"For you, in my respect, are all the world."

"Then how can it be said I am alone // When all the world is here to look on me?"
- A Midsummer Night's Dream

I just finished taking an online Shakespeare class. It was through Coursera, and was a free four-week massive open course in which we read four Shakespeare plays and discussed them, and watched clips from the movies that have been made about them.

Video "lecture." This format is pretty awesome.

I really enjoyed the class. I had read two of the plays before (Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night's Dream), but I hadn't picked up any Shakespeare since high school, so it was like re-discovering something and seeing it with whole new eyes. The other two plays were The Tempest and Much Ado About Nothing, and I was especially looking forward to the latter, as it had been on my to-read list for quite some time. (I didn't end up liking The Tempest much. It was really confusing to me, but I really liked Much Ado. And then I watched the Emma Thompson/Denzel Washington version of the movie, and it was also really good, and Matt even enjoyed it once he figured out what was happening.)

Though can I tell you something about A Midsummer Night's Dream? I think it was my sophomore year of high school, our theater department put on that play. I've looked for photographic evidence, but unfortunately I found none.

Before I started re-reading the play, I could not for the life of me remember the name of the character I played, nor what the play was actually about.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is about a wedding, and actors that are to perform a play during the wedding festivities, and a terrible love triangle (square?) in which a woman, Hermia is engaged to a man named Demetrius, though she's in love with another man, Lysander, and her best friend Helena is in love with Demetrius but he thinks that Helena is horrible. It makes for some very amusing poetry.

Reading it brought back so many memories from high school. I was cast as Hermia, and I was horrified when this boy that I thought was icky (no idea why, now) was cast as Lysander. Though I never had to, I was terrified that I might have to kiss him. (I had never kissed anyone, and didn't want Ickface to be my first.) Especially because I was totally head over heels for this guy that lived down the street from me, who was also in the play. Creepily enough, he got cast as Hermia's dad, Egeus, but it was like, the highlight of my life at the time to get to spend rehearsals with him, though nothing ever happened between us. (High School Allie pretty much only had unrequited crushes, until she went to Homecoming with High School Matt senior year.)

Your turn: tell me about your high school self! What were you involved in? Who did you have a massive crush on? (Or, if you'd rather, have you read Shakespeare? What is your favorite play?)

These Apps Are Making Me A Better Person

It has come to my attention (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha) that I am a pretty tightly-wound, high-stress person. It has also come to my attention that more people die from stress-related health problems than all types of cancer (according to a seminar I went to last week). I have been thinking about some pieces of advice I've received lately — things like "take one day at a time" and "let yourself feel whatever you're feeling" — and decided that it's time I actually did something to make myself feel better, instead of just allowing myself to be miserable because that's "how I feel" at that moment. That I need to actually DO things to keep my sanity, and to make my goals happen, and to not die of a stroke at age 34 or whatever.

These are a few of the apps I've been using lately that have been helping me feel like a Calm, Upstanding, Personal-Growth-Focused Productive Member Of Society instead of a Screaming Banshee That Can't Get Her Shit Together. (Bonus: Some of these apps are also helping me toward some of the goals on my Life List. Win win win.)

Headspace (iPhone, Android, Amazon)

Headspace is a meditation app. It's endorsed by Emma Watson, and that was enough to get me to download it. :) But seriously, it was created by a meditation expert named Andy, and he has the most soothing voice. With the free app, you get 10 days worth of 10-minute audio tracks where Andy walks you through meditation exercises, like breathing deeply, focusing on the body and allowing your thoughts to pass you by without getting fixated on them. (After you finish the 10 sessions, you can pay for a subscription to keep getting new sessions. Or I guess you could just repeat those 10 over and over.)

The app also has cute little animated videos that teach you things about meditation and how your mind works. The graphics are seriously so cute, and somehow match the peaceful design of the whole thing.

I'm on day six of the free tracks (I repeated day four because I accidentally fell asleep during it the first time!), and I am thinking about getting a monthly subscription when I finish, because I am really enjoying it. I feel so calm and relaxed after every session.

Duolingo (iPhone, Android)

I don't remember where I first heard about Duolingo, but I am glad I did! It's a free language-skills app where you practice building up your vocabulary in other languages. (Currently offering Spanish, German, Portuguese, Italian and French.) It offers these little mini "games" where you practice saying things out loud, or translating back and forth from English into your chosen language or vice versa. Plus, you get little bonuses when you complete "levels," and there are cute owl graphics.

