Roadtrip!!!!!!

Yay, last day of work. I'll get the xmas family obligations out of the way then hit the road. Yes, this year I'm off on a road trip. The first real road trip in at least 14 years. When I say real road trip I mean the no plan, no accommodation bookings style trip. Just me, the dog, the tent and a few beers and my trusty Japanese car. Not like the old days of rust-bucket Holdens overheating through deserted roads. No! Piece-of-cake wee Japanese cars that actually get from A to B.

I'm so excited. The dog doesn't look so keen. It's a 'poofy' (named by every West Coaster I met last weekend break I had) small fluffy number that can't be fed before trips in the car because he'll bring up his lunch on my upholstery.

A friend has booked a wee school in the depths of the West Coast hills for a New Years gathering so I'll start there, spending a couple of days, but after that it's no plans.

Bliss.

What a drip!

I have a had a major week. First my son develops asthma with the bad weather last week and probably a wee virus. So off we trip to the doctors, many medications later, to the hospital for the next couple of days. Fortunately with him being 12 years old, my company was not required a lot. In fact, "When are you going?" was uttered many times.
So, he happily sat in his private ensuited room summoning nurses for lemonade popsicles and to change the movies on his personal tv, and ordering his next meal. While I ferried back and forth from home to ensure the pets were ok, do business orders, and collect essential entertainment items for my son.
I happily slept at home each night until I found my bed wet from a leaky roof. That's all I needed! Fortunately it didn't leak a lot but I did have to move to another room for a couple of nights until I could coax a roofer around. They were of course all busy with the days and days of rain.
I'm hoping all will be back to normal tomorrow when hopefully my son goes back to school!

Driving Miss J-Mo

CCL Learn finito

Oh no, what are we going to do now the CCL Learn is finished? No more whiling away the hours in the workroom cruising the internet for gems for our modules. How are we going to continue this in our small offdesk hours?

Suggestions people?

To my fellow CCL Learn classmates: Web 2.0

Woah, this is a dry subject. I had to have a coffee break and choose items for my storyline borrower in the middle to stop me snoozing. I will say though that i think it is great that government departments are looking at and creating ways to interact with the public and provide accessible platforms for feedback and imput. Our local government website has only a feedback form but it does have an RSS feed for news.
Businesses are much more comfortable with using social networking etc to boost their customer interaction. Eg Air NZ has a facebook profile and sends info and fun stuff to customers who have 'become fans'. Some of the posts are informative, asking for opinions or just for fun.
Matapihi most definately needs an RSS feed to enable those who are interested, to keep updated on new additions to the website. NZ museums has twitter and facebook profiles to enable interested parties to follow activity on the site.
It's the way forward.

To my fellow CCL Learn classmates:

Well, I enjoyed the Discovery module much more than some of the others. I must admit I'm a huge fan of aimlessly wandering the net and am now really pleased it's been validated as a learning experience!
The DIY search engines are a good idea. Not something that I want to add to my ever-growing list of stuff clogging up my computer though. I'm terrible at having too many webpages and programmes open at the same time which slows down my computer terribly.
I LOVE Stumbleupon . I was introduced to it about a year ago now, and am totally hooked. I often work near my computer at home and find stumble is perfect to keep me amused while doing mundane things.
I didn't find WebQuest that great. I'm not even sure what it is. It didn't seem very user friendly and it kept coming up with 'no search results' for my topics. The link to the Antarctica webquest that south library's learning centre uses didn't lead anywhere either. Oh well, maybe i'll have another look later. How did you guys go?

To my fellow CCL Learn classmates:

Right Easter is over, a tonne of customers are lining up at our front desks but you know what? Us luckly few are noseying our way through the internet all thanks to CCL Learn. It's a hard life. I've been playing with google docs and google calendar etc. I'm finding it nice and easy to use but wondering if i'll ever use it myself. I guess it's of an advantage if you're using more than one computer (eg. your home one) for wordprocessing and communicating those documents with others. In the near future i can't see myself needing it, but it's great to know about it to show our customers what's out there and to help them with any problems they face. I do like the idea of free software such as Open Office and Google docs being available. Would google docs be limiting when sending documents to those who are not signed up to gmail or yahoo? Your thoughts....

