Last night, I made what may be an important move in my attempt to get my electronic life under control. I separated my work e-mail from my personal e-mail. I’ve complained for months that I’m overwhelmed by my e-mail load. I’m also overwhelmed by my browser tabs and my text documents. Things are out of …
“You know our house isn’t really cluttered, right?” Kris said last night. “What do you mean?” I asked. “When you write about your battle with clutter, it makes it sound like we live in a house filled with junk. We don’t. Our house is pretty clean. You’ve just got a lot of stuff you’re holding …
This has sort of turned into the “dumb things J.D. does” blog. Here’s yesterday’s dumb thing. I drove to Eugene to participate in a neuroeconomics study. I spent an hour inside an MRI scanner answering questions about personal finance. For this, I was paid $120. Because I knew I might fall asleep, I had a …
Here’s the product of my recent misadventure: Yes, those are as painful as they look. Kris feels smug in an “I told you so” kind of way. Several people have told me I need to print up those “Kris Gates is always right” t-shirts. Lisa even did research on where I could get them done.
When I started working from home in March, Kris and I developed a system to encourage me to get some household chores done during the day. We’ve placed a dry-erase board at the top of the landing, and every day Kris writes down her top priorities for me. Most of the time, I this works …
“What in the world are you doing?” Kris said, stopping in the middle of the road. She pointed at my bare feet. “It’s just a whim,” I said. “I want to see if I can do this.” “It’s over a mile to Paul and Amy Jo’s house,” she said. “The asphalt is hot.” “My feet …
Ah, friends, so many things to tell you in order to relate a simple story. I should write at this blog more often. I’ll do my best to be succinct. In March, I wrote a post at my fitness blog asking which whole wheat bread is best? I picked up one of every loaf from …
Kris is sad. Our Nintendo Wii died recently, so we’ve had to ship it back for repair ($82.50). She’d become addicted to Wii Fit, particularly the yoga, but for the past week or so, she’s had to improvise. Meanwhile, my doctor pronounced me “as flexible as a two-by-four”. “You might want to try some yoga,” …
Ah, the Fourth of July. Such a pleasant time in our neighborhood: lots of loud explosions. The early evening is filled with pops and cracks. It sounds like small arms fire, like we’re in some sort of war zone. Of course this is especially pronounced on the Independence Day itself (when the snap, crackle, pop …