can say, Happy Anniversary!
Thanks!