http://daytonmetrolibrary.blogspot.com/2009/08/night-counter.html
Chaucer's Santa Barbara
The Wright Brothers didn’t write so much as fly, but pretty cool for the book to get such a nice mention in their hometown.
Meanwhile, I loved reading at Chaucer’s (www.chaucersbooks.com) in Santa Barbara last night amidst Fiesta Night traffic, and one of the great moments for me was when a woman in attendance told me that her mother-daughter book club had chosen The Night Counter as its next read. This mother lives in Santa Barbara, but the other mothers and daughters, including her own, live in other cities and connect for their discussions via Skype. Pretty cool. As was my friend Janice inviting a friend who turned out to have gone to the same high school as me in Beirut, but hers was a different time, the 50s and 60s, when the American expat community was so large it had its own neighborhood.
Alia Yunis 
I just read a review for The Night Counter in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I can’t wait to read it. It can be a breath of fresh air to read outside of my typical genre of choice, mysteries.
I am particularily intrigued because I immediatedly recognized the name Alia Yunis as that of a 7th grade classmate of mine at Central Junior High School. My memories of that year are pretty vague, but I do remember a few details such as Alia teaching me to count to ten in Arabic while in Social Studies class (?). (I MAY remember still how to say “one”.) Could you be the same girl?
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By any chance did you live in White Bear Lake?
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Yes! I lived in White Bear until I was 25. I only attended Central Jr. High for 7th grade because of school boundary changes.
In my Central yearbook Alia (you?)wrote, “It’s been great knowing you even if you’re very strange. Good luck in everything you do!” Hmm…I think “weird” is a little more politically correct.
Stopped at Barnes & Noble, but they didn’t have the book yet. They said it was on the way.
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Ha! That’s me. I recognized your name before I saw the rest of the message. And then coincidently saw a little picture with you in it the next day when I was cleaning out an attic. I only went to school there that one year, too, and my memories are vague, too, but I remember laughing with you, so calling you “strange” must have a been a compliment.
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I remember laughing with you too (which is nice because I don’t think of that grade as being particularily fun). I think of you as being a fairly mature and very smart 7th grader. Maybe I remember dropping you off at home…an apartment not to far from school? And I think that “one” sounds something like “arbol” in Arabic…how wrong is that??
So fun to have found you! Sounds like you’ve had (and continue to have) a really interesting life, so full of travel. I still live in the Twin Cities area and teach high school math…calculus this year!
Congratulations on the book! It is next in my queue. I’ll have to watch your schedule for a future Minnesota visit so I can get it signed!
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Okay, Wendy, I will have to see you in Minnesota next time. (I go there so rarely, but you never know). Calculus is as far as I ever got in math, and not that gracefully, I might add. In fact, before reading this, I just blogged about math. Strange. Anyway, as you’re a mathematician, “arbol” is closest to 4, which is “aarbaa”. One is “wahid!” Not bad considering how long ago that was.
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