I am marking it on my day planner - at slightly before 4 p.m. on Thursday, January 5th, I brought up my first course for East Carolina University on Blackboard! Yahoo - the course site is ready to go so I now really feel like a part of the Library Science and Instructional Technology Department. Can't wait to work with the ECU LS graduate students. I am teaching a Books and Other Media for Children and Young Adults course, much to my delight. I had fun designing the course assignments and discussion boards. This is my first semester with ECU - I am a Visiting Associate Professor, still teaching from down here in the U.S. Virgin Islands, but we will be finding a place to live in Greenville, North Carolina come summer time. Greenville is such a pretty town and it isn't far from the Outer Banks! How can I miss - spending part of my time in lovely Greenville and and part of it in the tropical Virgin Islands. I'm getting excited about wearing more than tank tops and shorts all the time.

To celebrate getting the course online, I munched a few of the delicious dark chocolate kisses that I have "hidden" in the refrigerator so I don't scarf them down all at once. (Lara - thank you for these delicious goodies - the calories are worth it!) They are so good cold and last a little bit longer. Add that caffeine to the Diet Coke I am drinking and I should be pretty animated by the time poor Steve gets home from work and is ready to relax!

On to books! I don't care for the cover of the third book in Gloria Skurzynski's The Virtual War Chronologs. I enjoyed the first book, Virtual War, with the cartoon like cover. I could create in my own mind what genetically engineered Corgan looked like. Let's just say the dark-haired Corgan I created in my mind looks nothing like the teenage guy on the front of Revolt. What irritated me even more was the abrupt ending to the book - clearly there is a book 4 coming. Yup - it is called The Choice. Anyway, Corgan escapes from the Wyo-DC (Wyoming Dome City) and crashes an old plane into the ocean by the Florida dome city since there was no opening to put a plane down in. The robotics retrieved both him and the clone Cyborg before the mutant sea creatures got them. But Corgan isn't safe from Cyborg's clone twin Brigand. Brigand and Cyborg can read each other's thought and Cyborg knows his brother is on his way and plans to kill Corgan. So it is time for Corgan to escape again and this time it is into space and up to the Space Station, where no one is sure anyone is still alive, but Thebos, the aging scientist who helped create the spacecrafts that flew to the space station thinks there is a scientist there who can keep rapidly aging Cyborg alive. Corgan is an arrogant, self centered teen in this third installment, but his attitude is not surprising considering what he has been through since he fought for and won the only piece of uncontaminated land during the Virtual War. Offer this series to the guys who like Ender's Game.

The next holiday that will be upon us before we know it is Valentine's Day. Kids will love Barbara Samuels' Happy Valentine's Day, Dolores. I chuckled at Samuel's expressive illustrations of both Dolores and her cat Duncan. Poor Duncan - he is one accepting cat, even while having catsup squeezed on him so that Dolores can convince herself it is an emergency so she and Duncan can get a taxi and go to the Broadway Animal Hospital. In reality, she has to go to the store, Heart Etc. that is near the pet hospital and buy a froggie necklace in a heart shaped box since she lost the one she "borrowed" from her older sister Faye's dresser drawer. That Dolores, she just can't seem to keep out of her big sister's things, but sisters love each other - no matter what. What a fun book!

Okay - now to finish putting away the Christmas decorations! I should have left the tree up as tomorrow is a Holiday down here - Three Kings Day. Steve has the day off! :-) Excuse my typos - can't get the spellchecker to work without losing my postings.