After 2 weeks husband has decided that the tail end of cold is too much to deal with and I am back to cooking and cleaning on my own as of yesterday. So tonight I am catching up on 3 weeks of laundry backed up. I washed the clothing, he put in the dryer and then in the laundry basket. He then pulled out his clothing and put it away and left mine for me.
I think the final blow was yesterday was “change the bed linens day”. Last week we only changed the pillow cases. Last night I figured I would change the sheets, I would change my pillow cases, he would change his, and I would change the sheets and remake the bed - other than him dealing with his pillowcases. So yesterday morning, I pulled off my pillowcases, folded the blanket and pulled the top sheet off the bed. I would normally have pulled off his bottom pillowcase in the morning. I pull the top pillowcase and the bottom sheet off when we are going to bed at night and remake the bed then. (I used to pull everything off in the morning, but a couple of times he was dizzy and ill during the day and I had to quickly put his side of the bed back, so this is our compromise - he can lie down as the bottom sheet and his top pillowcase are there and then pull the top sheet - lying on the bed - on top of him if he does not feel well. ) So last night I put the last (of 3) set of clean sheets on the bed and put the blanket on. I went to pull 2 pillowcases for my pillow and he would do his pillowcases afterwards .... but there were only 2 clean pillowcases! We each took one.
I went down tonight to start the first load of laundry and did so. I was also going to run our “Packtite”, a device intended to heat suitcases and their contents when one returns home from a trip so that if one has picked up bed bugs they will be killed by the heat. We set it up with a laundry basket with holes in it and I heat anything coming into the house we are concerned about. Normally I run it when it when I do the laundry as it is near the washer and dryer in the basement and the timing for a load of laundry to wash or dry and to check the temperature on the thermometer in the Packtite is about the same. There is a small number of things to heat. I noticed that the thermometer reading for the Packtite was the same as last time I used it . (We have an indoor/outdoor reading thermometer and the dohickey for the outside is in the Packtite so I can see the temperature and make sure it is high enough, long enough, but does not go to high.) No new reading - or a blank reading - for the dohickey means that it needs new batteries. I walked up 2 flights of stairs to the office to get new batteries and then back down the same 2 flights. It still did not work. I texted husband to help me. (Yes, we are lazy enough to text each other in the house - much better than running up and down the stairs to tell each other something, especially in summer when doors are closed to keep air conditioning in the room and the ac units are running and making noise.) We spent over half an hour playing with it, but the dohickey still does not work. My solution? We have the same setup on a thermometer in the kitchen to read the temperature in the refrigerator, I brought that set up downstairs and took the working main thermometer from the basement and stuck it in the refrigerator and read it by opening the door. Tomorrow I will switch the setups back - and we will look for a new thermometer for the basement. (I pause here to run down and switch laundry loads.)
Okay, I am back. Over last weekend I reset the number of days for my Quickbooks to remind me of memorized transactions (mostly bills to pay, some direct deposits to come in) to cover everything through the end of the month (normally it is set for one week). I wrote checks for all the bills and calculated how much we needed to transfer from savings (which is a holding account for money for bills) to pay all the bills to the end of the month. I transferred the money yesterday and today mailed out the bill payments. Well, everything but the cable/Internet bill which will not come until the last minute at the end of the month - and the money for it plus a bit more is now is now in the checking account. Why did I pay it all at once? Husband REALLY wants to go on a trip of more than a day or two. He keeps checking the upcoming weather in the several places we might go and it continues to follow the pattern of a day with no rain - maybe two days if lucky -and then two or three days of pouring rain and thunderstorms. (Although the weather is not as bad as it is in some parts of the country - I hope none of you are in the areas of the wildfires or the flooding.) When we prepare for a trip we pay any bills that need to be paid while we will be away and need to transfer money for same and then mail the payments. This way we do not even have to think of the bills until the cable bill at the end of the month. We can leave with a just a quick stop at the bank for cash for the trip. One less thing that has to be dealt with. Actually the only other problem is the newspaper - if we go at the last minute there will be a paper sitting in the delivery tube while we are away - I guess one paper will look like that day’s paper so it is not bad. Most of our mail goes to our box at the Post Office and we put in a large locking mailbox at the house so that we do not have to stop the mail that does still come to the house. Clothing can be washed and dried and then packed the night before and just tossed on the RV bed when we go. Food, etc can be stuck under the RV bed in a holder that is there. It can all be unpacked when we get where we are going. So if he finds a place to go we can leave the next day.
He has had another project he has been working on and frustrated with, which affects me. He has been trying to convince me to stop using this laptop and buy a new one. I have some problems checking posts on some websites - the laptop runs Windows XP. We have been looking and have found some laptops at the price we can pay - actually more than we can pay, but we can stretch the amount another $100 or so t buy. I am still resistant as there are only one or two websites which are affected and I have software I like which may or may not work with Windows 10 and at least one I know will not work with same. Yes, it can take up to 20 minutes for the laptop to boot and takes awhile for programs to open, but I am used to. The alternative he comes up with is installing Linux on this computer to use when online. He has found and set up about 5 versions of same on USB stick drives and DVDs in the past week or so. The latest version on DVD actually works - but one of the sites I have a problem with only partially opens. I have not have my laptop at least part of each night as a result as he loads the new try. (Notice I made sure to write and post on time this week since I was late last week, but some friends on an embroidery site and some friends on a comics site will not hear from me - and I normally am on the comics site on Monday nights.) I am guessing that I will be giving in and getting the new laptop - but not until after the cutoff for the credit card bill this month, so we won’t have to pay for it until October - the house insurance is in September, plus any travel bills if we go away.
Oh - I did finally vacuum up all the shreds of paper from my big shredding of 2008 last week.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
One may fall behind due to illness or other reasons. Don’t panic. One can always catch up.
Showing posts with label reminders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reminders. Show all posts
Thursday, August 16, 2018
Thursday, June 29, 2017
HORRORS OF MOVING TO A NEW CELL PHONE
I have mentioned before that I have an older cell phone as I love the Organizer software I use on my computer. I love it so much that my husband had to set up a virtual Windows XP “side” to my desktop computer as I could not use the software with Windows 7.
Well, what I have been afraid of has happened. As (I am pretty sure I mentioned before) my cell phone - a classic Blackberry stopped accessing the Internet or email (email is something which I almost never access on my cell phone anyway) through the cell phone signal and started working only through wifi a little more than a month ago. I could make telephone calls and send texts without a problem. I have previously described my attempts to resolve the problem. Nothing worked. Husband was upset at the idea of my continuing to pay the full price for my cell phone service when I was getting only part of the service - but also knew what a major upset the change would be. We let the phone renew for another month to give us time to think. I had three choices - keep using (and paying for) my old phone service with my phone it was - my choice, update to “the modern world” and get a (low price) android phone, or go the other way and get a flip phone that would make calls and texts and just about nothing else - either of the latter two options was cheaper per month than continuing the service I had.
Husband has tried to be very gentle about this and help me as he knows how much change in general and this particular change especially, upsets me. My life was in that phone - it kept me - yes - ORGANIZED. My phone numbers were in it. My calendar was in it. My memos were in it. It synced with the software I love on my computer. (The phone did not sync with the software for todos/tasks something very important to me and I am still carrying my older phone - a Palm Centro (the first “smart” phone) around the house to deal with the todos as most of them are in the house and I learned to make a secondary calendar notation for todos to be done outside the house to get by.
I was happily getting by until this past Monday. We had needed to renew prescriptions. I telephoned the doctor from home and he was to call the pharmacy. When we went to pick up the prescriptions two of them were missing and I tried to call the doctor from my cell phone - it did not work. I then tried to text my husband to tell them about the problem and it would not text. Oh boy!! I found my husband who was looking at cell phones for me - his major hobby in Walmart these days - and after using his cell phone to call the doctor’s office and correct the matter - told him that I guessed that this was it.
I have one “real” (meaning a not just my craziness about things problem) problem with cell phones. I don’t carry a purse. I don’t wear a belt. The phone has to fit in the front pocket of my jeans. We have been looking at android phones to try to find one that would fit. He had me try his phone in my pocket for size - much too large as were almost all of the phones we found. He found two that were small enough - and only one was reviewed to be good. So that was the only choice. We bought the phone Monday when the Blackberry did not work - although it started working again later.
I have another problem which he insists is me - I haven’t been able to get anyone else’s android/Idevice to work. At the dentist office he used Square for our charge card and handed me his tablet to sign - I didn’t show up on it - husband had to sign it. So I have to learn deal with this. Husband has given me a stylus which will work with the phone and he found out that the “space pen” I carry will also work as stylus with it. (The space pen fits in my pocket.)
So for three days now we have been working with the new phone. It is on a different service provider and it was a bit confusing setting it up (my phones are both prepaids), but we got it done. Somehow it changed immediately; husband had been worried about me not having a phone for a few days - how could he text me when we are in stores and I walk away?
