The Holidays!

I am so excited for the holidays. I think a big reason is because I am off school and do not have to stress over homework, projects, papers and lesson plans. I just love getting to relax and not be stressed out over school. I also love the holidays because a lot of my friends who are away at school come home, and I get to spend time with them. I just finished helping my mom decorate the house and put the Christmas tree up. It was a lot of fun and I like decorating because it makes the house look festive and happy.

Another reason I love the holiday season is I get to shop. I love buying presents for everyone. There is something so special about spending hours finding the perfect gift for someone and giving it to him or her and watching his or her reaction. I am not going to lie; I also love the holidays because I get a lot of presents too. I have already picked out several things for my family and friends to give me. I actually started shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I picked up a lot of presents for people and I got a lot of great sales. I also plan to get more Christmas shopping finished after this semester is over.

I also love New Year’s Eve. This year my boyfriend and I are going to Ocean City, like we did last year, to bring in 2008. His parents own a really nice, like $725,000 condo on 59^th Street that we are going to stay at. I am really excited this year though because I am finally 21 and am able to go out and celebrate. I think we are going to go from December 29^th to January 3^rd. As of today, it is one month until Christmas!

My Busy Life

The next two weeks of my life are going to be crazy, but I am totally looking foreword to it. I have so much homework to get completed during this time, and I do not know how I am going to get it all finished. I am also going to my field placement, The Odyssey School on Tuesday for my normal student teaching day and on Friday to teach my technology lesson because my supervisor cannot come to see me on Tuesday. Really though, this upcoming week is just going to be school related stuff going on and I hope I can handle it.

I am super excited for November 16^th, which is when my boyfriend, Greg, and I go to see Dane Cook. We are going to the Verizon Center in DC, and I think it is going to be amazing. We purchased the most expensive tickets so we could be on the floor, up close, to see him. I think the tickets were $100 dollars each plus service charges. Greg and I are planning to take the Metro into DC so we do not have to play a lot of money for parking. We are also going to go out to dinner while we are in DC, which is very exciting because I love going out to eat. The show is at 7:30, but I have a feeling I will not be home until 2am.

This is bad because I need to get up and be to work by 8am, which is going to kill me. I am going to be at work until 4pm, and then I am going up to the Owings Mills campus because ACEI is having our Thanksgiving dinner at 6pm, but since I am in charge I need to be there at 5:30 along with my committee. I am excited for it though because it is always a lot of fun.

Hawaii

Since I am obsessed with Hawaii, I could not think of a better blog topic. I searched the Travel Channel- Hawaii, and found an interesting blog by Samantha Brown. It included links to accommodations, attractions, shopping, dinning, nightlife, entertainment, and just for two romantic ideas. While looking through the accommodations section, I found the perfect place to stay for a few days when I go to Hawaii. It is called the Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel, and it is located on The Big Island. The only problem is that some of the rooms are very expensive and cost around $7,000 a night. Whoops, I guess I had better get a good paying job!

In the attractions section, there are many fun things I would like to participate in while vacationing in Hawaii. The one I am the most interested in is swimming with dolphins. The Hilton Waikoloa Village's Dolphin Quest Learning Center Lagoon, located on the Big Island's Kohala Coast, is a habitat where marine mammals live, and people go to visit them. It is reasonably priced at $150- $330 depending on the program.

There are a lot of Hawaiian fashions I would like to indulge in while visiting in Hawaii, including purchasing an authentic lei, buying a ukulele, and a Hawaiian shirt. When I go to Hawaii, hopefully for my honeymoon, I would love to go to dinner at an authentic luau. According to Travel Channel’s Samantha Brown, The Old Lahaina Luau on Maui is one of the best luaus to attend while visiting Hawaii.

I think that Hawaii is one of the most romantic places to visit, so I know that it would be the perfect place to go on a honeymoon. The Four Seasons Resort Maui At Wailea offers a romantic dinner for two and the chef, Ben Takahashi, serves a seven-course dinner for just two people. You are seated at a secluded table set on top of a flowing waterfall surrounded by tropical foliage, and will experience your meal with the best crystal and silver, elegant linens and candlelight. This website has given me very interesting ideas for fun things to do when visiting Hawaii.

* Images from http://www.travel.discovery.com

Informative Website

The informative website I chose is The Maryland Science Center, which is located in downtown Baltimore. I picked this website for many reasons, the first being I love going to The Science Center. I also really like the website, and I think it is a great example of a user-friendly site. It is very organized, easy to use, contains a lot of information, and would be a reliable source of information.

It is clear who created the site, and what The Maryland Science Center’s qualifications are. On the homepage, it says Maryland Science Center, and even has information about the actual Science Center, including its address. In the menu, it has an about us section, which provides information about who the people are that run it, background information on it, and even information about the board members.

