When my mother wanted to praise me, she said: “You’re so organized.” I was pleased because organized is a sacred word to librarians. Organization spills over into other facets of my life. For instance, if I see paintings by the same artist in two different rooms at my house, I shift them so that they’re in the same room.

A HALF-DAY AWAY
On March 15, we went to the OMEA (Ohio Music Education Association) 2008 District I Choir Contest held at Archbold High School and heard two Sylvania Northview Choirs along with one choir from Toledo. The three choirs did an excellent job—and, as they sang, frequent freight train horns augmented their sound, blending harmoniously.

Between the first two performances, we went to downtown Archbold for breakfast at The Home Restaurant http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=%22home+restaurant%22&near=Archbold,+OH&fb=1&view=text&latlng=41522012,-84306296,9701241187365143995 where regular customers table-hop and visit. Then we walked the neat downtown and spotted The Tortilla Factory (Mexican restaurant) http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&resnum=0&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=%22tortilla+factory%22&near=Archbold,+OH&fb=1&view=text&latlng=41521849,-84306296,17862695780039611228 housed in a former bank.

After hearing the other two choirs, we took the scenic route home, passing Sauder Village http://www.saudervillage.org/home/default.asp and Das Essen Haus http://www.restaurantica.com/restaurants/314345/

The 2008 Newbery Medal winner is Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by librarian Laura Amy Schlitz.
http://www.ala.org/ala/alsc/awardsscholarships/literaryawds/newberymedal/newberymedal.cfm
The 2008 Caldecott Medal winner is The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
http://www.ala.org/ala/alsc/awardsscholarships/literaryawds/caldecottmedal/caldecottmedal.cfm

Employer Costs for Employee CompensationSource: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Employer costs for employee compensation for civilian workers averaged $28.11 per hour worked in December 2007, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Wages and salaries, which averaged $19.62, accounted for 69.8 percent of these costs, while benefits, which averaged $8.49, accounted for the remaining 30.2 percent. (See table 1.) Employers averaged $2.23 or 7.9 percent of total compensation for legally required benefits for every hour worked in December 2007. Legally required benefits — which include Social Security, Medicare, federal and state unemployment insurance, and workers’ compensation — is only one of several benefit categories included in Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, along with wages and salaries. Employer Costs for Employee Compensation is a product of the National Compensation Survey, which measures employer costs for wages, salaries, and employee benefits for nonfarm private and state and local government workers.
Employer costs for insurance benefits — life, health, and disability — averaged $2.34 per hour (8.3 percent of total compensation). Paid leave benefits (vacations, holidays, sick leave, and other leave) averaged $1.96 (7.0 percent); retirement and savings averaged $1.24 (4.4 percent); and supplemental pay averaged 72 cents (2.6 percent) per hour worked.
Permalink

Gov't Requirements for Banks to Provide Suspicious Activity Reports
Newsweek: Unintended Consequences - Spitzer got snagged by the fine print of the Patriot Act
 "The Patriot Act gave the FBI new powers to snoop on suspected terrorists. In the fine print were provisions that gave the Treasury Department authority to demand more information from banks about their customers' financial transactions. Congress wanted to help the Feds identify terrorist money launderers. But Treasury went further. It issued stringent new regulations that required banks themselves to look for unusual transactions (such as odd patterns of cash withdrawals or wire transfers) and submit SARs—Suspicious Activity Reports—to the government. Facing potentially stiff penalties if they didn't comply, banks and other financial institutions installed sophisticated software to detect anomalies among millions of daily transactions. They began ranking the risk levels of their customers—on a scale of zero to 100—based on complex formulas that included the credit rating, assets and profession of the account holder."