Monday, May 22, 2006

You Know You Need More To Do If...

You know you need more to do if --
- you do a dry swiffer on your walls. It was fun, but amazing how much dust was on the walls??
- you actually tell someone that once you use an iPod that you can't go back to a cassette player or portable CD player due to the fact that they are so bulky and hard to manage when on an elliptical trainer;
- you lament the service in the "old days" at Nordstrom. I have large feet and have shopped there for over 40 years. They used to care about helping you find the shoes you wanted. (Note: after I did comment, I received a personal note from London Edwards, a nice salesperson in Scottsdale Men's Shoe Department thanking me for my business) Yes, Men's Shoes. Like I said, I have large feet.
- you go outside every few hours to see if the cucumber plants sprouted any cucumbers yet, or if any of the other vegetables or herbs are getting too much sun.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

CliffsNotes For Life

The other night in Fry's Electronics we saw a huge rack of laminated pages, on all sorts of topics that attracted our interest: knitting, crocheting, use of different software programs, asthma, diabetes, to name a few. I rushed home to look up quickstudy.com and found that they are the largest source for laminated reference guides (is it a huge demand?) on all sorts of topics. Categories are business, home, medical, academic, computer and there are over 350 different topics. The website says they are quick study guides. They range from menus to any subject you would want to study or hobby you want to start -- I saw quick menu ideas, use of different herbs and spices and that barely scratched the surface.
The whole idea struck me as CliffsNotes for life. Perhaps memorizing all of them would be a good SAT preparation. All I know is that I am curious to go back and look at them again. Who could not find one or two that they could not live without? What a great gift idea for someone with a hobby or interest. To look at them, go to
http://www.barcharts.com/default.asp?page=charts&pg=quickstudy

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

My Camera Phone

I did not plan on getting a camera phone, but when my phone contract came up and I got a new, no-cost phone, I ended up with a camera phone -- only because the shape I liked had a camera in it. I did not expect to use it at all, but have surprised myself, and I think my family as well. I have photos of my family to attach to their phone numbers as Caller ID, World Baseball Classic festivities and close-ups of players, shots of the sidewalk vigils outside the house of the recent Seattle shootings, as well as my beloved cactus flowers. But, I don't send them to anyone (I tried once, actually, but it was too difficult for me to do.)
So, the headline "Few Camera Phone Users Send Photos" was no surprise to me. I like taking my personal pictures, quickly, with no hassle. But no one else will care about them. I did note that hundreds of people were taking camera phone photos at the World Baseball Classic Finals, but have no idea if they sent them off to someone, or just kept them stored to review or share later. It is a good way to mark a moment that you are enjoying, so when you are waiting somewhere you can flip through your photos like a photo album of good memories.
I guess that some of the carriers anticipated that cellphone users sending photos would be a revenue source. When I saw that photos received from a family member cost me 75 cents each on my Verizon bill, I requested that they not send me any more photos, rather than signing up for the pix service. I may not be the only one that feels that way. They are cute pictures, but not at that cost.
The full article is here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20060502/tc_cmp/187002419