At the Library - On the Web Site

Our Used Book Store is both dependent on and for the benefit of the Library. We don’t want to be troublesome to the Library staff, so we try to be careful not to ask for too much.

I wrote a page on the Used Book Store for inclusion on the Library’s web site and the Web Guy, Richard, was nice enough to put it up for us. He asked for any changes and I asked for a correction to the link for the Amazon Bookstore, which he did very quickly.

Then I saw a grammatical error. It wasn’t anything terrible, like “there, their, they’re”. It was a simple prepositional inconsistency and the average web site reader will not even notice. I noticed. My mother would notice. My boss would notice. I do not want to ask this nice man to update the page again for a mistake that I made – that is bothering no one but me. It wouldn't even bother me if it were on my own blog, but this is for the Library.

Would you believe that I already have a strategy for fixing this? The copy notes the next semi-annual sale, which is July 12-13. On July 14, I have an excuse to edit. I will be doing so.

At the Refuge - Mikki

I have taken a whole lot of bites from birds at the Refuge. Sometimes I even deserve it. Mikki once bit me while I was feeding him. Badly. When I would try to clean his cage he would try to bite me. I would try to give him a walnut and he would try to bite me. I avoided Mikki.

My friend Jose swore that it was only because he was cage-agressive and that if I got him away from the cage he would be nothing but kisses.

Great, Dude. You take him out.

Last week, Jose brought Mikki out and nobody died. I didn't hang out over there, but Mikki seemed very pleased to be out and about and having the attention.

Tonight, I went to the Refuge to put the birds to bed. Check in on everyone, cover them up, turn off the lights. I do a round first, giving each bird a nut of some kind. I got to Mikki. He was on the floor of his cage looking menacing.

(sigh)

I knelt down and slooowly offered him a walnut.

He took it from me. Didn't try to lunge past it and bite. Didn't throw it on the floor and try to bite me. Took it and opened it up to eat it. I told him he was a good bird and moved on. When I got back to his cage to cover him up, he was dancing around on the floor, like: "Look at me! I took the nut! And ate it! I'm a good bird!"

I gave him another one.

Mikki the Good Bird is available for adoption and you can read more about him here.

Public Service Announcement - HHS Web Site

I was reading an article in one of my trade magazines that made a link between issues with our physical health and issues with our financial health (Ever use your credit card at McDonald’s?). The main idea is that these problems – like gaining weight and growing debt – sneak up on us. And there is no quick fix.

On the physical wellness side, the article offered up a website from the Department of Health and Human Services called “Small Step” that is meant to show that small changes in our habits can make a difference in our overall health. While this isn’t a new idea, I thought you might appreciate the resource.

Some of the tips include:

(# 56) Keep a pair of comfortable walking or running shoes in your car and office.
(# 97) Walk the beach instead of sunbathing.
(# 154) Keep a bowl of cut-up vegetables in the refrigerator for snacks. Carrot and celery sticks are traditional, but consider broccoli, cucumbers, or pepper strips.

You can find the web site at:

http://www.smallstep.gov/

At the Library - The Street Sale

Friends of the Glenview Library will be at the street sale during the Glenview Summer Festival on June 28. The street sale is basically vendors with tables outside on the street, but it attracts a pretty big crowd. I hate crowds, so I haven't attended since about college.

This is new for the Used Book Store. The idea came out one day because several of us noted the number of customers that say, "I had no idea you were here!" Two years after we planted ourselves in the mezzanine.

We plan to bring a bunch of boxes of paperbacks, nothing extravagant. Just enough to let the average citizen on the street know that we exist. Let's just hope the weather holds up.

In other news, it looks we are finally getting approval for the plans on the new Library. There are several comments I would be making here, if I wasn't a Lady.

That was to make my mother laugh.

Shadow

I talk a lot about the birds, and as I wrote earlier about Spooky I decided the dog, Shadow, deserved some love.

About a month after I moved into my first apartment, I called my mother at work for some reason. Because she can't keep a secret to save her life, she blurted out that our 12 year old cocker spaniel, Max, hadn't been well and she was taking him to the vet that night. Depending on the response from the vet, she might not bring him home. If you understand my meaning. Max had heart trouble that we had been trying to manage for years, so I was not optimistic.

I raced to the house after work and my dad was sitting in his chair in the family room looking awfully twitchy. As the minutes ticked by, we decided that whether Max came home or not, we were going to adopt a puppy the next day. He sent me to the phone to call around the local shelters (this is before we discovered Petfinder ) and find him a mixed breed puppy.

Max came home, but we had already decided. We found shadow the next day. Six months later, my parents split up and my mother got Shadow.

Shadow is a great dog because he is totally unphased by the comings and goings of other animals in my house. And many are not too nice to him.

Old Man Max was not interested in puppies. Not long after I moved back to the house, we got a new roommate and his dog, Natasha, whom he adored. Natasha left when the roommate left. As I mentioned earlier, Spooky the Cat also came with the roommate. Shadow tried to make friends with Spooky and took a claw to the eye. Emergency room. And Spooky is the one that stayed.

When Natasha left, Dallas the German Shepard came. She was bigger, more energetic and sometimes pushed him around. I adored that dog, but sometimes you could just see Shadow rolling his eyes as she grabbed the scruff of his neck. We lost her to cancer. We have also babysat and fostered dogs - Shadow has been very patient with them, too.

Kiwi the African Grey is the bane of his existence. She will not sit still and is always touching his people. Sometimes he yells at her using his Big Dog voice, but mostly he just herds her back to her cage. And now we have Manu, if only temporarily. Shadow likes Manu because Manu stays in his own space and drops plenty of treats down to him.

