Movie and Zen habits

My husband and I watched a good movie last night. "The Soloist" with Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. It held us from beginning to end and had a message we thought was powerful. I would normally tell you what I thought that message was but if you read this and haven't seen the movie I would hate to ruin it. So go see it. It is about a homeless musician who is befriended by a journalist and it begins to change his life.

I also was told about an interesting blog by my son. It is Zen habits. Little tips on how to live more simply and enjoy life. Uplifting and insightful I am going to follow it and see if I can add some of the suggestions to our life. We are at the point where we need to re-invent ourselves for the older chapters of our lives. We need to think about convenience, health and what makes us happy. We have started to declutter and that is an energizing feeling. It does feel good to let "things" go just like everyone says it does. It is a big job after 17 years in the same house but I plan to get my son involved when he returns. We have a pretty good start already and I think I will go add to that right now. Have a great day.

good books

There is nothing like a good book to pass a hot, humid summer day. I just finished Chandra's Secrets and Thirteen Reasons Why. I enjoyed both of them. Chandra's Secrets was the most moving and highlighted the problem of aids in Africa. It was written from Chandra's perspective on how it affected her family and friends. Chandra is a very strong character who was enjoyable to get to know.

Thirteen Reasons Why was about suicide so it was also serious. It is about a high school girl who commits suicide and then sends audio tapes to the thirteen people who affected her death. I had heard that the teen girls were very interested in it so I thought I would read it. I was glad I did and I think it would make an interesting high school talking book; an introduction to the subject of suicide and relationships in high school.

New books for my ongoing list

I just received some new/used books today to add to my "to be read" pile. They are:

How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci : seven steps to genius every day - This was recommended at a workshop by a participant

China Safari : on the trail of Beijing's expansion in Africa - recommended by my son and looked interesting on Amazon

Thirteen R3asons Why - A serious YA book mentioned by other teachers to read because students are so interested

Any good recommendations for me? I have my Shelfari books shown below.

firstmonday.org

Another good site I found through my course work. I picked out one article to reflect upon but there were a lot of others. I want to remember to go back there and what better way to do it than to put it in my blog so that I remember the link. The article I liked talks about digital natives versus digital immigrants and how it might be a good thing for everyone if we blend those two groups and learn from each other. The immigrants can help the natives weed out the bad from the good. The natives can help the immigrants get up to speed in understanding the new ways of thinking.

The Power of Blogs

For a graduate course I am taking I have been looking for blogs that will help me professionally. As with everything else on the web this takes a lot of time not because there is nothing out there but there is so much to read. One blog leads to another site that might have good lesson ideas that I can use at the beginning of the year and then I segway into other topics of interest and before I know it many hours have passed. I find so many things intriguing on the web that I could easily spend half of my life there. The gmail reader has helped my life by allowing me to aggregate the blogs I like to follow the most. Once I get it honed to my favorites I can spend more time there and less time searching. Today I tried Bloglines. At first I had trouble because apparently some time in the past I set up a bloglines account with the email address I used and I couldn't find a way to get around not knowing the password so I used another email. Then it was simple. Every day I find another cool site that allows you to do one more thing. On this blog I have used glogster, flickr toys, voki's, etc. It is a fun place to keep everything I try. I should also add a link to my wiki but I have not kept current with my personal one. Well, I will end here and go read, read, read...