Super Bowl Sunday Salon

Photo from Seattle PI

Weather: overcast and cold. It has been rainy all week. This coming week the weatherman tells us will get cold, maybe even a flake of snow. We'll see.

Super Bowl today: The Seattle Seahawks vs Denver Broncos in the big professional football game. In case you are wondering who we are rooting for, it is the Seahawks. And they deserve to win. Why? Because this is only the second time they've ever been in this final game of the season. They are the only professional football team in this region of the country, so all of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska, Montana deserve to have a winning team at least once! The team has really come together this year and so has the fan base. There are 12th Man flags everywhere, including our house. We will be watching the game with relatives who live nearby. Go Hawks!

Feed My Starving Children: is an organization that puts together nutritional food packets (called Manna Packets). The food is shipped to areas around the world experiencing high poverty and to feed hungry children. The branch in our town supplies meals for children in Haiti. A group of about 30 from our church donated a few hours on Friday to help put together the packets. We put together 936 packets which is 5616 meals. The room was electric with God's spirit as over 200 people packed more than 78,000 meals in less than two hours -- enough to feed one nutritious meal to 215 children each day for a year. What a night.  (See photo of us with our hairnets.)

Nearing the end of untangling the mess caused by the library system outage. It was down for almost six weeks, but the messes that were made to student accounts are still an issue. This past week we tried to finally identify all the weird fines and reassign books that were wiped off accounts. We are almost there. Then we can turn our attention back to just regular operations of running a high school library.

Printz book awards announced: The ALA made it's grand announcements of all the book awards for the year. Three of our Mock Printz books were selected, including the winner Midwinterblood by Marcus Zusak. Two honor books on our reading list were:  Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell and Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner.

Tailgate party at church: there was a lot of excitement at church today around the Seahawks game so we played it up. Our coffee fellowship was called a tailgate party and everyone was encouraged to wear the team colors. Children were called up to sing a song and most were sporting their Seahawks gear.

Notice all the Seahawks emblems and colors on the kids

100 years-100 Books: Our local library celebrated its 100-year anniversary last year. To mark the occasion, patrons were encouraged to read 100 books during the year. Those who accomplished the feat were honored in a reception yesterday and given a t-shirt, a shopping bag, and a new library card with the recognition on it. I was among those honored. Take a look at all my new gear and at the photo of what the first library in Puyallup looked like.

The first library in Puyallup.
 Books were loaned out of this shack!

I'm part of the town's 100 Book Club!

Soup of the week: Thai Shrimp and Corn Soup. It was different but good. I am trying to make a big effort at varying up the soups I make so we don't get sick of eating soup all the time. I learned a new skill making this soup, too, which was how to add eggs to soup to give them that stringy egg look. Easy.

Books read this week:

• March (Book 1) by John Lewis...a graphic biography about this famous Congressman and his work with Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights movement. I recommend it.
• The Maid's Version by Daniel Woodrell...not a favorite. I won't be recommending this book to anyone. If you have read this book and liked it, I'd like to hear from you.

Currently reading:

• Allegiant by Veronica Roth...this is book three in the Divergent series and it is my audiobook this week. I'm about half finished and the action just picked up.
• How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig...I am enjoying this book quite a lot. In fact I am currently working on memorizing a few lines from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and nodding violet grows,
Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet muskroses and with eglantine.

Have a hallelujah kind of day!