Month: February 2011

Be Grateful and Thrive

OK, I confess I just stole this title from looking at someone else’s magazine on this plane, but I’m sure the article is also about what I learned in February.

For each day of the month, I posted something for which I was grateful, as my Facebook status.  It was a very rewarding experience and made me very aware of how fortunate I am and how many things there are to be grateful for*, both large and small, in my life.

From the obvious and big, including my wonderful friends and family, to the obvious and small, Egg McMuffins, and on to the not so obvious, a taxi or superglue when nothing else would do the job.

I am learning that my awareness of my gratitude has extended beyond February.

* I am grateful that I having my own blog means that I can end sentences and phrases with prepositions.

 

Pizza Night (part 1 & part 2)

Pizza night part 1 and 2

Sally taught me that if you forget which night is Pizza Night at the gym, you’ll be the only one who forgot!  The place is packed!  (She has learned this at least twice!)

And Gale taught me that the morning after Pizza Night at the gym is not exactly the atmosphere you may be seeking for an early morning workout.

 

Mystery Meal

This lesson brought to you by Sally:

Matt and I went out for a fancy French dinner last night. Since it was already a treat, we decided to spring for an appetizer, and ordered something that neither of us knew what it was, but it had something about plantain chips and an avocado mousse, so we thought it was worth a try.

BAD IDEA.  What we got was a chilled bowl of seafood!  It was clams, trout, calamari, and shrimp – none of which I eat and only half of which he likes.  We ate almost nothing and were kicking ourselves for not asking before ordering, until our waitress told us that she was comping our dessert to make up for our dissatisfaction.

Here, it all evened out, but the overall lesson is that being adventurous is fun, but unless you’re really up for whatever you’re served, google or ask before ordering. Those foreign words on menus can be tricky!

And btw, the French version of gnocchi is AMAZING.

 

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

This lesson learned by Gale:

Remind me when I become a grandmother someday, to do a lot of research and not depend on what was considered safe when my boys were born. I had everything homemade, including the crib bumper. Who knew that crib bumpers are now considered unsafe for babies?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/business/01safety.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&nl=afternoonupdate&emc=aua2

 

BOOK EARLY already!

WHAT is so hard to learn about this lesson?  Why am I still learning it?  Or not learning it??  Book flights early!  As soon as you know your dates.   Just do it!

I lost out on using a free flight just by snoozing and waiting.  I ended up paying for it, and paying twice what it would have cost a week ago, at that!

Book early!!!!!

DCU App Rocks!

I have learned that the Digital Credit Union iPhone app works like a charm for check deposits right from the phone!

It took me a few lessons to get here.  One was that there was a PC deposit function that looked like it worked, but only sometimes.  Then Kat told me about the iPhone/iPad app that was not announced but out there and great for checking balances.

Now it’s come together in this free thing.

Once logged in, click which account, enter check amount, photo of front, photo of back, DONE!  Worked like a charm on the first try.  Wow.

Don’t you just love a bargain?

Kat called me to say that she had a lesson for me to share with you.  I thought she told me to tell you to make sure to close the top securely when using a salad dressing bottle – the kind with the recipes printed on the side.  She was now wearing the dressing.

But no.

She was really trying to tell me to HOLD the top securely.  Closing it is not enough!  I had the same bottle, was making the same dressing (hundreds of miles away), and minutes later, had the same experience!

Now we know why these items were at the Christmas Tree Shops for $1.99!

End of the Big Gulp

Learned by Gale:

Today I learned that I should not be gulping down huge glasses of water just to get my daily water intake because the bloodstream can only handle being diluted by about 4 ounces at any one time. Any additional goes to the kidneys to be filter out out to maintain the osmotic balance of the blood. This means more work for the kidneys to filter water that hasn’t even had the chance to filter through the lymph system and clean the body’s tissues.

This process takes about a 1/2 hour so actually we should drink 16 4-ounce glasses of water per day. That sounds so much nicer to just keep a glass of water nearby and sip and enjoy. Ok, I can do that.

source – “Natural Eye Care, an encyclopedia by Marc Grossman

 

 

Delete, I say!

I may be the last person on earth to learn this, but hey, these are my lessons and I learned it… from Kat.

If you want to delete something in the search or web (or any) field on the iPhone, just hold the delete button down.  You do not, after all, have to hit delete-delete-delete until you drive the person sitting next to you crazy.

When you do this, it deletes slowly and then very quickly, deleting entire phrases at a time.

Who knew?  Did you?

Way Too Private

I learned that if you send an Outlook invitation and mark it “Private”, then the people they have delegated calendar functions to will not see it.

So if someone has an assistant who accepts all their meetings, this one will not make it to that person.

This could be a feature, but not if your recipient ignores calendar invites, thinking someone else has that covered.