BabyStep 30: Seeing Into The Future

Well, I just did what FlyLady said to do for this BabyStep, and checked my calendar for next month's events.  Not much to report here- no birthdays that warrant the buying of a card or gift (I am going to eat my words if there is and it just isn't on my calendar and that person reads this, so I hope I'm right!), no major events involving pre-planning, nor is there much of...anything.  Oh, I do have some library books due, and I do put those on my calendar so I make sure to return/renew them on time, but that's pretty much it.

FlyLady also mentions in this step to check out her Basic Weekly Plan and give it a few minutes of thought.  I did this a while back and have slowly begun to implement into my life, here is what I have so far:

Monday is the day we need to take the trash cans to the curb, Wednesday is FlyLady's assigned day to do those crap jobs we put off doing.  Friday is the day I go fill up and clean out my car, and I have moved my Weekly Pampering session of painting my toes to Saturday since I started leaving for my parents' house right after work Sunday night.

Somewhere in there I really need to have an "Errands Day", but I'm still trying to figure that one out.  It would be OK to have my basic grocery shopping on the same day of the week, but there are certain places I have to go for that one special thing that is totally out of my way from any other place I shop.  Case and point- cat food.  I get my cats' food from a Mom and Pop pet store near where I work, but to get there it's actually a couple miles past work in an area I never go otherwise.  When I'm low on cat food I have to plan ahead to make a special trip out there and this only occurs once every couple weeks.  The perfectionist in me wishes I could work it out so all my errands were done on one day and were all in close proximity to one another so I could get them all done at once- bam bam bam!  But, that's not gonna happen. Boo.

In other news:  The Home Routines iPhone app I use as my Control Journal announced about a week ago that they had submitted a new version to the application-powers-that-be.  I'm very excited to see the new features, but it's still awating approval!  I've been checking for the update several times a day every day, but still nothing.  It's driving me nuts!

Read more...

BabyStep 14: Pencil Me In (Plus Some Gossip!)

Guess what?

(What?)

It's that time again!

(What time would that be?)

The time where I tell you what BabyStep I am on and what it was all about!

(Oh, goody!)

Sorry, I just got a little sick of starting of my posts the same way all the time. Thought I'd stick my neck out and show my dorky side. (Not that it doesn't show most of the time as it is.) Anyway, yesterday's assignment was BabyStep 14: Read an essay that Kelly wrote. It was all about using calendars.

Personally, this is one thing that has actually stuck with me since my first go-round with FlyLady. I tried using a wall calendar so my then-boyfriend could see it too, and I got all fancy using different colored pens for different event types. (Red for bills, green for paydays, blue for personal events, you get the picture.) I loved the color coding, but not the hard-copy situation. I didn't like not being able to access my calendar from work, and hated having to use White-Out when plans changed. Since my then-boyfriend didn't seem to be checking the calendar anyway, I moved on to a digital format.

Enter Google Calendar. I loooooove Google Calendar. I spent so much time searching for and trying different online calendaring systems, I think I fried my brain. But, I found the one that works perfectly for me, so brain cells be darned!

The main reason I like it so much is the color-coding system it uses on the month view. I like to be able to glance at the month and just SEE what is going on. My fried-brain just took to it naturally. Now that I have the iPhone I can access my Google Calendar on the phone's browser, but the month view just isn't the same:

Ahhhh! No color coding!  No one glance planning!  With this, I have to click around on each day to see if there is an event or not.  I can switch over to the desktop view, which looks like this:

Ah.  Much better.  I can see what's going on.  Trouble is, the interface for adding/editing events in this desktop view doesn't fly so well on the phone.  There are third-party iPhone apps that have created calendars that look and behave like the Google Calendar, and can sync with it as well.  I'm just not paying $7.00+  for them when that is the exact amount I currently have in my checking account.  (I so wish I was kidding about that.)  I just wonder why Google can't do what these app guys have done- make the mobile-month view look like the desktop-month view, but have the interface more streamlined for the iPhone.  Puhleeese do this Google.  I live for the month view.

I will now apologize to those readers who are not iPhone users for my above ramblings.  It's my new toy.  I'm sure I'll bore of it eventually and stop talking about it.

OK, complete change of topic- who saw FlyLady getting a little, um, crabby with her FlyBabies today?  I was checking my Twitter updates and came across this:

What the...?  Anyone else take at least the tiniest bit of offence to her tone?  But wait, we're not done.  There was another Tweet with a link to her Facebook page that landed here:

Oooook.  I think FlyLady is just a bit grumpy today.  Actually, this is one of the things that turned me off to her before.  I used to listen to her Blogtalk radio show back when it was brand new, and there were times when I could just hear her wanting to strangle some of the callers.  If you know FlyLady, then you are aware of her no whining/don't be a martyr rule, but give me a break. Even though the program itself is free, I'm pretty sure she makes plenty of money from all those timers and scrubber things she sells.  Shouldn't she try a little harder to disguise her irritation?  First she tells us not to strive for perfection, but then gnashes her fangs at us in a very passive-aggressive way when we can't live up to her own personal level of perfection.  Sheeesh.

Am I the only one who wonders if one day she will just totally loose it and flip out, ending that which we know as the FlyLady Empire? 

Read more...