30 Day challenge

I love the idea behind this.  I have heard before that any habit takes 28 days to solidify, so this fits in perfectly.  I am going to give it a go - take a picture every day for the next 30 days.  What do you want to do?

Beat Boxing to the max

This is so cool.  I love to see what a single person can do with their voice.  Very, very cool.

Totally blown away by this.  It is scary, cool, and everything in between.

Lower Energy Bills

This summer I have been trying to be even better at taking care of the planet.  I have stepped up my recycling efforts and am trying to use far less disposable items (use a container instead of a bag, don't put a lid on your fountain drink, etc.).  I love the idea of finding out how you rank in your home energy consumption - I do think that it would be a huge motivator.  Watch the talk and think about how you can leave a smaller carbon footprint.

Welcome to Holland

A high school classmate of mine has a child with very severe disabilities.  She shares her experiences on her blog and this has opened my eyes to many of the trials and joys of raising a child with disabilities.  One of the first things I read on her blog was this:

WELCOME TO HOLLAND
by
Emily Perl Kingsley.
c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......
When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.
http://www.our-kids.org/Archives/Holland.html

I think that this not only applies to parents, but to anyone who has had to change their plans because of any type of hardship (think of Kevin Ware).  We either spend our time mourning the fact that our life isn't what we had hoped, or we make the most of it.  Even more however, if we can educate those in our lives as to why we are happy and let them know that we have adjusted, then maybe perhaps more people will be happy in Holland.

Just for fun.

I saw this at NETA this year and it is just too good not to share.  Enjoy.

Texting

Just watched this talk -very interesting.  It made me think of many a Facebook thread I have read in the last 6 months about how texting is killing language skills.  I love the speakers optimism and how he disproves the naysayers.  I really agree with him that texting is not destroying language skills nor is it the scourge of communication.  I am still not too good at texting like I talk.  It is hard for me to not write in complete sentences with punctuation - thanks to Mrs. Pearson my 7th grade English teacher.  However, just because I prefer to text in a more formal way does not make me smarter (although it might make me appear so, but that is another post entirely).