Christmas House 2009

Here are the pictures from our house on Christmas Day.

Clearing Snow from the Deck

Cynthia and I cleared the deck of snow before the next wave expected later this afternoon!

Charter

Starting last Friday we had a problem with our Internet access. It died and nothing we did following instructions from the Charter phone service helped. After having no connection all weekend, it came back on Monday morning. We thought all was well, but no service again on Monday night - frustrating! We scheduled a tech to come, but of course, he couldn't come until Wednesday morning. Maurice came and changed the modem; we were connected and thought all was well, but alas, we came home from work, and no service. We scheduled another visit for Thursday morning, this one thought we had a problem with our Macintosh computers connecting - WHAT?!? Our second tech on Thursday was scheduled to drop off a new cable box for our TV, and this cable guy knew what to do. Apparently, there is a sequence that has to be followed when replacing the modem : Unplug wireless router, turn Airport off, replug wireless router (WAN solid and Internet Blinking fast), then turn on Airport. We learned something new!! No problems! The moment of truth will be tomorrow morning!

Family

Happy birthday to my sister, Marcia, today. We had a good talk this morning catching up on our lives. Family is important in our lives. Our adult children are in Greenville, SC, Owatonna, MN, Fort Lauderdale, FL, Mankato, MN, Janesville, MN, and Owatonna, MN (in that order :-). Andy will be heading to Watertown, WI this coming week for his senior year at Maranatha Baptist Bible College. We will miss going to his football games, since we're involved at our new school with a totally different schedule. You can be assured we'll be perusing all the football pictures once the season begins.

Oscar and Peyton begin school after Labor Day in Minnesota, and they are buying school supplies in anticipation of new schools. Oscar will go to an all-day kindergarten in Waseca near Tricia's workplace and Peyton will begin 5th grade at McKinley Elementary School near our home in Owatonna. She had attended Washington Elementary School from K5-4, but when they moved to our home, she had to transfer to the neighborhood school and she'll do fine.

I also had a great visit with my sister, Darlene, this morning and caught up on her family. What a glorious day! I'm sure by day's end, I will call my mother to get her updates on my 97-year-old Great Aunt Edith living nearby in a care facility. What a span of generations.

Now off to lunch with friends in anticipation of a new week.

Cousins and Siblings

My cousin, Brenda, just posted a July 4, 1959 photograph showing several of us on the porch swing at the Crane Farm in Orleans, Indiana. The family reunions at the farm were wonderful playing games with our cousins, going to the barn with Grandpa Crane to milk the cows, and feeding the pigs. Grandma Crane always had lots of sweet tea and persimmon pudding plus lots of other food. I remember playing croquet after all food supplies were put away and then my dad, Roy Crane, would walk around the house on his hands to our delight! What great memories. Darlene and Marcia are my sisters, Nathan is my brother, and Brenda and Deborah are my cousins.
(L-R) Nancy Crane McGuire, Nathan Crane, Brenda Chastain Shepple, Marcia Crane Schmuck, Deborah Crane Barrows, and Darlene Crane Sylvia.

Thing 47 Evaluation

I'm delighted that I took time to finish the More Things on a Stick before moving next Tuesday. It has been a delightful experience of learning tools that will benefit me in my new position as Reference Librarian in a much larger school. As I shared with a friend just minutes ago, we are just a plane ride away from our beloved Minnesota and our many friends and family who we are leaving behind. I'm glad we have ways of keeping in contact virtually. Have a fabulous summer and we'll be back during Christmas vacation.

Thing 46 WJMN

I've had my membership for a while. I tried to change my email from the pillsbury.edu email that will disappear mid-August, but at some point, I must have another identity in WJ with my Charter email. The course availability is welcome for growth in librarianship.

Thing 45 Cloud Computing

I've used Cloud Computing when working on the yearbook. All work for the yearbook was created from any computer, but saved on servers elsewhere. It was fantastic. The students were able to work from home or anywhere. The big issue is trusting the company to protect your information. I set up a G.ho.st account and will load items to access anywhere. Since I'm a Macintosh user, I'll watch my files carefully.

Thing 44 The economy

I appreciated Frugal Dad and already do many of his suggestions. I've registered for the Frugal Dad forum and look forward to many more hints. Since our school closed at the end of December and we without 2 salaries, we had personal experience at cutting back and living frugally. Our children are moving into our house to maintain it, so we don't have to sell in this sad economy. We will be back at Christmas to visit grandchildren and children!

