Greece and beyond

May was a very good month

2008-06-14T14:38:00.010-04:00

May was a very busy month. I visited Caroline and Jonathan Ely, flew out to Utah to see the Morningstars and enjoyed several days at the Henlopen beach before starting my grueling job at Mt Airy library (25 hours a week, can you believe that!) Here are some hi-lites:

I left Mothers Day morning to visit my friends in Massachusetts. We decided that since my child wasn't in the area, I could spend my day driving!

The Elys are foster parents to three lovely children from the Congo. Nicole and Dubenie are the youngest two. Jean didn't like having his picture taken. The children will be moving to another

home in June, with adoption in the future. Caroline is now Mom, but will become Moma Caroline (more of a grandmother) once the move is completed. With retirement looming in early 2009, they are ready for the grandparent roll.

We went on several bike rides and visited Sturbridge Village as well, for a lovely visit (even though the 8 hour drive each way was a little taxing)

I was home for 36 hours before flying out to Utah to visit Jamie, Steve, Ben and Sam. CCPL should be proud of Sam's shirt - it's the buggy about reading T shirt for summer reading.

There is always lots of fun things to do in Orem, Ben and I enjoyed the local park (before the weather turned cold and rainy) I love having pictures of the mountains, it reminds me of why Utah is such a great place to visit (and a great place to live).

Sam has early dismissal on Mondays, so we were able to enjoy the Hogen Zoo with the boys. I'm not sure which critters they're pretending to be, but playgrounds and ice

cream were main attractions.

It's fun to be with Jamie and "the boys", as she signs her notes - and we'll be seeing our new granddaughter before 2009, hopefully!

Well, after all that traveling, we needed some time to relax, so to Henlopen we went. It is a great campground near Lewes, DE. We try to go twice a year, enjoying the beach while children are still in school. We're not sure about this fall, however, since CCPL has some buildings which will be ready for occupancy in Mid September.

We stopped by Longwood Gardens on our way home. There's a few new things happening there. The children's garden has been totally re-done and is worth a visit. They have also constructed several "treehouses". I think they're more like tree palaces. It was a fun stop, and we did miss most of the severe weather that hit Maryland that day.

Summary

2007-08-22T16:24:00.000-04:00

Interesting exercise. Some things weren't new, others really stretched me (RSS is still a challenge). I'm keeping the links to 23 things and will try some of them again. As far as assisting in life long learning, technology is cool and I'm not intimidated by it. Just don't know how blogs fit in to my paradigm.

Overdrive

2007-08-22T16:21:00.000-04:00

I tried overdrive, since that's what CCLP subscribes to. I noticed
- Not many current titles
- No indication of how long the wait is for a hold
so
guess I'll stick with books on CD until Overdrive becomes more available

Itunes

2007-08-21T20:12:00.000-04:00

I do have iTunes loaded on my pc and I have watched season 3 of Lost - just days after it was broadcast. My computer doesn't have enough memory to keep the movie running, and I have to shut the program down, usually twice, while watching an hour (or 45 minute) broadcast. Next time, we use Scott's computer with more power. We have also been watching Ninja for a while - very clever.

YouTub

2007-08-21T20:02:00.000-04:00

A family friend is in 2nd grade and totally engrossed in Pirates of the Caribbean I tried the YouTub search and found several interesting sites. I was VERY glad to see that "Jennifer love haveit sex in forest" required a login - keeping my friend's little eyes from something his parents would probably not want him to see. I also watched 70's commercials and went back in time to a gentler, kinder era of Captain Crunch.

2.0 Awards

2007-08-21T19:49:00.000-04:00

Looked at several "award winners". I know that CraigList and similar sites are popular, and have their place, but I haven't found a use for them. I do like Library Thing, which I explored earlier. I have found several authors that I am trying out - may post my opinions later!

google docs

2007-08-21T19:44:00.001-04:00

I used Google Docs since I already had a log-in from the blog (sweet)
tried several different features - here is the trial document:
This is a test to see how easy it is to create and change
Lists seem pretty easy
Wonder if they can be stopped without clicking the icon
YUP - just press enter twice. It also doesn't leave a blank line after the list. 2 points
Can add words to the spell checker, now I'll have to create another document to see if it remembers my list. Now I'll spell a word incorrectly to see how that works. Choices were good 2 points.
now, to save and create document number 2...

so - my evaluation is that it is nice to have the online version, but I still prefer doing stuff like this off-line and saving it to my hard drive. Guess I'm old fashioned!

Sandbox

2007-08-21T19:34:00.000-04:00

I posted my thoughts under
Random Thoughts
On the sandbox web site and linked it to my blog. This was not an easy thing to do - the instructions are VERY vague and it took several people to figure it out. I'm suggesting that this part of the instructions include:
First you name your page and then create the content. Once you have completed the page, you would save it.

