On initial glance, it would not seem that importance and urgency are as diametrically opposed as big and small. However in daily living, decisions that are strong in one aspect seem to butt up against other decisions that are strong in the other aspect. The question that we should (but do not often enough) ask of ourselves is whether we are making choices that we are comfortable with. It is easy to answer choices on paper, but actual actions indicate our actual choices.

I doubt that there are many of us who would say that answering a phone call about work is more important than continuing a discussion with a friend. Nor would anyone say that clean dishes are more important than spending quality time with a child. But when we step back and evaluate it, it sure does seem like we make some decisions that we regret, doesn’t it?

Maybe it is time to let the house get a little bit dirty, let voicemail fulfill its intended purpose, be cured of our iPhone ADD, and put work away. Then it just might be easier to look back and be comfortable with what we have decided to do with our lives.

Equipment

• At least 1 deck of cards
• 2+ players
• 1 cup for each player

Gameplay
Deal all of the cards to each player (as in war). Players are not to look at their cards. Play occurs in rounds (“battles”) with each player revealing the top card in their pile. The highest card (ace is high) is the winner. All players with cards lower than the highest relinquish their card to the player with the highest card as well as drink an arbitrarily small amount of water (i.e., a sip). If the 2 players have equally high cards, they are now to engage in a “war” with each player placing their top 3 cards facedown and revealing the 4th card. This continues until one of the players engaged in the “war” has a higher card. The loser of the war must relinquish all cards as well as drink the rest of the water in their cup. Once a player has lost all of their cards, they are eliminated. Each loser must drink the number of cups of water relative to their standing (i.e., the first person eliminated with 6 players has a standing of 6th and will then drink 6 cups of water).

Alternate Versions:

• Winner must drink the water
• Use food instead of water

1. inconspicuous
2. cheap
3. slightly padded
4. water resistant

That seems like a pretty good list to me! But alas I knew that it could not last. Unfortunately, bags (from companies that market them as camera bags) are fairly overpriced. Okay they’re not terribly expensive compared to the actual camera, but I rather enjoyed some of the unique aspects of my FedEx bag. I wanted to keep most of its positive attributes without having to bear the shame of actually holding a FedEx bag all of the time. Here is my bag.

First I got:

1. a canvas bag from my local Army/Navy military surplus store, which was a lot less rugged than I would have imagined
2. craft foam and ripstop nylon fabric from JoAnn Fabric and Crafts (the higher quality foam that I wanted to buy online had an unfortunately prohibitive shipping cost that was higher than the foam itself)
3. cardboard from a shipping box that I already had
4. my sewing machine (which isn’t actually mine and which I had never used before this project)
5. velcro with adhesive backing (I already had this)

Raw goods after purchase

My idea was to create my own padded inserts to put into the canvas bag. I was going to use the craft foam as the filler, cardboard to stiffen the insert, and the nylon to wrap the whole deal. I made a number of inserts, and each of them had a similar method of creation.

I guess that I didn’t take any pictures of my initial steps, but all I did was measure and cut the desired size of foam, cardboard, and nylon. I cut enough nylon to wrap the foam and cardboard like a present.

Next I pinned the fabric according to how tight I wanted it to be around the foam. I generally was going for pretty tight because I thought that it would give it a more professional appearance. For the most part I think that was correct because I saw other examples of loosely wrapped inserts that people made online that did not look as nice.

Pinned fabric ready to be sewn

I inserted the foam and cardboard into the sewn nylon. This was actually one of the most difficult steps because the nylon was getting sewn with the intent of there being a tight fit. And a tight fit it was! I was able to eventually get all of them into their nylon sleeves, but some of them were quite difficult.

Foam going into the nylon

I then closed up the nylon and pinned it so that I could hand stitch it.

Pinned nylon ready for hand stitching

I used (or tried to use) a hidden stitch when I was hand stitching.

Hand sewn and completed foam insert

So I repeated that process a number of times so that I could have the appropriate number of bag inserts.

All of the completed inserts

My final step was to attach some velcro so that the pieces would hold their form. I’m still working on this step, though, because I have since found that the adhesive on the velcro is insufficient to keep the velcro on the nylon. I am pretty sure that using some kind of glue (maybe even fabric or super) will do the trick.

All of the materials completed!

Here's my camera bag

It’s fairly inconspicuous, modestly priced (total for everything is under $50 compared to over $100 for the bags that I wanted, and I have leftover material), padded, and now I have skills that I didn’t have before!

Inspiration came from:
Wired – How To Make A Stealth Camera Bag
Make Your Own Customized Camera Bag

I have been running barefoot for over 9 months now. I started off running a few blocks, and I have progressed to now run a few miles a couple of times each week. Yes, it will sometimes be briefly uncomfortable when I step on a pebble, but it is usually gone in the next step. However for most people the thought of pain is enough to prevent them from ever trying to run barefoot. On the other hand, just because I run on the street does not mean that everyone has to.

