Ann Arbor happiness.

This weekend's second celebrity sighting--Sara Kelly Johns!
(WAY more exciting than seeing Sen. Hutchison in the airport...)

Ann Arbor is lovely--lots of trees that still have their fall color, ducks floating on ponds outside the hotel room & the ProQuest office, cool weather...too bad I forgot to pack two spare AA batteries for my camera (which went dead after taking two pictures)! Grrr.

So, in the meantime, you can check out the pictures at Sara Johns' ProQuest album on Flickr:
http://tinyurl.com/39hgzq


Oh, and we talked about databases (and school libraries and kids and budgets) and ate at Gratzi (Italian) and Amadeus (Hungarian) which were both yummily amazing...but the real joy in this weekend is wrapped up in the people. Smart, interesting, thoughtful, well-traveled, and simply fascinating. (Seriously, last night, I raised my glass of Hirter Brivat Pils to toast and clinked glasses with J. Linda Williams, WHO IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION!!) The night before that, I ate dinner with Sara Johns, THE PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOL LIBRARIANS. (This is like spending your weekend with Spielberg and Scorsese. Or Page and Plant. These two are the rock stars of the school library world!!)

Happy and with a tummy full of paprikash,
Kristy

UPDATE: One of ProQuest's cool new marketing posters with a flying saucer on it led to discussion of the classic film The Day the Earth Stood Still...which J. Linda Williams was in. About eight minutes into the film, look for five year-old Linda & her dad getting up from their picnic blanket and pointing at a UFO. (This, btw, raises Ms. Williams even higher than Robert Plant status...now it's like I spent the weekend with The Police.)