Doesn't even look like the same dog, does he? Shadow does not have his own web site and is not available for adoption.

At the Refuge - Website and Other Stuff

It seems my friend Susanna has the new design set up at the Refuge web site!

Tonight, it was crazy hormone night. I could hear the cockatoos screaming from outside. In my car. With the music on. My mother will tell you that is pretty bad.

Peachie the Moluccan Cockatoo, had actually laid an egg. It was already broken when Megan went to clean her cage tonight. Rocky, our poster bird, had three eggs in her cage. Addison, the African Grey about whom I posted recently has been over grooming his feathers. And Ninja, a permanent resident, attacked everyone that tried to walk by her. I don't know how they got her back in her cage.

I am exhausted, and I was barely there for two hours.

The good news is that our team is fully staffed and we are all working together very well. The construction seems to be moving along nicely (as we count down toward the day when I will have to finally decide if Manu should live with me or if he would be happier somewhere else. Where Kiwi the Grey is not).

The website looks great and the volunteers and members are using it - contributing their own stories. Seriously. Susanna Rocks.

Now if we could only do something about fundraising...

Adopt a Cat Month

In honor of Adopt a Cat Month, I would like to talk about my cat Spooky.

He came to live with me at the age of 8 ½ when my roommate brought him from his parent’s house. Roommate had a dog that slept in his room. My mother had a dog that slept in her room. The cat chose me and my room. The roommate left; the cat stayed. That was 8 years ago. I have had to sleep with my bedroom door open for 8 years.

We are a dog family. I do not speak cat. But I am convinced the cat speaks English. He has a Meow that sounds like he is calling out “Hello”. And the other night I was awakened at 4am by what I could swear was Spooky talking in his sleep about his grand plan for managing the Apocalypse.

On Sunday afternoon I gave him a bath. This is required because he has some kind of skin allergy that makes him itch and lick the fur off his skin until he bleeds. Afterward, he skulked away to pout, so I decided to get to my real chores and changed the sheets on my bed.

Then I put him on a leash to take him into the backyard to dry off in the sun. At his former home he was allowed outside as he pleased. We do not allow this, which I imagine is #1 on his list of reasons to bother destroying the Earth. He sat in the shade for 10 minutes before going back to the door.

(sigh)

I let him back in the house.

Within the hour, he was asleep. On my clean pillow. He was still wet.

So I cut his nails. I have to be careful, though. If he gets mad he will take it out on the dog. Actually, that is pretty funny, too.

If it hadn’t been for wayward roommate, I would never have had any idea that a pet that can’t be bribed, doesn’t follow direction, thinks he is smarter than I am and requires two litter boxes could possibly be so cool.

The Happy Hollisters

The other night at the Library, I spent a whole bunch of time individually listing a bunch of old children’s books for sale on Amazon. The Happy Hollisters was a mystery series and the books I saw were from about 1955 – 1965.

Great condition, including dust jackets, which is pretty rare.

There were eleven of them and I was listing them from $7.00 to $9.00. When I got home, I asked my mother if she had ever heard of them. She came out of her chair to squeal about how that series introduced her to mysteries and she loved, loved, loved them! I showed her the selection from our Amazon Storefront.

“Do you want them for your birthday?” Which is in August.

So as I go online to unlist them, I called our director to explain why I am doing all of this listing and unlisting and that I will pick up the books on Saturday.

She was very happy when I said, “So I showed her the books from the Storefront…”

Then I decided those books are really the kind that require covers for the dust jackets and I am starting to run low. So I went to my source on eBay and bought a new roll of adjustable, archive quality covers.

This is an expensive volunteer gig.

P.S. I went to Amazon to look up my favorite childhood book, The Little Witch. $100 for the 1987 hardcover. Lucky I still have my 1979 paperback.

P.P.S. Mom. That was not a hint to buy it for me. Do not buy it for me.

The Digital Divide

We talked a lot about the "digital divide" in my e-commerce class last semester. I found this chart in an article on msn.com by Steven Musil who talks about the haves and have nots of technology. If you can't read the little numbers, it says that 30% of us have never used a computer to create a document, like in Word or Excel. 21% have never used e-mail, looked up a website or used the Internet to search for information. Toward the end of the article, Musil says that after we get past the economics and education we still won't have everyone online because people just don't understand how the Internet can help them in their every day lives.

Relatively speaking, I am not particularly tech-savvy. The only reason I have my own computer is that I went back to school and I needed my little brother to pick it out for me. I am on Blogger because it was a school assignment. Even so, I have no idea what I did before Mapquest was around to give me directions.

And I was just making fun of my brother for buying a GPS.

Rescue Dogs and Teens

Chicago has, more than once, been name the Most Dog Friendly City in the U.S. The Chicago Tribune is pretty good about indulging us with local stories. This article talks about a Keeshond Rescue Group that has partnered with a residential facility for teens. The kids work on training with the dogs, making them more likely to be adopted. The kids gain skills and insight and perhaps relate to animals in a way they may not be able to with people. A dog that lost its home to foreclosure, another that was bait for dogfighters, etc.

The article mentions a story about a program for inmates in a South Carolina prison. Inmates were paired with puppies for a similar purpose and the results were fabulous. I remember reading about it and thinking it was the best idea I had ever heard. In some college psychology class or another, we were taught that violent and anti-social behavior toward people is often preceded in youth by violent behavior toward animals. Part of the idea of these programs is the opportunity for the inmate or "troubled teen" to experience empathy with the animal.

I am pleased to see a local group has implemented such a program.