The post that wasn’t

Life is seriously kicking my butt right now. There was the pre-vacation work panic, the vacation “I refuse to turn on the computer except to play facebook games”, and now the post vacation work panic. There’s actually posts floating around in my head.

There’s a post about how I skied last week – Sometimes ok, sometimes not ok. Sam crashed into me once and I fell. And cried. I thought about quitting. Then I didn’t and I went back for more punishment on the slopes. Now I want to go back for another lesson now that I have in my mind what I need to improve on (aside from steering clear away from Sam when he skis!!) FYI – he’s a bit of a daredevil – skiing backwards, through woods, etc. My daughter too. Oy.

There’s a post about some cool iPhone apps. That one I will definitely be making.

There’s another post about some cool products I have – I even have a giveaway to uhm… give away. Yeah. Words aren’t working for me at the moment.

There’s a post about how work is great, I’m not even advertising, but still people are finding me. In fact I think I may have too much work on my plate. (Maybe I need to charge more?? Or will that scare too many people away? LOL)

There’s a post about how despite all the exercising and dieting I’m a bit discouraged with my appearance at the moment and am tentatively investigating… something. Surgery? Tummy tuck? Mini tummy tuck? Laser something? I don’t know. Between kids and weight loss, I have… skin. How do you loose skin? It’s not fun, and it’s not really all that fair. (I know, life isn’t fair. I’m nearly 40. Maybe I should give up my dreams of wearing a bikini. I never have – I guess I never will) The cost is kind of prohibitive from what I’ve been able to gather – and really ANY cost seems so vain. The whole thing is so vain. I have a voice in my head that yells at me for even thinking about spending money on something so selfish. The money should either go towards my kids education or retirement. Anyway… I’m still looking.

That’s all there’s time for now. More to come once I dig out…

Another “I’ll never…” bites the dust

L“Mom? Uhm… Think I’m ready to come home now!”

Of course, being 9 years old, there’s all kinds of issues here. One problem is that I’m reasonbly sure this phone is going to get lost. Sooner rather than later, I’ll bet. The other issue is that, I can’t be 100% sure that she’ll forever get the idea that this phone is not to be used to chat it up with her friends. It’s to be used for me to contact her or her to contact me. If she wants to talk to her friends, we do actually have a landline phone she can use to her heart’s content. (Or at least until it’s time to do her homework or go to bed. LOL!)

So, after much debate, we finally got her one of those Tracfones. The particular model we got for her actually does text messaging, (so I can easily send her a text message to come home from her friends house at a specified time, if need be – and it only uses up 1/3 of a minute), it has voicemail, even a little camera. You buy minutes via a card (and actually the model phone we got doubles the minutes you buy for the life of the phone) – and if she uses up the minutes – that’s it – the phone stops working until we add more minutes. There’s no monthly or daily charge. And it’s not tied to our credit card. So no worries about a surprise $500 phone bill because she decided to sneak a few calls to some friends. And the phone itself only cost about $20. So while I really hope she doesn’t lose the phone – it’s only $20. It’s not like $200. And the phone? I mean for $20… that’s a pretty sweet deal – which is why I finally caved. I mean, I think I couldn’t get a decent walkie-talkie for only that much!

So yeah – I’m pretty sure only a few months ago I was saying “I would never buy my kid a cell phone!! Not until they’re at least 13 or something…” Yeah. Funny how circumstance will change things. That and the technology that can put out a $20 cell phone! 😉

How I’d Use an iPad

When it became clear that the iPad was going to be the new product launched in January by Apple, my first reaction wasn’t excitement. But at the same time, it took me over a year before I got the whole iPhone thing. Obviously, we know how that worked out seeing how I have a huge selection of posts on this blog reviewing iPhone apps. I know they say that necessity is the mother of invention, but sometimes it seems like Apple has managed to reverse that equation. They seem to be really good at inventing a product that solves a problem I never even knew I had.

So the iPad – I was extremely surprised at the price – I had originally been thinking like most others, that a product like that would have been closer to the $1000 range. That would have completely put it out of the range of my even thinking about buying it (which was why I wasn’t terribly interested in it to start). But since the “entry” price into an iPad is much lower than I expected, suddenly I start to wonder, Would I buy one? What and how would I use it? Do I need one?

And here comes in the problem that I never knew existed. When we watch TV, I almost always have my iPhone with me because I check email compulsively. When I need to respond, a quick reply it’s fine, but when a longer response is needed, I need to head over to the computer. I also like to be able to look up things online sometimes while we’re watching. Maybe it’s because there’s an actor we see that I’m trying to remember what other shows have we seen them in. Or there’s a product or website that’s talked about and I want to immediately check it out or bookmark it. Or I could just be multi-tasking. Browsing the web, reading blogs, playing on twitter, while also watching TV. Or even away from the TV, just around the house, I’ll have my phone with me to look things up online, check the hours of a store, or make notes about what I need to do the next day, etc. The iPhone can work for some of this, but it’s not the most convenient because of its size. The laptop is just a little overkill for this, but does do the job. However, something in between is probably even better. Enter an iPad.

It makes me wonder if they specifically announce these products before they’re actually available so that people can spend the next few months doing exactly what I did. Putting the pieces together and realizing that actually a product like that would in fact be pretty useful and cool.

