And now comes June. And the weather is still all weird. It was pretty cool today. I don't think we got up to 70 even. This weekend, it was stormy with tornado warnings again on Friday night, then very windy Saturday, but by Sunday it was gorgeous. We spent the whole day basically outside. I mowed both lawns, tested out my new trimmer/edger toy, cleaned gutters, and on and on. Since the weather wasn't very pretty on Saturday, we went to see "Finding Nemo." That was cute! And funny. Another hit for Pixar. I think I saw today that it took in $70 million this weekend. Not too shabby.



On Saturday afternoon, we went to the PBS "Share a Story" event at the mall. They had Cleo from Between the Lions there, Clifford, and a bunch of booths supporting reading. We saw Sandra from the Champaign Library and signed Jack up for the summer reading game. The producer of Between the Lions was there, so I took the opportunity to speak to him about Reading Rainbow's funding problems. He gave me his card and asked me to email him with my ideas. Basically, Between the Lions is at risk too. He is friends with LeVar (the host of Reading Rainbow), and since no formal campaign has been started yet to keep RR on the air, he wanted to hear my ideas. I was so excited, but I couldn't call Lael to tell her because I didn't have a phone number for her.



Later on, I got her number via Cece (Thanks!) and spent an hour on the phone with her going back and forth over the merits of the shows and the ridiculousness of the shows being cut. Come to find out though that someone has already registered the domain savereadingrainbow.com, so then I have to find out who, email them, email the producer with our thoughts and such, heard back from the guy with the domain, talked to him for a bit on Sunday, started fiddling around with some web space and design, and yet again I am taking on another project. That's okay though. This one is important.



For lots of reasons: Reading and literacy is important. Reading doesn't start at 6 and stop at 8. If you don't like the way things are going, you can change them. More than kids benefit from this show; ESL viewers, adults with literacy problems, and not to mention that all kids learn to read at different paces and have troubles with different concepts.



I guess I will never understand how those TV execs, another mysterious THEY, make the choices they do.



Anyway, I'm too tired to ramble on anymore. Time to head to bed. More meetings tomorrow, deadlines to meet at work, and a full day will be "lost" at an office retreat on Wednesday. Til later ...