Updates, Info, and Other Stuff

Saturday Snapshot: Trip to Plimoth Plantation

/ drbethnolan / 12 Comments

It was school break this week and we were just at home, so for two days I took the kids down to the Cape to see Plimoth Plantation and the Mayflower II.

IMG_2032 IMG_2034 IMG_2037 IMG_2056 IMG_2058

 

As always, I am challenged with my editing skills!! Here’s what we have:

–The kids standing in the English Village of Plimoth Plantation. It was just starting to rain and we were some of the only ones there, which was great! We could do whatever we wanted to! We talked to Miles Standish for about 30 minutes and hung out in the homes when it rained. There is also a Wampanoag village there with true Native Americans that were working and building a canoe (picture did not come out) that fascinated my son!

— 1620 marks Plimoth Rock!

— Here are the kids with the Mayflower II in the background and then on board. In true “Nolan” fashion, I get us everywhere at the start of the day when it opens — much less busy. We were the only ones on the Mayflower for a bit and could interact freely with the folks there.

–My kids asked me to include this “Moo-flower” cow statue from the visitors’ center since they thought it was hysterical!

Plymouth is only 75 miles from us, but we stayed the night to make it extra fun. The second day we went back to the Plantation to the Wampanoag village again and to see the baby animals in the barns.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Melinda at http://www.westmetromommy.blogspot.com. Check her site for participation rules!

Saturday Snapshot: Ski Lesson

/ drbethnolan / 5 Comments

Today was a beautiful 50 degrees, but we still have a ton of snow on the ground, so we took the kids to a nearby ski resort and they had their first lesson!

photo (38)SKI

 

They had a good time! Dad took a lesson, too. (I read my Kindle – lol).

You can participate in Saturday Snapshot – hosted by Melinda at westmetromommy.blogspot.com

See her site for participation rules! 🙂

Saturday Snapshot: Bookstore Window

/ drbethnolan / 10 Comments

If you know me, you know I do a lot of community theater. I recently was working on publicity for a local show, Night Watch, in Concord, and the Concord Bookshop displayed a themed window for the production:

photo (36)NW

 

There’s a bit of a glare in the background (showing you Main Street, Concord!) but I thought they did a fun job putting in a few play props and then books that fit the mystery/thriller theme of the story!

Just a note — The Concord Players was originally started as the Concord Dramatic Union by none other than my hero, Louisa May Alcott (and her sister, Anna). No surprise that I’ve attached myself to the organization!!

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Melinda at http://www.westmetromommy.blogspot.com. Please see her site for info on participating.

 

Saturday Snapshot: in the Snow!

/ drbethnolan / 14 Comments

Here are a few recent shots of the kids playing in the snow in our front yard:

IMG_1918 IMG_1920 IMG_1921

 

They used their sleds as forts! I have to say they are much heartier than I am. 🙂

Of course this weekend we are losing a lot of the snow as it warms up a bit (from about 15-20 degrees every day to about 40 today!).

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Melinda at http://www.westmetromommy.blogspot.com.

Please see her website for how to participate!

Using Grammarly!

/ drbethnolan / 2 Comments

A few weeks back, I was contacted by Nikolas Baron to see if I would like to try out “Grammarly”, an online grammar check. He offered me a small gift if I would check it out and blog about it. Of course I wanted to use it a bit so that I could give an honest review.

Grammarly is located at http://www.grammarly.com. It “catches” over 250 grammatical mistakes and also has an online plagiarism check (wish I had that when I was teaching college!). I put a few different items into Grammarly (you cut and paste your doc onto the screen) to see what would happen. A blog post came up as having pronoun usage (“you”) and sentence fragments, among other things. That’s true, as my posts are chatty and certainly not formal. A report I was writing for “real work” came up as verbose (moi?!) with lengthy sentences. That sounds about right. When I get technical, I’m the queen of the semi-colon. I clicked on the plagiarism check to see what would happen (with my blog post) and it immediately hit on my website as a match. I was impressed with the speed of it!

Grammarly is running a contest for a clever response to “I use Grammarly’s plagiarism checker because…” Of course cleverness is not my strong suit (though I will admit to being occasionally humorous), however, I would say that I used Grammarly’s plagiarism check to make sure that I (and no one else!) was sounding like myself that day!

I got a free trial to Grammarly, and you can, too. According to the website, you can try it free for 7 days. Then the cost varies, with the best deal being if you sign up for a year ($139.95).

If you do a lot of writing, and grammar is important to you (and it should be), then you should check out Grammarly. It’s more complete than any grammar check I’ve used, has an easy format, and it’s user-friendly.

Thanks, Nick, for having me try it out!

Grammarly — at http://www.grammarly.com