I'm currently using Duolingo to brush up on my Spanish. I've found it relatively easy so far, but I did take Spanish a little bit in high school and college, so I already had the foundation of how sentences are structured and how verbs are conjugated in español. It is for sure getting more complicated as I continue though; the sentences are getting longer and incorporating more and more vocab.

My favorite part is that it lets you compete against other random players, whoever is on the app at the same time and of approximately the same skill level as you. Like timed practice. But you can always just practice alone if you don't want to play with others.

When I finish the Spanish program and am fluent as a native (haaa), I intend to start working on German so I can speak Deutsch with my mother-in-law and her German relatives, should I ever have the opportunity to visit Germany. I've never taken German before, so I expect that one to be more difficult.

Fig (iPhone, Android)

I just downloaded Fig the other day, but so far I really like the concept. You create a "to-do" list of things that can help you relax, eat better, sleep better and do a whole lot of other stuff better, and then you do them. But it's not like a list where you feel bad if you don't do the things on it (I have a different app for that). Instead, you get gold stars if you DO do the things on your list! Because you're only doing them to feel good anyway!

There are six major categories you can pull to-dos from, like Eat, Refresh and Connect, or you can look through lists of overall goals, such as Weight Loss, Happiness, Stress Reduction and Energy Level, and choose the to-dos you want based on what your goals are.

Also, if you think there's a specific goal you'd like, but it's not on the list, you can always add it yourself. And you can set the frequency too. Personally, it's only been a few days and I think I've bitten off more than I can chew with that eight-glasses-of-water thing. I love water, but that's a lot of freaking water.

Fig costs $1.99 through Apple's app store.

Two Dots (iPhone)

OK, we can't all be making ourselves better people all the time. Sometimes we need games. Like when our brains are too tired to function.

Two Dots is my new Candy Crush. It does that thing where you have to wait to replenish your lives, but unlike Candy Crush, I can actually put this one down once in awhile.

Ahem, you may be sensing a theme, but CUTE GRAPHICS. It has different goals for each level, but it doesn't require a whole lot of thought unless you're stuck on Level 35 like me. It's also free.

What apps are you obsessed with lately? Any you love that I should check out?

P.S. No one paid me for any of these reviews. I bought and/or downloaded all these apps on my own. And all photos are screenshots from my phone.

One Box Lighter

One thing I've been wanting to tackle practically since I graduated college was the giant pile of notebooks my chicken-scratch and doodling filled in those four years. Over the course of my college education, I racked up dozens of spiral notebooks full of notes from my classes. I was a notebook-writing kinda gal; if I'd brought my laptop to class, I'd have spent the whole time playing games and not paying attention. (You gotta know what works for you when it comes to study habits!)

So I acquired all these spiral notebooks. And then I graduated college and they moved back to Texas with me. And then I moved in with Matt, and they followed me then too. And for the past almost three years, they've lived in the guest room closet where no one has looked at them since they were placed there.

Only like, one or two of these are Matt's.

I knew I couldn't just recycle them and be done with it. That would be like throwing away the physical evidence of the knowledge I'd gained over my four years of schooling. Instead, my lofty goal was to scan the pages of my notebooks so that I could haul them around forever without straining my back; to make all those spirals no heavier than the weight of my MacBook Pro.

It was no easy task! (I watched both the Golden Globes and the Grammys as I scanned and scanned.) Hundreds and hundreds of pages etched onto a flash drive and transferred over to the computer. Distant memories from long-forgotten classes dredged up. I took some really interesting classes that I'd forgotten about: Religion, Culture and the Meaning of Life. The Bible as Literature. A women's studies class on body image. Tudor England (one of my favorites). A technology class where we spent the whole time discussing "new" means of communication, like Skype and Google and TiVo. Plus, all the advertising classes you could ever dream of, a perfect fit for a commercial nerd like me.

I may not remember every second of those classes, but I remember which ones I loved and which notebooks got thrown out as soon as the class was over. (I'm looking at YOU, Propaganda and Rhetoric. What should have been a thrilling English class was the most boring three credits ever. Except that we got to read "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood as part of the curriculum, and that was excellent.)

