Veit Springs Hike in Flagstaff

A DREAM OF A VACATION

Here's where the Howleys stayed on the coast north of Mendocino, California. It was thrillingly relaxing (if that's not an oxymoron!), and here's a link to more excitingly stress-free pix--http://www.flickr.com/photos/24015643@N03/sets/72157606566179611/

WALK ACROSS ARIZONA WRAP-UP

Our Walk Across Arizona challenge is officially over. For 16 weeks, fifty of us did our best to walk (or do other equivalent exercise) as much as we could. Besides walking, we biked, belly danced, gardened, shifted ranges of books in the library, did aerobics, used treadmills and elliptical machines, cleaned city streets, and more! And we did these things not only here in the Valley of the Sun, but also in San Francisco and San Diego, Hawaii, Michigan, Flagstaff, and who knows what other exotic places! We were sometimes waylaid by illness, injury, surgery, and distressing circumstances--but we kept on going. In fact, we kept on going for 7,144.3 incredible miles! I cannot adequately express how proud I am of each and every one of us, and how honored I feel to have been a part of this group--let's do it again NEXT YEAR!
This whole experience is such fun, and I'd like to end with a laugh! Below is a sketch I love from Monty Python, "Ministry of Silly Walks"--

GOLDEN DELICIOUS

Thanks to Dan Haskell, I have discovered an actual use for Del.icio.us.com, the bookmarking tool that was covered in lesson #13 of Library 2.0! Out at our information desk, we are now limited in the number of favorites we can have bookmarked on the two computers, so I opened an account in Del.icio.us, loaded all the favorites off my computer at my desk, and all the favorites that looked good to me from both Info desk computers and the Call Center computer. Now when I'm on the desk, I just log in to Del.icio.us, put it on a tab, and have instant access to all the sites I want, without having to remember them all, or go to something like Google to look them up. I love it--thank you, Dan, for the suggestion!!

Slideshow Experiment--California Coast Trip

I decided that I could teach myself to insert a slideshow into my blog--but it turned out to be extraordinarily time-consuming and difficult. I don't know exactly why, but I just couldn't get Flickr and Blogspot to cooperate, so if you click on the little red x above, you will see a presentation of our photos in random order. Thank you, and if anybody out there wants to give me a personal one-on-one tutorial on how to accomplish this, I'd be thrilled to learn!

Computer Use Is Fun!

If anyone is still reading these--I particularly wanted to emphasize how much I enjoy reading my colleagues' blogs that you have all done for this Learning 2.0 tutorial. They are by turns funny (yeah!), thought-provoking, beautiful, encouraging, and helpful--plus they give an insight into people that I've not had before, or provide a way to get to know some staff members I'm not well acquainted with. Sometimes when I read things I comment, but most of the time I just enjoy the blog without commenting. But even if you never see any remarks from me, for sure I have read your blog and got a kick out of it!

Cool picture of my home computer from the following link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonirvine/414517495/

Blogging Benefits

I can never resist something funny! But what I really want to say is that creating a blog is actually the Learning 2.0 lesson I enjoyed the most. I kind of said these things before, but I feel it bears repeating. When I first finished, I thought maybe it was using Flickr, or something like that. But my blog incorporates elements of almost everything I learned, and it is what I plan to keep working on, as time permits. One other thought I'd like to add about our Learning 2.0 experience is that I am already seeing benefits. The main benefit (other than having my blog as an outlet) is the rise in my self-confidence in regard to technology, which of course bleeds over in to other areas also. I have also been able to help several people, like my supervisor, for instance, so that I do keep using what I've learned--and that's great! One of the reasons that I want to keep working on my blog is so that I won't lose what I've learned through inactivity.