I have been learning to use the phone - I have a problem, believe it or not - hitting the correct letter when typing (and even once the wrong digit when using the numbers, in a situation where I could not go back and correct it). I tend to hit the letter to the right of the one I am trying to hit. I sent a text to him - only took a half hour to write it as I kept hitting the wrong letters. Yes, I am that lazy - I text him to come down to dinner instead of walking up and telling him. I am sure I will improve.
My embroidery chapter board had our annual board meeting last week and there have been followup emails - I answered one of them and said that I have gotten the emails, but I am switching phone which means that I will be totally disorganized until I figure it all out, and to please bear with me - they are nice, they will.
First major problem - I have over 400 contact entries in my old cell phones/Organizer and the only way to move them to the new phone is by copy and paste of each item in each entry. I looked through the sync software I use for the Palm Centro as it is a sync program we bought and it syncs a variety of programs and devices - it has a choice labeled “Google”. We tried setting that up as husband figured I might not only be able to transfer the contacts and my calendar with it, but then I could sync them as I wanted to. No, was set up for too old a version of Google.
He did managed to find out how to export my calendar from Organizer to Google, so after a few false tries, that worked and it is one set up done on the new phone.
I then started copying and pasting contact info. There are two schools of thought as to the order to do this - first one is to start with the first contact in my Organizer (also Blackberry/Palm as they match) and go through one after another - this idea is very organized, hard to miss a listing. The second thought, is copy the contacts most needed - so I can use the phone right away - and then copy the others, a bit each day, which is the more practical of the two.
Since Monday I have had one contact in the new phone - my husband’s cell phone. Today I sat and pasted and copied the listings for our immediate family, two other board members of my embroidery chapter, the head of our reenacting unit, our doctors, and our medical insurance companies. I have out an email to each of my sisters double checking that I have the correct info for them, their husbands, and their children, so I put in basic info for them that I know is correct and will add the rest when they let me know of any updates. I have a lot of contacts as I have all of the members of our reenactment unit and my embroidery chapter in the phone. I also have at least one emergency contact for those in our reenactment unit (there is a campfire and there are guns, so we like to know who to contact - just in case) and one advantage to the new phone is that I can put the emergency contacts as part of the main contact for the members and label who they are for (mom, wife, cousin, friend...). That might speed it up a small bit. In the mean while when we go out I bring my Palm just in case we need another contact - it is smaller than the Blackberry.
My plan going forward is that I will have a “memo” in the new phone - if I make an appointment while out or add a contact, I will add it to this memo and then add it to my Organizer program at home by hand. The same with todos - up until now I have been putting them in the Blackberry as an appointment until I am home and can fix it.
The memos I have are the biggest problem. Some of them are static - info we need for some purchases - how much fabric, what model saw, etc. Others change sometimes - a list of our EZ pass tolls so I can check it against the statement - this one is not a problem as I will have my Palm with me when go out of state any way - but I will also use a separate memo in the new phone to keep track of same. Biggest problem is the constantly changing memos - my shopping list for example - I need to keep both lists - the computer and the phone list the same and that will take some work - then again, right now I am using a list written on paper until all this gets set up and working and anything has to be better than that - I forgot to buy eggs today.
How have YOU dealt with switching cell phones?
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK - What has to be done, has to be done. One can say no as much as one wants to, but when push comes to shove, one has to do what one has to do. When the cell phone did not work Monday (which was apparently a problem with too few “bars” as it worked again later) I took it as a sign that someone (not my husband) or something really wants me to switch and I should just “rip off the bandage” and switch.
Well, what I have been afraid of has happened. As (I am pretty sure I mentioned before) my cell phone - a classic Blackberry stopped accessing the Internet or email (email is something which I almost never access on my cell phone anyway) through the cell phone signal and started working only through wifi a little more than a month ago. I could make telephone calls and send texts without a problem. I have previously described my attempts to resolve the problem. Nothing worked. Husband was upset at the idea of my continuing to pay the full price for my cell phone service when I was getting only part of the service - but also knew what a major upset the change would be. We let the phone renew for another month to give us time to think. I had three choices - keep using (and paying for) my old phone service with my phone it was - my choice, update to “the modern world” and get a (low price) android phone, or go the other way and get a flip phone that would make calls and texts and just about nothing else - either of the latter two options was cheaper per month than continuing the service I had.
Husband has tried to be very gentle about this and help me as he knows how much change in general and this particular change especially, upsets me. My life was in that phone - it kept me - yes - ORGANIZED. My phone numbers were in it. My calendar was in it. My memos were in it. It synced with the software I love on my computer. (The phone did not sync with the software for todos/tasks something very important to me and I am still carrying my older phone - a Palm Centro (the first “smart” phone) around the house to deal with the todos as most of them are in the house and I learned to make a secondary calendar notation for todos to be done outside the house to get by.
I was happily getting by until this past Monday. We had needed to renew prescriptions. I telephoned the doctor from home and he was to call the pharmacy. When we went to pick up the prescriptions two of them were missing and I tried to call the doctor from my cell phone - it did not work. I then tried to text my husband to tell them about the problem and it would not text. Oh boy!! I found my husband who was looking at cell phones for me - his major hobby in Walmart these days - and after using his cell phone to call the doctor’s office and correct the matter - told him that I guessed that this was it.
I have one “real” (meaning a not just my craziness about things problem) problem with cell phones. I don’t carry a purse. I don’t wear a belt. The phone has to fit in the front pocket of my jeans. We have been looking at android phones to try to find one that would fit. He had me try his phone in my pocket for size - much too large as were almost all of the phones we found. He found two that were small enough - and only one was reviewed to be good. So that was the only choice. We bought the phone Monday when the Blackberry did not work - although it started working again later.
I have another problem which he insists is me - I haven’t been able to get anyone else’s android/Idevice to work. At the dentist office he used Square for our charge card and handed me his tablet to sign - I didn’t show up on it - husband had to sign it. So I have to learn deal with this. Husband has given me a stylus which will work with the phone and he found out that the “space pen” I carry will also work as stylus with it. (The space pen fits in my pocket.)
So for three days now we have been working with the new phone. It is on a different service provider and it was a bit confusing setting it up (my phones are both prepaids), but we got it done. Somehow it changed immediately; husband had been worried about me not having a phone for a few days - how could he text me when we are in stores and I walk away?
I have been learning to use the phone - I have a problem, believe it or not - hitting the correct letter when typing (and even once the wrong digit when using the numbers, in a situation where I could not go back and correct it). I tend to hit the letter to the right of the one I am trying to hit. I sent a text to him - only took a half hour to write it as I kept hitting the wrong letters. Yes, I am that lazy - I text him to come down to dinner instead of walking up and telling him. I am sure I will improve.
My embroidery chapter board had our annual board meeting last week and there have been followup emails - I answered one of them and said that I have gotten the emails, but I am switching phone which means that I will be totally disorganized until I figure it all out, and to please bear with me - they are nice, they will.
First major problem - I have over 400 contact entries in my old cell phones/Organizer and the only way to move them to the new phone is by copy and paste of each item in each entry. I looked through the sync software I use for the Palm Centro as it is a sync program we bought and it syncs a variety of programs and devices - it has a choice labeled “Google”. We tried setting that up as husband figured I might not only be able to transfer the contacts and my calendar with it, but then I could sync them as I wanted to. No, was set up for too old a version of Google.
He did managed to find out how to export my calendar from Organizer to Google, so after a few false tries, that worked and it is one set up done on the new phone.
I then started copying and pasting contact info. There are two schools of thought as to the order to do this - first one is to start with the first contact in my Organizer (also Blackberry/Palm as they match) and go through one after another - this idea is very organized, hard to miss a listing. The second thought, is copy the contacts most needed - so I can use the phone right away - and then copy the others, a bit each day, which is the more practical of the two.
Since Monday I have had one contact in the new phone - my husband’s cell phone. Today I sat and pasted and copied the listings for our immediate family, two other board members of my embroidery chapter, the head of our reenacting unit, our doctors, and our medical insurance companies. I have out an email to each of my sisters double checking that I have the correct info for them, their husbands, and their children, so I put in basic info for them that I know is correct and will add the rest when they let me know of any updates. I have a lot of contacts as I have all of the members of our reenactment unit and my embroidery chapter in the phone. I also have at least one emergency contact for those in our reenactment unit (there is a campfire and there are guns, so we like to know who to contact - just in case) and one advantage to the new phone is that I can put the emergency contacts as part of the main contact for the members and label who they are for (mom, wife, cousin, friend...). That might speed it up a small bit. In the mean while when we go out I bring my Palm just in case we need another contact - it is smaller than the Blackberry.
My plan going forward is that I will have a “memo” in the new phone - if I make an appointment while out or add a contact, I will add it to this memo and then add it to my Organizer program at home by hand. The same with todos - up until now I have been putting them in the Blackberry as an appointment until I am home and can fix it.