By scanning these pages, though, it's almost as if I'm admitting that digital text makes much more sense than paper and pen. Which kind of saddens me. I've always been so pro-written word, so anti-digital reading.

At the same time, it feels like a huge burden has been lifted. (And placed on Matt's shoulders, because it's his job to take out the recycling bin. And I mean BIN.)

Our giant Rubbermaid "paper recycling bin." At least half of it is old notebook pages.

But once it's taken out, we'll no longer have to carry the weight anymore. And that's a relief.

The remaining spirals are Matt's. Only a few old Bibles and Photoshop magazines are left. Michael Scott approves.

What do you need to organize? Did you keep any of your old school notebooks?

Do Some Good While You Do Your Shopping

Church is one of the places I'm most consistently happy. I know that sounds weird, but hear me out. When Matt and I were planning our wedding, one of his only requests was that we get married in a church. At the time, we didn't have a church we were regularly attending. We went to a lot of places, week after week, trying to find one that would be a good fit for us.

It was not a big church. There was nothing particularly special about the building, the windows or the sanctuary. But we were immediately welcomed. People wanted to know us. They were friendly, and kind, and wanted to introduce us to other young couples we could be friends with. We felt like we were home — the relationships and the involvement were what we had missed in our previous church-finding endeavors. We made really good friends. We got involved in a lot of things. And even when I don't particularly feel in a church-y mood, I still want to go on Sundays, because these are my people.

I know these people. I know what their hardships are, and what their joys are. We've volunteered together, and we've cared for each other.

So when my friend Megan shared this website, UMCmarket, where a portion of your online shopping proceeds come back directly to your church, I thought that was a pretty sweet idea. Because a church, to me, is so much more than just a building you go to once a week. If, like me, you're probably already planning to do a lot of your holiday shopping online, logging in through this site before you make a purchase is something simple you can do to give back to your local church to support things like mission projects and children's ministries.

TONS of stores you already shop at online are participating, offering your chosen church a percentage of any purchase you make at Amazon, Walmart, Groupon, Sephora, Lowe's, Jos. A Bank, Pier 1, Barnes and Noble, Banana Republic, various hotels, and like 26 more pages of stores. Plus, this is not limited to Christmastime — you can give back to your church year-round.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure this site only works for United Methodist churches. If you know of a similar site that works for other denominations, I'd be happy to post the link here so others can find it.

Are you planning to do any shopping on Cyber Monday?

No one has paid me to talk about UMCmarket. I just like the concept, and know our church — and probably many others — could use a little extra help this season.

How to Protect Your Wedding Album

After my post about how our wedding album pages were sticking together and ripping, I got in touch with AdoramaPix to find out what the problem was and what I could do about it. Because they are awesome, they offered to reprint our book for me at no charge. (I paid the shipping for the new book, and I also bought a protective box for $7.95 when I placed the re-order.) I was very impressed with their customer service — they offered to help me get the book re-ordered immediately and were great at communicating with me via e-mail, and even though the new book was scheduled to arrive on June 25, it actually arrived several days earlier.

Their rep, Libby, also made a few suggestions as to how I could prevent my album from getting damaged again, since things like humidity in the air can affect the pages (and I live in a very humid state). So since I know several of ya'll also have photo books from AdoramaPix, I wanted to share a few ways you can protect your albums so this won't happen to you!

Oooh, ahhh. Brand new album in its protective box.

Don't keep them in a heavy-traffic area.
We always kept ours out on the coffee table in the living room, because I loved it when people would come over, see it and want to look at our wedding pictures. Maybe that's kind of self-centered of me, but I love looking through it and I know sometimes other people do too — when I go to friends' houses and see their albums, I always want to flip through them.

We spend most of our time in the living room, so there was a lot of risk potential for the book getting damaged by keeping it on the coffee table. Having the book in a location that's not heavily trafficked means less risk of spilling something on it, grubby fingers, or accidentally damaging it yourself.

Protective tissue paper too. Fancy!

Don't leave them out 24/7.
Guilty. It didn't move from the coffee table for over two years, and look where that got me. So when Libby suggested I get a protective box to store the new one in, it made sense to me. The box I ordered is very nice, solid and thick, and it helps keep moisture in the air away from the book. That way when it is being stored, it won't get damaged by things like, oh, humidity. From now on, I'm going to keep it probably in the office, and only bring it out when guests are coming in or when we want to look through it.

