Author: janeslessonslearned

Check the Schedule! (Or Bide Your Time)

On this day, I rushed for a bus that did not exist.  What a bummer.  What’s worse is that this is not the first, or the second, time this has happened.  Oh please I hope it’s the last.

The bus schedule is easy to check.  It’s online.  I’m online.  I just need to take a minute to put those things together in the name of common sense, before I rush for the bus.

On the other hand, I have learned how to use the gift of unexpected open time.  This time it was a latte and a phone chat with a good friend, sitting in the train part of South Station, under the tote board that makes ticka-ticka-ticka sounds as the trains schedules post, even though though the board is 100% electronic and those sounds are only artificial nostalgia.  It works for me!

Whistle or Die

Although I always tell people that if I had a whistle-less teakettle (like my mother-in-law’s) I would probably burn my house down.  And my family bought me a wonderful electric espresso maker after my fear that I would do the same with my stove-top model for that.  Yet, if I forget to close the whistle/cover on my teakettle, I’m in the same scary boat and the water boils out and it’s not a pretty thing.   Or a safe one.

Lesson learned again today: always always ALWAYS close the whistle on the kettle!

P.S. I know that one of my beloved blog-followers is going to hate this.  But I’m sure she would rather I posted and learned!  Right?

Plug In Here

I learned that my Boston Express bus (at least the model I was on yesterday) has little labels way up high above the seats, on the luggage compartments, to indicate which seats have electrical outlets available.  There are very few but it turns out they are well marked.

Now if I can remember to have the cord with the electronic item (an OFTEN-learned lesson of 2010), I’ll be all set!

“Don’t let the perfect drive out the good”

My brilliant and profound (or is it profane?) husband taught me / teaches me this lesson.

Perhaps others said it first, say maybe Voltaire http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Voltaire, but Steve says it better.

On this day, the desire to perfectly summarize the lessons of 2010 has been keeping me from adding perfectly good lessons and get on with 2011, so no more of that!  Here we go with another year!

I have purchased the address janeslessonslearned.com and I am on a roll!

Email me your lessons as you learn them and I’ll give you your own day!

Thank you for a year of lessons!

Jane

Be Very Specific!

I am wrapping up a year of lessons with this gem from my cousin, Susan:

“Be careful what you wish for, because the wish genie is a literal bastard. For example, wishing for abundance in the new year did not mean I’d like to grow the biggest ass east of the Mississippi. Oops. Maybe if I write this here I’ll remember that being specific is so very important when setting goals…”

Again with Holiday Eve Squared

It seems fitting that, at the end of a year of learning and recording lessons, I would have to re-learn and re-post something learned only one week ago!

December 30 seems like a few-commuter day, right?  And 3:30 is a nice early time to leave the city, even a really big city like New York, right?

Wrong!

January 30 is New Year’s Eve Eve, so even if a smaller number of people are leaving the city for the holiday weekend, they ALL leave at the same time!  Which, apparently, is about 3:30!

I have learned, I really hope for the last time, to treat these days as high commute days and get out really really early, or very late!