The memos I have are the biggest problem. Some of them are static - info we need for some purchases - how much fabric, what model saw, etc. Others change sometimes - a list of our EZ pass tolls so I can check it against the statement - this one is not a problem as I will have my Palm with me when go out of state any way - but I will also use a separate memo in the new phone to keep track of same. Biggest problem is the constantly changing memos - my shopping list for example - I need to keep both lists - the computer and the phone list the same and that will take some work - then again, right now I am using a list written on paper until all this gets set up and working and anything has to be better than that - I forgot to buy eggs today.
How have YOU dealt with switching cell phones?
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK - What has to be done, has to be done. One can say no as much as one wants to, but when push comes to shove, one has to do what one has to do. When the cell phone did not work Monday (which was apparently a problem with too few “bars” as it worked again later) I took it as a sign that someone (not my husband) or something really wants me to switch and I should just “rip off the bandage” and switch.
Thursday, May 18, 2017
REMEMBERING TO DO CHORES
I have mentioned that I use my cell phone to remind me to do things. Before I had a cell phone or a computer calendar, heck, back before I had a computer or used my husband’s comptuer - I needed a way to remember to do things.
When we lived an apartment chores were a lot easier. My husband would come home exhausted at the end of the week and go to bed early on Friday nights - very early - so I would clean the apartment while he was sleeping. I changed the bedding on the weekend. At first when the laundry bag filled up - about once a week to a week and a half - I went to the laundry up and across the street and wasted time doing the laundry - it came home in the same bag which also was washed. Then someone left a lipstick in the washing machine there - the washing machine I put all our clothes, towels, and bed linens in. Most of it had to be thrown out. Even then we were “odd sized” and had trouble replacing the clothes - plus the expense of replacing same and the rest. So we looked around and bought a very small washer and a very small dryer - really small. This turned laundry into an ongoing process most of the week. On Monday I would put the first load in the washer - a week of our shirts was all it was hold in one load. The dryer was about the same and did not have an exhaust hose, it exhausted the hot air into the adjacent air in the apartment and it took about twice as long as drying a full load of clothes does now. So this was a laborious process for most of the week - and very hot in summer with the air from the dryer heating the apartment beyond the summer heat, even with an air conditioner running.
When we moved to the house I needed to find ways to remember and “force myself” to do the household chores. I found it helpful to associate the chores to things to remind me. We have garbage pickup on Monday and Thursday - so, I started changing the towels on the same days - new towels went out on Mondays and Thursdays. Eventually I decided that I needed to change the kitchen towels more often and they became Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays, while bathroom towels stayed the same. (Shower towels are taken out when they will be used and used once.) Works well.
I used to change the bedding on Mondays as it was a new workweek. This worked okay until we started traveling for weekends more often as we often stayed away through Mondays. Since then Tuesdays is the day I change the bedding - unless there is a reason to do it on another day.
I started doing the laundry on Wednesday nights. Why? If we were going to take a weekend trip it definitely would not be while we were away and we would have clean and folded clothes for a trip leaving on Friday. I used to do the entire washing and drying on Wednesday nights, then husband started watching TV in the kitchen and blocking the basement door, so I could not conveniently do the laundry while he was sitting there and had to wait for him to go upstairs to his computer, so I ended up splitting the laundry between Wednesday and Thursday nights - and folding them Thursday and Friday mornings. Yes, “West Wing” changed my laundry schedule. :-)
Even this blog is tied to something, it is written on Wednesday night and posted late on same - or technically early on Thursday - as I do the laundry at the same time.
Actually cleaning and dealing with the house was easier before husband quit his job and is now with me all the time. My time is no longer my own - similar to him sitting in the way of doing the laundry on Wednesday nights. I may plan to do one thing - but he needs help warping his loom. I plan to do things during the afternoon - not even house related - and he has other plans. Today the eyeglasses he ordered came in, so everything I hoped to do was gone. We drove 45 minutes to Walmart in the next county (the only one with a vision department around here) plus the time there and then the drive back - and while driving home I remembered we needed to buy milk at Walmart and had to stop at another one and buy it.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
Are there automatic reminders which you can tie your house chores to?
When we lived an apartment chores were a lot easier. My husband would come home exhausted at the end of the week and go to bed early on Friday nights - very early - so I would clean the apartment while he was sleeping. I changed the bedding on the weekend. At first when the laundry bag filled up - about once a week to a week and a half - I went to the laundry up and across the street and wasted time doing the laundry - it came home in the same bag which also was washed. Then someone left a lipstick in the washing machine there - the washing machine I put all our clothes, towels, and bed linens in. Most of it had to be thrown out. Even then we were “odd sized” and had trouble replacing the clothes - plus the expense of replacing same and the rest. So we looked around and bought a very small washer and a very small dryer - really small. This turned laundry into an ongoing process most of the week. On Monday I would put the first load in the washer - a week of our shirts was all it was hold in one load. The dryer was about the same and did not have an exhaust hose, it exhausted the hot air into the adjacent air in the apartment and it took about twice as long as drying a full load of clothes does now. So this was a laborious process for most of the week - and very hot in summer with the air from the dryer heating the apartment beyond the summer heat, even with an air conditioner running.
When we moved to the house I needed to find ways to remember and “force myself” to do the household chores. I found it helpful to associate the chores to things to remind me. We have garbage pickup on Monday and Thursday - so, I started changing the towels on the same days - new towels went out on Mondays and Thursdays. Eventually I decided that I needed to change the kitchen towels more often and they became Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays, while bathroom towels stayed the same. (Shower towels are taken out when they will be used and used once.) Works well.
I used to change the bedding on Mondays as it was a new workweek. This worked okay until we started traveling for weekends more often as we often stayed away through Mondays. Since then Tuesdays is the day I change the bedding - unless there is a reason to do it on another day.
I started doing the laundry on Wednesday nights. Why? If we were going to take a weekend trip it definitely would not be while we were away and we would have clean and folded clothes for a trip leaving on Friday. I used to do the entire washing and drying on Wednesday nights, then husband started watching TV in the kitchen and blocking the basement door, so I could not conveniently do the laundry while he was sitting there and had to wait for him to go upstairs to his computer, so I ended up splitting the laundry between Wednesday and Thursday nights - and folding them Thursday and Friday mornings. Yes, “West Wing” changed my laundry schedule. :-)
Even this blog is tied to something, it is written on Wednesday night and posted late on same - or technically early on Thursday - as I do the laundry at the same time.
Actually cleaning and dealing with the house was easier before husband quit his job and is now with me all the time. My time is no longer my own - similar to him sitting in the way of doing the laundry on Wednesday nights. I may plan to do one thing - but he needs help warping his loom. I plan to do things during the afternoon - not even house related - and he has other plans. Today the eyeglasses he ordered came in, so everything I hoped to do was gone. We drove 45 minutes to Walmart in the next county (the only one with a vision department around here) plus the time there and then the drive back - and while driving home I remembered we needed to buy milk at Walmart and had to stop at another one and buy it.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
Are there automatic reminders which you can tie your house chores to?
Thursday, December 29, 2016
CHRISTMAS FOLLOWUP AND NEW YEAR'S TO COME
Well, Christmas is over. Did you have a good Christmas? I will tell you about ours in a little while.
Did you find all the gifts you had bought to give to people? I admit it, once when my youngest sister was young (she is 12 years younger than me) my husband and I forgot to bring her gift when we got together with my family for Chanukah - terribly embarrassing and of course we had to get the gift and bring it to her later that week.
I finished decorating our two main trees on Thursday. I did the rest of the decorating, including a small tree with the brass ornaments we have received as contributors to Colonial Williamsburg over the past few decades - they were taking up too much room on the main tree, we have 2 duplicate ornaments and put one set of them on the main tree and the rest on a small tree in our dining room.
Friday afternoon I also went to wrap the gifts. Since we bought few gifts this should be a fairly quick process. When I can I put our gifts to ourselves into recycled small Christmas gift shopping bags (the bags were received with gifts from others in the old days when we traded gifts with others). I thought I had plenty of Christmas wrapping paper as I had not made any notes under “Christmas” in my “buy” shopping list in my cell phone. Oh no! Just a bit left on one roll. I had plan to wrap our gifts as husband was busy upstairs and I could wrap the gift I had for him that he did not know about without him seeing it. Plans changed due to the shortage of wrapping paper. It was more important to nicely wrap his niece’s gifts. I laid out the Barbie for one and DVD set for the other on the paper and cut the paper and wrapped the gifts. I then needed paper to wrap the scarves husband had made them, which I then planned to put into two of the recycled bags. I laid out the rolled up scarves and cut a large enough piece to go around the larger scarf, which was, of course the thicker of the two rolls. Luckily, there was plenty to wrap both scarves. I then went up to talk to husband about the exact wrapping and including a photo with each of the scarf while it was being made. He got all excited as he was not ready to wrap the scarves and had to print laundry instructions for them. I told him to calm down and not rush - but of course he did. While he was doing so I went back down and wrapped in the paper which was left, two of his gifts and used small pieces of the wrapping paper which had been left over in the past to wrap a couple of pieces which I planned to put in his stocking. The other items, which were small enough, I put into other of gift bags. I put all 4 of my 4/$1 hair clips in one bag for me. He came down and we wrapped his nieces gifts. His gifts and my one gift when into 2 regular paper shopping bags (mixed, I did not take a bag just for my bag of hair clips) and the 4 gifts for his nieces into another paper shopping bag. Did not want to chance forgetting a gift for a niece as I did with my sister decades ago. The bags were set aside in the dining room out of the way.