As I mentioned before, the website is very easy to use. The web developer makes it clear where you are, and how you move around the site. On the homepage, there is a very large menu with many different things to choose from. As you move your mouse over the selections, it divides the information into even smaller categories, so you can find exactly what you are looking for. In the other pages on the site the menu is located on the left side of the screen so you can go to another page right from there, or return the homepage.

I like the design of the website. It is very easy on the eyes, but is still attractive to look at. The font appears to be the standard veranda, with a text color of black. The background is white, which makes it very easy to read the text. The layout of the page is very simple, and the most colorful thing on the pages is the menu on the side, which makes it very easy to find. Overall it is a great website.

Images from: http://www.mdsci.org/newsroom/logosphotos.html

Laughter is the best medicine

I was looking through the website http://www.thehappyguy.com/humor-articles.html, and I found many articles that were hysterical. I noticed that every article was by the same man, David Leonh. I was very curious who this man was, so I searched his name on google, and it came up with many different websites with a lot of information on him. He is a writer, and he writes for many different websites, and even for The New York Times. He has created the website, thehappyguy.com for people’s pure enjoyment, and just to make people laugh.

I spent about twenty minutes looking through the website, and reading the different stories. The story I found very funny is titled The Art of Kissing. It is so funny because David Leonh says that kissing is the greatest sport on Earth, and that you can kiss anyone. In a different section of the story, it goes into extreme kissing, and he goes as far as saying not to kiss an electrical outlet. I do not know why I found this so funny, but it made me laugh a lot. I also thought mentioning braces getting stuck together was hysterical because I remember one of my friends telling me when she was younger, this actually happened to her.

Overall, the website contained a lot of different funny articles, and I found the website easy to use and navigate. The one thing that bothered me was that the stories were in no particular order, and I felt as if they were thrown onto the page. The author did mention this at the top of the page though, so I knew to expect that while looking at the different stories. I cannot say I would visit this website a lot, but if I am feeling sad, or need a pick me up, then I think I would visit this website for a few laughs.

New iPod

While searching through the website www.slashdot.org, I came across an interesting article about the new Apple iPods. Apple has redesigned the iPod and while they are still keeping the “classic” they have created a new touch screen called iPod Touch, similar to the new iPhone. I was rather excited and annoyed at the same time by the surprise announcement because about two weeks ago I purchased a 30 gig classic at the same price as the 80 gig classic is now. I understand that Apple is making changes and I think that is great, but I wish I would have known so I could have waited and purchased a larger sized iPod or even the new iPod Touch.

The link to the article is http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/07/09/05/1830228.shtml. There are well over one hundred comments about the new Apple release and I would say half are positive and the other half is negative.

I think the idea of a touch iPod is great because the one thing I really do not like about mine is the wheel. I am excited about the new iPod because I think it is going to be even easier to use then the now classic iPod plus it has wireless on it so you can connect to the internet using Apple’s browser Safari and with the new iPod you can now download iTunes songs directly to the device instead of putting it on you computer and then putting it on your iPod.

Overall, the website seems very informative about technology and there were many articles I found interesting. I gave my boyfriend the website because he is a Business Information Systems major and I knew he would find it very helpful and interesting. I think it will also help him to stay updated on the latest technology information.

* image from www.apple.com

Award Winning Blog

The blog that I have chosen to discuss deals with the topic of a father and his children and all of the exciting things they do together. The name of the blog is, “ I think this world is perfect…” and the link to it is http://www.ithinkthisworldisperfect.com/. It is located under the parenting section of the best of blogs as the winner.

I really enjoyed reading many of the author’s posts because they are so upbeat and you can tell he really is a great father. He talks about his two daughters, Ava and Madison, with such enthusiasm and appreciation. I love how he includes pictures of his children from many activities, including the family vacations, his children playing, and even when his one daughter broke her arm. I think the pictures help to tell the story and it makes it so much more interesting then just the text alone. You get to see where the family went on vacation and what they did while they were there. It is nice because the author only needs to add a sentence or two instead of several paragraphs to describe what the picture shows.

My favorite post is called Avalon, NJ and it was posted on July 30, 2007. The family was invited to a friend’s beach house for the weekend. They spent time on the beach and while they were playing in the waves, the dad lost his glasses and had to have them shipped to the beach house. It was such a funny post and hearing him describe everything being blurry and how him and his wife are not really “beach people,” but go for their two daughters was very amusing. I think the pictures are really what made this my favorite because you can see how much fun the family had even though the parents were not looking forward to going and the two girls clearly had a blast that weekend.

So go check this blog out, I promise you won’t be disappointed!