Building update

The family room now has bookcases and a mantle. Next week, most of the plumbing will be done and the kitchen cabinets should be installed. I'll take some photos of the exterior now that the lights are installed.

Rehoboth Beach in November

It isn't all about shopping. We took a break and walked the boardwalk. Some of the best shops are in the downtwon area and definitely the best restaurants. We recommend the Cafe Sole, Cloud 9 and The Pig and Fish Company. From past trips, we can tell you that Finbar's is good and the Frogg Pond is a lot of fun - good food and a great bar.

Narbonne

Narbonne’s Top 5:

- Archbishops’ Palace. On the northern side of the main square, the place de l’Hôtel de Ville, this Gothic wonder is now home to the town hall and a couple of Narbonne’s museums.
- Cathédrale de St-Just and St-Pasteur. This is the only Gothic cathedral in the Mediterranean that comes anywhere close to rivaling those in the north of France. However, it remains uncompleted because at the time of construction in the early 1300s it was considered too risky for defensive reasons to knock down the Roman defensive wall nearby. Hence, there’s no nave.
- Gruissan beach. Twenty kilometres south of Narbonne, the beach at Gruissan was used as the setting for the film, Betty Blue (known as 37.2 degres le matin in French). It’s here you’ll find the unusual beach huts on stilts that featured in some of the location shots.
- Horreum. Despite Narbonnne’s importance in Roman times, this former granary is the only building to survive from the period. In fact, until 1838 it remained undiscovered. Only when demolition work was underway hereabouts did the horreum reappear. Only a fraction of the original has been excavated and consists of a warren of tiny storage chambers.
- Patisserie Combot. At Rue de l’Ancien Courrier, this bakers is a Narbonne institution known for its gooey cakes and pastries – don’t leave town without trying their bouchons du Languedoc, coarse biscuits made of honey and almonds with generous helpings of pine nuts.

http://www.creme-de-languedoc.com/Languedoc/city-guides/narbonne.php

Dry Wall

Still green

MAGGIE!

Not Quite Ready for Christmas But Coming Along

Gentlemen and Players and the subtle art of gaslighting

At book club last night I mentioned that J. Snyde was gaslighting Roy Straitley. My reference was pretty obscure so I looked it up in Wikipedia today and here's their definition:


Gaslighting, a form of psychological abuse coined as a reference to two similar films of the same name:
Gaslight (1940 film), directed by Thorold Dickinson and starring Diana Wynyard, Anton Walbrook, and Frank Pettingell
Gaslight (1944 film), directed by George Cukor and starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer
Gas Light (1938) the Patrick Hamilton stage play upon which the films were based.

We all really enjoyed this book by Joanne Harris. I wonder how it would translate into a movie - it would be pretty hard to keep the secret going until the very end.

A French Exchange Student's Last Night in the US - Havre de Grace Gazebo

Color

Looking at paint and thinking about what colors to choose for new rooms - leaning toward yellow for family room and kitchen, pear green for bathroom and some sort of blue for the bedroom. Hallway - bright or white. I like the idea of chalk paint, too. Maybe that would be good on laundry room wall.

Grease - The School Version

Here are Hannah and Katy in Grease garb. Hannah's lovely skirt was made by the gifted and talented Lois S. Thanks, again, Lois.

All the kids put so much work into these school plays. Mrs. B. is a taskmaster and she gets results.

If Halloween is over, can Christmas be far behind?

A friend sent me this link so I thought I would share it. What a time to be without a kitchen!

I am frustrated - nothing I do makes this a link. If you would like to visit this site go to www.northpole.com and look for Mrs. Claus' kitchen.

Days like this

Some days I barely have time to get dressed, brush my teeth and drive the car pool. Later in the day, I'll realize I didn't even have time to go to the bathroom. That makes you cranky.
Anyway, I was browsing the new book shelf today and came across a new graphic novel that is so utterly charming, Robot Dreams. I visited the author's web site,
http://www.chickenopolis.com/
This picture I posted just spoke to me. Take time to visit this site and find out more about Sara Varon.

35th Annual National Storytelling Festival

Cathy and I attended the 35th Annual National Storytelling Festival - her 15th year and my 25th year ! We've camped for the past 14 years and have experienced every sort of weather. This year it was HOT! We had such a great time - the storytellers were wonderful - telling stories that were at times hilariously funny or heartwrenchingly sad. In the pictures you can see us with Dovie Thomason. Get a feel for the beauty of storytelling by attending one of her performances right here at HCPL in November. I also included a picture of a typical big top tent in which we listen to stories, a view of a crowd, and one of our favorite tellers, Ed Stivender.

