productivity

Solving my productivity problems

Productivity has been a buzz word for quite some time because I rarely meet someone who does not want to be more productive. I cannot resist clicking on any headline that has the words productivity or organization in them because I want to do better. I am a sucker for trying new things and have attempted online calendars, Outlook, pen and paper calendars, writing to do lists, etc, etc. I have yet to be successful at any of it. I have been toying with bullet journaling for some time but I fear that would require bringing a new notebook into my life. Plus, I don’t see myself as artistically creative like I see when I Google “bullet journal” and scroll through the images. I don’t think it’s so much the systems as it is my personal style of getting easily bored with these methods.

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Life

2018 Goals Check-in

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Back in January, I wrote out a lengthy list of things I wanted to accomplish or do better in 2018. I got myself a brand new fancy notebook (I definitely have a problem with buying notebooks and journals) and promptly lost it under a pile of papers and books to read. So much for getting organized! I dug it out last week to see what I wrote and how I was doing with it. Continue reading “2018 Goals Check-in”

travel

My definitive packing guide for a spring trip to Costa Rica

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Pants and sturdy shoes necessary for horseback riding!

A few weeks ago I was here sweating over what I should pack for Costa Rica. Now that the trip is behind me, I can share my experience of what to bring on the trip in a more helpful way. Anyone clicking on this post was probably questioning the veracity of the headline because it left more questions than answers about what to bring on a trip.

I must first do a little bragging that I mostly hit the nail on the head with what I ended up bringing. I made a few notes to myself about what would have been nice to round it out. Here is my definitive list for a week that included San Jose, light to moderate hiking in the rain forest (sans rain) and a couple days of activities that included horseback riding and zip lining.

Here was our seven day itinerary: Continue reading “My definitive packing guide for a spring trip to Costa Rica”

Musings

The Royals, Not Like Us

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In case you are living without access to information, a new Royal made their way into the world yesterday. And if you’re reading this, you certainly have access to information and a lot better sources than this blog for news about the Royal family. I am not overly gaga about them but it’s hard to miss when they are in the news every day with Kate giving birth and Harry’s upcoming nuptials. And here’s my conclusion: The Royals, they are NOT like us.

How do I know this? Did you see pictures or videos of Kate seven hours after she gave birth to the yet-to-be-named Prince? She looked stunning. Stunning! I cannot look this good on my best day but she was dressed smartly: lovely dress, heels, full make-up and barley a bump where the baby had been and this is her third baby.  She bestowed upon us an ear-to-ear smile as she looked fondly at her newborn boy and then left the hospital shortly thereafter to head home.

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parenting

Letting our kids grow up

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Hello, readers! Today I’m tackling a hairy parenting topic known as letting our kids grow up and find their way. I feel this is necessary after I witnessed a meet and greet with a new teacher this week that can only be described as a well intentioned assembly that went off the rails. Yes, it’s late in the school year. Yes, our school had to replace one of their teachers (who I previously wrote about here). Yes, we can do this.

If you don’t want to click the link for the backstory, here’s a brief synopsis of the issue. New teacher acts inappropriately many times. New teacher enjoys a great deal of “bathroom/locker room humor” with 10-14 year olds. Kids, of course, love said teacher because he acts like a peer and not an authoritative, adult teacher. Teacher not a good fit and leaves with seven weeks to go in the school year. I don’t know all the whats and whys behind the leaving but I trust the school did what was appropriate. Yesterday we got to meet his replacement, a highly qualified individual with a doctorate, and from what I could tell from his message to parents, many years experience with a variety of grade levels and sound teaching practices.

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Life

The Philosophy of Kanye West

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Yesterday as I was perusing my Twitter feed and something weird kept popping up. Retweets of random messages from Kanye West. I am not a follower and I don’t subscribe to the whole Kardashian way of living so I was a little surprised by this.  How did these tweets make their way into my timeline? Why is everyone retweeting Kanye? Why did The Skimm’s top link today reference this tweet storm? Turns out Kanye is writing a book about philosphy. And guys, he’s doing it in real time on Twitter. I am questioning what kind of parallel universe I’m living in.