Store them horizontally.
I did something right! I'm not sure why keeping the books flat is better for them than storing them standing up, but I'll bet it has to do with making sure the spine stays strong. I'll have to change the way I store my other albums, since those are all standing up on my bookshelf. (In addition to our wedding album, I also have albums of our engagement photos and my bridal portraits, though they were cheaper albums bought through other printing companies.)

How do you store your albums?

All We Have Left of Our Wedding

After we got a CD of our wedding pictures two years ago, I spent hours painstakingly creating our wedding album on AdoramaPix. The book turned out beautifully — hard cover, thick and lustrous photo paper, bright imaging — and it has sat on our coffee table ever since, where we could flip through it any time we wanted.

A few days ago, Matt started flipping through it and about halfway through, he noticed that some of the pages were starting to stick together. And when we gently tried to pull them apart, the top layer of the photo paper started ripping off, still stuck to the opposite page.

Don't see it?

How about now? 

Then the pages started getting more and more stuck and ripping larger and larger areas of the pages, so eventually we stopped trying to open the pages and just left them stuck together. Which kind of defeats the purpose of having an album, but I just couldn't watch Matt try to pull the pages apart anymore, because no matter how careful we were, you could hear and see the pages ripping.

I really don't know what happened to make it do this. We've taken great care to never let anything happen to this book, and it opened just fine even a couple of weeks ago, when I looked through it on our anniversary. Even that one time I spilled water on the coffee table, none of the liquid actually touched our album, since we had other books underneath it.

It makes me sad that our album now has these torn places, and I'll never be able to look through it and not see those spots. Matt and I looked at what it would cost to reprint the book, but we just don't have an extra $100 laying around for a new copy. I'm just super bummed that there's not an easy fix for this.

What would you do if this happened to you? Would you suck it up and live with the torn spots, or would you re-order?

—————

EDIT 7/10/13: I got in touch with AdoramaPix. They replaced the album (I only paid shipping) and gave me some helpful tips for protecting their photo books. I am very impressed with their customer service.

What Would Life Be Like?

Sometimes when I have a hard time focusing at home, I'll go to the library to work. There's also a Starbucks that I frequent, but I find I like the library better. Mainly because I don't have to buy anything in order to use their wi-fi. And also because I usually have books waiting for me on hold, so I don't have to make a separate trip to pick them up. (In fact, I'm writing this at the library. This week's book was "A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan.)

Normally everything is pretty quiet at the library; there's just the murmur of the reference desk lady and the people asking her questions, click-clacking from the computer keyboards nearby, the sound of heavy books being taken off shelves and replaced with a thud. I like having the background noise. It helps me focus, so long as it's muted and not coming from a TV.

Where I like to sit, in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows.

But the other day at the library, I eavesdropped on a conversation that made me think. This old man with a grizzled beard made his way into the library, and asked the reference librarian for help because he had "never messed around with a computer before." He was trying to sell something on Craigslist, but to do that, you have to have an e-mail address; so he had to go about setting one up for the first time too. After about an hour, he gave up and left.

I can't imagine day-to-day life without a computer. I don't remember a time without computers. My parents bought their first desktop the year after I was born, more than 20 years ago. Although it was primitive compared to the computers we use today, the device has always been part of my life. I can't imagine approaching one now, having never used one, and trying to figure it out. How frustrating that must be.

But I wondered if it would really be so bad to not be so dependent on computers for everything. What might that be like?

We might have conversations face to face. We might spend more time invested in others.

We might still use maps in the car. (Let's face it, if you're bad at directions like me, having a GPS on your phone really isn't more helpful than having a map. That thing still gets me lost all the time.)

We might not be constantly connected to each other via e-mail and social media — but it would be okay, because everyone else would be out there living their lives too.

We might be filled with curious wonder, and instead of whipping out a smartphone for all our answers, we'd go down to the library and search among the books.

What do you think life would be like without computers? What technology do you think you could live without?

