Open House

It was six below (-21 Celsius) when I got up this morning. Sunny, though, and bright.

It reminds me of the year I was at St. Louis University. We had some Filipino students who had never experienced a Midwestern winter before, and they could not understand how it could be bitterly cold outside when the sun was shining. For them, sun meant warmth.

Last night I completed the corrections to the book proof and this morning tweaked the cover a bit and sent the updated version out. If all goes well, this time next week I will be able to tell them to put the thing up for sale. I told a nun friend I hoped to have it by Ash Wednesday (February 25 this year) so that people could read it for their Lenten penance.

By the time I headed over to the library open house, it had warmed up to minus 4! (-20 C) I wasn't sure what that was going to do to our turnout. After all, the library and all our exhibits are inside a warm building. The question was whether people would brave the cold to get there. At least it wasn't blizzarding out.

We wound up with a pretty good turnout, at least as good as last year, I was told. I spent most of the time taking informal photographs to be used in a large collage the staff will put together later. It was fun for all, I think. There were tons of little kids there to do the crafts projects -- making their own puzzle and personalizing a puzzle piece to be used to create the frame that will go around the collage of photographs -- and to attend the storytelling by readers dressed as characters in the stories they were reading. A few innocent people happened to wander in and were totally surprised to see such a mob and all the activities.