// there has got to be a better, efficient way to process/reply to all these emails and still have time to complete other tasks at work.
Category: field notes
Field notes
// okay, it took 5 cups of coffee to get going today. but now i wonder how i’m going to sleep tonight.
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the folks at ingles seem very lonely. i think i was the only customer there. plenty of milk and bread and dvds (to rent).
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it’s snowing outside. looks more like flurries. co-work says we might get 4”. better haul it to ingles and buy bread and milk.
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the water coming from the home facets are rust red. or clay red. one of the plagues of egypt? or asheville’s stellar urban planning?
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i’m on my third cup of coffee. still waiting for the first cup to kick in. must be monday. or the weather.
10 Ways to Save Money
10. Get better at re-using your stuff
9. Cut your food costs
8. Dress and look sharp with less cash
7. Start working for yourself (crazy as it sounds)
6. Cut the cable and get your TV free
5. Trim your cell phone costs
4. Invest in your career
3. Trick yourself into spending less, saving more
2. Get serious about Craigslist
1. Reduce your bills by simply asking
from lifehacker:
Top 10 Ways to Save Money in a Recession
(via wyliefisher)
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if i have dreams, i never remember them upon waking. but this morning i awoke and remembered a dream about chicken soup. weird.
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so much for…. think i’ll make some coffee and ponder how to answer the kidlinger’s question, ‘what do you do all day?’
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okay, so i didn’t take the bus this morning because i didn’t want to wait outside when the windchill is -8°F.
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sometimes, in conversation, it is difficult to distinguish what comments require a response and what comments require further attention.
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time to catch a bus. how long will i have to wait for the bus with a wind chill of 6°F?
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standing in a grocery store with a list in one hand & a basket in the other… staring at walls of stuff & wondering what’s it all about
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best buys really needs to grow its customer service… a dozen people on the floor and only one person asks if need assistance.
How the city hurts your brain – Boston Globe
The reason such seemingly trivial mental tasks leave us depleted is that they exploit one of the crucial weak spots of the brain. A city is so overstuffed with stimuli that we need to constantly redirect our attention so that we aren’t distracted by irrelevant things, like a flashing neon sign or the cellphone conversation of a nearby passenger on the bus. This sort of controlled perception — we are telling the mind what to pay attention to — takes energy and effort. The mind is like a powerful supercomputer, but the act of paying attention consumes much of its processing power.
Interesting. Is this another call to simple, rural living?
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it’s snowing… i totally forgot to make a run on the grocery store for bread and milk… how am i going to survive a southern blizzard?
// watched high fidelity the other night… i want to be a record store owner… do record stores still exist?
// somedays i fantasize that i’m a reviewer for the new york review of books… all day long i read engaging books and write elaborate book reviews… and then i wake up and realize most people don’t read engaging books… nor literary criticism… i’m such an anachronism.
Blogs survive as scavengers
News-gathering is expensive. (Read previous posts on this theme here (The (read) sky (between) is (the) falling (lines)) and here (Pornographers don’t sell pornography).) That’s why I present this from Simon Dumenco for AdAge.com:
“unlike Salon, which… pays for its content, HuffPo [HuffingtonPost] has an ethically questionable content-generation scheme: It doesn’t pay most of its bloggers at all. Worse, it sometimes even lifts content wholesale from other sites that do pay for their own content…” (http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=133541)
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browsing through a copy of The American Poetry Review and Poetry (both arrived yesterday) while drinking a big cup coffee.
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just finished watching a couple episodes of Marty Stouffer’s Wild America with the kidlingers
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listening to the wind pull the barn door off its hinges.
Seth on the death of the personal blog
From BlogAsheville:
Many local bloggers have neglected their blogs recently, with varying reasons/excuses.
So, do bloggers need a bailout too? No. Read Seth’s take on the personal blog demise:
There’s a difference between a blog about YOU… and a blog about the reader. Guy Kawasaki’s blog, and my blog for that matter, are not about us, about what we ate yesterday or how great we are. They are about you, the reader.
I guess there’s an easy analogy:
Your blog could be like a newspaper (written by a staff)
or it could be like a book (written by an author)
So, enough about me. How about you?
The point is not to show up on a list, the point is to start a conversation that spreads, to share ideas and to chronicle your thinking.
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i know, i know. my inbox is filling up. i left a book at a clients office. press proofs were delivered. and, yes, i will call you.
Coffeehouse Junkie 