Review: EEBA

*NOTE: Since I wrote this review, EEBA has since re-branded as Goodbudget. The app is the same, and if you previously used EEBA, everything has transferred over for you. But if you're looking for a budget tracker app, you may have to search under "Goodbudget" now. I didn't change the references to EEBA in this post.*

Back in January, I went to a preview class before Financial Peace University started. I was hemming and hawwing about whether or not we should attend, and spent a little time talking to a friend after the preview. He told me that he and his wife had been using an envelope system like Dave Ramsey recommends for a few months already, but with a family of four on such different schedules, carrying around cash in envelopes just wasn't going to happen. So they were using this app called EEBA, where you assign envelopes a certain amount of money per pay period, and then every time you make a purchase (with cash, credit card, debit, etc.), you simply create a transaction in the app and it keeps track of what you have left to spend in each category.

A sample of our monthly envelopes.

So I downloaded it to see if it would work for us. And so far, it's basically perfect for us. It's available for both iPhone and Android, so Matt and I can both use the app under the same account, and it syncs our transactions automatically so both of us can see what we have left to spend at any given point in time. You can also sync it to your bank account so you don't have to manually input transactions, but we haven't done that.

With the free app, you get 10 monthly envelopes and 10 long-term envelopes (and you can purchase more on a monthly basis if you need them).

The only thing I don't like about the app is that if you "deposit" uncategorized money directly into the app, it can be difficult to assign it to a category without screwing up either your total amount or the amounts in your envelopes. Luckily you can do this without a problem on their website, which also links to the app in real time. So every month when we do our budget, I just hop on the website to fill our envelopes. It's been a lot easier for me to keep on budget because of EEBA, and it's also taken away some of my spending guilt — because the money is already there and available to be spent!

Do you use an envelope system? How do you keep track of your budget?

I didn't get paid for this review, I just wanted to share in case anyone else is currently using or planning to use an envelope system for their money.

On Par With the Rest of the Planet

Clearly I'm not an early adopter for most kinds of technology, considering I once asked what the heck you're supposed to do with Instagram, and then proceeded to only use it to take pictures of my cat. (Then I deleted my account when they threatened to sell users' photos, and had to start over when they decided not to.)

But, if you check out the the sidebar, you'll see that I now have social media buttons! You can now follow me on Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

Happy Friday!

Just In Case

It is important that you create a living will as soon as possible. Especially if you're a 20-or-30-something woman. It doesn't hurt to throw in a regular will while you're at it, even if you've only got $5 to your name.

Because Matt and I are young and have very few assets, we had been putting off creating our wills for a while. But last week we finally sat down in front of the computer, and used Quicken WillMaker to bang out some wills, living wills and final arrangements documents. While Matt was filling out his forms, I sat next to him and we talked and laughed about not wanting our ashes being put in cardboard boxes.  The gravity of the situation hadn't hit me yet. When it was my turn ... suddenly there was a question in mine that wasn't in his. And all of a sudden, this turned into a huge, life-altering thing.

When you're filling out a living will, it wants to know what your wishes are in case you're terminally ill and/or brain-dead; situations where you can't speak for yourself about what you want to happen to you. By what means do you want to be kept alive? What procedures do you not want to undergo to prolong your life if you're near death or never going to be lucid again? And do you have someone named as your "healthcare agent" who can make these life-or-death decisions for you if you can't?

But then at the end of the document, it asked, "If I am pregnant when my health care directive is considered: a) I direct that it be given no effect during my pregnancy, b) I direct that it be carried out."

I didn't know how to handle that. It's basically asking, "If for some reason you become brain-dead while you're pregnant, do you want us to follow your wishes to continue or discontinue life support, or do you want us to throw your living will out the window and do everything possible to keep the fetus alive?" It's a heavy decision, because suddenly you're making choices for three people. Select one box, and you're choosing to leave your partner a single parent, should the baby survive; choose the other, and your spouse may lose both their wife and child.

It's a hard thing to think about. But it didn't make me angry, just incredibly sad. At least until I read the information sidebar, that is. According to the program (our version is from 2011), "Texas law specifically restricts your right to control your own medical care if you are pregnant. ... The reasoning is that the mother's health care needs may be different from or even secondary to the needs of the fetus." As far as I know, Texas law hasn't changed in the last year or so.

Regardless of which box you would select, I want you to be able to make your own choices for your healthcare. (Though I don't know for sure that checking the second box will actually protect your rights, especially if you're in a state like Texas. So it's equally as important that your spouse and/or healthcare agent knows what you want, so he or she can make proper decisions on your behalf.)