Saturday afternoon I got ready for Christmas Eve dinner. I put the ham in the oven and careful read the directions for the other items I was making 3 hours before we planned to eat.
I then took out the ornament I had embroidered for my husband. I was unhappy with it when it was assembled and decided it needed a decorative edging. I sat and braided red pearl cotton (a type of thread). I then stitched the braid around the front edge of the ornament - made it much better looking. I then wrapped it in tissue paper, having run out of wrapping paper, and added it to the bags of husband’s gifts. I then returned to my cooking.
One of the things I was making as a side dish is something called dried corn. This is a Pennsylvania food. Corn is dried by heat for storage. When it is cooked it is soaked to bring it back. In the past we had bought the canned - ready to heat and eat - version. The one company that makes this item had shut down several years ago and finally someone had bought up the business and was making it again. When we were in the Lancaster, PA area we had bought the canned version and also a version in a package. We have made the canned version and it was not what it used to be. For Christmas we decided to make the packaged version. This version is just the dried corn itself, so it has to be soaked for use. I had misread the package and had thought it would be soaking and cooking for an hour and then another 5 minutes after adding milk - oops, it was to soak for an hour and then cook for 40 minutes plus the 5 minutes after adding milk. Luckily I caught it in time - and hour and 45 minutes would be just about 15 minutes longer than when we would sit down and we were having soup first. It came out pretty close to what we had before.
We had meat tortellini in chicken broth for the soup. Not much involved in cooking same, boil the tortellini, add to the chicken broth when same almost heated.
We had also bought a box of potatoes au gratin. I had never made this before. I waited until the ham came out as I wanted the ham to set a bit before slicing and eating and the potatoes needed a temperature 25F degrees higher than the ham. I of course checked the ham with a meat thermometer to make sure it was cooked through. I followed the instructions for the potatoes. I took out the size baking dish needed and added the cheese mix plus butter and milk as it said. I then was to mix with a whisk - uhhh, the size baking dish it called for was completely filled and any mixing would make it run over, so I had to take it out of the baking dish, mix it and then put it back in. I careful added the dried potatoes to make sure I did not run the cheese mixture out of the baking dish. The box said that the sauce would thicken as it cooked, not really. I cooked it almost double the time with no luck - and I have a fairly quick oven and the oven had been well preheated by the ham cooking in it. We had it anyway.
Dinner in the dining room with tablecloth and cloth napkins and the good china and silverware. 3 hours of cooking 45 minutes of eating and then the clean up has to be done. I had looked up in advance the times for mass. Several years ago midnight mass was moved to 10 or 11 pm at most of the churches around here. We found one that still has it at midnight and it is a pleasant church with nicer people than the others. When I checked the times I found out that there was a midnight mass and also a 10 pm mass. Husband decided we should go to the 10 pm mass. (His choice as it is his holiday.) Clean up had to wait until we returned.
When it was time for bed husband went up and - spoiler alert - “Santa” put our gifts under the tree from the bags in the dining room. So Christmas Eve had gone fairly well.
We go to a family member of husband’s on Christmas Day. We got there and gave the nieces their gifts - which were lost in the numerous and huge gifts from Santa and other relatives. Then the host started in on the subject which polite people have been avoiding discussing, especially when they are the host and they know that their guests disagree with them - the election. Husband got so ill over this discussion that we had to go home and he had to go to bed. Short Christmas Day.
We are now awaiting New Years. I am getting ready for the change. I have made up a list of the todo’s and appointment reminders I need to put into my computer organizer for 2017. I have some entries which are annual ones and are already in the softwear data through 2020, but the daily, weekly, monthly and so on entries I put in each year as they might change and to keep the file smaller. On January 1 or 2 I will back up the file for my archive as 2015-2016. I will then delete the 2015 entries. I will then add the 2017 entries and I will be ready to go for the new year - and still have this year for reference if needed. I keep 2 years current each time and back up 2 years each time. This has worked great for me since the early 2000's.
We have renewed all our prescriptions so as we start the new medical insurance year, we know that we have a start on it and won’t have to worry about any changes not made in the insurance company’s systems for prescriptions delaying us from a needed renewal.
We don’t have plans for New Year’s Eve yet. Husband is thinking of finding out if the movie theater we go to will be open then. Normally we do not do much. We watch the ball fall here in Manhattan on TV. No, we have never gone. It is too big a crowd for us to be happy with in so many ways.
When I was a girl New Year’s Eve was confusing to me. I could not understand why it was a bigger deal than the change of any other month. I would be allowed to stay up until midnight. At that time “The Tonight Show” was done in New York City by Johnny Carson. On New Year’s Eve they would do the show live and cut away to the ball drop. I remember one year it was to be New Year’s Eve on Saturday and I was not sure if they would show the ball drop as the show was only on Monday to Friday. My parents, correctly, assure me that they would show it.
Since I am talking about New Year’s and this blog is, at least nominally, about organizing - the question of resolutions has to be mentioned. I found that I never kept any and felt bad about it. One year, some decade or so ago, I made my last resolution which was not to make any further resolutions. I do think over the past year and changes I might like to make or things I might like to do, but I do not make any resolutions - they just cause guilt when they are not kept.
Think of one thing you would like to change to make your life better or easier - and try to do it. Don’t resolve, just try.
I am going to try to do a better job of regular cleaning of the house. I used to be much better at doing so. When first married in and were in our apartment, husband would come Friday night and fall asleep early after dinner from the week. I was also working full time then outside the house. When he went to sleep I would clean the apartment. As we went along we bought the house and I stopped working outside the house and moved the accounting practice I had taken over from my dad into the house and was therefore in the house more, I started doing the cleaning on Wednesday mornings. When he left work, I moved it to Wednesday nights. I am thinking Tuesday nights might be a better choice and will see about it. It is in my calender as a “todo” and I will schedule it for Tuesdays instead. I spread the chores over the month - one week upstairs, the next down, repeat.
My best wishes for a wonderful New Year for us all.
Click to go to the Where Did I Leave That? website - feel free to leave comments.
Did you find all the gifts you had bought to give to people? I admit it, once when my youngest sister was young (she is 12 years younger than me) my husband and I forgot to bring her gift when we got together with my family for Chanukah - terribly embarrassing and of course we had to get the gift and bring it to her later that week.
I finished decorating our two main trees on Thursday. I did the rest of the decorating, including a small tree with the brass ornaments we have received as contributors to Colonial Williamsburg over the past few decades - they were taking up too much room on the main tree, we have 2 duplicate ornaments and put one set of them on the main tree and the rest on a small tree in our dining room.
Friday afternoon I also went to wrap the gifts. Since we bought few gifts this should be a fairly quick process. When I can I put our gifts to ourselves into recycled small Christmas gift shopping bags (the bags were received with gifts from others in the old days when we traded gifts with others). I thought I had plenty of Christmas wrapping paper as I had not made any notes under “Christmas” in my “buy” shopping list in my cell phone. Oh no! Just a bit left on one roll. I had plan to wrap our gifts as husband was busy upstairs and I could wrap the gift I had for him that he did not know about without him seeing it. Plans changed due to the shortage of wrapping paper. It was more important to nicely wrap his niece’s gifts. I laid out the Barbie for one and DVD set for the other on the paper and cut the paper and wrapped the gifts. I then needed paper to wrap the scarves husband had made them, which I then planned to put into two of the recycled bags. I laid out the rolled up scarves and cut a large enough piece to go around the larger scarf, which was, of course the thicker of the two rolls. Luckily, there was plenty to wrap both scarves. I then went up to talk to husband about the exact wrapping and including a photo with each of the scarf while it was being made. He got all excited as he was not ready to wrap the scarves and had to print laundry instructions for them. I told him to calm down and not rush - but of course he did. While he was doing so I went back down and wrapped in the paper which was left, two of his gifts and used small pieces of the wrapping paper which had been left over in the past to wrap a couple of pieces which I planned to put in his stocking. The other items, which were small enough, I put into other of gift bags. I put all 4 of my 4/$1 hair clips in one bag for me. He came down and we wrapped his nieces gifts. His gifts and my one gift when into 2 regular paper shopping bags (mixed, I did not take a bag just for my bag of hair clips) and the 4 gifts for his nieces into another paper shopping bag. Did not want to chance forgetting a gift for a niece as I did with my sister decades ago. The bags were set aside in the dining room out of the way.
Saturday afternoon I got ready for Christmas Eve dinner. I put the ham in the oven and careful read the directions for the other items I was making 3 hours before we planned to eat.