Then you go back to "home" - or the FrontPage and at the bottom of the page, click on Edit Page.

Once you are in the edit screen of the page, go to the list of wiki pages and insert (or add to the bottom) a heading or label or whatever you want to call it ... let's say you created a page called Favorite Beaches. On this page, you would type Favorite Beaches, then you would highlight it and click on the little Link icon on the toolbar... a pop-up box will open and you would click on the drop down box that says Link to Wiki Page, your new page should be one of the choices. Select it and you should be good to go.
this was from Irmgard Brown, and was very helpful to me in completing this task

wiki

2007-08-21T19:26:00.000-04:00

Wiki's are great and are a wonderful and easy way to let people know what's up
but
1 - Wiki's need to be updated regularly - St Joseph subject had parts which had not been updated since 2006. I don't think it should be put up if it is not going to be maintained.
2 - The Wiki format of several sites looks the same, not very interesting
3 - Library wiki is in date sequence with oldest first. hard when you want the most recent and have to scroll through many entries
4 - Princeton book lovers was more interesting but even that had an article from 2006 on the front page - not current! that really surprised me, even Princeton Public Library doesn't have the resources to keep their site current

Future

2007-08-21T16:47:00.000-04:00

Myspace, blogs and wiki are popular and noticed. They can be a great tool, assuming they are updated and maintained and interesting. Several sites are old and boring, which is worse than not having anything up at all. Creativity is important, and librarians don't seem to have that attribute.

rollyo

2007-08-21T16:17:00.000-04:00

OK - finally found a way to get the information about Disneyland. Rollyo had some of the same sites as the others, but about the 4th hit, I found exactly what I was looking for. Guess blogs don't work as well as web sites for the kind of information I wanted.

related blogs

2007-08-21T15:58:00.000-04:00

Well, we are also going to Disneyland at the end of November, so I used every blog search for Disneyland dinner (looking for suggestions and comments). Even when I went to the advanced search in Technorati, I got so much junk that didn't have anything to do with dinner or Disney. I think people just put random words in their blogs so that others will read them, a big disappointment.

RSS

2007-08-21T15:43:00.000-04:00

I have been following the blogs that I put into my feeds. It is a convenient way to check the sites every week or so to see if anything new has been posted. Some blogs obviously post more than others. One news posting I used deleted the entries after 5 days, but I'm guessing that it isn't NEW any more.

Del.icio.us

2007-08-20T14:56:00.000-04:00

Did the Delicious thing - great idea, if you work at the same computer every, however, being a sub, I can't use the tool bar on "my" computer, since I work at a different work station each day. Will probably try this at home on my computer.

Library Thing

2007-08-20T14:52:00.000-04:00

My book list is - http://www.librarything.com/catalog/marciar So far I've only listed Daniel Silva books. I really like the author, but am disappointed when I try "if you like..." lists. Maybe some of the suggestions such as The Faithful Spy, or David Hagberg's series staring Kirk McGarvey will satisfy.

Technology ??? !!!

2007-06-27T10:57:00.000-04:00

Blogs and lists make my head spin. Our daughter, Jamie, blogged every day during her three week trip to Asia. It was fun to read about her experiences and make comments, ask questions and participate in her learning experience. We also have a family page on MyFamily.com which allows us to share pictures, write comments and list birthday present ideas, so I was looking for something different. FOUND it - I will be uploading pictures to create puzzles for my grandsons.

I've also put some captions on pictures we share on MyFamily. here's one. I think they should go to more story times, they like xbox 360.

Making Plans

2007-06-20T10:46:00.000-04:00

Flickr has so many beautiful pictures of Mykonos and Santoni, I'm wondering if we'll need totake our camera! We fly into Athens, spend one full day touring, then board a ferry for 4 nights at the Dorion Hotel on Mykonos. It's going to be a tough decision, should we spend our time lying around the pool, relaxing?

should we visit the windmills and "Little Venice"?

Auspicious Start

2007-06-13T09:45:00.000-04:00

Since we're going to Athens, then on an island hopping cruise in the Aegean sea, I'm researching some of Greek mythology. We're also visiting Patmos, so we'll be discussing St John and his imprisonment as well.

Our first experience with a cruise started with our ship - Sea Diamond - going to the bottom of the sea. In April, while waiting to dock at Santorini, in calm, sunny weather, the ship hit volcanic rocks (which had been there about 3,000 years) and sank within hours. Looks as though the Captain forgot to look down! Auspicious start? My view is that Greek cruising couldn't be safer now - how can they let a second disaster happen and stay in business?