Wrestling with Easter

I had all these plans to paint rooms in my house over Easter, but do ya know what? I couldn't be bothered. So I slothed around on Friday after a nice big sleep in. Walked down to the park with my son and munched on not-so hot cross buns, then later had the ol' 70's fondue with friends followed by dipping stuff in melted chocolate. Strawberries were the best.
Saturday was equally lazy although I did 3 hours work at the library to keep the guilts at bay. A lovely sunny afternoon rewarded me for my efforts and my son and I watched Midsomer Murders that night. The crime capital of the UK.
A big sleep in Sunday followed my making my way through a dark chocolate easter bunny and spending up large at the garden city. Oh yes, I must remember to plant those vegie seedlings before they die..... Feed chips to huge baby big seagulls from the car window at Sumner while they peered their beady eyes (and huge beaks) at me from my car roof. It was kinda creepy actually but my son thought it was a hoot. I wonder if he will be so pleased when he has to clean the s*** off the roof. Tee hee.
Everything was fabulous this weekend, especially the avoiding any work around the house bit, until my cat decided to go to the toilet on the floor in my toilet room! I chased her outside angrily and threw water at her, cursing all the way back inside thinking of what i'll have to clean up. But no, my dog fixed the problem. Eeewwww!!!!!!
Well, I did feel kind of guilty for not having done any painting, so at 10pm last night I wrestled my ancient rangehood (that has more rust than metal and therefore haven't been brave enough to turn it on) free from the wall, and moved it's supporting beams to accomodate the new rangehood. My hands are sore and I finally feel like I've acheived something. Still, I should consider resting an acheivement!

Cute has reached a new level

I couldn't resist sharing this photo and this link to the cutest young foxes I have seen.

CCL Learn Workmates: Confused about Clouds? Read this...

Man I was bogged down in 'what the hell are clouds?' until i found this you tube video . In plain english and some nice basic graphics the video turned the light on for me. How about you?

Lovely warm Autumn weather keeping winter at bay.

What is with people complaining about the warm weather?! It's something that drives me nuts. We get a lovely day where we don't have to rug up, we can enjoy the suns warmth on our skin, then off we go to the shops/work/anywhere and people are wingeing about it. Move further south I say! Leave the warmth to those who appreciate it.

Easter and the School Holidays

I have lovely visions of sleeping in during Easter and the school hols, until my internal filofax reminded me that i had promised to complete some interior painting of ceilings and walls. Not to mention working all through the holidays. But one ray of hope surfaced when my 12 yr old son piped up and said, "By the way Mum, you won't see much of me during the holidays. I'll be visiting all my friends." I had to stop myself from leaping up and punching the air shouting "Yes!" I was thinking of suprising my boy with a kitten, but then visions of a paint covered kitten being licked clean by the dog and the subsequent vet bills stopped that crazy thought....well, at least for the time being........

To my fellow blogging classmates @ CCL Learn

OMG I'm finding MediaWiki frustrating. I created an account, waited for the address confirmation. Days later it arrived. I clicked the link to verify my email address. It verified ok, then asked me to log in. Hahaha, this is where the fun begins. Nope, didn't recognise me. No such account bla bla bla. So I've given up on that one. Pbworks wiki was fun though. I enjoyed adding my favs etc.

Ah the joys of kids....and their technology.

Yesterday morning I woke from a pleasant dream to my son's voice whining, "Geeet uuup!.....Come on!.....You've got to go to wooorrrrk!.......Are you listening to me?!......I'm over here!....I won't tell you again...." After much half-asleep confusion I found his cellphone hidden well under my bed. He had recorded his voice and set it as an alarm, set to go off 10 minutes before my usual alarm.
Ingenious but frustrating. I hate to think what else he'll think to record. Spooky sounds perhaps?