On Past 23...

My favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey included actually creating my blog and becoming comfortable expressing my thoughts through the blog. I can't see myself stopping any time soon. Even though it is a little frustrating when I don't get a comment on something I think is clever or pithy.
23 Things has introduced me to so many new ideas and ways to use on-line resources personally.
The living isn't always easy in the summer. Summer Reading activities were the highest priority for me and that kept me from focusing on this program. I found that often it was next to impossible to work on the program because of the slowness of our internet during such a busy season.
If another discovery program like this was offered in the future, I would definitely choose to participate.
Last night at our first Girl Scout meeting of the school year, we were discussing some upcoming concerts the girls were interested in attending. The girls were lamenting the fact that many of the concerts - particularly Fall Out Boys - were scheduled for school nights. I mentioned that the DropKick Murphys were on a Monday but that my daughter's school had off the next day and mentioned that I had a clip of them performing on my blog. One of the girls squealed - You have a blog! Oh, give me the URL, I've got to see it.

Pando - a peer to peer file sharing tool

http://www.pando.com/

I found out about this tool while surfing other 23 things projects. It is a way to send large files to others that might otherwise be too big for your e-mail account to handle. It works by compressing files.

Downloadable Audio

Project Gutenberg: The Audio Books Project - Project Gutenberg makes audio eBooks available for some of the same great literature available in plain text. Listings are divided into two categories: Human-read and computer-generated audio books. These are FREE so you don't need an Overdrive or NetLibrary subscription to learn about downloadable audiobooks!

Great idea and wonderful choices but I didn't find any of the titles that came to mind - Almost French, How Green Was My Valley - neither were listed.

Overdrive and NetLibrary have been popular with our patrons and I have directed a number of people to the area where they can register and have shown them how to search for titles. These both offer access to popular titles and fill a need.

Celtic Folk Podcast

I have added Celtic Folk Podcast to my Bloglines account. This feed includes Celtic music from Nova Scotia and Cape Breton.

I was frustrated with the search capabilities of Podcast.net, Podcastalley.com and
Yahoo Podcasts. I searched for podcasts dealing with Nova Scotia and with storytelling. I didn't come up with anything for Nova Scotia and found that the term "storytelling" is used very loosely.

My best results came from googling "Nova Scotia Podcast." This brought me to a Podcast.net selection, so go figure.

Almost Half Way to St. Patty's Day

I like YouTube because it is easy to search and I enjoy some of the exchanges between various viewers. It would be easy to spend way too much time viewing these video clips. My daughter has committed so many of these to memory - quotes from the video clips become a kind of communication shorthand for teens, immediately establishing their quirky humor.

I chose this clip from Dropkick Murphys because it is almost halfway to St. Patrick's Day and they will be performing at Ram's Head Live on September 17.

Peggy's Cove

Carnival Cruise to Canada

I was lucky enough to go on the Maryland Library Association's cruise to Saint John, New Brunswick and Halifax, Nova Scotia. We took a coach from Harford County and boarded in time for lunch in the Mediterranean Restaurant on deck nine, Lido. I thought at the time that I would never stoop so low as to walk around with soft serve frozen yogurt. Little did I know...
After lunch, we heard Eloisa James discuss her schizophrenic career as a Shakespeare scholar and lecturer and her success as a romance writer. She was funny and thought provoking.
We sailed out of New York City and left under extremely foggy conditions. We were glad to hear the fog horns from our stateroom balcony but a little disturbed to recognize that the soft tunes being piped into the deck five common area sounded an awful lot like the theme from Titanic.
On Sunday, we spent some quality time in the Black and Red Sea Lounge or as Michael Gannon called it, the floating brothel.
Storytelling from the Field: Unusual Library Experiences explored prison librarianship- Gleaner Shirley and Shirley Smith told us about their experiences in the Maryland Correctional Library, Carol Carman shared her experiences working in the Maryland Department of Legislative Services and Louise LeTendre shared her experiences as an Army Librarian in Vietnam and currently at Aberdeen Proving Ground.
Next, Michael Gannon had us laughing with Love and Death on the High Seas - A Readers' Advisory.
That night, we attended the Captain's Party and formal dinner. We librarians cleaned up nicely. We had a wonderful dinner.
The next day was sunny and our Monday and Tuesday shore excursions to Saint John and Halifax was the best weather the Atlantic Provinces has seen all summer. (Perry, our tour guide to Peggy's Cove told us so.) On Monday, I went on a small group tour of Saint John with Lance Timmons, a professional photographer and teacher who helped us improve our skills with his top photography tips. He also shared interesting facts about Saint John. His web site is
www.timmonsphotography.com
Remembering Lance's tips, I tried to be arty on our tour of Peggy's Cove, in Halifax the next day. You can see my stunning photo of the lighthouse at Peggy's Cove. Halifax is an interesting city with a lot of stories. More on that later.

