Things I Love

First let me start by saying that I loathe consumerism.  I don't like being a consumer.  Needful things.  I prefer to live from a place of satisfaction with my life, my family, the way it is, without more, without consideration for things more accurately.  It may not appear that way in this blog so far as it almost appears to be a shopping blog.  Many of things I love can be had for free, borrowed for free, or a free alternative can be found.  (Not gonna go into people I love which are greater than any thing!)

I guess the above was more for me than you.  I am still working on my consumerism and still feel guilty over this.  And with guilt, I can choose to do something about it and release it or just release it.  There is no need to carry it.  :)

Lol, laughing at myself, moving on to my favorite things (at this time).  Oh wait a sec, so my oldest daughter and I were talking two nights ago.  (Can you believe she will be 18 this July?!?)  She is hating Valentine's Day at the moment.  She broke up with her boyfriend on Monday and life is ending for the two of them.  (We all giggle behind our hands at teen drama and yet it feels the same way for adult break-ups.)  Amen Sistah! 

So through her complaining her dad said that he would tell her his take on V-Day this weekend.  Anna and I were being silly and joking around cuz her dad hates anything that focuses on something other than himself.  Well, we came up with the perfect holiday for his type.  Buy Yourself Stupid Shit Day.  We'll call it Byss Day.  And we came up with a theme song.  SpongeBob has a song, "Best Day Ever", easily modified into "Byss Day Ever."  Do you know how freaking popular this will be?  I should patent it right now!!!

Ok, so some of my favorite things (for real this time!).

Amazon Kindle:  Duh!  I have the Kindle 2, Kindle Keyboard, and Kindle Fire.  Madalyn uses my Kindle 2.  I use the Fire as a tablet more than a Kindle.  The backlighting hurts my eyes long term and... it doesn't freaking have read to me!!!  I don't know why and complained directly to Amazon about it. 

I freaking love you Mal (oops, that's a movie...) I freaking love the read to me feature.  I will have it read to me the dry and boring books (like Dracula, movie MUCH better!) while I'm knitting, driving, cleaning, etc...  And I will have it read to me books I can't put down, but need to do something else and I love that I can pause it and begin reading again.  Anna has the Kindle 2 and the new pocket Kindle.  That little sucker is sooo fast!  Tim also has a Kindle 2.  We adore e-Ink.  It is so much easier on our eyes!!!

Light Therapy Device: mentioned here.  I didn't set an alarm while I was recovering and didn't use my light on Saturday or Sunday.  I started waking up later and later again.  From 7 a.m. without an alarm to 9:30-10:00 a.m.  On Monday I started using my light again and yesterday I woke up at 7:06 a.m. and I set my alarm for 7:15 a.m.  Again we are only looking at 2 weeks with this thing, but if it broke tomorrow we would go couch diving to find hidden change to replace it in some way for the difference it's made.

Magic Erasers: thank goodness!  Years ago, a friend of mine was stationed in Japan.  She sent me a couple of "magic sponges" from the 100 yen store (dollar store).  Before she left she sent me a whole box filled with them. 

Right as I ran out, Mr. Clean came out with the Magic Eraser (original?  I think not!).  And it's the same thing!  These will take crayon off the walls, scuzz off the tub without heavy scrubbing, if you haven't tried these then you have no idea the miracle these things are.  Warning, rinse carefully when moving from walls of different colors. 

Microtels: Even in our economy and with our income greatly reduced, I still need to get away.  This led us to creative solutions.  Parks and Rec has some very economical options for all sorts of needs.  Camp sites, yurts, cabins, houses, etc...  However, everywhere we wanted to go was booked.  That's when I found Microtels.  It turned out to be cheaper than several options than Parks and Rec. For weekday stays this month it's $59 a night for the sites we are looking at and that includes a waffle/continental breakfast.  It's $7 more a night for the weekend.  We are heading back to the beach soon, woot!

 Kalso Earth shoes: Better late than never, I was asked to review these last year.  I have Plantar fasciitis and my doctor told me that I need to wear shoes.  I hate wearing shoes... just saying.  He recommended the Kalso Earth shoes and pointed down to his feet.

The Kalso Earth shoes have a negative heel that causes you to sit back into your heel activating different muscle groups than regular shoes.  Standing in these shoes burn more calories than regular shoes.  It helps with posture.  Anything to help my posture between the scoliosis, S-curvature, and hip issues is a godsend. 

As my exercise shoes were 12 years old I decided to replace them with the Exer-walk.  It took me a while to break them in, but once I did I find them very comfortable and once I put them on I leave them on till bed time.  They almost feel like a slipper to me.  And it's like free dieting... I'm burning extra calories for nothing!  My feet aren't hurting as much even though I'm bad about putting shoes on still.

When I decided on this topic I thought it would be easier to come up with things I love.  I will get to apps in a bit, but I guess since I'm no longer a mom of infants and toddlers a lot of my favorites have fallen off the list.  Like authentic chinese prefolds, wool soakers, slings... 

Did you know that Amazon gives away a paid Android app for free daily?  I have gotten apps I was thinking about paying for.  Score!  Please note that I didn't double check all the apps for platforms, you may be able to find this for other phones than Android or similar apps if not.


MyBookDroid

 Here are some apps that I love:

MyBookDroid:  This baby works in conjunction with goodreads.  You don't need to set up with goodreads, you will do that as you sign into the app.  I love apps that share data across platforms.  So I can look up my books on my cpu or droid.  If your Droid has a camera and a scanner app you can scan books into your app or you can type in the title, ISBN, etc...  It is time consuming to place an entire library into the app.  However, it has saved me when I was shopping used book stores for Norse books.



Key Ring for Iphone and Android

 Key Ring: scan in your member cards.  I reduced my wallet width by about a third.  I loathe those reward cards. 

Unfortunately, not many stores have scanners that can read from phones.  Some do though and I've heard that more stores are purposefully moving to scanners that can.

Deluxe Moon for Android



 Deluxe Moon is also available for iPhone.  There is a free and paid version of this app.  This is one of a few apps I've paid for.  It is absolutely beautiful.  I love the many widget options.  With the paid version there are all sorts of touch areas that pop up with additional info.  Planting cycles.  Moon phases for the year.  Astrological phase of the Moon.  



Diary Mobile



Diary Mobile: This app shares its data as well with Diary.com.  Again, love it!  With all the technology, I get frequently frustrated when info is stored only on one device.  I love clouds, apps that share across platforms, etc... 

Diary has tabs for Events, Tasks, and Journal.  I should note, this is also available for iPhones.  I use WinJournal for writing when on my computer and I love, love that program.  It doesn't have cross platform sharing, but it's other advantages outweigh that.  However, when I was looking at note taking apps for my phone I thought maybe a diary app might function better and boy was a right. 

I've tried out the different google interfaces for tasks, reminders, and I don't like them.  I love being able to take notes while I'm meeting with a client or teaching a class and know that I can access it on all of my devices.  Laptop, desktop, phone, Fire, I'm covered.  Big grin.

I've mention Sleepbot previously, an app I use to track body movement in my sleep.  And I've used a couple different diet and exercise apps, I can't remember the name of my fav as I don't have it loaded at this time. 

Where did the time go?  I've been writing for over 2 hours now.  Wow!  Time to move on to the next task :)  Ciao bellas.