Sounds, if not sights, of spring!

Listen to this.  It's a beautiful thing...

I told someone this morning that I was determined to find some sign of spring today on the occasion of the Vernal Equinox.  Then I walked out to the mailbox and I only saw the added eight inches of snow we got yesterday.  I also saw the tracks of the big town grader that plowed us out yesterday, and for that we are always grateful.  And I felt the warm sun on my face, and that gave me an idea.

I went around to the back of the house and that's where I heard Spring!  The running water might not be visible in the ditches along the side of the road because they are still so full of snow, but Spring has come to our roof!

And our chairs tucked into the corner and out of the wind are all ready for someone to come out and read and listen to the spring!

We can do this!

Blogs in the Spotlight - A Dashing and Bold Library

Blogger - Marcia Kochel
Blog - A Dashing and Bold Library: Reflections on school librarianship and what's happening at the Galloway School Library

Some of my most fun years working as a school library media specialist were during the time I was working with Marcia Kochel as a colleague in another Bloomington middle school.  If I had been 10 years younger, and if she hadn't moved away to Atlanta, who knows what we could have accomplished in the school library world!

Now she is the head librarian at The Galloway School in Atlanta, and when she blogs, it is about the things she is doing there in her library.  Most recently she has been tweeting more than blogging, but just yesterday she blogged about her spring break trip to Ireland with another friend, and all kinds of memories came flooding back about OUR trip to Ireland.

Sometime in the winter of 2004 Marcia asked me if I wanted to go with her to a library conference presented by IASL - International Association of School Librarians - in Dublin, Ireland.  It would be happening that coming June and she thought we could work it out that our school district would pay for the conference and maybe some of the flight costs.  And they did!  (They don't do that so much anymore.)  So we decided to plan to go to the conference that was being held at Trinity College in Dublin, and then extend our stay with another week of travel in Ireland.  And since she travels extensively, she had a working relationship with Rick Steves travel books and she planned out the whole trip.  And she even created a CD mix of songs from Ireland to get us in the right mindset.

And most importantly, she was the driver of our rented car, driving on the left side of the road, which went really well most of the time - except for the first day out.  We were headed south into the Wicklow Mountains, on a narrow little mountain road just beyond the lake that looks like a glass of Guinness beer (dark brown with a sandy beach at the top that looks like foam), and we popped a tire when we went off the left side of the road.  So this is us:

Actually, I guess it was me because she didn't think she knew how to change a tire, and was surprised that I did.  And there were no cell phones or AAA to help.  Only a minor injury to my hand and we survived to have a great time on the rest of the trip.

Here's Marcia standing by a Kilkenny County bookmobile.  Seemed appropriate for the trip.

And here are our sock monkeys, Rory and Nate, resting near Sweet Molly Malone's cockles and mussels in Dublin.  Marcia's Nate has traveled with her all over the world, so when we were going to Ireland, she and her husband created Rory (short for Aurora, I think) for me to bring along.  Rory started out in this foofy pink dress, but things got better for her later in the trip when we found her an Ireland World Cup Soccer outfit!

On the ferry crossing over to near Galway.

Standing while being buffeted by the winds of the Cliffs of Mohr, Nate in the backpack.

And our nightly task was to find some local nightspot where they were playing Irish music live, and finding something to eat.  Hopefully this picture won't cause her problems at her school, but it shouldn't since she is drinking tea and I have the Guinness!

It was great fun.  And I hope she keeps on blogging! 

Coming soon - We accept credit cards!

Part of the process of setting up our business was acquiring a business credit card.  Along with that we raised the question of our business being able to accept credit cards from customers.  Our initial inquiries gave us answers we didn't really want. We found out we would have to pay a fee to rent the machine to slide people's cards in, pay a per transaction fee, pay a monthly fee to be able to accept credit cards, and pay a fee to keep the whole process secure.  And for our little business with only two guest rooms, it didn't seem worth all the fees.  Plus, we were told that we couldn't use the cute little card readers that connect to iPhones or iPads because our business was lodging.  (What's that got to do with anything?)

So now a year later, we, along with our customers, have all survived our need to accept only cash or checks.  But it was touch-and-go at times.  One customer forgot and mailed us a check after they got home, but I could tell from the check that it was some kind of counter check from their bank.  And I cringed a little every time I had to tell potential guests that we don't accept credit cards, especially if they were 35 or under - an age group that hardly ever uses checks anymore.  If they forgot, I knew we always had one ATM in town, but only if The Store was open.  So, I was always on the lookout for a solution.

And here it is:

Every time I opened up my QuickBooks computer program to do some B&B business, I was met with a screen taunting me about using credit cards for our business.  I finally called the 800-number and talked to a nice young man who explained about Intuit's pay-as-you-go plan and how it could work for us, even though we are lodging.  Turns out, the rule--or law--says that we can't accept a credit charge for more than 90 days in advance, so as long as we stay within that time frame, we can accept credit cards.  YAY!  The pay-as-you-go plan was super cheap and the charge data goes through wifi directly into our QuickBooks program.  Sweet!

Of course there was one last glitch - this only works when using QuickBooks 2014 and we are using 2013.  But a lucky St. Patrick's Day discount yesterday enabled us to buy it at a greatly reduced price, so we are almost good to go.  

I suppose that means anything we saved by moving to this service for people was eaten up by the purchase of the new software.

(Sigh - again...)

Skyline view of a big still-frozen lake

Lake Superior from Skyline Drive

It was another trip to Duluth today.  We had some time between errands and doctors' appointments, so we checked out Skyline Drive which curves around the upper areas of Duluth.  From there I was able to take this -rather bleak- picture of the aerial lift bridge - it's that little bump far, far away in the middle of the picture and behind the bush.  (It seemed like wherever I stood, there was a scraggly bush in my way.)  And behind the bridge and that long spit of land to the right, which is the Minnesota side of Park Point, is the full expanse of Lake Superior, still covered by ice.  

If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can faintly see the trail of ice that has been broken through recently by the Coast Guard Cutter Alder.  With temperatures back down to single digits, I'm sure it's hard to keep the shipping lanes open.

Here's an interesting article highlighting the Coast Guard's work last week, breaking through ice that was up to four feet thick in places.  A scientist quoted in the article warns that, with all this ice in a lake this big, it's going to be "a lousy year for swimming in here until about August."

But up here, that's about what we would expect.  

More snow tomorrow (sigh).