Yep, that's mine

• I was not born with shoes. (Of course I also wasn’t born with clothes, but clothes don’t injure me. If they did, I wouldn’t wear those either.)
• Injuries increase with the price of the shoes according to surveys from runners.
• It’s recommended (by pediatricians) that young children be allowed to walk around barefoot so that they can develop their feet. There must be something there, right?
• By the laws of physics the force of each step when running has to be translated and absorved somewhere. Running sure isn’t hurting your feet. Where does that leave? Perhaps the knees and hips?
• Tough and hardened feet are much more useful than soft tender feet. Soft feet are nice to the touch, but they can’t nearly do what used feet can do. If you had to run away from danger, you can’t exactly stop to put on your shoes.
• Without the artificial support of shoes, your feet need to balance and adapt. That is, the muscles and tendons in your feet will get stronger. It’s similar to why it’s excellent to do exercises without artificial support. You need to balance while also performing the task at hand. And that will make you stronger and strengthen the entire structure.
• There sure are a lot of people from other countries that are awesome runners without the need for shoes. Have you ever thought about that? Not only are they awesome, but they have lower incidence of injury. Just because I wasn’t born in a culture like that does not mean that I cannot become like that!
• I stand for freedom!. I always have, I always will. But it is a different kind of freedom that I feel when I’m running barefoot. It kind of makes me feel like a little kid, and I love that.
• The arch is one of the strongest structures known to man. We use it for bridges to hold up amazing amounts of weight. Have you ever seen an arched bridge have something filling the entire arch? No. That’s because the arch is strongest when there is nothing filling that gap. Surprise, surprise guess where we have an arch.
• One of the most important reason to consider running barefoot is that it makes you more conscious of your running form. So while your form might suffer when you’re running with shod feet, you won’t modify your behavior because it doesn’t manifest itself until years of running have beaten your body down. However you will definitely notice the difference with bare feet. You will not strike your heel. You will land on the balls of your feet. You will be careful of where you go. You could learn how to run with better form from someone teaching you. But that doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily going to change. Pain is a much better way to modify your behavior than mere information. It’s a reminder every step that you need to run correctly.

I run barefoot. I enjoy it.

References:
SportSci – Running Barefoot
The Painful Truth About Trainers
Barefoot Rick – I enjoyed reading some of his articles and thoughts about running barefoot.

The thing is, some people have better memories than others. Everyone is different and is able to remember things in different ways. Laugh if you must, but I remember wanting a photographic memory like Cam Jansen when I was a kid. Then I could rapidly flip through books and not need to study! How wonderful that would have been! But alas, my dreams did not come true. Even now I often wish for a better memory.

But just as remembering something is pretty binary (i.e. you did or you didn’t), those of us lacking in the memory department have to make do with what we have. Otherwise we will be mocked. Who will mock, I do not know. All I know is that mocking will occur.

3 Memory Aids That I Use:

1. Remember The Milk

   (RTM for short)

   Besides having a pretty amusing name, this is a website whose sole purpose is to create TODO lists. It’s refreshing for a website to be so singular in its purpose in this day of do-everything-until-we-take-over-your-life websites. In any case, I initially signed up for an account on the site, thought it was cool, and promptly did not hardly ever use it because visiting another site everyday wasn’t too practical.

   But then they developed a Firefox extension that changed that up! They developed an extension for placing an RTM pane whenever a Gmail tab is opened! It maintains the overall look and feel of gmail so you (or at least I) don’t feel like it’s out of place at all. Since I much more often have a browser tab open for Gmail, I was much more able to use the service. And I have. And it’s great!

   The concept is nothing new, you just put in due dates. But since it’s in front of my face at least once a day (since I check my e-mail once a day), it’s actually useful. And it’s on a remote server so I don’t need to worry about losing it or keeping different lists in sync.

   So there are 2 ways to use this baby:

   • Gmail for RTM extension
   • RTM website

   Either will do, just do.

2. Phone calendar

   Okay so I don’t have a smart phone. But that doesn’t mean that my phone is dumb! (Ha…ha…)

   But almost all phones nowadays have some sort of calendar feature. And that’s fine and dandy for checking what the date is. But there is often also the ability to schedule events. So I use my phone (a Motorola, by the way) and put in reminders for certain things that I need to get done.

   This is especially useful when I’m out and about. Often my phone is one of the few things that I’ll carry with me. I could actually text message a reminder to RTM which is cool. But I’ll be honest, I’m cheap when it comes to text messaging. And Verizon charges $.15 per message. For the amount of reminders that I put in for myself, that could get pricey. Haha laugh if you want, but the calendar reminders are free.