Web 2.0 Awards

I discovered this nifty section of Merlin a while back and blogged about it. For the purposes of this assignment I explored the three sites listed for Music. I want to create a CD for my sister who will turn 50 in September and I am looking for songs that address growing older. I have already Googled this. I love the way I can type in some long, drawn-out query and Google almost always comes through with very satisfying results. I was directed to several wonderful collections of songs that were perfect.

I was not so impressed with the three music websites included here. I did not like the search strategies or the extremely limited selection of fairly mainstream artists. www.pandora.com was the most satisfying of the three, which is probably why they won the award. I guess I expected too much. All three sites allowed one to search by artist, song and keyword. I was just not satisfied with the result.

Patrons in the library could use these sites to try to jog their brains when trying to think of an artist or song. Pandora Radio will play while you work on another project, providing useful background music - as long as one wears headphones in the library.

Online Productivity Web-based Applications for Day-To-Day Use

Tools such as Zoho Writer www.zohowriter.com and Google Docs www.writely.com are incredibly useful to our clientele. Now our patrons can create resumes, save them to an on line source that is available at any computer through the web, easily post the resume to an online job application and never have to spend a dime on printouts, floppy disks or CDs. To quote Maryland Libraries Learning 2.0:

One large benefit to web-based applications it that they eliminate the need
to worry about different software versions or file types as you email documents
or move from PC to PC. Another bonus is that they easily accommodate
collaboration by allowing multiple users to edit the same file (with versioning)
and provide users the ability to save and convert documents as multiple file
types

Zoho ho

 Comparing Zoho Writer to Google Docs: I think I prefer the versitility of Zoho Writer but the beauty of both tools lies in the fact that it is free, on-line, readily available. 

To become familiar with Google Docs, I will tell you a little bit about my recent trip to Cape May, New Jersey. Visiting Cape May is always a highlight of Summer vacation. This year I was able to squeeze four days in - sandwiched between my Monday evening programming responsibilities and my Saturday to work. Vacation always seems so much more satisfying after you have busted your butt doing something and can completely and utterly give your self over to the time off.

It has been a cooking summer for me as I did the two Cooking Up A Storm programs for Middle Schoolers, the Meet An American Girl: Molly's Hawaiian Hula Party, and cooked the beef for our Volunteer Fiesta Party. What a surprising success we have had with our Middle School programming.

Anyway, back to Cape May. When I go for a week, I feel obligated to pack the bikes, plan the menu, bring projects and books, but this little four day jaunt was very unstructured. Even the things I thought I'd bring, I forgot. So I just enjoyed early morning walks, beach time, pool time, eating at wonderful (but pricey) restaurants, and shopping.

Restaurants we've enjoyed recently include Freda's, The Black Duck, Cape Orient and the Lobster House. www.capemaytimes.com has some useful info. I highly recommend drinks at Congress Hall and a bike ride to Sunset Beach.

Why Wiki ?

For thing #16, I found the following wikis extremely informative:

http://instructionwiki.org/Library_2.0_in_15_minutes_a_day

http://www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Several months ago, we decided to give wikis a try, and two extremely resourceful librarians set it up and we started using it. We thought it would be more useful than the constant flow of e-mail but we discovered early on that, unless we set the wiki up to notify us of new postings, we never looked at the wiki. We also thought that the page set up was difficult to use. Our branch wiki has been tweaked several times and we are now using it to build Branch Meeting Agendas, for Brunch Sign up and recipe posting and for Branch Happenings.

I much prefer e-mail for ease of use and quick turnaround time. I love my blog but find that often I write in a vacuum. I think I could really get hooked on My Space or Facebook, if any of my friends used this.

It's week six somewhere...

