Eye halve a spelling checker

I found this rather nerdy poem in the book I before E, (except after C) by Judy Parkinson, which I was reading out of pure boredom the other day. Whoever wrote it definitely had too much time on their hands :)

Eye halve a spelling checker

It came with my pea sea

It plainly marques for my revue

Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word

And weight four it to say

Weather eye am wrong oar write

It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid

It nose bee fore two long

And eye can put the error rite

It's rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it

Eye am shore your pleased two no

It's letter perfect awl the weigh

My checker tolled me sew.

-Margo Roark.

About that long absence...

So...I'm back! After a very (very) long "summer break," the blog is now up and running again :) Two reasons it kinda fell by the wayside:
1. I spent two months this summer helping at an orphanage in Guatemala (as most of you probably know). Quick recap:

I fell in love with a lot of cute little orphans

got to know some of the amazing men and women who work at Casa Bernabe (the orphanage),

and was amazed by both the tropical beauty and third world poverty of Guatemala.

Reason 2 for not posting: School just started, and I've been busy with exams! That's not really an excuse though, 'cause I find that all of the reading and assignments in school is about the only thing that gets my brain running! So, that's generally why my posts only happen during the school year, even with exams :)

Now that my extended sabatical is over, I can't promise that I will be any more regular in posting (the whole point of this blog is that it is composed of random things that strike me as interesting), but I can promise that there will be more posts! (Not that people necessarily care...I just do it because I like to! :) So with that being said, I'll be writing soon!

Isn't It Lovely?

I just made my first cake! Aren't you proud of me?

 

P.S. This is why I always let my Mom and Sean take care of the cooking.

Livin' to a ripe old 96.8!

Well, according to AARP's Longevity Calculator, that's how old I may very well live to be! And I could add 2.6 years onto that if I'd get more exercise and eat more veggies :)


Take it yourself at http://longevitycalculator.aarp.org/


Of course, taking this quiz at 18, when it's really designed for more like 40 year olds, does mean that I may have tweaked the system a bit to make it more accurate... (Yes I'm in a happy relationship...with my family. Yes, I'm satisfied with my job...that's practically what school is, right? And, I'm planning on getting a 2 year college degree...even if I don't have it yet)

I guess I'll have to re-take it in a couple of years and see where I'm at!

Meet...Elinor Dashwood

Haha, so I took the Jane Austen personality test, and...

Take the Quiz here!

Now I actually feel I am more like Jane Bennett from Pride and Prejudice, but she wasn't an option, so I suppose Elinor is the next closest :)

Best of the Web!

Ok, so lately, I got to thinking about the many free websites that I have grown to love and use on a daily basis. Sadly though, many of my friends have no clue that they even exist! So, to fix that problem, and hopefully introduce some of you to the most wonderful websites you've ever been to, here is my very random list of websites I have deemed Best of the Web. Check 'em out--they're all free, and you might find they become a favorite of yours, too!

First of all, I feel I should mention some websites that everybody already does know about, but that are amazing anyways. This would include:

Best search engine:
Google.com

Best social networking site:
Facebook.com
(not that I actually have an account, but that doesn't negate the fact :)

Ok, now for the fun ones.

Best Photo-Sharing:
Flickr.com
Hands down, Flickr wins this one. If you ever take pictures, whether you've just got your little pocket-camera or a ginormous SLR, you should absolutely get a flickr account. It's a great way to get your pictures out into the photography world! You can post your pictures for your friends to comment on, and you can keep track of all the pictures your friends are taking. And when you join groups with other photographers, you can see learn all sorts of new photography tricks.

Best Book Site:
Goodreads.com
I know this caption doesn't make much sense, so allow me to explain. Well, better to just explain what Goodreads is, and you'll see why it's the best. With Goodreads, you can keep track of every book you've ever read: rate it, write a review about it, suggest it to your friends, put it in a bookshelf--everything. You can also see what books your friends are reading and how they're liking them, or check out an individual book and see what people are saying about it before you start reading it. Goodreads is SO cool.