3. Google Calendar

   Calendars have been around for ages. The print versions are still quite popular and understandably so. But as computer usage becomes more and more prevalent, we are transferring much of the things that we do in tangible form to things that we can do through using the computer.

   Personally I use the Google calendar, but really there are many such applications floating around. I figure that I already have a Gmail account, so why not. (Of course, this line of reasoning sounds that in my post Google’s Taking Over The World…And I Don’t Like It.)

   Anyways, a nice feature of Google calendar is that I can have it e-mail me before the event occurs. I don’t use the application everyday, but awhile back I input all of my friends’ birthdays. Now it will e-mail me the day before someone’s birthday, so I’ll never egregiously forget a friend’s birthday!

   Granted, it’d be better if I just remembered. It would show that I care more. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s just that I don’t want to make a mistake! It’s my failsafe, if you will.

   • Google Calendar website

Do you have other tips for fellow forgetful fellows (or gals)?

Photo courtesy of Flickr user W2 a-w-f-i-l

Until college, I always despised any running that I did. Whether for P.E. or for sports, it was always a chore that was done with little enjoyment. A necessary evil that we a prerequisite for the fun of something else.

And then in college something changed. My fitness level was probably about the same so that wasn’t it. My location and life were obviously different. Whatever the reason was, though, I started to realize that running allowed me to:

1. Stay fit
2. Get some fresh air
3. Explore the area on foot rather than in a car
4. Spend some time alone in my thoughts

I would run the loop around campus on a fairly regular basis. I even started to enter into a few races. What a turnaround from only a year or two before! In any case by the time that I left college I was fairly comfortable going out for runs for recreation and fitness purposes. In fact, I was even going out with other people occasionally for a little bit of socializing (in addition to the fitness benefit)!

So enough about the history of me and running. I started to recently run a little bit (only once or twice a week, mind you). However, after reading the article I was for some strange reason under an incorrect impression about tempo runs. I thought that they were run faster than they really are. I mean, “an 8 on a 1-to-10 scale” sounds pretty fast to me! But reading the rest of the article as well as another article on tempo runs made me realize that it’s simply more of a steady consistent pace, albeit a pace faster than one might normally jog.

What I have been doing is running at a consistent pace but for only much shorter intervals. This week I ran 4 sets of 3:30 runs at probably about an 8 minutes/mile pace with a 60 second jog between sets. Let me tell you that it’s not easy! But I rather enjoy the challenge and am once again starting to enjoy the time alone, outside, and not in front of a computer (now that I’m in front of one the entire day for work).

I’m not sure whether I’m going to continue this regime of running at a fairly brisk pace (but definitely NOT sprinting) for longer periods of time or whether I’m actually going to try a tempo run for 20 minutes. Whatever the case, I will continue the running as it is affording me benefits that I value.

Running is even more than just exercise, though. Have you thought of that? You can learn a lot about life from running. You can learn about yourself: are you persevering, are you stronger in mind than in body, are you even in shape? You can teach yourself to be independent and strong in mind. Running a race has been used as an analogy to life, and that’s because it is so true. How better to understand the analogy (and correspondingly life) than by running yourself?

So go. Do it. Just do it. (Does anyone remember Nike’s once ubiquitous slogan? Whatever happened to that? They went from simple to complex marketing in my opinion.)

1. Navy Shower
   Directions:
   1. Turn on water
   2. Rinse
   3. Turn off water
   4. Lather and scrub
   5. Turn on water
   6. Rinse off
   7. Turn off water
   8. Enjoy the moment of the day that you will be the cleanest

   Save yourself water like the sailors had to do on ships. You’ll realize it’s not bad at all. I mean do you really need to have water being wasted while you scrub? I doubt it.

2. Coasting in the car – When you’re driving around, think about the fact that only having two action options, accelerate and brake, could not be the most efficient. There is room for some other option: do nothing and let the laws of physics propel you. The momentum that you’ve previously gained can be utilized. All you need to do is be more aware of things going on around you. If there is a red light up ahead, take your foot off of both pedals and just let your car glide along. Positives while doing this are
   1. Less stress – Coasting, as in life, will let you relax
   2. Save money – Not pressing the gas pedal will obviously not use gas and that is an obvious monetary savings
   3. Have fun (and stay awake) – It’s like a game to accurately figure out when to let off the gas in order to coast such that you won’t have to brake at all. Great for when you’re falling asleep, huh?
   4. Eliminate congestion – I should write about this sometime, but coasting at a constant speed in congestion will not only get you to your destination in the same time, but it will actually start the elimination of said congestion! For those not totally self-centered, this can be seen as a huge positive.
3. Always turn off the light when you leave a room. No matter how long you’re gone, it has been verified (okay okay, by the great Mythbusters) that it’s more worthwhile to just turn off the light if you leave the room for ~20 seconds (I don’t remember the actual number).