Thing 43 Online TV and Video

I created a Hulu account and was amazed at the ease and speed of viewing a movie via the web. The letterbox viewing is fab! I like the fact that one can go in and view an episode that one has missed; what a nice benefit. A drawback would be the addictive nature of continually having a video or TV available! Sometimes I just like to listen to the dialogue, and can do that while doing other things. I set up a queue for viewing House episodes.

Hulu allows connection to other sites, and I shared a hippo video on my FB that shows that hippos like their space!!

Thing 42 Music 2.0

I've been listening to radio via Internet for several years and love the versatility. I have both a Pandora and Live.fm account. When we moved here from SC, we missed our WMUU FM classical music station and were delighted when we were again able to listen via web.

Thing 41 Mashup Your Life

I set up a LifeStream account and will try it. After the initial set-up, it seems to work well.

Thing 40 Mash-Up the Web

I'm listening to KingSingers on Pandora and love it! I checked out the Lunchbox, Ping.fm, Interestingness, Flickr Memari, and let me Google that for you. The best is Pandora.

I used Bubblr and loved the ease of adding a cartoon caption to any picture:

Thing 39 Digital Storytelling

As a yearbook adviser, I've used yearbook programs to create books for the past 11 years. For this thing, I used Smile Box to create a book to commemorate our Library Open House June 17, 2008 exactly one year ago.

Make a Smilebox photobook

Thing 38: Screencasting

I worked on Grab, ScreenToaster, Skitch, and then got involved with packing, packing, and more packing. I'm trying to finish my last 9 in 3 days! I look forward to delving more in depth into screencasting; perhaps in my new position.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Thing 37: Photo Tales

After looking at several of the photo programs, I used Photobucket and Slide to create a slide show of my daughter's apartment that will be nearly the same as ours with the same view from the balcony! Exciting. The slide shows can be used for tours of the library, or anything that requires a sequential group of pictures to inform. I enjoyed working with this thing.

Grandchildren

Precious in God's Sight

Thing 36: Comic Relief: Generate some fun

Even though I had fun viewing the generators, the ToonDo wasn't operating correctly and just stuck when attempting to create a Toon. The generators I especially liked were those that make life easier for college students including the Son of Citation Machine and EasyBib. I appreciated the tag cloud creator and posted two on my blog to see which one I like the best. I added the email icons to my signature line in Entourage. I added a ToonDoo to my blog, but got an error message; I'm not sure what was the problem.

Thing 35: Books 2.0

I love the fact that I have 15 digital books on my Palm that save my place so I can start where I left off. My IPod has digital books from Audible so that when I walk I can plug into books. My observation of people at work is that the book is alive and well; everyone reads on their breaks and lunches. The library was always the gathering place for people to gather and discuss ideas, and yes, books. I think digital media enhances our reading experience for the better. I had college students that were absolutely dumbfounded that they could tap into the digital books online to read or research. I love the fact that the digital book has full search ability by key word or phrase. Fantastic. I can hardly wait for the Kindle to be available in color! I've tapped into LibraryThing and Shelfari and linked them to my blog and FaceBook. I added WorldCat and shared all the neat features with my students. Sites where group discussions of books take place are similar to the discussions we have around the dinner table with our adult children. Fun!

Thing 34 Is This Our Competition--Online Answer Sites

The appeal of a Q/A site would be frustration in not being able to find the answer on the person's own IMHO. I personally don't think that the sites are our competition, but then I've only been involved in an academic library and reference questions that we get are primarily project/paper specific. I didn't participate in the Slam the Boards event, but perhaps will in the future.

Thing 33: Travel 2.0

Travel sites are always helpful in college settings with students traveling to and from home, trips for school credit, and vacations. The Lost Girls was fun to read with nuggets of helpful hints. Boo.com was well organized. My Life of Travel is a nice set-up for creating a travel blog. Fastfood Maps is a helpful tool especially for traveling young adults.

Thing 32: Maps and Mashups

I created a map of my walk to work beginning in June at BJU. What an excellent tool! When I have pictures, I plan to add photos to the walk. This can be useful in numerous ways on a university campus by creating maps of sports teams and their year of games and dates, or classes and tours abroad.

Thing 31 More Twitter

What fun! I added the Firefox add-ons Twitbin, Twitter Fox, and Power Twitter. Excellent! I had already linked Twitter to my blog, but now I have added Twitterfeed to link my blog to Twitter. I had already added Twitter to Facebook, but now I've also linked my update to Twitter. Fun stuff! I tried the TweetSnap, but prefer my Twitter Updates that I linked months ago; it is cleaner looking. I added BeTwittered to my homepage and love it! I could spend hours checking out all the possibilities. I added my name to the Twitter Directory under librarians.

