ring-a-ding things

OK, I've been lurking & reading - time to jump back in! I helped my daughter Liz move to Milwaukee and set up her new 4th grade classroom (Hooray for Willard School librarian Marcia Ryan, who gave me boxes of weeded books for Liz' classroom library), and then took a day yesterday to help my daughter Mary set up her math classroom. (In fact, there were more contractors than teachers, trying to get everything done before school starts - it's a beautiful new building.)

SO - trying to get back to posting with 21 Things! I am feeling the information overload with all of the new things, readers, alerts, etc., but enjoying seeing it all. I still need to figure out how to avoid internet indigestion from over-indulging. :)

It's been a busy time with a lot of back-to-school stuff, including welcoming 2 new school librarians to our district. I'm looking forward to a great year of school/library collaboration, and I'm hopeful that the wiki I set up will help - once we all start to use it. Our staff wiki @ the library has been great - so glad we have it.

More later, I hope!

A million things on hold

OK, I think 21 Things will be on hold for awhile, along with about a million other things in my life - as my library's Outreach person, I am swamped with back to school events, meetings, etc. I'm also helping my daughter Liz move to Milwaukee & set up a new classroom there, and my daughter Mary move into a new classroom in Chicago. (At least their schools haven't started yet!) Thank heavens I'm not moving! I'll try to keep reading blogs but may not post much - hopefully I'll be back before too long!

Why I have a twitter account

Our library uses both FB & Twitter (and Meebo, and text a librarian), but I have a Twitter account b/c of a conversation I had some time ago with my daughter, who teaches math in a Chicago school.

Me: I kind of don't get Twitter. Why would people read a play-by-play of my day? It's not that interesting! And I have so much I want to read already that I can't see adding tweets...

Mary:the only reason I would have a Twitter account is b/c my students say the funniest things - they're really amusing.

Me: well, if you join Twitter I'll follow you

Mary: OK!

and I do enjoy her tweets, and am now following a bunch of people, but I don't tweet much. I am being followed by some martial arts dude in Australia who apparently picked up a tweet about ninja librarians I sent - hmmm.

Some Mary tweets:
(which are much funnier if you know her voice, and also this is what happens when you post at 3 AM - maybe I should try sleep?)

J (17, male, wears motorcycle boots) raised his hand and asked "can I go the bathroom so I can try?"

I told a kid who said I was boring that he'd have a few more years to experience it if he didn't start doing work.

My new student looks at me and goes, "they're not going to look in our bags are they? Cause I sell....not drugs"

1. There are over 20 cops here. 2. We're on lockdown. 3. For a gang fight. 4. Between PARENTS (that's class)

Grandma: We had a cinco thing tonight...watered down margaritas and only one person had to be taken out in an ambulance.

In other news, I got a fwd from my granddad titled: Fwd: no viagra, its really from me (glad we got the spam issue fixed)

ha ha ha ha...my class is "worse than jail"

Ah yes, Nancy B. Jefferson...the "selective enrollment"* school. (*you select to go there via some sort of crime)


Kid says he "took a trip out of town". Which is true if by "out of town" you mean "jail". I know how that one works...

My grandmother would prefer I get married sooner rather than later because "I'm old and I could be dead by then." Not likely.

OK, I threw in a couple of grandparents so it wouldn't be so heavy on the jail/gang/crime thing...

electronics don't like me

...but they are keeping me company. Well, sort of - I grabbed a book on CD to listen to in the car and I got an error message - never seen that before. AND my CD player at home just went on the fritz.
I am too wired to sleep after an unexpected midnight trip (emergency averted), so I thought I'd work on 21 Things. But I still get messages that I need to sign in - when I was signed in. It does seem to be easier on a Mac.
I'm enjoying everyone's blogs but not doing much blogging myself... does that make me a lurker? Does anyone still use that term?

Back to work!

I just returned from a vacation in Colorado, where I went biking & rafting and even did a little "21 Things" with my niece and nephew. We had a lot of fun with the Image generators - here's a sample!

Unfortunately my tendency to wander the web is worse when I have fellow travelers! Fortunately I (and my library) already use Twitter, Facebook, and IM; I also use Good Reads but need to be more consistent with it.
I'm a little conflicted about posting photos to Flicker - we do post pics on our blog & link to albums, but I'm a little leery of privacy issues. We had one mom who asked that we remove all of her child's pics from our online albums, which could be viewed by clicking on a link on our blog.
Check out some pics from our Crazy Costume Capers on our blog:
http://www.rfplkids.blogspot.com/

Falling behind...

...and likely to get further behind! No access to my work computer for a few days b/c our room is being carpeted (YAY!!), and very busy with all the moving that entails. Also doing a lot of moving stuff @ home as my younger daughter will be staying with me til she has a confirmed job & place to live. And leaving to visit family & meet my daughters in CO tonight, so unless I work on this on vacation... or finish all the other last-minute stuff I CAN do w/o access to our shared drive... might need a life preserver when I return!

I am enjoying reading others' posts & seeing the links - hope to get some things up soon!

Shiny

My older daughter & her boyfriend stayed overnight with me so I could take them to the airport @ 5:15. I forgot how chirpy she is when she wakes up - please! But the night before she looked over my 21 Things, and helped me narrow down the feeds I subscribe to so that they're it's not (as) overwhelming. (She also made me promise not to subscribe to anything new for a week, til I see how the current list feels.)
And she was helpful - and patient - as I tried out some of the new stuff. But (as usual) I started wandering the web, intrigued by one thing after another. After a couple of "Mom, why don't you finish what you were doing first?" comments, she just started saying "Shiny" in a hypnotic voice every time I went wandering again. Shiny. Distracting. Bewitching. I have to learn to watch out for Shiny Syndrome!

The good thing was that I actually felt caught up - for about 12 hours. And I was sleeping for 6 of them. But still...