On the move

The last few weeks have been busy, but fun, for Logan and me. Logan finished school on Thursday, and is very excited to be off for the summer. His last few weeks of school were crazy, with parties to plan, assessments to complete, and report cards to finish. In addition, he took a few days off to serve as the best man in his friend Alex's wedding. Oh, and he got to dress up as Smokey the Bear too! Here's "Smokey" with his class: The Thursday before school was out for Logan, he and I took an early morning flight to the midwest. I flew to Indiana, where Alex and Emilie's wedding was being held, and he flew to Chicago for the bachelor party, then drove down to Bloomington the next day to meet me. The wedding was held at the Memorial Union on the Indiana University campus. It's a beautiful campus, with a really nice hotel on site where we stayed. The memorial union is a large, castle-like building made of limestone. Here's the view out our hotel window down onto the lovely little cemetery below:
On Friday, when Logan and the guys were making their way from Chicago to Bloomington, I rented a car and drove to visit Logan's grandma, who lives in a little town in Indiana called Bicknell. The drive was beautiful, and the two lane highway wound through lots of lush farmland. This is what most of it looked like:
Aside from where the highway intersected with other highways, the intersections were mostly of the gravel-road variety:
After about an hour and a half of driving, I made it to Bicknell!
There's one stop light going through town, and if you blink you'll miss the town altogether. I turned off the highway onto Main Street, which was lined with banners on the light poles:
A view of the brick buildings on Main Street in Bicknell. It's a pretty quiet town:
After visiting with Logan's grandma for a few hours, I made the drive back to Bloomington, and we attended the welcome BBQ at a brewery that night. The next day was busy for Logan- he had lots of tasks to complete as the best man. It was overcast that day, but luckily the rain held off, and the ceremony was held outside as planned. Logan looked very nice in his tux:
The ceremony, which was performed by Alex's sister Amy, was full of laughter. Emilie looked beautiful:
The wedding was also a mini-reunion for Logan and some of his high school friends. Here are five Monta Vista class of '96 graduates- all very successful adults now:
Alex got to choose the shoes for the groomsmen. Very spiffy!
Logan and Alex, enjoying the reception:
Alex and Emilie walked to a nearby bed and breakfast after the reception ended, so they tied cans and a "Just Married" sign to Alex:
We flew back from Indiana on Sunday evening, and the next day it was back to work for both of us. The day of the wedding had been the last day the Mitchell Park Library, where I work, was open for service to the public. The library will be torn down in a few months to make way for a new, larger library and community center. So, the staff's job this past week was to pack up the library and prepare for our move to our temporary location down the street. We had to pack all of the books that are going into storage onto these huge orange book carts:
And everything else went into these plastic crates. There was a sea of orange in the library:
Each book that was taken off the shelf to go to storage had to be scanned into the computer with a status of "basement" so we know where it is. Dave scanned books all day for about three days straight!
Here is the mostly empty children's room:
The movers dismantled our workstations and offices on Thursday morning. Here the walls of my office are being taken down:
All of the phones in the building were collected in one area. By Friday, we had one lone working phone in the whole building:
It's hard to believe this space used to house seven staff people and their desks!
This is where my office used to be. Note the lines in the carpet where they removed the walls:
A shot of the outside of the building, complete with brown paper in the windows so customers don't try to come in:
Another, more flattering, shot. It's not the nicest looking building, but the gardeners do a great job:
Yahoo! Mitchell Park Library is CLOSED:
By the end of the week everyone was exhausted, and a bit stir-crazy:
Yesterday (Saturday) we had a groundbreaking ceremony and celebration at the library and community center, complete with crafts for the kids, ice cream, and jugglers. I think a lot of people will be glad to see the building come crashing down.
Today Logan, Clark and I are leaving for a few days of camping in Stanislaus National Forest. We're really looking forward to the fresh air- and I'm looking forward to seeing something other than book call numbers all day!
I puttered a bit in the garden this morning and was very excited to find the first two ripe tomatoes of the 2010 season. Yay!