Best Online Dictionary:
Onelook.com
This title is easily won by Onelook. Sure, I know that there are a gazillion different online dictionaries out there, and you're probably thinking that they're all the same. WRONG! Because Onelook isn't just one dictionary; it is a page that searches the best dictionaries out there (oxford, merriam-webster, etc) and provides a link to each site's definition of your word. This is great especially if you are writing a paper or in debate, because you can look over a couple of definitions and pick the one that works best for you, then cite it directly from the dictionary's page. If you don't want to go to all that work, it provides one concise definition right on the main page. It's so clean and easy, and there are no ads!

Best for Buying/Selling Textbooks:
Bigwords.com
Now this website I just discovered last month, when I was selling back all my schoolbooks. It's amazing. You type in the ISBN of the book you want to buy or sell. Their "machine" searches all the major book selling/buying websites for your textbook. It compares prices, takes into account extras like shipping and coupons, and then spits out a list of the best places to buy/sell your book. It does all the work for you in seconds, and is totally free!

Best Knitting Website:
This one's actually a tie between:
Knittinghelp.com and Knitting Pattern Central
Now I know many of you don't care. But I said this was going to be a list of the websites I've found most helpful, and these definitely make it! So, for any knitters out there, here's what I love about each of them:
Knittinghelp.com has wonderful step-by-step videos of almost every stitch and technique known to knitting. So helpful if you're trying something for the first time.
Knitting Pattern Central is just a compilation of thousands of different knitting patterns, organized into categories. If you're looking for a pattern online, this is where you'll find it.

Well, that's all of my Best of the Web winners! If you have also come to know and love any of these websites, please comment! And, if you have your own "Best of the Web" sites, feel free to share them, too!

A Day in DC

Well, I was going to do a philisophical post about "when a tree falls in a forest," but then I went to DC yesterday with Sam, a couple of his friends, and Cody, and decided that would be much more fun to post on! It was an amazing trip. We speed toured the ENTIRE city, and I mean that literally. I mapped it out later--6 miles of walking! And it was so much fun finally having Sam home!

Ok, so any post of DC has to start with a picture of the White House...even if it wasn't the first place we went.

Have you ever been to the Old Post Office? I'd never heard of it before--turns out it's the second tallest building in DC (behind the washington monument) and has an even better view. And it was so cute!

Haha, this was our reflection in the elevator ceiling.

Sweet view!

I like how old this picture looks :)

And then down the dark and gloomy staircase...

Next stop: some memorial I've never been to before. Navy or something? I dunno...but it had a really cool map of the world that you could walk all over!

Home Sweet Home. (I photoshopped the label in afterwards, if you were wondering)

Beth in Israel

Sam wanted to stand in the Black Sea (biggest inland sea in the world he informed us), but couldn't remember which one it was :)

Cody shivering at the North Pole (so cute! ...but don't tell him I said so :)

Ok, enough with the maps. This was the fattest squirrel I have ever seen.

And some birds who were people-watching

Chillin' at the WWII Memorial...
This was the weirdest thing ever! It was counting UPSIDE DOWN!

Cody mentioned that he felt like doing a flip in the grass by the tidal basin...but he was too shy to do one. So Josh promised Cody that if he did one, Sam would too. Yeah, what are friends for? I didn't whip out my camera fast enough to catch Cody, but I got Sam, who was a very good sport. Brother points!

Look closely next time you walk around the tidal basin...you just might be surprised by what you find in there!

The second one is someone's camera, if you can't tell. Poor person.

The JFK memorial is definitely my fav. And these are my favorite pictures!

Did I mention that it was an absolutely perfect day? Perfect.

Inside the Jefferson Memorial

I fee like this picture should be the end of the post, just cause it's so perfect and beautiful, but we weren't done yet!

The American History Museum (which was the whole reason we went down to DC in the first place!) had lines out the door, so we went to the Natural History to see the bugs! This was like the best museum tour ever--no exhaustive class field trip for us! We were in and out of every exibit in under 10 minutes. Whoo ya! Deej had never seen the elephant :)

And these signs in the bug exhibit cracked me up :)

A last word of advice!

Yes indeed! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!