Item #6

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/view?q=estes+park+chipmunks&psc=G&filter=1#5250142349162083586

It was really neat to look around the Picasa website. I especially liked the search field - I typed in "Estes Park chipmunks" and it brought up pictures from Estes. Hopefully the photo link above works correctly. I linked to this picture for two reasons: one, this blog is called Pet Talk and while a chipmunk is not technically a pet, it's an animal so I figured that was close enough. Two, my family went to Estes Park on vacation in 2007, and took the tram to the top of a mountain there. At the top, you were allowed to get out and climb among the rocks/boulders at the top of the mountain. There were tons of chipmunks hanging around there - the gift shop sells bags of peanuts so you can feed the chipmunks.

We must have spent well over an hour feeding them and watching the chipmunks scurry around the mountainside. The bigger, fatter chipmunks were not afraid of us and would come close to get a peanut. The smaller, younger chipmunks were more wary and skittish - I'm sure they'll become more friendly over time as they get used to humans feeding them! I have several of my own pictures of these little critters on my computer at home, so when I saw this on Picasa, it brought back memories of that trip.

I didn't even realize something like Picasa (or Flickr, etc) existed out on the web! I guess that's the point of going through this "23 Things" training. :)

7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifetime Learners

Okay, part of this 23 things training (which prompted me to set up this blog) is to blog on which of the 7 1/2 things is the easiest for me to do, and which is the most difficult for me. Is getting started an option for the hardest? Oh well, here goes!

I think the most difficult one is habit 5 - "Create your own learning toolbox". The concept of this is not hard, but finding the time to do this is difficult. It takes time and effort to keep touch with friends, visit web pages, schedule training classes, and all that is involved with this. I have a skeleton Facebook and MySpace set up, but I haven't gone beyond setting up the accounts and finding a few old friends I've lost touch with . The desire to have an interesting, involved account is there, it's really just an issue of taking the time to work on it. So, that is why this one is going to be the hardest one for me.

The easiest habit is #2 - "Accept responsibility for your own learning". I know I'm the one who is ultimately responsible for learning new things. If I don't continue to learn, I have only myself to blame, and I realize that.

That's it for this blog. I'd better go on to the next step, as I'm falling a little behind on this!

My First Post - Pet Talk at Work

Hello everyone,

This is the first blog I've ever attempted, so bear with me and hopefully it won't be too awful! I thought I would start simply and have a blog about pets - I don't want to discuss just cats and dogs, but any pets you currently have, have had, or will never have again!

Input is encouraged, so let me know what you think!

Let's see if I can publish this now...