I then took out the ornament I had embroidered for my husband. I was unhappy with it when it was assembled and decided it needed a decorative edging. I sat and braided red pearl cotton (a type of thread). I then stitched the braid around the front edge of the ornament - made it much better looking. I then wrapped it in tissue paper, having run out of wrapping paper, and added it to the bags of husband’s gifts. I then returned to my cooking.
One of the things I was making as a side dish is something called dried corn. This is a Pennsylvania food. Corn is dried by heat for storage. When it is cooked it is soaked to bring it back. In the past we had bought the canned - ready to heat and eat - version. The one company that makes this item had shut down several years ago and finally someone had bought up the business and was making it again. When we were in the Lancaster, PA area we had bought the canned version and also a version in a package. We have made the canned version and it was not what it used to be. For Christmas we decided to make the packaged version. This version is just the dried corn itself, so it has to be soaked for use. I had misread the package and had thought it would be soaking and cooking for an hour and then another 5 minutes after adding milk - oops, it was to soak for an hour and then cook for 40 minutes plus the 5 minutes after adding milk. Luckily I caught it in time - and hour and 45 minutes would be just about 15 minutes longer than when we would sit down and we were having soup first. It came out pretty close to what we had before.
We had meat tortellini in chicken broth for the soup. Not much involved in cooking same, boil the tortellini, add to the chicken broth when same almost heated.
We had also bought a box of potatoes au gratin. I had never made this before. I waited until the ham came out as I wanted the ham to set a bit before slicing and eating and the potatoes needed a temperature 25F degrees higher than the ham. I of course checked the ham with a meat thermometer to make sure it was cooked through. I followed the instructions for the potatoes. I took out the size baking dish needed and added the cheese mix plus butter and milk as it said. I then was to mix with a whisk - uhhh, the size baking dish it called for was completely filled and any mixing would make it run over, so I had to take it out of the baking dish, mix it and then put it back in. I careful added the dried potatoes to make sure I did not run the cheese mixture out of the baking dish. The box said that the sauce would thicken as it cooked, not really. I cooked it almost double the time with no luck - and I have a fairly quick oven and the oven had been well preheated by the ham cooking in it. We had it anyway.
Dinner in the dining room with tablecloth and cloth napkins and the good china and silverware. 3 hours of cooking 45 minutes of eating and then the clean up has to be done. I had looked up in advance the times for mass. Several years ago midnight mass was moved to 10 or 11 pm at most of the churches around here. We found one that still has it at midnight and it is a pleasant church with nicer people than the others. When I checked the times I found out that there was a midnight mass and also a 10 pm mass. Husband decided we should go to the 10 pm mass. (His choice as it is his holiday.) Clean up had to wait until we returned.
When it was time for bed husband went up and - spoiler alert - “Santa” put our gifts under the tree from the bags in the dining room. So Christmas Eve had gone fairly well.
We go to a family member of husband’s on Christmas Day. We got there and gave the nieces their gifts - which were lost in the numerous and huge gifts from Santa and other relatives. Then the host started in on the subject which polite people have been avoiding discussing, especially when they are the host and they know that their guests disagree with them - the election. Husband got so ill over this discussion that we had to go home and he had to go to bed. Short Christmas Day.
We are now awaiting New Years. I am getting ready for the change. I have made up a list of the todo’s and appointment reminders I need to put into my computer organizer for 2017. I have some entries which are annual ones and are already in the softwear data through 2020, but the daily, weekly, monthly and so on entries I put in each year as they might change and to keep the file smaller. On January 1 or 2 I will back up the file for my archive as 2015-2016. I will then delete the 2015 entries. I will then add the 2017 entries and I will be ready to go for the new year - and still have this year for reference if needed. I keep 2 years current each time and back up 2 years each time. This has worked great for me since the early 2000's.
We have renewed all our prescriptions so as we start the new medical insurance year, we know that we have a start on it and won’t have to worry about any changes not made in the insurance company’s systems for prescriptions delaying us from a needed renewal.
We don’t have plans for New Year’s Eve yet. Husband is thinking of finding out if the movie theater we go to will be open then. Normally we do not do much. We watch the ball fall here in Manhattan on TV. No, we have never gone. It is too big a crowd for us to be happy with in so many ways.
When I was a girl New Year’s Eve was confusing to me. I could not understand why it was a bigger deal than the change of any other month. I would be allowed to stay up until midnight. At that time “The Tonight Show” was done in New York City by Johnny Carson. On New Year’s Eve they would do the show live and cut away to the ball drop. I remember one year it was to be New Year’s Eve on Saturday and I was not sure if they would show the ball drop as the show was only on Monday to Friday. My parents, correctly, assure me that they would show it.
Since I am talking about New Year’s and this blog is, at least nominally, about organizing - the question of resolutions has to be mentioned. I found that I never kept any and felt bad about it. One year, some decade or so ago, I made my last resolution which was not to make any further resolutions. I do think over the past year and changes I might like to make or things I might like to do, but I do not make any resolutions - they just cause guilt when they are not kept.
Think of one thing you would like to change to make your life better or easier - and try to do it. Don’t resolve, just try.
I am going to try to do a better job of regular cleaning of the house. I used to be much better at doing so. When first married in and were in our apartment, husband would come Friday night and fall asleep early after dinner from the week. I was also working full time then outside the house. When he went to sleep I would clean the apartment. As we went along we bought the house and I stopped working outside the house and moved the accounting practice I had taken over from my dad into the house and was therefore in the house more, I started doing the cleaning on Wednesday mornings. When he left work, I moved it to Wednesday nights. I am thinking Tuesday nights might be a better choice and will see about it. It is in my calender as a “todo” and I will schedule it for Tuesdays instead. I spread the chores over the month - one week upstairs, the next down, repeat.
My best wishes for a wonderful New Year for us all.
Click to go to the Where Did I Leave That? website - feel free to leave comments.
Thursday, September 29, 2016
REMINDERS
I have been having another computer (sort of) problem and it gave me the idea for this column - reminders.
Among the problems I have is that I lose track of time and/or forget I have to do something. I have found that reminders work great to deal with this. It can also remind one to do something that one does not really want to do and tries to ignore.
I use my cell phone and my computer for reminders. My husband had the wonderfulness known as a Palm Pilot. Perhaps you remember them. He could enter information into a calendar, a to do list, an address book, or a memo list in his Pilot and sync it with the calendar from Palm (or some other ones also if he preferred) and the same information was on the Pilot and on his computer. I had liked the idea of a calendar on my computer, but since I don’t keep it on all the time it was inconvenient to use as I had to turn the computer on, so I did not keep my calendar on my computer. He lent me his Pilot to see if it made if it made using a computer calendar convenient for me. I used to be on the road locally and I was using a calendar book, which I could carry in my brief case, to keep track of my appointments. I also recorded what I did in it - for work especially. The Pilot was to replace it. If I liked it we would buy me one also.
Well, I did like it. Instead of buying one, however, he told me to keep his. At work his secretary kept track of his appointments and at home I did, so he had found he had not needed it while I was using it. We found a nice program to use with it (instead of the one which came with it) and I was happy. It would go to work with me in my brief case. If I was going someplace that I might need to make an appointment or otherwise see if I would be free on a certain date, I would bring it with me in my tee shirt pocket. Then horrors, of horrors, Windows updated to Windows XP. The calendar program I was using only worked through Windows Millennium. I switched computers with husband when I needed a new one as his ran on same and that gave me some more years, but then I had to give in and upgrade to XP. Luckily I had received for one of my laptops a program I had never used - Lotus Organizer. I tried that and it was even better than what I had before and worked with the Pilot. Problem solved.
When we had to update our cell phones we got Palm Centros. They also synced with the Organizer program, were smaller than the Pilot, and since I did not have to carry a separate cell phone - it fit in my pocket! This worked terrifically for me until husband decided to get one of the “new” Android phones and I had to get a new cell phone when we split our plans. He did some research and found out that the Blackberry Centro - new at that time - could be made to work with the Organizer with old Blackberry software. I was back in business. Next problem was the upgrade to Windows 7 - but husband managed to get the Organizer work with it also. The Blackberry won’t work with the Organizer to do list, but since most of my to dos are in the house, I use the Centro for same, using it as a PDA and for its games. I keep both the phones synced to the Organizer program and if I have to dos outside the house I put them in the calendar section so they sync to the Blackberry calendar.
So, what does this boring recitals of cell phones, Windows versions, and computer calendars have to do with real organizing? I use the setup to remind me of what I have to do from day to day. How?
