Right now I feel like I'm meeting myself coming and going. Thanksgiving break can't come soon enough. The university has all of next week off, but since I work for the public school district, they only get next Wednesday through Friday off. While I wish I didn't have to work Monday and Tuesday, hopefully I can use these days to work on the five projects/papers left to due between now and December 15. I now only have two more face to face classes left, the aforementioned assignments to complete, and one final to take and my semester will be FINISHED!

Prayer request: last week my grandma Jessie (my only living grandparent) was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Our family and friends have been uplifting her in prayer and when she went for a follow-up visit to the doctor yesterday, the PET scan they had taken came back showing NO cancer! Praise the Lord! There is still a tumor in her esophagus, which is still a very serious situation. The doctors are discussing what to do from here. So, while there is some great news, there are still some unanswered questions we will face in the days and weeks to come. Please keep my grandma and our family in your thoughts and prayers.

Elementary library land is going well and as always, my kids at school say the funniest things. Last week one 1st grade boy had requested the book "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales" by Jon Schieszka. We only have one copy of this book and it's very popular, so he had been waiting for it for a while. After he started looking at it, another little boy said, "Well, I think the book smells like stinky cheese!" Yesterday I read the story "Melissa Parkington's Beautiful, Beautiful Hair" by Pat Brisson to the other class of 1st graders. The story deals with ways you can improve yourself and do kind things for people, including donating your hair. I used the story as an opportunity for a writing prompt and asked the kids to write down five kind things they can do for others and three things they wish they could do better - playing basketball, becoming a better artist, etc. A cute little blond headed girl with glasses looked up at me and said, "I know something I can do better! I can get better at catching bugs!" I smiled and told her, "Oh, that's a wonderful goal!" Except for lightning bugs, I wasn't ever a big bug catcher, but it made me happy to know that this simple childhood pleasure is one she thinks she can improve upon. :)

This past summer I believe I mentioned my fascination with reading Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" saga, complete with going to Barnes & Noble the night "Breaking Dawn" was released. In keeping with this tradition, a group of my MLS friends and I pre-bought tickets to see the movie adaptation of "Twilight" when it opens this Friday night. We'll see if we're surrounded, yet again, by sixteen year old girls in love with Edward. I just hope they keep their mouths shut during the movie...I hate going to movies when the theater is filled with incessant chatter, but I already know I should bring audience earplugs.

And thinking of teenagers, this past weekend I was the adult sponsor (it's hard for me to admit I'm on the "grown up" side of life now...) who drove a group of teens from our church and a neighboring church to our fall district Nazarene retreat, C.O.G. - Centering on God. The Lord helped me drive that big red van through the rain the entire way there on Friday night, allowed me to sense His presence as I always do when I go to Pinecrest, and helped me stay awake on five hours of sleep as I drove the van through cold wind and spitting snow coming back on Saturday. The entire weekend was filled with confidence building, resting in the Lord, and the reminder of how important it is to truly take time to meet and center on God.

With all that has happened to me lately, and all that I know is to come, the Lord has brought me back repeatedly to Psalm 73:26, "My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Forever. Yes and amen.

Blessed Saturday, how I relish thee. For some reason, it's been terribly frustrating that I am not able to sleep in much on Saturday mornings anymore. After a long week wafting between "I don't think I can handle much more in my life" and "It's going to be okay," I was hoping my body would not pay any attention to my overactive brain. Thankfully, I was quite pleased when I rolled over to discover my clock said 8:03 a.m. I then proceeded to pleasure read for almost another hour before I finally got out of bed.

Library Update: For the most part, my elementary kids are really good about returning their library books. Fridays are usually a day I receive an onslaught of books to check-in and reshelve and yesterday was no exception. Most of the teachers have some sort of book tub, basket, or rolly pull-behind cart that allow the kids to bring their books back without carrying them. Yesterday morning I was working with a 4th grade class, and as I looked at a green basket that sat by the book check-in cart, I saw several books inside (no surprise), and one pink tennis shoe (surprise). As I pulled the books out to recheck them, I discovered that the pink shoe was not alone - it's little mate was waiting at the bottom! I don't know which class brought it in, or which little girl placed her shoes in with her library books, but it definitely brought a smile to my face. I'm currently in a Cataloging class, where the professor has told us sometimes we have to be creative with how we catalog non-printed items in the library. For example, puppets, stuffed animals, globes. Or pink shoes. Oh the unpredictability of life.

