The fun Continues...

We are up to Round 15, September 3 - September 16. As we bid summer good-bye, here are some new suggestions for adding fun and creativity to your days:


The January 2009 Women's Day had some neat ideas for having fun:

*"Hide and Seek" - On separate pieces of paper, write down 15 fun things you've always wanted to do. Now put each sheet in a different spot: between the pages of a book you want to read, tucked in the back of a kitchen cabinet, between the towels in your linen closet, in the pocket of a pair of jeans, etc. During the year, whenever you come across a note, do whatever it says.


*Host a Closet Raid - invite friends over and ask them to bring clothes they are willing to part with. Go through your clothes and select some too. Then have a clothes swapping party.


*Put your right brain to work. Create your own artist's wall. Grab a camera, go outside, and snap whatever moves you. Hang the best shots, rotating in new ones every few weeks.

And on the Web...

Here are some staff favorite sites for fun.

*Nancy V. claims she learned about these web sites in Cataloging class!

For cat people: http://icanhascheezburger.com/page/2/
For dog people: http://ihasahotdog.com/page/2/

*Wordle - Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

*Visit Learn Something Every Day The whimsical drawings of trivia from the sublime to the scary to the ridiculous are endearing.

* Explore Invention At Play, a site devoted to highlighting the importance of play in fostering creativity and inventiveness.

More Fun Activities to Explore

Round 14 (August 20 to September 2) continues to explore having fun. Some activities to sample include:


1. Taking time to smell the roses. Lifedev is a blog full of tips, tools and resources that can give you insights into ways you can improve your work and your life. Take better breaks is a collection of posts devoted to the art of recharging by taking a time out from your busy day.

Looking through my Delicious bookmarks (see the OCL Web Challenge) for more fun activities, I found some more fun things to do:

2. Six Word Memoirs from Smith Magazine. Can you sum up your life story in six words? That is the challenge on this web site. It was so successful that it was made into a book. Go ahead and try it, and share your memoir in the Comments.


3. Facebook is a great way to connect with old and new friends and family. A recent study said that checking social networking sites like this at work actually increases productivity! While the jury may still be out on that issue, it is still a fun way to reach out and socialize.


4. Guess-the-google is an addictive guessing game based on Google's image search. It turns the mental activity of searching into a fun, visual and engaging game where people can enjoy the challenge of being the fastest and most efficient at making that connection between search terms and their results


5. Freerice is a fun free vocabulary game. The website states: "For each answer you get right, we donate 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. "