News from Donna

Well.... the school year is almost over -- yeah! I am looking forward to the summer break. I will be spending the first two weeks in Portugal. I have funds from Sask Learning (online teaching professional development money) to attend the International Association for School Librarianship conference in Lisbon. I am looking forward to it as some of the key speakers are individuals whose work I have been reading for my university classes and for changes in our school library program.

I will spend a week (on my own dollar) after the conference in a little fishing village called Lagos in the southern part of the country -- lots of beautiful beaches. I have booked a private room in a hostel and hope to walk, read, relax and enjoy lots of seafood.

I have enjoyed the past few weeks as I have not had a university class and no new classes this semester to teach. I have more time to myself than I have had in the past few years and I have really enjoyed getting in touch with my friends again and enjoying my house and yard.

I spent last Saturday helping mom set up her computer... well she had it all set up by the time I arrived. Out of the box and ready to go... its a Mac you know! See it here And.. check out the cool Mac ads.

In no time we had browser (Firefox) and e-mail (Thunderbird) apps downloaded and had checked out that all her peripherals (printer, camera and palm) had the correct drivers and apps installed. Printer driver came with the machine and her camera works great with iphoto. We did need to install the mac apps for her palm.

She currently has a trial version of word and powerpoint which hopefully will do until I can get my picture ID and get to the university bookstore where I can them for a substantial discount. (Ramona's gift to Mom)

I did forget to format her e-mail program to open attachments (pictures, word, wav, and pps files) but should have that worked out within the next few days.

What a nice machine! Very fast - I am a bit envious! It really looks nice sitting on her desk.

Well.. that's my news!

ps -- Jim and family and Mike... I will have a few hours in Calgary on my way to Lisbon on July 1st -- any chance that we can meet for coffee at the airport?