26 days till Spring

As I look over the 25 foot snow drifts in the library parking lot here in Lake Neverwuz I am happy to hear that Spring will arrive in 26 days, which means that we will have only 7 more weeks of snow and ice. In May we usually have the last of the snow melt and that will coincide with this year's Rural Libraries Conference. Yes, May 7-9 at Grand Traverse Resort we will all be together again. Don't miss our reunion by forgetting register or reserving a room. The Gates Foundation is a paying for the registration, which includes the meals, so your library has to pay for the cost of the hotel. What a deal!!

I am anxious to get there so you can all see the results of my Extreme Makeover. You know when one gets past 30 parts of us start to go "south". Well I took some of my DDA beautification fund and used it to do a tuck here and there. It's all part of the let's bring Lake Neverwuz into the 21st century, a program sponsored by our Downtown Development Authority (DDA). I also received some grants for our staff and you just wouldn't believe the changes including the increase in male usage of the library.

I also thought we should have a cell phone at the library. Our only problem is that the cell phone reception is very poor unless you cross into the next county. VeryHorizon,ATTTT, Sprinter is working on getting a tower in town, they first tried putting a tower on the bookmobile but found that reception was only good around the bookmobile and because it changed location so often you were easily cut off during a conversation, this proved to be very problematic when the mayor was talking with the Governor concerning the 50% cut in state aid. Their conversation was cut off just when he said______.

We do get USF discount for the phone. Our schools have 98 of the 100 students qualify for the reduced lunch program so our discount is 99.99999% so the phone only costs us 39cents a month, and with the kind of service we get that's about what it's worth.

Enough about us, register for the conference so we can get together at the bar and talk about services and about the librarians who are not attending the conference.

Marian