nichole's auxiliary storage

7-Year-Old Strikes Archaeological Gold

The Wisconsin Historical Society reports:

A 7-year-old boy and his "Kids Companion" mentor made the archaeological find of the year in Wisconsin on a November day in 2005 while exploring the Wisconsin River bed in Sauk City.

I don't know about you, but when I was 7, finding a rare archaeological treasure would have made my decade.

Sneak preview

Over at John Kovalic's blog, there's some contagious excitement about (and an awesome box design for) Cineplexity:

... it looks like the game will be out in time for the summer conventions. Huzzah, huzzah!

Well said! Summer can't come soon enough.

Field trip

Last week I took a field trip to a library I'd never been to before. I was afraid I might get lost, but around the Dells I saw a reassuring sight.

I got there and back OK. Plus I got to see this clever use of costume jewelry, donated to the library/community center:

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Two library-ish cards this week at PostSecret

Not exactly worksafe but oh so funny and/or vaguely creepy.

Liveblogging the annual church meeting

OK, not really. But I am taking advantage of my church's new wireless connection to tag some books in LibraryThing while folks give their annual reports. (Some people are knitting, kids are playing; it's cool.)

The library's coming along well. All 941 books are in LibraryThing and shelved alpha by title. Since there's no computer in the library room, once each book has at least one tag I'll print book lists by tag and author for folks to browse.

For the honor-system circulation "desk," I bought a locked metal suggestion box (it even came with a shiny "Express Checkout" sticker) and will print checkout slips for people to fill out when they  borrow books. When they return the books, I'll dig out and discard their checkout slip and reshelve. (I hadn't thought about statistics yet...hm...)

Otherwise, there's just a bulletin board to hang, and a bit of PR to do, and the library should be open by Lent - a contemplative time that seemed fitting.

Dane County Timebank

The Wisconsin State Journal reports that Dane County Timebank is taking off. This bit about the potential for jail inmates to participate caught my eye:

Rearick hopes to expand the Timebank concept throughout Dane County. "We're working with the sheriff's department to help people in the jail to earn credit for when they get out, like for transportation to job interviews," she said. "They can also earn credits for things while they're still in jail like literacy training, preparing resumes and basic financial planning."

Just yesterday I asked my friend who works with Stephanie Rearick how the project was doing. I'm glad to see it catching on.

New jail finds posted

Finally, new found fragments - including a letter to Stephan Pastis, a drawing of an eagle, a vocabulary list, and more.

Pie from the Nook

One of JM and my habits is to stop at the Norske Nook in Osseo anytime we're in the vicinity, and get a refill for the pie tin ($6 deposit) that's taken up permanent residence in our cupboards. In 3 years we've tried 13 pies and have at least 16 to go.

1. Apple (reviewed at Marginal Utility)
2. Banana cream (a prizewinner but I swear it's got Cool Whip on it)
3. Blueberry
4. Chocolate cream
5. Coconut meringue (dad's favorite)
6. Dutch apple
7. Chocolate mint (a March special the same year I kicked the repulsive ritual of buying one Shamrock Shake per year)
8. Lemon meringue (see below)
9. Peach (was actually kind of fakey peach flavored)
10. Rhubarb
11. Sour cream apple blueberry
12. Sour cream raisin (mom's favorite)
13. Sour cream raspberry

We brought the lemon meringue back after Christmas. Behold.

Hopping mad

A few weeks back, I looked out the back window and saw something awful. Almost all the raspberry bushes were gone.

I thought at first the bitter cold and heavy snow might have snapped them off. Upon closer inspection, it looked like they had been snipped with pruners.

A little Googling later, I turned up a UW Extension horticulture "Vermin report":

...rabbits cut them off neatly at a 45 degree angle - almost as if it were pruned with a pruning shears.

The well-trod highway and piles of scat were also a bit of a tipoff.

JM's taken a philosophical approach: no berries, no infuriating swarms of Japanese beetles. The roots should still send up new primocanes, and if we put up a good fence we'll be back in business in 2007.

Friends have suggested bone meal and dried blood as good deterrents, too. Now that the snow's melted the bunnies seem to have stopped noshing. And maybe this little guy, one of our favorite Christmas gifts, can be trained to give us a hand...

Caption, anyone?

Seen on last week's grocery run (picture credit: JM).

We hope so too

They should hopefully make it through a few more letters this year.

saith Kristian, unflagging supporter of Madison bloggers, of Eating in Madison A to Z, in A year in Madison blogs, circa 2005 on the Daily Page. We'll likely be in the Gs. My bet is we'll be ordering Glass Nickel for New Year's Eve.

Doug Moe: End of chapter for library chief

In the December 30 Cap Times:

Today marks the end of a great run for Peter Hamon, who is retiring as director of the South Central Library System after a distinguished quarter century in the job.