I like to go right to the source of things so I made my way over to his Twitter feed and clicked follow. Am I falling into a trap here? Thanks to my stint working in a newsroom, I think I have a healthy dose of cynicism skepticism and so immediately tried to discern a motive for his sudden interest in writing these brief tweets. Is Kanye’s philosophizing all about drawing eyeballs to himself? So he can sell more whatever? Albums. Clothing. Lifestyle. Page views. Some of the things he was saying seem to go against the entire grain of what the Kardashians seem to be about.

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Life

An Ode to TGI Friday’s

TGIFI haven’t been to a TGI Friday’s in years. I recently read something that Millenials are killing off these casual chain restaurants (like Ruby Tuesdays, Applebee’s and TGI Friday) with preferences for healthier food and it kind of makes me a little sad. I’m not sad people are eating healthier – we are all trying to do that. What I’m sad about is what TGI Friday’s meant to me in my young adulthood as the place to gather for happy hour (with free food which was definitely not healthy) and to catch up with friends while also scoping for potential love interests.

These memories are also a mixed bag but the one thing that sticks out for me is none of us had cell phones so our time together was all about face-to-face conversation and I think there is a lot to be said for that. Usually we started out in the bar area, grabbing a couple of drinks and playing trivia while we waited for others to arrive. We sat or stood around the bar area and caught up on our days. We would also note if there were any cute or interesting strangers in the vicinity and one of us might get up the courage to engage them in conversation (usually not me).

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travel

The people at the airport

When I’m flying solo, the experience is significantly more enjoyable for me (click here for exhibit A), particularly for an early morning flight as is the case today. I arrived at the airport earlier than I needed to be because I overestimated how quickly I’d be ready and we live about 5 minutes from the airport. Plus, I can never sleep the night before a flight as I have a deep seated phobia about missing my flight (this has happened twice).

The airport is prime people watching territory. There are business flyers, families, solos and there looks to be one group of ladies trip flyers (this group grew significantly and looks like a large group of college kids going on spring break!) Of course I’m curious where everyone is going and what they are doing at their end destination. My flight is going through Baltimore and Phoenix with a final stop of Santa Ana. Some of these people will likely be changing planes at any of these destinations.

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travel

The Time Zone Challenge

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I am in the midst of writing a post about the last leg of our Costa Rica journey, which was my favorite part of the trip! The weekend was all about catching up on laundry and cleaning and here we are at Monday again. Back to work. And I am exhausted! I’m not sure if it’s due to the time change but it’s leaving all of us sleepless (except my husband, Jim, who can sleep anytime). I had trouble sleeping on vacation too and I think it’s catching up with me.

This is probably not the best time to be traveling to the west coast for a work conference in which I’ll need to adjust to another time change before I’m back on the east coast late Friday night. Hopefully I’ll have time to finish my post about northern Costa Rica during the week. I’ve also asked Liam (the eleven year old) to write an essay about the trip and if he’s up for it, I’ll post it here. It will be interesting to see what he deems important from the trip.

Today will be a bit of a rush catching up on work from the past week and a half. And then packing to leave for the trip west tomorrow morning. This will be my first visit to California, so even though I’m a bit travel-worn, I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll also have a large bed to myself for a few days which will likely help my sleep issues.

MC

Uncategorized

Procrastinating

I am sitting in the library and thumbing through magazines. My mind wandered back to the prompt of the day, inchoate, a word I had to look up because I’m unfamilar with it. I don’t believe I’ve even seen it written or heard it spoken. I’m still unsure of it’s use so I decided to check in with other blogs to see what they did. It is not an unpleasant way to spend one’s time.

The house is an utter disaster, the contents of our luggage is spread from kitchen, to living room, to bedroom. There are piles of unfolded laundry and dishes in the sink. You can see why I’m at the library!

A message just came through. Jim is wondering where I am. Time to go and clean.

MC