First, there is the obvious. I put any appointments I make into the calendar section. Doctor appointment? It’s in there and I can set a reminder to remind me in advance - weeks, days, hours, minutes before - of the appointment. A regular monthly club meeting - I put them all in at once using the repeat feature. Holidays? I have the ones which occur on the same date every year (Christmas, New Year’s Day, etc.) set up to repeat annually, automatically. Holidays which are on a certain day (3rd Monday of February for example) I also set up to repeat annually, also automatically. The reason I love the Organizer (unfortunately no longer available as it is a “dead” program - but there are alternatives) is the variety of ways it allows the appointments (and to dos) to be entered and repeated. (I could even repeat something every 13 days, for example, or every 3rd Tuesday, or every 5 months, or every 3rd year.) Holidays that vary around (such as Easter) I will go in and set by hand for 5 years and then do so again towards the end of the 5 years. Birthdays, anniversaries can be set in to repeat year to year. Children’s dance classes, little league, religious classes, etc. can be in the calendar to remind you.
If we are going on a trip I enter the hotels, or more recently the campgrounds, into the calendar section. For example I enter “John Hancock hotel, 4 nights, reservation number 345678A, $95 a night” on each night that we will be staying at the hotel. Now, this tells me where we and when we will be sleeping, but can be confusing as we don’t always sleep where we are going and it is off from the days as it shows the nights at the hotel. So I also enter, separately what we plan to do, in a general sense. For the above it was a complete trip, for example, the first day would say “drive to Boston” - this would match the first night at the hotel as we would be staying there after driving to Boston. The next 3 days would say “Boston” as that is where we plan to go, Boston and the surrounding area - these days match the remaining 3 nights of our stay. Now the last day - which does not list a hotel for the night - we are still in Boston, but will be driving home and there is no hotel for the night and I will enter “drive home from Boston”. So now I have a record of where we are staying and when - and all the reservation details, as well as what we plan to do each day. If I want to keep a record of what we did each day, I make a to do (or memo, this is called different things by different programs) and list what I want a record of having done.
Second, I use the to dos (memos) to keep track of what has to be done. Huh? Well, every day at 6:45 pm a reminder rings in my PDA to remind me to stop doing what I am doing (I am generally on the computer or otherwise working in our office), backup the computer data, sync the phones and the computer, as it will soon be time to make dinner. I have a weekly reminder to write my entry for this blog on Tuesday nights and another - also weekly - to remind me to post it on Wednesday night. And, yes, just like the clock we all set in the morning, it is not uncommon for me to reset the alarm on the to do to finish what I am doing at the computer or to write the blog on Wednesday if I can’t do it on Tuesday.
A reminder can be set for any reason - husband does not like cold ketchup; on Thursday afternoons I have a reminder to take out chopped turkey to defrost and the ketchup to warm up. I have reminders to do the laundry on Wednesday and Thursday nights, I have reminders to check my email once a day (I do not check it again unless I did not receive an email I expected to receive or I sent one out and expect a reply. My email does not come in automatically when it arrives. This lets me not get stuck constantly dealing with email.) I have reminders to change the towels in the house (twice a week in the bathrooms, three times a week in the kitchen) and to change the bedding once a week. Being a crazy accountant, I have things I do at the end of the month to sort of close out one month and start another - reminder for each.
I also have standard times to set reminders on an ongoing basis. I put in a reminder to make telephone calls at 1:30 pm. I put in a reminder for things to do in the late evening after dinner at 11 pm (we stay up late) and so on.
I enjoy doing embroidery, but never seemed to get a chance to stitch on whatever (and there are always several) piece I am working on. I have a Thursday night “to do” which sets aside the time for me to stitch then.
Now, things which I will do while at the computer and while looking at the Organizer calendar, I do not necessarily set up with an alarm to remind me. When I go to our office (also known as the second bedroom, lest you envision a huge business office) I turn on my computer, sync the 2 phones with Organizer (one at a time, first the Curve and then the Centro) and open Organizer. I will first make any adjustments needed due to the syncing - I check off finished to dos for example. I then look at the page, the same as one would look at any paper appointment book, and I see what I have to do and any appointments. (Important appointments, such as doctors, will have an alarm a few days before, reset as we go closer to the appointment.) I then know what needs to be done - starting with checking my email. When I am finished at the end of the session, I back up my data, then the calendar data, and then sync again - again first the Curve and then the Centro. As soon as I leave my computer and make any changes they no longer agree among the three - Curve, Centro, and computer, which is why I sync them when I start so they will all have any changes made and then again when I leave - so they will all be the same going forward until a change is made.
Third, I also use the address books in the three and sync them together so they all have the same information in them. (My current problem is that the Centro has stopped syncing the address book. Based on syncing it with my laptop - something normally only done when on a trip - I find that it is a software problem in my desktop computer and I will need to delete and reinstall the syncing software.) Names, phone numbers, addresses, and email addresses. There is also a section to list other information - great for remembering the doctor’s nurse’s name when one goes in or the name of a business associates wife - and if it is in your cell phone - you know you will always have it with you. A campground we go to frequently has notes on which spaces we like and which we do not.
Lastly, all 3 have a memo section. What is this? Just for notes you need to make and have. A shopping list. The sizes that one needs for Christmas shopping. Which sewing machine one has. Which books on certain subject one has (stops one from buying a duplicate). Notes made while someplace on how to do something. I have a memo with a listing by state and main road of where there are places we have found to eat while in transit - due to the RV needing a bit more space in a parking lot I also note if there is a problem (“small parking lot”). I list the exit from the road. Much cheaper (if one is not on a toll road) than eating at truck stops along the way. So basically, a memo section can hold anything - no alarms though.
Okay you are thinking, but unlike this crazy person who uses old stuff, I have an android or an Iphone and the software she mentioned no longer exists - what do I do? Well, first every cell phone has an address book of some type, so that is easy to use. I asked my husband and he told me that there is a calender in android phones and in Iphones (and I think I had one in my old flip phone) so that is available for you to use. If there is no software for a calender or to dos or memos - there are apps. I understand that Google has a calender and one can set it up to sync with an android or Iphone and then the info will be on your computer and on your phone. Even better than just a sound alarm - you can have Siri or Cortana remind you of your appointments and things to do. Even setting an alarm clock can help remind you to do something.
Now, I know I get carried away with my reminders - but your cell phone can be a very useful tool to help you stay on track with what you have to or want to get done. Want to sort stuff in the back room where it all just seems to have piled up? Set a reminder to go in there and work for 10 minutes a day - or once a week - or in between - or less often. If you have to return books to the library and you know you will forget in the morning - stick them in a bag and hang it on the door you will leave by - or the closet door (clothing or coat) - or on the kitchen table. All sorts of reminders work and really help.
How do you remind yourself what to do and when to do it
Among the problems I have is that I lose track of time and/or forget I have to do something. I have found that reminders work great to deal with this. It can also remind one to do something that one does not really want to do and tries to ignore.
I use my cell phone and my computer for reminders. My husband had the wonderfulness known as a Palm Pilot. Perhaps you remember them. He could enter information into a calendar, a to do list, an address book, or a memo list in his Pilot and sync it with the calendar from Palm (or some other ones also if he preferred) and the same information was on the Pilot and on his computer. I had liked the idea of a calendar on my computer, but since I don’t keep it on all the time it was inconvenient to use as I had to turn the computer on, so I did not keep my calendar on my computer. He lent me his Pilot to see if it made if it made using a computer calendar convenient for me. I used to be on the road locally and I was using a calendar book, which I could carry in my brief case, to keep track of my appointments. I also recorded what I did in it - for work especially. The Pilot was to replace it. If I liked it we would buy me one also.
Well, I did like it. Instead of buying one, however, he told me to keep his. At work his secretary kept track of his appointments and at home I did, so he had found he had not needed it while I was using it. We found a nice program to use with it (instead of the one which came with it) and I was happy. It would go to work with me in my brief case. If I was going someplace that I might need to make an appointment or otherwise see if I would be free on a certain date, I would bring it with me in my tee shirt pocket. Then horrors, of horrors, Windows updated to Windows XP. The calendar program I was using only worked through Windows Millennium. I switched computers with husband when I needed a new one as his ran on same and that gave me some more years, but then I had to give in and upgrade to XP. Luckily I had received for one of my laptops a program I had never used - Lotus Organizer. I tried that and it was even better than what I had before and worked with the Pilot. Problem solved.
When we had to update our cell phones we got Palm Centros. They also synced with the Organizer program, were smaller than the Pilot, and since I did not have to carry a separate cell phone - it fit in my pocket! This worked terrifically for me until husband decided to get one of the “new” Android phones and I had to get a new cell phone when we split our plans. He did some research and found out that the Blackberry Centro - new at that time - could be made to work with the Organizer with old Blackberry software. I was back in business. Next problem was the upgrade to Windows 7 - but husband managed to get the Organizer work with it also. The Blackberry won’t work with the Organizer to do list, but since most of my to dos are in the house, I use the Centro for same, using it as a PDA and for its games. I keep both the phones synced to the Organizer program and if I have to dos outside the house I put them in the calendar section so they sync to the Blackberry calendar.
So, what does this boring recitals of cell phones, Windows versions, and computer calendars have to do with real organizing? I use the setup to remind me of what I have to do from day to day. How?
