Life in a Single Word

There is one word that sticks with you forever. I guess you could change that word, but generally speaking, it is where you are. That of course is your name… let’s go with your first name. For many people, that first name builds an image in a person’s mind before they meet you. Most likely they have met a Sally before so they have a quick picture of ‘Sally’ before the first time your paths cross. Maybe, your name will create a new impression that will erase the previous Sally for future first encounters.

While most names are given before a child has a personality or more often before they are even born. Not so much with a pet. Few folks have a name in mind and then search for a pet to match that. Most pet names are descriptive of that pet while a person’s first name is usually a relative or follows a rule like “this name should be hard to shorten into something embarrassing” .

For pet, most often a Cat or Dog, the name may just hit you when you first meet. If that doesn’t happen, here is a great site with many pet names. What I particularly enjoyed is that the site explains where the name came from, what it might mean and most often the sex of the pet it is used with. Fun to look through even if your not having a new family addition.

A fun project we had last week was to write a story that included other authors that we have never met and are not within two states away. At first I thought this meant we would be passing bits of text back and forth, a team member showed me that we would be doing this over EtherPad.

If you have not visited it, EtherPad.com is a simple concept allowing many people to collaborate on a single document in real time. I’m having a hard time being very casual about how exciting it was for us to see our work come together using such easy tools.We played with limiting how many words each person got to add and again without any restrictions to see how well the document came together.

The service is free and no sign up is required. While we were using it in a business project enviroment, what a great site for kids in education…

There are many types of ‘words’ people put on their walls to add atmosphere to an area. In offices they are usually words of inspiration or encouragement. In the house, these are generally placed on a shelf with books and nick knacks or hung on the wall. A single word that enforces the mood of the room.

We have been keeping an eye out for the right words to put on the wall in our home office. We have found a few at the local hobby supply shops, usually these are basic white on the rougher side to encourage your to spice them up with color to match the room.

Last week we took the plunge for a simple one we found at Current. We liked the font the maker had chosen and thought it matched the mood of the word quite nicely. For now it is being used as supplied, in white, but soon will be painted in a contrasting color to the wall it’s on. This is a picture from Current and not the actual one we have due to the white on a white wall just didn’t show well in the photos we took.

Available at Current – Dream Wall Word measures 6 3/4″ x 22″