Maybe the law is different in your state, maybe it's not, but if you do not have a living will, these decisions may be made for you if for some reason you are not able to articulate your wishes yourself. So you better make sure your wishes are in writing. And there's no better time than now.

If you don't already have a will or living will, you can use a program like the one we used to create them at no cost (besides the cost of the software), and in some states you may have an option to create one for free online. In both cases, as far as I can tell, you just have to pay a small fee to have it notarized and/or to file it with an attorney. We already had Quicken WillMaker on our computer, and neither of us received compensation for mentioning it here.

Picturing Freedom

I have an Excel spreadsheet that I use to keep track of my student loans. Well, not to keep track of them ... to see how quickly I can PUNCH THEM IN THE FACE.

I used to have several additional loans, since out-of-state tuition is pretty much highway robbery, but their ridiculous interest rates (SIX-POINT-EIGHT PERCENT???) strongly encouraged me to pay them off first. As of 2012, I was down to three.

So I have my Excel spreadsheet. It has three tabs, one for each loan. And thanks to my dad (who set it up) and Matt (who fixed it after I messed up a bunch of the formulas), this spreadsheet is interactive. So if I change the numbers I'm paying per month, it adjusts the entire chart and tells me how much sooner I can pay the whole thing off.

I'm still kind of far away from doing that, but I'm making excellent progress. This month, I laid the smack down on one of my three remaining loans, so I'm down to two!

Yeah, I have encouraging messages to myself at the bottom of each tab.

To keep me from feeling depressed that there's still a long way to go.

Matt thinks I'm too hard on myself, because I worry all the time that I'm not paying these off fast enough, and I don't give myself any credit for what I've already accomplished. So here goes.

In the six years since I took out my first student loan, I've already paid down $33,000. I've been paying them down since the second I took them out, and I'm hoping within the next three years, I can have my education 100% paid in full.

It feels really awkward to say this. It feels like bragging, and I guess I just don't think this is something that is brag-worthy. Matt and I are taking Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University right now through our church, and every time I hear someone say, "We've paid off [ridiculous quantity of debt!] in [ridiculously small number of months!]" it makes me want to cry out of frustration. It takes such an extreme amount of dedication to pay off any kind of debt, and when you have student loans, it's hard to be that dedicated and focused for years and years and years. Doing it any faster seems absolutely impossible.

So not only did I want to share what I'm working through right now, but I wanted to encourage you if you're in a similar boat. You're doing a good job. Someday we are going to be free. 

Do you have student loans? What are you going to do first after you make that last payment? And has anyone else gone through the Financial Peace program? (I like it a lot. I'll probably talk about it another time. EDIT: I wrote about it here.)

(P.S. If you'd like a "blank" copy of my interactive spreadsheet, send me an e-mail {allie at tulipandtweed dot com} and I'll send you a copy. It won't actually be blank because I'm afraid I might accidentally delete all the formulas, but I'll make the numbers generic so it'll still work without sharing all my personal information.)

Sixty-six books in 2013! Just kidding. Kind of.

The Protestant Bible contains 1187 chapters in its 66 books. That means, in order to read through the whole thing in 365 days, you have to get through 3.25 chapters every single day of the year.

Have I mentioned that I'm not good at math, and I'm worse at things I'm supposed to be doing every day? I need a little less structure than that.

Back in December, I was flipping through free app options on my hand-me-down iPad, and on a whim I downloaded a Bible app. Turns out, this app (called "Bible," go figure) is freaking amazing, and I don't know why they don't charge for it! It not only offers tons of different translations, but it also offers reading plans so you can read through the whole Bible in three months, six months, eight months or a year! And they offer plans that go historically, chronologically, or just chapter-by-chapter. And you can complete the whole thing on your iPad. (It also has plans for people who don't want to read through the whole Bible, but I didn't pay any attention to those so I can't tell you about them.)

I love that there are so many options! I selected the "CCV" plan, which typically chooses readings from  the Old Testament, New Testament, and the Psalms or Proverbs every day. It also allows two "off" days per week for reading ahead or catching up, which is one of the reasons I picked it. Oh, and it keeps track of what days you should be doing what readings, and what day of the plan you're on.