I think I'm at the Conversing stage and enjoy the process and looking forward to expanding further. Twitter is another connection to other people and ideas. I receive my Tweets on my phone and love the fact that I can stay connected even at work where our personal use of the computers is restricted during working hours!

Thing 30: More ways to use RSS and Delicious

My RSS feeds appearing in Bloglines have kept me up-to-date on several areas of interest since early 2008. The articles I regularly get from Ebsco-Host are the result of several searches I set up to come to my feeder. I exported all of my feeds, transferred them to Google Reader, and linked them to my IGoogle home page. I also linked all of my delicious links to my IGoogle home page and put a badge on my blog inviting people to my bookmarks.

Thing 29 Google Tools

I set up Google alerts long ago to track certain topics important to me - excellent tool. My G-mail account has been tremendously helpful to me at various times. I synced my calendar to my cell phone a year ago and have been delighted with the service.

The 800-GOOG411 is awesome!! Will definitely use it :-).

Thing 28 Customized Home Pages

I've created both an IGoogle page and a My Yahoo. Each one has a variety of services. On My Yahoo I linked my Facebook account and I like the fact that I can send cell phone messages from Yahoo - helpful for contacting students. Both were easy to set up. I've added games, puzzles, clocks, counters, etc. Widgets and gadgets are fun to add.

Thing 27 Twitter

I created a Twitter account last summer when I started following a friend. I enjoy getting tweets on my phone keeping me linked to others wherever I am. I changed my Twitter background and have a number of people I follow. I have a link on my blog. Come follow me.

I look at Twitter as yet another tool to connect with friends. Students benefit from following a library twitter to keep them informed of services and research helps.

Thing 26 Join the Ning

I joined the Ning in the first round of 23 Things on a Stick. I've changed the look of my home page, brought it up-to-date, and added a fun video. A Ning can be used in the library to communicate with staff in a fun way. I joined knitting in the library and look forward to communicating with the group.

Thing 25 Blogger Toolkit

I had fun with this thing adding widgets or gadgets. I started this months ago and just came back to it deciding that I really want to finish this before moving to Greenville, SC. I added the search box, clock, Meebo, slide show, and several other widgets. I decided not to pursue the tag cloud since it looked cumbersome, but I may decide to go back to it at another time. I spent a couple of hours on this thing, but could have lost myself in all of the choices. Fortunately, I have a temp job that is keeping us afloat until we begin our new positions.

BJU

Praise the Lord, Dave and I both have positions at BJU beginning this summer. We are looking forward to being near our daughter, Cynthia, who lives in the same building where our apartment will be. What a blessing!

We will certainly miss our home in Owatonna, but sometimes God has to make us content to leave a place where we have been content. It is tougher to move away from our children and grandchildren who live in the vicinity, but we'll just be a plane ride away. After 25 years in Owatonna, we will be leaving the ice, snow, clean air, good friends, lovely blue sky for the Smokey Mountains, azaleas, warmth, and lots of friends.

What an adventure!!

Thing 24 Refresh my blog

I changed the template on my blog to one I really like! It has more room with a cleaner line. My avatar was easy to change into a classy pantsuit at the airport - I love it! I changed my profile to reflect the fact that I'm looking for a new position. Changing the color to pink every chance I get is fun and makes me happy in the winter thinking about the pastels of spring.

House

I'm trying to think ahead about what we would take if we had to move from Minnesota. While making the list, I'm easily distracted to do something else. Hence writing in this blog. This is a difficult time in our lives : wanting to stay here in MN in our home and near our children and grandchildren, but knowing that we need jobs. One position will be near our oldest daughter - she would like us to come and join her, but both of us need jobs. Another possibility would take us to a place we've never been, but has positions for both of us in the academic world. We shall see. Until then, I better get back to sorting out our lives and deciding what would go and what we can part with in the event that we'll have to sell and move. Decisions, decisions .........

Daughter

We had a wonderful visit with our daughter while interviewing for jobs on campus at BJU. They have a Reference Librarian available for me, but Dave's possibilities are still pending. We shall see. I would have liked to have stayed in the sunny south while Dave came back home, but married couples of 38 years don't usually do that :-). Cynthia and I would have had a blast during our down times. Alas, we're back in the Tundra of Minnesota and glad that we're in the southern part of the state!!! We're interviewing locally and in Arizona while praying for wisdom as to what and where God has positions for us. We'd love to be near our daughter, but both of us need positions in order for that to work. We're looking in town as well as on campus. Decisions, decisions!!