I’m not saying that I’m going to run out on day one and buy one. But I have to admit, that while I didn’t before, I do see one in my future at some point. The issue with Flash does bother me. (One of the other things I like doing while multi-tasking is playing games on Facebook – most of which are run via Flash) I also kind of wish the iPad had a camera. (I’ve had the same complaint about the iTouch and that is the main reason why I haven’t bought one for my daughter. I’m still kind of hoping the will eventually, and when they do, THEN I’ll buy it. But I’m not interested in investing the money in an iTouch when I think at some point they will add a camera) I am glad to see they made the 3G an OPTION. Being that I am the biggest home-body, I would probably get the 3G model but not sign up for the plan right away until I saw how and where I was actually using it. If I used it, as I expect to, mostly at home where wifi was available – then I don’t really need that 3G as much as I thought. (But I’d still probably get it with the capability in case that ever changed…)

As for the name – yeah, even I got a chuckle out of it, but I think in general people will get over the silly side of the name and move on. It’s not like the word “pad” is only used for one meaning. Certainly, as names go, iPod is probably more silly. So I don’t think this will really have any long term negative effects on the product itself.

Pre-vacation Panic

Why is it that just to take a week off requires several weeks prior of insanity. I’ve easily gone a week without anyone contacting me here and there, or with clients forgetting to get me stuff. But as soon as I say the words “I’m going to be taking a few days off” it’s like I’ve just told them I’ll be gone for several months and they’ll be on their own. My brother and his family are coming into town and he’s rented a townhouse up in the mountains for the week. So this was part of the push for me to learn how to ski this year, because I wanted to to be able to ski with everyone.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing. The Pre-vacation Panic. It sounds like it should be some kind of line-dance. I’ll bet it looks alot like people running around and bumping into each other and getting knocked out. At least, that’s what I’ve felt like I’ve done at the end of each day.

A good day to ski

(Side note: I have a list of iPhone apps I’ve recently purchased and have been playing with, so stay tuned, I’ll have tons of that stuff to talk about soon – in the meantime, I leave you with another installment of my learn-to-ski saga)

So back to the slopes we went this weekend. I probably would have preferred to either take a break for at least a week after last weekend’s fiasco (and the fact that the Sundance Film Festival is going on right now up there), but I kind of had to go. I had filled out a customer comment form on the resort’s website and told them about the various problems I’d had – the first lesson, with all the equipment issues I had, then of course was last weekend where the class had been much more advanced than I had wanted. I got a call from the director of skier services and we talked a bit about how the classes are supposed to be run – obviously there was some miscommunication that landed me in the class I ended up in. He promised to have my favorite instructor be the one teaching the class I needed for the following Sunday if I came back to give it another try. So I had to go.

That instructor is a ski-goddess. I love her. I really do. If you are in the area (Park City, UT), (and especially if you are new to skiing and want to learn) and want to take a lesson with the most awesome instructor that ever was – let me know and I will give you her contact info. She has just the right balance of understanding my fears, but also getting me over them so I can progress. I never feel like she’s talking “down” to me, and even when I’m trying to deal with a kind of silly fear (like my panic attack on the chair lift) she never made me feel bad about it, but still got me totally over it.

So the class started off on the bunny slopes I was comfortable with. She gave us a few little pointers to improve what we were doing, then up to the big slope we went. The same one I was “Yard Sale-ing” on last week. (I was told by a friend that it is passe to call it “face plants” – and that the cool kids call it a yard sale. This totally baffled me why someone would call it a yard sale until I saw this video. Then I understood… Ah… they call it a yard sale because your gear goes in all directions all over the mountain like you’re having a yard sale. LOL! Got it.) Before going up, she looked at me to make sure I was ok with the idea LOL! I told her I trusted her, and I totally do. If she thought I could do it, then I believed her.

I’m sure that part of the problem last week was it was really new territory for me and I just didn’t have the same kind of confidence in that instructor that I do in this one. But also, I knew that if I started to have problems, she would be right there to help me out.

Ironically, this time, I had no trouble on the run. I didn’t fall once. I didn’t lose control once. I joked with the instructor that now she’s in for it, because I think I just need her to be my personal lifelong ski coach. LOL! I will admit that I was still quite a bit nervous and I have this little mantra going in my head. It’s totally ridiculous, but it does help. When I start to get a little nervous, I just say over and over in my head “You can ski! You can ski! You KNOW how to do this!” LOL! Like I have to convince myself I know what I’m doing. But you know what, as soon as the mantra in my head starts, I start to ski better.

The run we did was about 3-1/2 miles I think, but part of it we did twice, so it ended up being about 5 miles. Downhill. No falls. I DID IT!

So now I think I’m done with the lessons for awhile and will probably just be sking this run (a green run) and maybe a few other green runs they have at the resort. I’m skiing now at the level I wanted to be at – so now it’s just doing it over and over again until I feel really strong on it.

Meanwhile, Rachel was skiing blue runs in her class (kids learn so easily. It’s so not fair. LOL!) And Zach also was really improving. We put him in their all day program and he had a blast. The instructor was really impressed with how well he’s picking this up. He said he was listening really well (that alone is impressive!! LOL!).

Not sure if we’ll get up there next weekend. The Sundance film festival is still going on, but by getting there early we didn’t have trouble getting parking at the resort. Sam is on call with work, so he can’t be away from the computer for the whole day like that. But Rachel and I might go up just ourselves. Now that I can do that green run, I know she won’t be overly bored with skiing with me. 😀