Project 52 - Week Six

Monday was a very busy day going to the doctor's with my mum to see about her new medication, then an appointment with the OT in the afternoon.  All was well and my mum has recovered very well from the setback she suffered in January, thank goodness.  Then shopping, lunch together and back home to pack my bags and then early to bed at 9pm.  I set 3 alarms to ensure I would get up on time.

I was up at 3am on Tuesday morning and caught the Stansted coach at the unearthly hour of 3.55am.  An uneventful journey to the airport and the flight arrived into Pescara at 1pm.  K was there to pick me up and off we went home, where I was greeted with this lovely welcome message in the kitchen.

Since then it has been hectic dealing with Telecom Italia engineers who have been here to fix the phone line, which hadn't been working for the past two weeks.  They couldn't believe how terrible the road was and they refused to go down it with their van, so K ended up having to ferry them up and down from the end of the road to our house several times. 

Luckily the water pipe was fixed earlier as well, and it is now above the road looking quite ugly.  They can't bury the piping until the road has been fixed!!  Then off to the local 'Comune' to pay a Rubbish Tax bill and I bumped into the lord Mayor.  I collared him and asked him about when our road was going to be  fixed, but he explained the land was still wet (true) so no point in starting the work until the weather is a bit more stable.  I asked him not to forget us, and that we have great difficulty in getting down the road now, and that it is a very urgent matter...

Checking up in the garden and all my pots was a very important duty for me and it was lovely to see the various furkids POTtering about, pun intended, lol ...

 Despite adding the netting as a deterrent, the kitties still insist on using my pots as a resting area!!

I couldn't resist taking these photos of Fluffy and Olivia chilling on the balcony.

Fluffy enjoying a catnap

Olivia deep in thought

Shopping for bits and pieces on the Wednesday, I spied a lovely carpet, which would be nice for the kitchen or living room area.

The colours are quite vivid, but they are the right ones which would go with the rest of the decor. It measures 160 x 230 cms and may be a bit on the short side, so will have to think about it for a bit longer before buying it....

During this week, I was in communication with Dr Nellie Deutsch about my presentation on WIZiQ for Connecting Online 2014.  She is an amazing person, and I admire her for all the work she does for the teaching community.  She has been organizing the free Connecting Online econferences since 2009.  I am proud to have been a part of this event the past few years both as a presenter and attendee.  All the webinars are free and Dr Nellie organizes everything perfectly.  She is able to attract some of the world's leading educators to present for CO14.

I have attended Vicki Davis' webinar on  Reinventing Writing, and Dr Bob Diotalevi's session on Copyrightdot.com: Teaching Old Dogs New Clicks .  I am looking forward to attending Dr Curtis Bonk's webinar this afternoon called Experiences of Publishing of an Open Access and (free) PDF and then Shelly Terrell's webinar on Reimagining Online Learning & Reflective Multimedia Eportfolios this evening. 

I created a ToonDo comic to highlight this fantastic CPD event this weekend, and also wrote a quick blog post to showcase the information about it here. My presentation is on tonight at 11pm and it is the same one I did for RSCON 2013, so am looking forward to it very much.

It will have been an exciting weekend of CPD!!
 
This week, I have tried to pop in to the EVO ePerfect Book session as often as I can to leave comments.  I am amazed at the creativity and originality of the proposed ebooks and the wonderful energy emanating from the participants.  I wasn't able to attend Saturday's Week 4 HoA, but I have already viewed Andre Sprang's fab Prezi presentation.  I have learned so much from him and from all the team of moderators.  I am also learning from all the keen participants. This collaboration is what makes EVO sessions so incredible, as they are a powerhouse of learning and connectivity!!