I'm excited for this challenge (at least right now — last year's book challenge got kind of taxing towards the end), and I hope I can maintain that excitement this year. I've done barely any Bible-cracking in the past few years, and I want to change that. I started a few days before the new year, and so far I'm right on schedule. I've even used my "off" days to try to get ahead, which was a good idea, since we've been in and out of town so much lately that I've missed a few actual reading days here and there. (Matt's a groomsman in a wedding later this month, and between the holidays, bachelor party activities and bridal showers, we've been doing quite a lot of driving!)

What are your reading goals this year? Have you found any new apps that you're crazy about?

No one paid me to talk about this app, I just got a little obsessed.

When Misfit Toys Go Speed-Dating

I just thought this was cute and had to share. :)

Do you enjoy holiday commercials? Also, do any of you own a Windows 8 phone? I've never seen one in real life; I've played around with Windows 8 on a desktop computer, and it didn't seem very intuitive, so I wonder if the system meshes better with a mobile platform.

A Love-Hate Relationship

My mom asked me a while back if I wanted an iPad mini for Christmas. Apparently my waffle-y attitude toward tablets in general concluded that I didn't need one. Meanwhile, my dad had an old first-generation iPad that he wasn't using anymore, so my mom gave it to me and saved herself some money.

Well, I knew that if I had an iPad, I would primarily want to use it as an e-Reader. This revelation kind of shocked me, because up to this point, I have been very anti-e-Reader. I like my books in paper and ink form, and in ridiculous quantities, please and thank you. And I don't know what else I would use an iPad for at this point in time.

But I downloaded iBooks, and started browsing through the free e-books, and then I went a little crazy and ended up downloading a whole ton of free stuff, like Anna Karenina and Vanity Fair and Paradise Lost and Little Women and Wuthering Heights. Books I've always intended to read but never got around to starting.

And now I think I'm a little bit obsessed.

And sad, because I've kind of enjoyed reading on the iPad, especially at night with the white-on-black settings, but I don't want this to become my primary method of reading, ever. I already spend so many hours per day on my computer (and when I'm not on the computer, I'm doing stuff on my phone), that staring at another screen for extended periods of time, even for something as awesome as reading, doesn't really sound all that appealing. But having a lot of books in the same location is quite appealing...

So basically, I'm still waffling on whether or not I would ever seriously consider using an e-Reader, even though I puffy heart iBooks.

Do you have an iPad? What do you use it for? Anyone else still not totally on board with e-Readers?

Going Off The Grid

In the days before our trip to Corpus Christi, I decided that under no circumstances did I want to be checking my e-mail constantly during my vacation. I was starting to get annoyed with how much time I spend online doing pointless things, and I thought vacation was a perfect time to hit the proverbial reset button and go cold-turkey on my Internet usage.

So I went a week without the Internet. And it was quite a feat since we were only out of town for four days, so I had to be good while I was at home too.

I was amazed at how much free time I had once I stopped checking my usual websites — social media and Google Reader especially. I was surprised to find that I really didn't miss Pinterest or Facebook, and even once I got back home I wasn't super keen on catching up on the things I might have "missed."

What?! You can't be serious!

On the other hand, I'm accustomed to looking things up on my iPhone when I need to, and as we were out of town I constantly wanted to look online for restaurant recommendations and whether or not jellyfish can sting you if they're dead ... but I limited myself to only using apps I already had.

It was nice to disconnect for a little while, but it was difficult! I'm glad to be back online, though I want to focus more on spending time doing things I enjoy both online and off instead of browsing mindlessly to kill time.

Have you ever taken a break from the Internet? What would be hardest for you to go without?

Happy Valentine's Day!

Here's an adorable and funny video celebrating love.

via Ad Week (but I promise it's not an ad)

Got any fun plans for V-day?

Instagram

I know I'm way behind the times, but I just got Instagram on my phone last week. It took me a few days to figure it out, because I'm slow, and also because I'm a photo purist. I've been a scrapbooker all my life, and I like to remember things as they are, so why would I want to alter a perfectly good photo to look like it was taken in the '70s or whenever? Especially if you can never get that moment back to its non-'70s original?

Then I figured out I could apply filters to the photos I'd already taken without destroying the originals. And then I liked Instagram better.

While I was figuring it out, I took a bunch of pictures of my cat. I'm sure you're not surprised.

What technology has it taken you a while to get on board with?