The Beach! Plus Blogging Ideas, WWI Centenary, and ROW80

or the first time in a long time I've... got nothing.

I've mentioned all the intriguing books on my wishlist and TBR piles... I've celebrated other bloggers (and I still owe so many visits!)... I've gotten a little further on my main ROW80 goal of typing up the Wallace letters (following another wrangle with losing text on the iPad, this time through my own fault)... I've mostly caught up with or at least minimised my daily life task lists (I still carry too much paper and too many to do lists and general stuff in my purse)... I'm starting to get the hang of things more and more at my new job (can't believe it's been four months already!)... and the weather has gone back to lovely dry warmth and sunshine after a weird two weeks of cloudiness and rain.

This is usually about the time I make the mistake of signing up for a blogfest, to give me a theme to focus on. But then I fall further behind in commenting!

There is one main event this week, of course, and that's the centenary of World War I. I think of Tolkien, in the prologue to The Lord of the Rings when he says "To be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than in 1939... by 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead."

Oddly enough, I'd never searched for Tolkien memes before. Found this neat one just now:

Here's a war memorial in Geneva:

And the post-war attempt at peace, with the founding of the League of Nations:

I've looked up blog post ideas before when stuck for something intriguing to say. Here are a few that sounded good:

"Make Something -- Show us how you make your lasagna in a video. Show us how you organize your files on your computer. Take us through in a way that WE can do the same when you're done.
Share Five Friends -- Show us five friends' blogs and give us a blurb on why you like them.
Talk Slowly -- Teach us a difficult tech concept, piece by piece, with analogies, and drawings made off napkins or Flickr pics.
Five Tools I Use -- Show us your web toolbox (add or subtract as needed).
My Mother, My Daughter -- Doesn't have to be exactly this, but the idea is to interview your parent and your child, and ask them five questions to compare their perspectives.
A Cause to Connect -- Share your social cause of choice, and give us a background, the challenge they face, and ways to connect and be helpful.
Without Words -- Can you post a story told completely in pictures? How about sounds?
Conversations With Past Masters -- Seek out a journalist or a radio veteran or a former TV personality and interview them on how producing media was in their day, and what they see coming out of this social media space.
Secret Experts -- You know lots about how to be a digital citizen. You just don't realize that others DON'T know it. Share some tips for people coming online and engaging in social networking."

Book and writing ideas:

Read a classic that has always been on your list.
Write for at least 15 minutes every day.
Reread your favorite book from childhood.
Attend author readings at your local bookstore, library, or literary centre.
Reread your old work.
Read a best-selling mystery. What can you learn from a well-paced page turner?
Find some of the best humor writing and see what makes you laugh out loud. Then give yourself a humor writing assignment.
Get an anthology of poetry and read the same poem twice every day -- once in the morning, and once at night. Does coming back to it in the evening change it?

Meanwhile, there are actual beaches in Geneva!

Some are along the Rhone river:

Swirling colours where the Rhone river meets the Arve river

And some are right on the lake:

We also discovered a temporary Canadian-Quebecois food stall, complete with smoked meat sandwiches and poutine:

What other blog post ideas do you have? What's your go-to post theme?
Hope everyone's having a sunny week!