Pretty simple and straightforward, huh? Let me know what you think about ‘em in the comments. Or even better, give me some other tips.

Edit: I totally forgot that when I was thinking of this post I actually meant to also say that these things will save you money but will also help save the environment! Take that into account, why don’t you?

Basically you earn money (or you find it, or you steal it, or whatever) so that is what is coming in, and then you spend it (or you give it away, or you lose it, you know) and that is what is going out. So what’s the best thing to do? Well spend less than you earn and you should do right fine. Makes sense huh?

A while ago I read about a basic rule for which one could ideally budget and limit one’s spending. It’s called the 40-30-20-10 rule for obvious reasons. The very quick among you would have already realized that those numbers add up to 100 and that would seem to represent 100% of your income. So what do the rest of the numbers represent?

• 40 – Savings
• 30 – Necessary spending such as rent, food, bills, etc
• 20 – Free expenditure allowing any possibility of spending on entertainment, gifts, and otherwise unnecessary for living types of things
• 10 – Tithe

When I first read that, it seemed pretty easy and straightforward to me! However, I am wondering if it’s too easy to look at on paper but perhaps a bit too difficult in reality. How many people do you know who only live on 30% of their income? It sounds extremely conservative doesn’t it? You’d require a much better income just to be living an average lifestyle. Of course, I think that’s kind of the point of this budgeting scheme. However, I honestly don’t think that too many people could adhere to this type of drastic budgeting change from their own methods because they have come to expect a level of “luxury” in their lives.

I think that this is a superb idea, and I will try to stick with it as much as I can. I’ve been working on The Budgeteer (although that’s not what this post is really about), and I’ve been using this budgeting as my budgeting inputs. It’s been going alright thus far, and I actually have personally increased my savings category since my necessary expenditures are currently not as high. It’s nice, but I’m wondering if it’ll always be so.

Have many people heard of this plan? Would/could/will many practically use it?

A man, feeling alone and disconnected from the world, went out to a local place and offered free hugs with a sign. Now that seems pretty strange if you think about what you’d feel if you saw someone doing the same. I know that I would have thought that he was just a creepy guy trying to feel someone up. But in any case, it turns out that this guy really just wanted to spread the love. And I think that’s an excellent idea!

The world we live in truly is disconnected from each other. We see hundreds of people everyday, and we don’t even bother to greet most of them. Even with the people that we do know and talk to, between cellular phones, e-mail, and instant messaging, our communication is distant at best. We don’t look people in the eye as often. And that is just too bad.

Hugs are the antithesis of today’s mindset. That is why the Free Hugs Campaign was so revolutionary. It totally went against the norm.

In short, I like hugs a lot. Why?

1. Receiving a hug gives you a certain feeling of being accepted for who you really are
2. Giving a hug lets others know that you care about them in a tangible way
3. Hugs are something that you could do with just about anyone
4. Hugs are free

Give ‘em a chance. I doubt that you’ll regret it.

In any case, I’d like to share a tip for recycling on your own. As you very well know, you don’t have to actually return cans in order to be recycling. You could also be recycling by using things for multiple purposes. A sample case would be the following tip:

Next time you go grocery shopping (after using the grocery pricer to check that you’re going to buy things at a good price, of course) you should choose to ask for plastic one time and paper the next. At home, take the paper bag and place it inside of the plastic one. Unfold the paper bag so that it is now simply its original size with the plastic bag on the outside of it. Place your trash in this bag and when full throw the entire thing away. This is useful because the paper will be able to hold the majority of the weight while the plastic ensures that no leaking will happen. By using this method, you are going to save yourself some cost for “trash bags” while also recycling the bags that you’ve gotten from the grocery store!

I don’t actually know if this is a well-known thing to do. Maybe it is, and I’m just unaware. In any case I’d like those that don’t know to be able to do this as well.

Oh I just thought of another tip that I heard from someone. After you’re done with your toothbrush (if you still use the traditional manual one) then you can use that in your cleaning around the house! If toothbrushes are designed to get rid of the nasty plaque on your teeth, then don’t you think that they’ll be good at cleaning any kind of gunk that you can throw at it?

Alright and coincidentally I just read about some tips for different uses for everyday household things. I like the different uses for dryer sheets, but you can check out the tips for all 10 items featured.

In any case, recycling is not hard, it’s good for both the environment and society, and it’s good for you! So take the opportunity and happy recycling!