Browngirl Speaks

I’m still recovering mentally from a computer crash which left with no choice but to do a hard reinstall of Windows XP thus lose ALL of my files.  Yes, it was gut wrenching and I’ve learned my lesson about backing up data.

Moving on…

A member of my local hs support group recommended a site called Letter of the Week for free language arts curriculum.  Well, I became more intrigued with their Country of the Week lesson plans.  It’s still a work in progress, but they have 2 or 3 countries complete.  The full list of countries they plan to include is listed and I was able to take the core breakdown and we will learn about a place not on the list–Trinidad and Tobago.  Why T&T?  Z’s paternal grandmother is native to Tobago.  I’ sure we would’ve gotten to eventually, but I thought it’d be a fun way to start this new learning activity.  I’m still hunting down a few resources online for enrichment but here’s the plan so far:

Reading List:

Trinidad and Tobago  Patricia R. Urosevich

Trinidad and Tobago  Sean Sheehan

A Wave in Her Pocket: Stories From Trinidad   Lynn Joseph

An Island Christmas  Lynn Joseph

Jump Up Time: A Trinidad Carnival Story  Lynn Joseph

Web Resources:

One World - Nations Online

Other Activities:

make a flag from construction paper

listen to calypso music online

make a lapbook

Target has the most awesome commercials and it’s mostly because of the song choices. They really know how to pick song that convey their message and general good vibes. Their latest song, A Brand New Day has kicked it up a notch for me. I sing along every time I see the commercial and I finally had to Google it. This is the full length version is on YouTube (there’s no embedding because the poster didn’t want to be cited for copyright infringement). But here’s one of the commercials. Yeah, I know, it’s cute and slightly cheesy…

My laptop is resurrected, but….I’ve lost every crumb of my data and files. It was such a hard decision, but I couldn’t wait around anymore for a magical computer fairy to appear and fix it or at least do a data recovery before I did the reinstall. Yes, I tried to do a recovery a few times and the problem only became worse. It started with the “blue screen of death”. I will just leave it at that because this has worn me ragged for almost two weeks.

I will say, though, I have learned an excruciatingly painful yet valuable lesson: BACK MY DATA THE HELL UP!

So, boys and girls, please learn from my mistake and do regular backups.

i’m having a rare moment these days—using a friggin’ computer! mine has totally jumped funky with a brown chic and i’m mad as hades! anyway, i’m still around, just not in cyberspace as often as i’d like to be. please send some positive energy my way, thanx…