(500) Days of Summer | unrelated video

Went to see (500) Days of Summer last night. Loved it. Here's a video that doesn't come from the film but is fun anyway...

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

Ethan wants nothing more than to get out of Gatlin, the small town where he's lived his whole life. He thinks that nothing interesting ever happens in Gatlin and wonders why people choose to stay if they're smart enough to make a living somewhere else. The only thing interesting in his life lately are these crazy dreams he has about trying to save a girl he doesn't know. Enter Lena. She's new in town and Ethan can't wait to get to know her better, even though befriending her will surely alienate his friends on the basketball team since this town is full of people who still refer to the Civil War as the "War of Northern Aggression" and consider anyone an outsider who wasn't born in Gatlin.

I was hooked on Beautiful Creatures from page one. This is one of those books that you don't want to put down and only finally do when your eyes are closing of their own will and you realize you're reading but not processing and you can't wait to get back to it the next day. The book is long (600+ pages) but worth it.

Test for Mrs. Billings' classes

This is a test to see if Mrs. Billings would like her students to post blog comments on either "Girl with a Pearl Earring" or "A Thousand Splendid Suns."

redswingproject.org

We were heading from the Rothko Chapel to the Menil this morning and ran across this swing in the park between the two. Of course the kids had to swing for a bit before we went to the museum. On the front of the swing was 'redswingproject.org' and on the back '054' so when we got home, I looked up the website. Turns out they put up swings in urban locations as 'a tribute to the spirit of childhood.'

Get out there and swing like no one's watching!

Thing #8 RSS Feeds and Readers

Here are a few of my favorite feeds:

Found (and it's stuff like this that makes me love Found)

YALSA's podcasts

Google Entertainment News

BBC has a helpful 'how-to' and 'what it is' here.

And if you're into free music: iTunes offers free songs each week. Videos, too.

I've been using the iGoogle page with Google reader. Good stuff.

Thing #7 Cool Google Tools

The most frustrating thing for me about Google is not anything to do with Google itself, but the fact that I love so many aspects of what Google offers (I use so many of these tools already) and I can't use them from 5 a.m. to about 5 p.m. most days. Our district has restricted almost every aspect of the best Google tools since they require you to be logged into your Google account to use them. From alerts (sent to your email) to the notebook (linked to your account) to the calendar (which would be great if I could use the widget that integrates Outlook's calendar with any other iCalendar--like Google's calendar).

Oh, and a thing that's coming up soon is also blocked: StumbleUpon. I wonder what the benefit is for students when the restrictions are so strict. I'll add some sharing of my Google like my Picassa Web Album in Thing 7, Part II which will be coming to a blog near you soon.

For now, feel free to read this article reaffirming the need for school librarians.

Thing #6 Part II

I forgot that I'd meant to put the image of the faux-tivational poster on my blog, so here it is: