Yoga and Fasting

Today was a quiet day at home.

For 7 years now, Friday mornings have started with a meeting of 6 like-minded people who share technology news and tips. It was organized way-back-when by Martin Brossman and he sets the tone of fun and learning. We always have a couple of good laughs. We meet on Zoom, but Zoom didn't exist when we started - I think we used Hangouts. Learn by doing! Think of it as mental yoga!

Next on Friday comes a real Yoga class - also on Zoom. Well, some might not call it 'real' because it's chair yoga ... for us old folks! The teacher has taught Kundalini for many years though and you can tell. I feel great after that 45 minutes.

The rest of the day was what I call work. Sitting at the computer writing, researching, and website maintenance. We did take a break and took a walk around the circle.

Fasting Friday - well kinda. I think fasting is good for you. Giving your body a break from digesting. Reboot if you will. Sometimes both Jim and I easily fast, consuming nothing but water all day. Other times it's just impossible - I'm hungry! Last night we went to a party by our Dive Club - we had fun. We ate and drank, so fasting friday seemed like an especially good idea today. I got too hungry to fast 100%, but I drank a lot of water and only ate 1 apple, and a few bites of tuna. Hopefully the scales will notice tomorrow morning.

I have a healthy husband

 Back in 2013-14 we went on a very strict, doctor-led diet. I lost 20 pounds and Jim lost over 70. 8 years later now, and we've kept it off. It made a huge difference in Jim's health. Before the weight loss, he was on several medications for cholesterol and high blood pressure. All of them went by the wayside when he lost the weight and, to this day I look at him and marvel. 

My husband is mighty fine!

We now have a checkup once each year and we both get compliments from the doctor on our blood pressure and the results of our bloodwork! The last checkup showed a small abnormality in his EKG so he had an appointment with the cardiologist today. They re-tested him and could find nothing wrong. I have a healthy husband! It's a good thing, because we have lots of travel plans.

Do you think I went too far though, commissioning this statue to him over at the Ringling Art gallery in Sarasota?

Fun and aggravation with my new phone

 I did finally get the box open! Then I turned it on and followed the instructions to turn OFF my old Samsung/Verizon phone so that the new one (the S21 Ultra) could automatically activate. Amazing. I didn't have to deal with the SIM card at all, it just did everything for me.

 

After activating the phone number, it went to work installing all the same apps as were on the old phone, setting up my accounts, and copying all the data. When I picked up the new phone, I could hardly tell the difference between it and the old phone. That is, until I opened one of the apps. Here comes the aggravation, you have to sign in and verify your identity. I usually do that with Lastpass, but Lastpass needed me to sign in and prove my identity as well. Kind of a catch-22. I just kept at it. Reading instructions, pushing buttons, entering codes that got sent to one of my other devices, until stuff started to work. The turning point was when I set up my Google Voice phone number on the new phone. Now, I can get the codes sent to Google Voice and it comes straight to the new phone.

The Google Photos app seemed to be stuck. All day long it said, "Setting up your library" and "Getting ready to back up" I finally gave up after a full day and a few hours. I uninstalled Google Photos and re-installed it. The library was set up and backup was complete in less than a half hour!

OK, now let's go have some fun with that camera! I found a pretty spot in our neighborhood where there was a sign and I got a ways away. I stood in one spot and took 4 photos, one with each of the different lens settings. You can't even see the sign when I use the wide angle or the normal lens. With the 3X You can see that there is a sign there. With the 10X you can almost read the sign - and if you zoom in a bit with two fingers, you can clearly read it. WOW

Cheating

 I committed to writing a daily blog post until the end of the year. I woke up in the middle of the night realizing that I didn't do that yesterday - Monday. So - I'm writing this morning - Tuesday and cheating by setting the publish-on date to yesterday. Near enough!

Since we work on Sunday with our YouTube show, Monday is our day off. Or at least it feels that way. It feels like a Sunday, we try not to schedule anything on Mondays and we do whatever we feel like. Of course, most days are like that now. Except for our show Sundays, it's hard to ever tell what day it is any more. Oh yeah, there's our Toastmasters meeting on Thursday morning and our Tech-sharing small group meeting on Friday mornings. Most mornings Jim and I look at each other and ask "what day is it?" I have to look at my watch to be sure. That's actually one thing I really like about the Apple Watch - the way it prominently displays the day of the week. Here's my watch face, notice the TUE in upper right:

A screenshot of my Apple Watch. How did I get a screenshot? Press the digital crown and the side button at-the-same-time and let go to see a flash.

Today was the day I promised to start my bookkeeping. I'm bad about bookkeeping. No, worse than that. I just don't do bookkeeping at all. It is the end of the year, and if I want the CPA to prepare our business tax returns, I need to give him some numbers! So, I opened up Quickbooks online (for the first time this year) and started with January. Quickbooks automatically gets all the transactions from our business bank account, but I have to look at each one and enter a category. Then I open the statement from the bank and balance it in Quickbooks. I used to also balance the PayPal statement, and the credit cards, now I cheat. I just make sure to pay off the credit cards from the business account, and transfer all income from PayPal to the Business account. That means that everything related to the business goes thru the bank account - voila! only one account to categorize and balance.  The CPA said he could live with that as long as I also provided the PayPal and credit card statements. Cheating? or Smart?

As much as I hate to do bookkeeping, it surprises me the satisfaction I get from it. I finished 2 months by the end of the day and I was actually in a very good mood. Bookkeeping uses a different part of my brain than my teaching/writing/video-making. It's not creative (at least it's not supposed to be!) When I sit down to do bookkeeping there are specific steps to follow - all I have to do is remember them. Then, when I get to the balancing part, there's proof that I've done something right! When it shows $0 left I'm done, and I know it's done right! There is no such thing as "done" or "done right" in my creative endeavors. It actually feels pretty good. I think I'll do another couple months :-)

My new phone arrived! Two days early. So exciting. Now if I could only get the box open!

Youtube, Football and M*A*S*H*

 Today is Sunday and we're doing our live YouTube show, Episode 224 of What Does This Button Do? I had work to do this morning as I was less than half prepared for the show as of 8am when I woke up. I rolled over and thought about it a bit. Then I got up and made coffee, read a couple chapters in my current favorite book, "The TAO of Willie" by Willie Nelson. Eventually, I was ready to go to my computer and start working. 

Our show is LIVE. It's not just us talking, we demonstrate stuff on the computer and on phones. Jim has several cameras and he switches among them as I try to demonstrate different things. Live is risky, demonstrations go awry. So I try to have one or two or three pre-recorded videos. I recorded one yesterday and I had one more to make this morning. It's about how to make your Emergency contacts show up on your phone's lock screen. It seems to work a little different each time I go thru the process. Making the video was an aggravating experience, but I got it done. Then we did our show with a mixture of live presentation and the 2 videos.

After our live show, we hold a Zoom meeting for members only. One of our members, Walter, relayed how our show introduced him to the apple watch earlier this year. He got one and just last week it alerted him to the fact that he was exhibiting symptoms of atrial fibrilation. He went to a doctor who put him on some medications and congratulated him for the early detection. Walter credits us with saving his life :-) I don't know about that, but it certainly feels good to hear that people benefit from our teaching. Then we got to chat with all sorts of friends and members. We are so grateful for technology and Zoom in particular!!

When we're done with our work, it's time for Football - the Dolphins are playing the Carolina Panthers. I'm not really a football fan - it's quite a horrible sport , broken bones, multiple concussions, and millions of dollars for no good purpose. But, its a diversion, and many years ago we committed to being Dolphins fans and watching the games whenever possible. When we're on the road, we find a sports bar to hang out in for the afternoon. We actually found the most rabid Dolphin fan we've ever met in Pismo Beach California - it was so much fun. It's hard to be a Dolphins fan when they lose 7 in a row like earlier this season. But that makes it even more fun when they win 4 in a row like right now! 

Jim graduated from Southern Regional High School in New Jersey. One of the star receivers on the Dolphins team right now also graduated from Southern Regional (Gesicki) so he feels an extra reason to cheer.

At one point during the game, a player took off before he was supposed to - offsides. That happens a lot, but they usually don't get as far as this guy did - it made us laugh out loud and Jim said, "That's just like the football scene in the movie M*A*S*H* that always makes me laugh" So, as soon as the game was over, I found the movie Mash on one of our streaming services and we had a little walk down memory lane.