Wordle

I'm on another tech team this year at school, and one of the cool things we learned about was wordle. It's a fun little tool you can use to make word clouds out of any sort of text you'd like. You can link to your blog and see what comes up, or paste in text, or type up your own list.

The more times you type in a word, the larger it will appear. You can play with fonts and layout and colors all you'd like.

A few tips:

***copy your text each time you create one, because it will be lost if you go back.

***To put it somewhere else (like your blog) you need to (alt+print screen) and then open it from your clipboard somewhere else (I use adobe photoshop) and then crop it and save it as a jpg and then put it in like anything else.

Here, for example, is a wordle made from one of my favorite Anne chapters, 25 in Anne of Green Gables "Matthew insists on puffed sleeves" I just googled it and copied it from the text (provided by Project Gutenberg)

I'm looking forward to doing it with my 6th graders, having them describe themselves in Spanish and then make a wordle out of it. I think it'll be a fun way to practice and reinforce vocabulary.

Overheard at Wal-Mart

Woman on a cell phone:

"She just cusses at the clients too much."

The sock doesn't fall far from the drawer.

When I picked Anna up from the bookstore after school today I was surprised to see her outfit. She confirmed that she dressed herself. 3 bows, legwarmers, flip-flops, long sleeved shirt, dress, all in the same general color family...

I was thinking she was a strange little girl when I remembered what I wore today...

Chopsticks!

Tonight, when I told Anna we were having Chinese food (Shannon's yummy stir-fry) she squealed with delight and ran over to the silverware drawer.

"It is Chinese food so I can use my chopsticks! They are eating things! For eating Chinese food!"

She knows this because she has asked a zillion times about them, when doing her "chore" of putting away the silverware.

During dinner she said:

"I call these my gymnastic noodles, because they are from the place where they do gymnastics."

After dinner, when getting ready for bed, she informed us (while laying on the floor with her head on her blankie) that she did not want to go to sleep. Matthew told her she could just lay in her bed in the dark and think. She told him:

"I will think that I want to get up."

Little pink flats

I looked really cute today. A new little knee length A-line skirt with an Italian street scene, all bright and cheery, little pink flats with flowers on top, an embroidered jean jacket. Cute.

As I was leaving school the teachers were teasing me about how I was supposed to stay and sub in the afternoon and I explained that Matthew and Anna were gone, so I had the whole house to myself. They told me to hurry and get home.

I hopped in the car smiling and sang along with the radio some, and thought about 9/11/01, remembering and wondering at the fact that my 6th graders weren't even in school yet.

I pulled into the drive and saw that the trash pile was on fire.

I looked around a little, for someone, because I know that sometimes fires on farms are purposeful, but I couldn't see anyone. I called "the farm" (Marion and Joan) but no one answered and I remembered Marion told me he had to go to Hays. I called Matthew but he didn't answer. I tramped gingerly through the dried knee high weeds to get a peek at the fire. No flames, but lots and lots of smoke and lots of wood to burn and dried weeds and metal and things that scared me.

I tried Matthew again. No answer. I tried to pull the hose over to the fire, but it didn't reach. I decided to go get my watering can. Matthew called back and confirmed that the fire was an accident. The man who is going through the trash pile to take out what he wants and pay us for it was here earlier using a torch, so that must have been what started it. I filled up my flowered watering can 4 times and put out the fire, dirtying my sweet pink shoes and getting weeds all stuck to my cute skirt.

I feel a little bit like a hero.

My new favorite quote

"Start by doing what is necessary;

then do what is possible;

and suddenly you're doing the impossible."

--St. Francis of Assissi

September Gift

At just the right moment, it rained, and the million dormant sunflowers all came up to see me.

(I wish I could take a better picture) (or get better resolution here) (but you get the idea)

And people say it's not pretty where I live.