Last night I celebrated the end of my week by going to see Charlie Hall ("Give Us Clean Hands," "All We Need," "Better is One Day," "You're Worthy of my Praise") in concert here in town, along with several of my friends from church. What a blessed evening of music, worship, Biblical truth being proclaimed, and the Holy Spirit speaking to my heart. He had his new CD "The Bright Sadness" on sale for $10. I promptly bought it after the concert. So far I'm a big fan of "Chainbreaker," "Walk the World," and "Mystery." Tomorrow I will enjoy continued fellowship with my church family when we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Church of the Nazarene, complete with a full-out pig roast and homemade ice cream contest after the morning services. :)

And can I just say that I have a love/hate relationship with trying to find articles on the University's online database? After much searching last night, which continued this morning, I FINALLY found the three articles I need to read for my Management of Libraries class. Oh technology. *sigh*

A pot of bean soup is cooking on my stove right now, waffles are reheating in my toaster, and a day of productivity awaits.

So, yesterday was the big double-whammy job interview day. During the first interview, I met with the principal, the district technology coordinator, and the other librarian with whom I would be working. Their interviewing method followed a standard format and I was confident in the way I answered the questions as straight forward as I could. The school is west of town, has two classrooms per grade level, for a total of only about 250 students K-5, so a pretty homey environment. But I found out that it would be a full time job, not a part-time job like I thought it would be. I left with confidence that I did the best I could and approximately fifteen minutes later, as I was driving home from the interview, the principal called me, informing me that they were offering me the job, if I wanted to take it! She knew that I had another interview later in the day, so I told her I would call her soon with my answer.

The second interview/first phone call I received on Thursday, was at 3:30 on the east side of town, but both schools are almost exactly the same distance from my apartment. I interviewed with the principal, the other librarian with whom I would be working, and one of the classroom teachers. This interview was really laid back and less formal. This school is even smaller than the first having only having around 170 students K-5, with one or two classes at the most, per grade level. This position would be part-time, twenty-five hours a week, but without insurance benefits. However, I could keep a full graduate load of 9 credit hours while working, allowing me to maybe graduate by 2010 with my MLS, so that's something to definitely consider. As the interview was wrapping up, the principal asked the other teachers if they could read her mind, and as they agreed with her she offered me the job before I even left the interview!

Now comes the hard part, accepting one position, and turning down another. I don't do well telling people, "no, thank you" to a job offer, but that's what must be done. The decision that I will make, however, feels good - I'm at peace and know that I'm choosing the school that will be the right fit for me. I praise the Lord for answering prayer and His continual provision in my life!

The rest of my day/evening consisted of going out to dinner with three of my MLS friends, followed by us attending the book release of Stephenie Meyer's "Breaking Dawn" at Barnes & Noble. Since the publicity information for the party suggested dressing up in prom attire, we took them at their word and wore fancy dresses. I decided to get a little more mileage out of my bridesmaid dress from Addie's wedding. (My prom dresses were re-sold years ago.) And since we were dressed up, our hostess asked us what the special event was, and when we told her she proceeded to ask us, "Did one of you all write the book?" We smiled and said no, that this was a national book release party. :) Once arriving at B&N, we were definitely above the median age of females in attendance. There were some very enthusiastic 15 year old girls among us, many of whom wore some kind of sparkly dress, or had made their own t-shirts, complete with a catch-phrase from the book. Clever. As the evening reached its pinnacle, there was a cheering countdown to midnight, I kid you not, and once the clock struck twelve, they started selling the book, literally hand over fist. I witnessed adolescent girls grabbing the book from the salesperson and running out the door to go read it. In some ways it made me roll my eyes and think, "oh, please," but I can't deny that these books have done wonders for teenage literacy. And, truth be told, if I were about ten years younger, I probably would have been one of those girls, racing out of the store, dying to get home to read it - even if it meant staying up all night, which I know many of them did. As for me, I'll wait until this coming week when my three friends are finished with their recently bought copies of "Breaking Dawn", and then borrow it from one of them. :) So all in all, a long day, but full of exciting and memorable moments. God is so good.