Autumn duties

Well, Autumn is here. Yes, it is! It may be lovely and sunny and warm today but don't be fooled. March ends next week. I remember when the 1st April usually signalled frosts. Lets hope i haven't encouraged them by mentioning it. Anyone else enjoying this late summer? Thank god it is a late summer, as the early bit was horrid.
Chilly mornings have reminded me to do something about getting a new woodburner and ordering wood. With woodburner bought and on the waiting list for the installation, all i needed was wood. A nice lot of oregon and blue gum was dumped on my driveway yesterday after parting with a couple of hundred dollars. It smelt lovely. All dry and sweet. I spent my day off stacking it neatly (in true Libran fashion) inside my shed. It looks fab. A work of art. Too good to touch.
But don't panic. I'm not wishing winter to hurry up! I'm enjoying the sun too much.

To my fellow blogging classmates @ CCL Learn

It seems i need to blog about the social networking module, so here goes. I use facebook daily to keep up with friends, family, old schoolmates, and acquaintences here and abroad but i was not aware of Ning and didn't know much about Twitter. Or maybe i still don't, but i did read about them and have had a nosey. I've set up a Ning group. Check it out here. I can't think what to add to it so i have just put up the Skype meeting as a reminder to us all. See you all on Thurs. I must go play with my skype headphone thingy........

Bat crafts?! Who would have thought it.

To add to my bat theme I've just found the cutest craft website. Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all into craft but this was so cute. I was searching photos of fruit bats on Flickr when I found this one of a crocheted bat! So funny. So of course I got sidetracked to owners website. It's amazing. Check it out here.
I found this module quite fun. Checking out Flickr and what it can do was pretty easy and the world of RSS feeds is mindblowing!

Grrrr

My video bar keeps defaulting to whatever You Tube wants to put on it. It seems to be mostly music videos. It's suppose to have Simon's Cat videos http://www.youtube.com/simonscat
Oh well, check out Simon's Cat yourself sometime. You love it
:)

To my fellow blogging classmates @ CCL Learn

Are you looking for podcasts to add to your blog? I found Podcast NZ at http://www.podcastnz.com check it out for many catagories of podcasts :)

Return to normalcy in the household.

Wow, it's amazing what a night at Nana's can do to an adolescent. He was apparently behaving beautifully until she said he wasn't allowed to do something or other. Then fists were drawn much to the shock of Nana. But this is not a Nana to mess with! I destinctly remember her 'volcano' temper from my youth. Don't mess with the Nana!
So a blasting was given to the young lad about violence, domestic violence, and while she was at it she gave him heaps about treating your mother with disrespect.
So off to school he went the next day, and came home a different boy. The usual well behaved son I'm used to, and thank god for that!
A pleasant evening mall crawl was had together. It was very pleasant. We shared some chinese dumplings and walk arm and arm through the shops, until at one point I lost him. But some 20 minutes testing the squishiness of a couch in Farmers later, he turns up. We had a nice veg-out time on the couch at home watching bad influence programmes such as 2 and a half men, and his idols on Big Bang Theory. Still he can't be too bad if his idols are OCD physics geeks!

Batty news

I'm reminded of The Count from Sesame Street and his fabulous song "Doing the Batty Bat" everytime I think of the word batty. I have added the link to this video just for fun. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7yAe2MBIpE
Anyway, getting back to what I'm posting, I have found a page on the bat family Chiroptera on the exellent animal database Grizimek's (pronounced Chimex or something similar) that is available through our library's website for any other bat fans out there. I have attached the link with this post. http://animals.galegroup.com/web/grzimeks/animals/Chiroptera

The stress of adolescents!

What a morning, or week should I say. My 12 year old has started to kick up such a fuss this week. The hormones are obviously kicking in. Grunts, glares, and emphatic NO!'s are now a staple diet. This morning was going fine until I discovered he had packed icecream for lunch in a little plastic flask. It seems I am evil mother from hell not letting him take it to school. Tee hee. Hmmm, I know what I'll be having for afternoon tea :)

Hmmm, having fun finding my way around blogging. I can see I could get addicted to this if only I could think of something to say without grumbling tee hee.