I'm feeling a little pressed for time and can't say that I enjoyed my experiences with these week 6 topics. I ran into trouble several times and actually had to call a 2.0 tech guru for assistance. (She was very helpful and encouraging).

I explored Del.icio.us and was non-plussed by it. I can appreciate the usefulness of this social networking site but yet it seemed too serious yet superficial. Why not just join one of the Facebook groups like People known only by their last names or the Sailor group. Facebook puts impressive spin right up front by referring to themselves as an utility. OOOh The Smith College Sophian had a great article that listed ten popular Facebook groups:

10. "SMITH COLLEGE TEAM AWESOME!!!"
9. "Being a Yankee Fan Just Because they Win a Lot Is Wrong"
8. "Nerdy Boys Melt My Butter"
7. "Books are for Bad asses"
6. "Caution! People On Facebook May appear Hotter Than they actually are"
5. "Ever Have Strong or Confusing Feelings about Guacamole? Me Too."
4. "I Can Fit a Cheez-it In My Belly Button"
3. "Confederation of Hallway Jousters"
2. "I've Got 99 Problems and the Long Walk From the Quad Is 73 of them"
1. "I Was Invited To This Group But Have No Idea What it Is, But Yet I Still Clicked Confirm."

While I haven't signed up for any Facebook groups yet (though I'm leaning toward Books are for Bad asses ), I have established a Del.icio.us account. Unfortunately, I was unable to create the link on my toolbar even though we use Foxfire at home and that is supposed to be easier.

I read an article that suggested that these social networking sites provide an avenue for "Shameless self promotion."

Feeling linear, I next investigated Technorati and attempted to get an account. I got bogged down on the registration because of the need for a unique password. With some help from the above mentioned Tech Guru I managed to create the account. I then claimed my blog and I am thinking hard about what I want on my Watchlist.

Now to answer the age old question, What does Library 2.0 mean to me. I viewed the You tube video Web 2.0 The Machine is Us/ing Us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g
I found this video very thought provoking. Two messages jumped out out me: Who will organize this data? You will. and Every time we forge a link, we teach.
Two articles I enjoyed were Web 2.0 Where will it take libraries? To a Temporary place in time and Away from the icebergs. I'm on with the Library 4.0 vision of the neo library - especially the single malt. In Icebergs, I was struck (ha) by the point made concerning user education and eliminating barriers.

Rollyo but Don't Bogart

I had stagefright with Rollyo. I consult websites all day long and have found favorites but staring at that screen, my mind went blank. Yes, this would be a very valuable tool and I plan to give my searchrolls more thought. What a great way to set up a kind of shorthand /shortcut completely personalized search engine that is available at any computer. No longer would you have to rely on your favorites or tabs on a toolbar.

http://www.rollyo.com/deeney/

Chose de Bibliotheque

Je n'ai pas besoin de cataloguer mes propres livres mais j'ai vraiment eu plaisir à lire des commentaires de différents groupes. I started at Talk and chose the group, Francofiles. There I found some interesting suggestions for future reading. One title in particular sounds very intriguing - The Piano Shop on the left Bank.

Here is my link to my Library Thing catalog:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/deeney

Berlin Wall

Having fun with image generators. I really enjoyed Letter John but felt on the spot to come up with phrases and quotes to fit the space allowed.

VAM!

Yesterday we had a wonderful reunion at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. What a place for inspiration. If you have never been to the museum go now, especially if you are working on 23 Things. You will definitely look at things differently.
In the pictures you can see (from Left to Right) top: Jonah, Adam, and Hannah and bottom: Me, Kathie and Selma. We have been getting our kids together since they were tiny but have had a hard time scheduling them since about middle school. Now they are seasoned high schoolers and had not seen one another for about two years so this was a risky business we set out to accomplish.
What a refreshing relief to watch them renew friendship, catch up, compare notes, all while thoroughly enjoying the museum's exhibits.
Here's the link to the museum, in case you would like to explore a little more:
www.avam.org

Post Haste

Or what happens when you are in a rush to post. Please add an "n" to the word, chosen, in the previous post.