First, there is the obvious. I put any appointments I make into the calendar section. Doctor appointment? It’s in there and I can set a reminder to remind me in advance - weeks, days, hours, minutes before - of the appointment. A regular monthly club meeting - I put them all in at once using the repeat feature. Holidays? I have the ones which occur on the same date every year (Christmas, New Year’s Day, etc.) set up to repeat annually, automatically. Holidays which are on a certain day (3rd Monday of February for example) I also set up to repeat annually, also automatically. The reason I love the Organizer (unfortunately no longer available as it is a “dead” program - but there are alternatives) is the variety of ways it allows the appointments (and to dos) to be entered and repeated. (I could even repeat something every 13 days, for example, or every 3rd Tuesday, or every 5 months, or every 3rd year.) Holidays that vary around (such as Easter) I will go in and set by hand for 5 years and then do so again towards the end of the 5 years. Birthdays, anniversaries can be set in to repeat year to year. Children’s dance classes, little league, religious classes, etc. can be in the calendar to remind you.
If we are going on a trip I enter the hotels, or more recently the campgrounds, into the calendar section. For example I enter “John Hancock hotel, 4 nights, reservation number 345678A, $95 a night” on each night that we will be staying at the hotel. Now, this tells me where we and when we will be sleeping, but can be confusing as we don’t always sleep where we are going and it is off from the days as it shows the nights at the hotel. So I also enter, separately what we plan to do, in a general sense. For the above it was a complete trip, for example, the first day would say “drive to Boston” - this would match the first night at the hotel as we would be staying there after driving to Boston. The next 3 days would say “Boston” as that is where we plan to go, Boston and the surrounding area - these days match the remaining 3 nights of our stay. Now the last day - which does not list a hotel for the night - we are still in Boston, but will be driving home and there is no hotel for the night and I will enter “drive home from Boston”. So now I have a record of where we are staying and when - and all the reservation details, as well as what we plan to do each day. If I want to keep a record of what we did each day, I make a to do (or memo, this is called different things by different programs) and list what I want a record of having done.
Second, I use the to dos (memos) to keep track of what has to be done. Huh? Well, every day at 6:45 pm a reminder rings in my PDA to remind me to stop doing what I am doing (I am generally on the computer or otherwise working in our office), backup the computer data, sync the phones and the computer, as it will soon be time to make dinner. I have a weekly reminder to write my entry for this blog on Tuesday nights and another - also weekly - to remind me to post it on Wednesday night. And, yes, just like the clock we all set in the morning, it is not uncommon for me to reset the alarm on the to do to finish what I am doing at the computer or to write the blog on Wednesday if I can’t do it on Tuesday.
A reminder can be set for any reason - husband does not like cold ketchup; on Thursday afternoons I have a reminder to take out chopped turkey to defrost and the ketchup to warm up. I have reminders to do the laundry on Wednesday and Thursday nights, I have reminders to check my email once a day (I do not check it again unless I did not receive an email I expected to receive or I sent one out and expect a reply. My email does not come in automatically when it arrives. This lets me not get stuck constantly dealing with email.) I have reminders to change the towels in the house (twice a week in the bathrooms, three times a week in the kitchen) and to change the bedding once a week. Being a crazy accountant, I have things I do at the end of the month to sort of close out one month and start another - reminder for each.
I also have standard times to set reminders on an ongoing basis. I put in a reminder to make telephone calls at 1:30 pm. I put in a reminder for things to do in the late evening after dinner at 11 pm (we stay up late) and so on.
I enjoy doing embroidery, but never seemed to get a chance to stitch on whatever (and there are always several) piece I am working on. I have a Thursday night “to do” which sets aside the time for me to stitch then.
Now, things which I will do while at the computer and while looking at the Organizer calendar, I do not necessarily set up with an alarm to remind me. When I go to our office (also known as the second bedroom, lest you envision a huge business office) I turn on my computer, sync the 2 phones with Organizer (one at a time, first the Curve and then the Centro) and open Organizer. I will first make any adjustments needed due to the syncing - I check off finished to dos for example. I then look at the page, the same as one would look at any paper appointment book, and I see what I have to do and any appointments. (Important appointments, such as doctors, will have an alarm a few days before, reset as we go closer to the appointment.) I then know what needs to be done - starting with checking my email. When I am finished at the end of the session, I back up my data, then the calendar data, and then sync again - again first the Curve and then the Centro. As soon as I leave my computer and make any changes they no longer agree among the three - Curve, Centro, and computer, which is why I sync them when I start so they will all have any changes made and then again when I leave - so they will all be the same going forward until a change is made.
Third, I also use the address books in the three and sync them together so they all have the same information in them. (My current problem is that the Centro has stopped syncing the address book. Based on syncing it with my laptop - something normally only done when on a trip - I find that it is a software problem in my desktop computer and I will need to delete and reinstall the syncing software.) Names, phone numbers, addresses, and email addresses. There is also a section to list other information - great for remembering the doctor’s nurse’s name when one goes in or the name of a business associates wife - and if it is in your cell phone - you know you will always have it with you. A campground we go to frequently has notes on which spaces we like and which we do not.
Lastly, all 3 have a memo section. What is this? Just for notes you need to make and have. A shopping list. The sizes that one needs for Christmas shopping. Which sewing machine one has. Which books on certain subject one has (stops one from buying a duplicate). Notes made while someplace on how to do something. I have a memo with a listing by state and main road of where there are places we have found to eat while in transit - due to the RV needing a bit more space in a parking lot I also note if there is a problem (“small parking lot”). I list the exit from the road. Much cheaper (if one is not on a toll road) than eating at truck stops along the way. So basically, a memo section can hold anything - no alarms though.
Okay you are thinking, but unlike this crazy person who uses old stuff, I have an android or an Iphone and the software she mentioned no longer exists - what do I do? Well, first every cell phone has an address book of some type, so that is easy to use. I asked my husband and he told me that there is a calender in android phones and in Iphones (and I think I had one in my old flip phone) so that is available for you to use. If there is no software for a calender or to dos or memos - there are apps. I understand that Google has a calender and one can set it up to sync with an android or Iphone and then the info will be on your computer and on your phone. Even better than just a sound alarm - you can have Siri or Cortana remind you of your appointments and things to do. Even setting an alarm clock can help remind you to do something.
Now, I know I get carried away with my reminders - but your cell phone can be a very useful tool to help you stay on track with what you have to or want to get done. Want to sort stuff in the back room where it all just seems to have piled up? Set a reminder to go in there and work for 10 minutes a day - or once a week - or in between - or less often. If you have to return books to the library and you know you will forget in the morning - stick them in a bag and hang it on the door you will leave by - or the closet door (clothing or coat) - or on the kitchen table. All sorts of reminders work and really help.
How do you remind yourself what to do and when to do it
Thursday, December 31, 2015
NEW START FOR THE NEW YEAR
The last post before I return to the kitchen next week/year.
As the new year comes and the old one goes it is time to let go of what was not done in the past year. Forget about tasks never done - let your negative thoughts from the past go. The new year coming is a clean slate - remember your new notebooks the first day of school, clean and waiting to be written in? The change of the year is the same thing.
Several years ago I made a resolution for the new year and I have kept it ever since - I resolved not to make any more resolutions. A resolution is a good intention which is generally too vague to be kept. Once resolutions are made and then broken one feels bad and shortly into the new year one is again thinking negative thoughts, when positive thoughts are much healthier and better to help one do what needs to be done.
Instead of resolving to be more organized, get rid of clutter, etc. pick a task to start doing - it does not have to be a large one, just something that you feel you can actually do. Perhaps to deal with the mail as it comes in. Perhaps to always do the dishes before going to bed. To put your clothes out to wear the next day before you go to bed. Pick something that you feel you can do which is a single step towards dealing with your clutter and disorganization. Even getting and keeping a calendar - paper or online (one which can be synced with your cell phone is even better) is a step. We try to do too many things at once. One step at a time is a good idea. Plan what you will do to deal with your choice during the year. Any positive change is good. In the same way we walk one step at a time, one can deal with their clutter and disorganization problems one step at a time.
For years, for example, I wanted a blog. I would start one, post once, and then never post again. When I decided to start this blog, I prewrote four posts, this way I would avoid the problem of never writing a second one. I have a recurring entry in my computer/cell calendar to ring and remind me on Tuesday nights to write new posts (right now I am going week to week, but hope to go back to writing in advance) and another to remind me weekly to post overnight Wednesday to Thursday. I have managed to post weekly for 3 months now and will continue to do so.
So pick something and do it in the coming year. Once you are comfortable with the one change you can pick another one.
Oh, and remember perfection is not required. I still have, on December 29, Christmas decorations to finish putting out. If I was a perfect person I would have gone crazy when I was not finished by Christmas Eve, but I am not. As long as I see the decorations out during the holiday season, it is fine with me (and my husband).
Happy New Year to all.
