Entertaining Song

One of my dear friends always responds to someone of importance who announces the desire to visit for a week or so with "I'll bake you a cake". I knew it was a reference to a song but I didn't know the lyrics until today. I can see how singing the peppy tune and doing a little vaudeville tap dance number in your head would create the perfect degree of graciousness in one's response. She had a large family and her husband's job required doing a lot of cross-cultural entertaining of people who think conversation is a man thing and serving is a woman thing. If you find yourself in such a situation, here's the song to keep your morale up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1gfZwejPv8&feature=related

I Will Survive - Pesach

Finally - a song to house clean by
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOe2gWCuENI&feature=related
The only problem for me is that there never was help. Tell me - is it a spiritual discipline if someone else does the actual work? Anyway I'm going to do a little research into cleaning for Pesach to try to take this whole thing to a more spiritual level. Do you get credit for the violent acts you didn't commit when incredibly awful things happened when you cleaned - for example, someone donating 3 truckloads of dirt to be dumped by both the front and back doors of the rectory the week of Stephen's ordination to the priesthood. Paula was a month old, Peter was 20 months old, David was 3 years old and all the priests were robing in our house. It rained that morning and the first priest to arrive not only decided to walk through all that mud instead of on the boards Stephen laid out, he also decided that he was too important to take his very muddy shoes off and proceeded to walk through every single room. That was just the beginning of a rapidly deteriorating experience. By the time the service began, I was singing "I Will Survive" in my head to the whole group of clergy and the Bishop leading them in prayer.
http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfG5kfzxKu0&feature=related

30 Day Declutter Challenge - Discovery

Guess what? I'm not a declutterer. Wherever I go in my house to declutter, I see what I need to buy. I'm not a shopper and I've never spent the money to set up efficient systems. The biggest discovery is that we turn every room into an office so wherever you go, you see massive amounts of information you haven't looked at. We have 3 bookcases in our bedroom, 2 bookcases in the hallway, 2 bookcases in the spare room, 1 bookcase in our son's room, 5 bookcases in the livingroom, 1 bookcase in the diningroom, a wall of bookcases in Stephen's office, 6 bookcases in the living room, crates of books in the upstairs laundry room and boxes of books in the basement and we've left behind way more books than we've moved over the years. And not only are there books in all those rooms - there's also mini offices in all those rooms. When you add satellite dish tv, movies, music and fast speed internet to the mix, the picking up and tossing never seems as urgent as the information waiting to be processed and synthesized and needed to accomplish whatever. I'm not decluttering - just tossing the totally shabby and updating.

Lambeth Conference Update

Being a God, Queen, Country and Family type person, I just couldn't get enough of Lambeth Conference. Maybe because I'm such a disorganized person myself, order and good governance are pretty high values in my life. And maybe what I like best of all is that Canada is part of many families - Commonweath countries, French language countries, indigenous people living north of 60, the worldwide Anglican communion, etc., etc. Everything to Canadians is a family reunion - a gathering of adult brothers and sisters in a place where all have an emotional connection. I just can't process why the Episcopalians have so much angst about the Archbishop of Canterbury being the first amongst equals. Watch the movie Down Periscope starring Kelsey Grammer. Reality is that leaders and crews can be gloriously eccentric and still function effectively in reaching an impossible target.

Free Course in Connectivism

This course is free unless you want to receive credit for it from the University of Manitoba.
Connectivism and Connective Knowledge is a twelve week course that will explore the concepts of connectivism and connective knowledge and explore their application as a framework for theories of teaching and learning. It will outline a connectivist understanding of educational systems of the future. George Siemens and Stephen Downes – the two leading figures on connectivism and connective knowledge - will co-facilitate this innovative and timely course. http://ltc.umanitoba.ca:83/wiki/Connectivism
Week 1: (September 7-13) What is Connectivism?
Week 2: (September 14-20) Rethinking epistemology: Connective knowledge
Week 3: (September 21-27) Properties of Networks
Week 4: (September 28-October 4) History of networked learning
Week 5: (October 5-11) Connectives and Collectives: Distinctions between networks and groups
Week 6: (October 12-18) Complexity, Chaos and Research
Week 7: (October 18-25) Instructional design and connectivism
Week 8: (October 26-November 1) Power, control, validity, and authority in distributed environments
Week 9: (November 2-8) What becomes of the teacher? New roles for educators
Week 10: (November 9-15) Openness: social change and future directions
Week 11: (November 16-22) Systemic change: How do institutions respond?
Week 12: (November 23-29) The Future of Connectivism

30 Day Declutter Challenge - Day 2

Today I'm working on the middle shelves in my bathroom closet. It's crowded but I don't know what's in there - mostly stuff that I moved from the bathroom in our last house 3 years ago. I want to have 2 of the things I actually use - one in use and one in reserve and liberate the space of stuff that isn't in use. For example, I can't imagine I'll be needing those little bottles of solution that kids use for blowing bubbles but my husband's gorilla mask and my butterfly wings are useful for come in costume events.
When I get better with my first digital camera, I'll post pictures. I've got the pictures - I just haven't downloaded.

30 Day Declutter Challenge - Day 1

I'm taking the August 30 day declutter challenge. The rules are here: http://www.mysimplerlife.com/blog/?p=1187
Day 1: I threw out 2 pairs of jeans that I loved so much that they had totally lost their shape, had faded to almost white on the upper thighs and had become so thin that the material was starting to split. Fortunately I had recently bought an identical pair but my thought at the time was that I'd save the new jeans for running errands and look grunge around the house.
Actually what I really need is a wardrobe that looks less like what a 5 year old boy would wear - jeans, t-shirts and running shoes, and pick up something more tailored and coordinated. I'm looking to the navy for inspiration.