The smallest library in the world!

I came across this today in reading my library news and got a kick out of it. With budget cuts hitting everyone, and small towns trying to build bigger and better libraries at the same time.... a town in England made a library out of a phone booth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/somerset/hi/people_and_places/arts_and_culture/newsid_8373000/8373906.stm

Hanging it up?

Am I hanging it up? It sure looks that way. After a couple of months of trying to post every day, I went 2 weeks without a single post. Looks like my hopes of doing a blog on a daily basis have gone away.

I do hope to still occasionally check in here, but it seems like I am not being the regular blogger that I had hoped to be.

We had a quiet Veterans Day, staying at home. Then that weekend we found ourselves picking apples on a Sunday afternoon. I've never picked apples in November before. It sure has been a warm month. This past weekend gave us another Sunday to enjoy the outdoors. Abby and I played in the yard for several hours, on the swings, the slide, just general running around. Her favorite game these days is "House" where she gets to be the mom, and I get to be the big sister. It's not a lot of fun for me, but I indulge her as often as I can because I like seeing her use her imagination and doing pretend play.

Thanksgiving is still up in the air, we'll see what happens. I did get a new netbook so hopefully I will be able to keep up on my RSS feeds and other things better during non-work days if I can drag myself out of the house to an internet connection.

Happy Veterans Day

Tomorrow is Veterans Day. I'm not sure if I'll be raking leaves, visiting family, or just hanging out somewhere with the kid and the husband. I hope I'm doing something productive. The weather forecast is supposed to cooperate with being outside. We may not see a parade or do something actively to show our support for Veterans, but I carry the thought in my heart anyway.

Preschool is closed so I won't be at work. I guess that goes without saying maybe.

Hope you all have a good day.

Sprout again

A very professional sounding woman from PBS Sprout called me today and called me a liar. She said that Sprout has always carried toy company advertising in the "fourth quarter" and that the ads are aimed at the parents, not the kids. I say Bullshit!

Sorry. Those ads are aimed at the kids and I don't care what Sprout says. I asked her if she had a preschooler at home, but she didn't want to go there. I don't blame her. In the end we did not agree, and she held her ground that Sprout is not going against their policies and has carried toy ads for the past 4 years. Maybe they have had those ads for the past 4 years, but my daughter wasn't in preschool then and we weren't paying attention.

PBS Sprout is violating their promise not to market to kids!

We have been devout PBS Sprout watchers. We are particularly fans of Nina and Star and the "Good Night Show". "Caillou" is one of Abby's top 2 favorite shows (the other being "Blue's Clues"). I like "Kipper" myself, and watching "Kipper" is often a part of our nightly bedtime routine. A few weeks ago we got Tivo in the bedroom because "Kipper" didn't seem to be on at the right time for us. Sure,it cost some money, but the show is on twice from 6pm-9pm and I didn't like missing the first showing and then having to wait until 8:45pm for the 2nd showing. So we got the Tivo.

Now for those of you who don't know, PBS Sprout is all about children's programming. A lot of the shows are made by the same people who produce Sesame Street, and there are no ads DURING the shows themselves. Still, there is a need for them to show some advertising and they have done a great job of doing this by advertising to the parents instead of the kids. We see ads for health insurance, garbage bags, vaccuum cleaners, credit cards, and debt solutions. I am used to this. It's boring, but I tolerate it because I know they have bills to pay.

PBS Sprout has promised, has written in stone practically, that they will not market to our children.

So what happened????? All of a sudden I'm seeing ads for Hasbro,Playskool, and "Pillow Pets". I'm furious! Suddenly my daughter needs a Pillow Pet for Christmas, maybe more than one because there are several kinds. I looked up PBS Sprout website today, and the pledge is still there and yet I saw the ads myself.

So please, call or email PBS Sprout and tell them to DITCH the ads aimed at the kids!! If they don't do it soon, I'm going to ditch PBS Sprout, and probably my whole Directv subscription in the process.

http://www.sproutonline.com/sprout/home/

http://www.sproutonline.com/sprout/help/#GQ11

"Does PBS KIDS Sprout include advertising?

Yes, PBS KIDS Sprout is advertiser supported. However, advertisements will never interrupt a program, and we only feature messages targeted to parents and caregivers, not the child viewer."

Please help me get the message to them. This is NOT acceptable.
Thank you!

OOps!

Serves me right for not reading the whole story first. I was going to post about today being the birthday of Sesame Street because I saw something on Google. Well, the birthday isn't until the 10th. Google is just starting now with Sesame Street things to celebrate for a whole week. Big Bird's legs were in the logo on the Google home page.

I also pulled up some YouTube videos, but I didn't listen to them because I'm at work with the sound off. I just assumed that they were the original Sesame Street songs. I posted on on Facebook, and my mother in law told me that there was non-children friendly vocals. OOPS! I deleted the post.

Dumb me! So listen and read before I start spreading the news I guess. Duh!

This space for rent!

Well it's almost the end of the day, and I was SO sure I was going to get to the Halloween pictures today. I was also sure I was going to pay bills during my lunch break, especially since I didn't bring a lunch to work today. Didn't achieve either one. Oh well. I guess my brain is on vacation or something. Not sure who would have seen the pictures if I'd put them up anyway.

If there is anything you'd like to hear me rant about, post about, research for you, whatever.... let me know. I'm running out of things to say.

Recap of the weekend

I guess I've pretty much thrown out my whole M-F themed post thing. It didn't seem to be working. More and more I am just posting about whatever tangents of family updates that I feel like posting about. I still like the Writing Wednesdays, but even those have been not so great.

So I did my hair on Friday, and Friday night I tried to wash it out. Saturday morning it still felt sticky though, and I still had paint on the back of my neck and stuff, so I decided not to do it again for Saturday night. Abby saw what I had done to my hair, and decided she did not want pink hair for herself. Just as well. Now it's Monday and I think it's out of my hair finally. Still need to wash my hairbrush though because that is looking pretty pink.

We did trick or treating in Montague (MA) Center, and had a blast. Saw some of Abby's friends from school, a coworker from the library, and a lot of people out having a good time. I'd never seen hot dogs and beer given out to trick or treaters before! We did attempt Shutesbury first, but no one was out yet at 5:20pm so we went to Montague. We had a little rain, but it didn't seem to stop the crowds. Great time! I hope we do it again next year. We might even look at houses in the neighborhood if we get serious about selling ours. I know they have internet there at least.

We didn't go to the Fairy Princess Garden. Abby wanted to find a pick-your-own-pumpkin patch so we spent Saturday afternoon looking. Never found one. Ate lunch at the BlueBonnet Diner in Northampton and watched the train inside and all the staff was dressed up too. Finally got a pumpkin from a roadside stand and brought that home just in time to make a jack o'lantern before going out.

After going to Montague, we drove up to Shutesbury but by the time we got there Abby was too tired to get out of the car so we went home. Pretty good meltdown at home from being so overtired and hungry, but we finally got her in the house. She gave up most of candy, more than I thought she would. I'll probably offer to give some of it back later. Didn't go to bed until really late, which helped with the time change in the morning.

Sunday was my dad's birthday. Abby decided early in the day that she wanted to stay home and play with her toys. In the morning she went outside to play in the leaves. I went grocery shopping and she stayed home with Aaron. When it came time to go to dinner, she still didn't want to go so I went by myself. Aaron and Abby stayed home, did arts and crafts, and had dinner etc. I had dinner with my dad and his friend at a Chinese place. Then we went to the hospital to see my grandmother. She was admitted on Saturday, but I heard she should be heading back to the nursing home today or tomorrow. Hopefully nothing serious.

Today is my mother-in-law's birthday. She's in Florida so obviously no party for that.

Did I cover everything? I hope so. Hope you all had a good weekend!
and
Thank you Montague for a great Halloween!!