Five Hours of Fame

Yesterday my daughter and I worked as extras in the filming of From Within, a psychological thriller set in a small town. Havre de Grace has been highly touted as perfect for the setting, due in part to the absence of chain stores and restaurants such as MacDonald's. Let's hope we don't have any copycat events following the filming.
We reported to the Havre de Grace High School along with approximately 350 other locals and spent five hours pretending to be the congregation of the local church gathered together to mourn the passing of several teens. My daughter was grouped with other teen girls so they could be zoomed in on during the "service." Our job was to listen raptly, focusing on the pastor, and not the cameras, and occasionally say amen! We stood up, clapped and swayed to the music. Some of my daughter's friends were chose to be members of the "church" band because they knew how to play guitar and bass.
Filming will continue the rest of this coming week and Joseph's Department Store will be a featured location. I guess we'll have to snoop around for other opportunities to act.
I hope they will have a special showing of the movie in Havre de Grace when it is released. I know there are at least 350 people who will want to see it.

Je voudrais ainsi être en France...

">I enjoyed creating my Avatar but had a hard time finding my hair style.

I plan to explore the different sites for the perfect avatar. I was reading someone's blog recently and they were wondering why all avatars look about 12 years old. Yahoo gives you the option of different body type but the choice of apparel is limited to four outfits. I will have to go to Curves a lot more often to match my avatar and I think I'll need some highlights as well.

Merlin

I've been exploring Merlin and have added it to my Blogroll. I particularly like the Web 2.0 Award Winners short list http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0/short Here you can look at the top three winners in each category and directly link to it as well as nominate your favorites for the 2008 awards.
I also found the Learning Links very useful. Search engines were not particularly intuitive, however. RSS4LIB was a useful blog that explores RSS links of use for libraries.

Happy 4th of July, Hon!

Our Friend, Wayne, hosts a wonderful party every 4th of July. This year's party had a jungle theme and many of us wore leopard prints or tropical prints though some stuck to the traditional red, white and blue. While not on the official parade route, the larger floats and vehicles drive right past Wayne's office and it has become a tradition for many of the elected officials to stop by. The Governor must have felt at home: with all the leopard prints, we resembled a mini Honfest. I was thrilled to meet Martin O'Malley. He was very cordial and even remembered singing with the St. Patrick's choir about 10 years ago when we did a special Celtic Mass. I told him that I often told people that I have sung with him. To see more pictures, go to www.gov.state.md.us Follow the link to photographs and choose the Bel Air Parade.

You Oughta Be In Pictures

From Within will begin filming in Havre de Grace on July 11. Hundreds of extras are needed with the biggest demand for July 14. For information on being an extra or to register e-mail fromwithinmovie@hotmail.com

Can I get a Blogroll, please?

I am happy to report, that after some initial confusion (and a few dumb questions) I have successfully subscribed to several RSS and Newsreaders !

It was interesting reading and choosing which ones would represent my essence. I pondered this for at least ten minutes.

I like this mix of library-related blogs and newsfeeds mixed up with those of my friends.

I do admit to preferring to get my news curled in a chair with the Daily Sun and a strong cup of coffee. I always read the comics first.

You may find my blogroll at :

http://www.bloglines.com/public/Deeneys

#7 Create a Blog Post About Anything Technology Related

BATTERIES ! I HATE them.
Larry Williams, the Ideas Editor, for the Sun (Larrywilliams@baltsun.com ) wrote a tantalizing article entitled, Why not spend your money on an iPhone? Try these reasons. Oh, he lists lots of reasons, but the one that stands out for me is the question of replacing the battery. The battery is supposed to last a day or two between charges, but the battery's power will begin to fade after about 300 charges. Larry reports that "when the battery finally fails, you'll discover that there is no way to pop off the back cover and replace it. Instead you will have to ship your phone back to Apple to replace it at an as-yet-undetermined cost."

Rehoboth

My creation
Originally uploaded by Susan's Mighty Fine Story

Catching up on Week Three and playing around with Flickr, I decided to wharhol myself. I also worked on a trading Card but found the little icons annoying. This is a photo taken in Rehoboth Beach over St. Patrick's Day Week end, which, as those of you who know me know, is an important religious holiday for me.

http://www.tullamore-dew.org/
Fond memories of our trip to Ireland - the music, the lovely room in Killarney and the dew...
Certainly org indicates an educational web site.

Leading the Parade at Magic Kingdom

The John Carroll Band performed admirably in Disney World's Magic Kingdom. The parade route took them from Frontierland to the main entrance. The day was bright, sunny and HOT - 96 degrees.

Memo for next time:

Ice packs

Spray bottles

Three hour shifts for the chaperones

Relay for Life

We are a little groggy after spending the night at the Havre de Grace High School track walking the Relay for Life. We had 23 members in our team and our camp site placed first for decorations - though the highest award was "grand" so I guess you could say we came in second. Teams were to choose a movie and decorate based on that. We chose Finding Nemo and had a lot of fun with Dorie's character.

