Oh, how I wish this were a more entertaining post.

Well, it has been quite a break since my last post.

Any by that, I mean a break in writing blogs, not in any other sense of the word.

Last week was so busy. Maybe more emotionally than physically what with finding out one of my grandmothers is in the hospital with pneumonia in both lungs and is not doing well, getting lab results back from a physical, having a job interview and various other circumstances and situations that I will not ramble on about here.

Fortunately it has been a long weekend, and John has not worked a single hour since Thursday afternoon. We have rediscovered the joy of hanging out with friends, lounging around the house, and actually sitting down to eat meals together.

This weekend is all the more extraordinary because generally when we have a long weekend we are out of town or we have events scheduled weeks or months in advance. Three days ago we had nothing really planned to do this weekend, so we could meet up with friends at the last minute and then continue doing nothing much for the remainder of our time.

Some have asked about updates on the library situation. Because of the extraordinary busyness and stress of last week, we did not end up attending the city council meeting. (Turns out that was a good call because I think the meeting lasted until the wee hours of the following morning.) However, we did watch some of the proceedings online and there was a fine representation of citizens speaking out to save our little library.

It so happens there is a long-term plan (approved several years ago) that will rid the city of our library and one other neighborhood library in favor of three larger libraries for the entire city. Some Library Experts consulted with the city on this plan, so apparently it is the Best Way to handle the library situation.

The problem is…the three larger libraries have not been built yet. Our library was not supposed to be demolished until those other larger buildings were completed. But money talks. And our city has very little of it. Sooooo, the city council decided that eliminating our library now would cut costs (and of course there are no current plans to start any other building since the budget is so tight). We are hoping the city council decided to keep our library open for at least one more year and maybe raise enough funding to stick to the original plan.

I say “we are hoping” because we could not keep our eyes open long enough to watch the last several hours of this marathon city council meeting. Nor can we find the budget results anywhere on the city website. We will have to do more research before bringing the final results to all of you.

I think the remainder of the day will be spent, unfortunately, fighting the Labor Day crowds at the grocery store and watching the continuing coverage of Hurricane Gustav. We had just moved overseas when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, so this is brining back memories of watching CNN International in our hotel room at the Novotel…only, thankfully, this storm seems much tamer.