May was a very good month

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!