Thank you, Mr. Tom for cooking dinner and then coming back at 4:30 a.m. to make us pancakes! Thanks you, Me. Ernie for setting up your fire pit. We loved being able to make S'mores but didn't plan on needing it for warmth.

We definitely want to do this again next year. We learned a lot about fundraising. Add to our checklist - pillows, blankets, and lounge chairs!

Consider doing it: we had a lot of fun and raised money for a cause whose devastation had affected us all.

View of Downtown Havre de Grace

You heard it here first...

A well known, European film maker and his crew will be filming a slasher/horror film in downtown Havre de Grace this summer. Their offices will be in the old Bank of Memories and they will be filming mainly on Washington Avenue!

Some things make it all worthwhile

A couple of years ago my book club, the notorious BCMA, was gathered at Coakley's, allegedly to compare and contrast the book and movie version of The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, when we noticed that there were quite a few college kids in the bar. One of the young men approached me and I recognized him as one of my Havre de Grace patrons from some time ago. He came right up to me with a big smile on his face, gave me a hug and said, "Ms. Susan, I always loved your storytimes!"

Travel happily

He who would travel happily must travel light.
Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Going with John Carroll's chorus and band to Walt Disney World next week. I may try to add to this blog down there. We have about 70 students going and a small group of parent chaperones. I'm looking forward to the trip and I am in the process of over-planning the trip.

This trip and our MLA Canadian Cruise are getting mixed up in my head. I'll go to the Canada exhibit at Epcot and think I've already been to Halifax!

Accept responsibility/View problems as challenges

I've combined these two habits of life-long learners because in my mind they go hand in hand. Somewhere along the way, one hopes their child will learn to accept responsibility, admit guilt, fess up...but oh, there are times when the best of us would just like to point a finger and say, "Jimmy did it."

Years ago, it was the habit of a former director to invite library board members to the Committee of Thirteen (Administrative Council) meetings. One board member fully embraced the tenets of the Power of Positive Thinking and talked quite a bit about the idea of viewing problems as challenges. He introduced us to his family's way of cutting down on negativity - the Neggie Jar. Members of his family had to put a quarter in the jar every time they were negative, abrupt, or if they cursed or said other unkind things. Our director liked the idea of having us all read the same book and share the ideas put forth. We read How to Win Friends and Influence People, The Power of Positive Thinking and other classics.

Begin with an end in mind

Now there's a good suggestion. Did I consider this when I started this blog? Nooo. I am looking forward to pimping my blog. I can't wait to add some photos and web links. I hope to reach a point where my teenaged daughter will no longer roll her eyes at me while I attempt new technological feats. (I know I will never be able to stop the eye-rolling completely)
I like the idea of a web site and wonder what makes someone's MySpace different from or more desirable than a web site. And if a blog allows you to add photos, podcasts and links, why not just blog?

Let's start

1. Reading other people's blogs seems almost voyeuristic. I am impressed with the thought and creativity put into the blogs I've read so far. I'm not sure where people find the time! I run from one activity to the next and by the time I settle in for the night, the last thing I want to do is type. I really would like a portable, voice-activated keyboard.
2. I reviewed the 7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners. Because of bandwidth issues here in the branch I read the screen and advanced through quickly. Fortunately, I had already done this tutorial. On January 9, Branch Managers participated in a teleconference introducing us to this model. I was delighted that the tutorial encouraged us to "make play our New Year's resolution." Of course, that is the 1/2 Habit that makes everything else approachable and doable. Attitude is everything. This is the easiest and hardest to accomplish. Fish! Philosophy encourages us to choose our attitude - to decide to bring more enthusiasm to work, to consider the magnificent versus the ordinary. I think we could use a plan for lifting ourselves out of the dumps when schedules are tight and computers are slow, though a cold, wet fish seems somehow inappropriate in our setting, we need that sense of play. I liked the idea of a learning contract. This isn't too much different from our PERS goals - establishing the goal, identifying obstacles, and assembling the toolbox to achieve the goal seem obvious but when you multitask you sometimes forget to check in and regroup. You also forget to pat yourself on your back.
3. Setting up my blog was a little confusing. I wanted to be clever and pithy but found it hard to think while filling out the blanks. I discovered that I have three blogs! One of them was done last year and I never added to it after I set it up.