I’ve been trying to work on a new theme for my site. Problem is, I haven’t much been inspired lately. I have a big list of things I want to implement on my site, but as far as the look of my new theme is concerned – the creativity just hasn’t hit me yet. I came up with a pretty nifty logo (in my opinion), but now is the task of trying to build a new theme around it. I have some ideas I am playing with, but none of them are really “wowing” me as of yet. Here’s the logo I’ve come up with. It needs some tweaking I think, but I like the overall idea of it.

Sometimes it’s tough trying to come up with something new and exciting. Now I’m stuck.

Right now I am typing this on my brand spankin’ new laptop. A laptop I got for FREE, yes FREE people. OMG. I can’t believe I actually got it. I will write about all of the grand details tomorrow.

Today was a pretty okay day. For one thing, I got a laptop. The other neat thing is that I got two autographed books for free. Here’s what happened:

Kentucky author, Leigh Anne Florence, visited the 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders today. She visited our school last year. She writes a series of books about her two dogs, Woody and Chloe, and their adventures in Kentucky. Woody and Chloe actually travel around with her. She does a pretty neat presentation. She’s also super nice. Today, I got a phone call from one of the teacher who told me the “speaker” needed a laptop to connect her laptop to. I assumed the “speaker” was Leigh Anne, and I was right!”

So, she comes down to the lab and says the teacher was mistaken. What she really wanted was a second laptop to use in the gym to show the Woody podcast on so she could run the podcast simulatenously with her slideshow on her laptop. Well, I couldn’t do much for her. We don’t have internet access in the gym or a wireless connection in the school. She said that was okay and left. She came back a few minutes later and asked if I could just download the podcast and burn it to a CD she could play on her cd player. There wasn’t a download link or anything for the podcast. It just plays straight from the site, so I wasn’t sure I could save it to my computer. Luckily, I was able to. I burned her a cd. To thank me for helping her, she gave me two of her books for free and she signed them for me. It was pretty cool. She told me after it was over that the cd worked like a dream. I was glad I was able to help.

I had a pretty boring PD after school about PLATO and its use during ESS. We didn’t learn anything except that PLATO is just as frustrating if not more frustrating than we thought. They didn’t even give us any drinks or snacks either! I didn’t get home until 5:00.

But when I did finally get home….my FREE laptop was waiting for me! How exciting! All three of our computers are now connected to the internet, and Colin ran a cable into the living room so I can watch TV and do the internet at the same time! Oh, Heaven! I am so super excited about this laptop. It has a built in webcam and everything. It is an HP, of course, and is running Windows Vista. Vista is okay so far. It is slow like I have heard from others, but overall I think it’s decent enough for me. It’s just so amazing to own a laptop. Way better than that old Apple iBook that Rachael is so envious of.

Right now, I am super tired, thirsty, and in need of a warm shower. I am going to have sweet laptop dreams tonight! :kiss: :sleepy: