The 53rd Annual VNSA Used Book Sale is scheduled for February 14 and 15. This is one of the largest used book sales in the country. It is held at the Arizona State Fairground Exhibit Building located at 1826 W McDowell Rd in Phoenix. They accept donations of books prior to the sale.

For more information about the sale or for information regarding book donation – vnsabooksale.org.

VNSA = Volunteer Nonprofit Service Association

It seems that 2008 was a good year for lemons. I can hear many of you making up jokes already. We had a bumper crop on our dwarf lemon tree. We will of course be making lemonade and perhaps lemon pie.

If you are one of the many Valley home owners with too much citrus, please consider donating it to St Mary’s Food Bank Alliance. For a $10 per tree donation, volunteer gleaners will pick your citrus for donation.

For more information or to schedule a citrus pick-up call 623-344-2158.

I read an article, Word Fun Becomes Feeding Frenzy, in the AZ Republic today about http://www.freerice.com/. I had also heard about this site from our daughter who has played it quite a bit. It is pretty simple and probably easy to get addicted too. It was originally created by a father to help his kids study for the SAT.

It is basically pretty simple, the screen displays a multiple choice vocabulary question, answer right and 20 grains of rice get donated to the UN World Food Program. You can keep playing and answering more questions which get harder as you get questions right. After you have answered a few questions, it assigns a starting vocabulary level for you to work upwards from. Apparently the highest level is 60 and not too many people make that. Will you be one of them? In the Options section you can select to save your total and vocabulary level from one session to the next.

The rice gets distributed in countries like Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Uganda. The site’s sponsors pay for the rice. 20 grains of rice may not seem like a lot but it adds up quickly. Just yesterday over 75 million grains of rice were donated through this program.

There is a lot more information on the FAQ button on the http://www.freerice.com/ website.

The downtown branch of the Chandler Public Library has had a box for them in the past. I’m not sure if it still does. Please leave a comment if you know of other locations that people can drop off their used eye glasses.