As the new year comes and the old one goes it is time to let go of what was not done in the past year. Forget about tasks never done - let your negative thoughts from the past go. The new year coming is a clean slate - remember your new notebooks the first day of school, clean and waiting to be written in? The change of the year is the same thing.
Several years ago I made a resolution for the new year and I have kept it ever since - I resolved not to make any more resolutions. A resolution is a good intention which is generally too vague to be kept. Once resolutions are made and then broken one feels bad and shortly into the new year one is again thinking negative thoughts, when positive thoughts are much healthier and better to help one do what needs to be done.
Instead of resolving to be more organized, get rid of clutter, etc. pick a task to start doing - it does not have to be a large one, just something that you feel you can actually do. Perhaps to deal with the mail as it comes in. Perhaps to always do the dishes before going to bed. To put your clothes out to wear the next day before you go to bed. Pick something that you feel you can do which is a single step towards dealing with your clutter and disorganization. Even getting and keeping a calendar - paper or online (one which can be synced with your cell phone is even better) is a step. We try to do too many things at once. One step at a time is a good idea. Plan what you will do to deal with your choice during the year. Any positive change is good. In the same way we walk one step at a time, one can deal with their clutter and disorganization problems one step at a time.
For years, for example, I wanted a blog. I would start one, post once, and then never post again. When I decided to start this blog, I prewrote four posts, this way I would avoid the problem of never writing a second one. I have a recurring entry in my computer/cell calendar to ring and remind me on Tuesday nights to write new posts (right now I am going week to week, but hope to go back to writing in advance) and another to remind me weekly to post overnight Wednesday to Thursday. I have managed to post weekly for 3 months now and will continue to do so.
So pick something and do it in the coming year. Once you are comfortable with the one change you can pick another one.
Oh, and remember perfection is not required. I still have, on December 29, Christmas decorations to finish putting out. If I was a perfect person I would have gone crazy when I was not finished by Christmas Eve, but I am not. As long as I see the decorations out during the holiday season, it is fine with me (and my husband).
Happy New Year to all.
Thursday, November 5, 2015
MANAGING MY TIME
While I can judge time fairly well when I am attentive to time passing, I tend to lose track of time when involved in something, as well as being a procrastinator. (Are you?) I have figured out ways to deal with this over the years.
I check my email once a day in the late afternoon. The exception to this rule is when I am expecting an email and it is not there or if I send out an email - new or as a reply - and expect an answer. I have several email accounts. Most of them start with my initials and then have something special to the reason for the account. I have a main account for my family and my accounting clients and my friends. I have one for each organization I belong to. I have one that I use for accounting for the various government notices I need to get. (Have I mentioned that I am an accountant, but not a CPA?) I have one that I use for my husband so we can send each other things. I have one for the crafts business my husband and I have. I also have one that is without one of my initials which can confuse people by sound, so I use this one if I have to give my email by telephone so there is no confusion. I also have an email for my online groups and such and one which I give to and contact stores and such with to keep same from my other email. Separately, as they are not technically my emails - I have one for a client who does not use a computer and has things which need to be done online that I do for her, and one each for 2 organizations I am involved in for the organizations themselves which I check for the group. Yes, that is a lot of emails. I use a software program which will check all of them at once. Any junk mail is deleted at once when I check my email. If I am traveling I will check email by going to the website of my email provider and I will only check the ones I need to check . Similarly using this system, if I have limited time I can just check the relevant email addresses and save time or just recheck the email addresses I am looking for an email from. So email time is fairly limited and organized.
I don’t have Facebook (which I have almost no presence on) or yahoo groups or other social media emailed to me. I go to the sites at my chosen times and check the sites then. This way I don’t find the entire afternoon was used up following something when I should have been doing something else. I like cartoons, for example, and read several strips online. I go Monday night and read the strips at their websites rather than receiving them daily which would waste needed time. Of course sometimes Monday is Tuesday if something is happening on Monday and I don’t have time or sometimes they continue into Tuesday, occasionally even Wednesday, if I run slow on reading them. But I choose the time I will spend online on all of this and when I will spend that time so that I do not lose my focus to do other things.
When I am working at tasks, such as my afternoons working on the computer, I often forget to check the time - yes, it is right in front of me on the computer, but I still forget. I also forget to do little things like make needed phone calls, take out chopped turkey to defrost for dinner as well as stuff I don’t want to do - the laundry, the garbage, etc. I use my computer and my cell phone to help me with this. I have a calendar program which syncs with my cell phone (more or less, but I will wax ecstatic over my software and how I juggle things to make it sync in some later post). I set reminders to remind me when it is time to do something. I have a reminder which goes off at 6:45 pm to remind me to start getting ready to shut down and go make dinner. I then back up what I have been working on and my calendar and sync my calendar with my cell, at least in theory. In real life, I usually reset the alarm for 7pm and then possibly even 7:15 pm. I have an alarm set to go off weekly on the day we usually have burgers for dinner to remind me to defrost the meat for same. I have a weekly reminder to do the laundry, one to take the garbage out, one to change the towels, one to change the bedding, etc. No, I don’t have alarms go off for everything just things which are time sensitive during the day. Something like “Laundry” it is enough it is listed for the day as I will see it and remember. One of my reminders, set for daily, is “Check blogsite” to see if any of you have left me comments which need to be moderated and, hopefully, posted (I really would like some more of these - feel free to comment), as well as one to remind me to post. Does everything get done because it is scheduled to be done - of course not. Sometimes it is done on a different day, sometimes I just delete the reminder as I have a reason for not doing whatever it is which is scheduled.
It is not a perfect system, but it helps remind me of what I have to do and prod me to do it. What do you do to keep on schedule and stop procrastinating?
I check my email once a day in the late afternoon. The exception to this rule is when I am expecting an email and it is not there or if I send out an email - new or as a reply - and expect an answer. I have several email accounts. Most of them start with my initials and then have something special to the reason for the account. I have a main account for my family and my accounting clients and my friends. I have one for each organization I belong to. I have one that I use for accounting for the various government notices I need to get. (Have I mentioned that I am an accountant, but not a CPA?) I have one that I use for my husband so we can send each other things. I have one for the crafts business my husband and I have. I also have one that is without one of my initials which can confuse people by sound, so I use this one if I have to give my email by telephone so there is no confusion. I also have an email for my online groups and such and one which I give to and contact stores and such with to keep same from my other email. Separately, as they are not technically my emails - I have one for a client who does not use a computer and has things which need to be done online that I do for her, and one each for 2 organizations I am involved in for the organizations themselves which I check for the group. Yes, that is a lot of emails. I use a software program which will check all of them at once. Any junk mail is deleted at once when I check my email. If I am traveling I will check email by going to the website of my email provider and I will only check the ones I need to check . Similarly using this system, if I have limited time I can just check the relevant email addresses and save time or just recheck the email addresses I am looking for an email from. So email time is fairly limited and organized.
I don’t have Facebook (which I have almost no presence on) or yahoo groups or other social media emailed to me. I go to the sites at my chosen times and check the sites then. This way I don’t find the entire afternoon was used up following something when I should have been doing something else. I like cartoons, for example, and read several strips online. I go Monday night and read the strips at their websites rather than receiving them daily which would waste needed time. Of course sometimes Monday is Tuesday if something is happening on Monday and I don’t have time or sometimes they continue into Tuesday, occasionally even Wednesday, if I run slow on reading them. But I choose the time I will spend online on all of this and when I will spend that time so that I do not lose my focus to do other things.
When I am working at tasks, such as my afternoons working on the computer, I often forget to check the time - yes, it is right in front of me on the computer, but I still forget. I also forget to do little things like make needed phone calls, take out chopped turkey to defrost for dinner as well as stuff I don’t want to do - the laundry, the garbage, etc. I use my computer and my cell phone to help me with this. I have a calendar program which syncs with my cell phone (more or less, but I will wax ecstatic over my software and how I juggle things to make it sync in some later post). I set reminders to remind me when it is time to do something. I have a reminder which goes off at 6:45 pm to remind me to start getting ready to shut down and go make dinner. I then back up what I have been working on and my calendar and sync my calendar with my cell, at least in theory. In real life, I usually reset the alarm for 7pm and then possibly even 7:15 pm. I have an alarm set to go off weekly on the day we usually have burgers for dinner to remind me to defrost the meat for same. I have a weekly reminder to do the laundry, one to take the garbage out, one to change the towels, one to change the bedding, etc. No, I don’t have alarms go off for everything just things which are time sensitive during the day. Something like “Laundry” it is enough it is listed for the day as I will see it and remember. One of my reminders, set for daily, is “Check blogsite” to see if any of you have left me comments which need to be moderated and, hopefully, posted (I really would like some more of these - feel free to comment), as well as one to remind me to post. Does everything get done because it is scheduled to be done - of course not. Sometimes it is done on a different day, sometimes I just delete the reminder as I have a reason for not doing whatever it is which is scheduled.
It is not a perfect system, but it helps remind me of what I have to do and prod me to do it. What do you do to keep on schedule and stop procrastinating?
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