I feel in love with our new city this week.

The kids and I took one afternoon out after school, heading downtown to the public library and then the large play park on the waterfront. After a delicious hour and a half flew by at the former, we parked at what I thought was the closest public parking lot to the play park.

Walking over, the water called to us and we decided to take the path along the beach until we came to the play area, rather than the usual sidewalk. Barefoot through the sand on a gorgeous early summer day, playful breeze off the lake, sitting in the sun, watching the kids explore and jump and spin and dig. It’s really no wonder at all that this town is growing as it is.

Once arriving at the park, I noticed a parking lot situated just on the other side of the play park. I think I’ll keep parking in the first one I found.

Share this post!

“We feel safe around direct, honest people. They speak their minds, and we know where we stand with them.

Indirect people, people who are afraid to say who they are, what they want, and what they’re feeling, cannot be trusted. They will somehow act out their truth even though they do not speak it. And it may catch everyone by surprise.

Directness saves time and energy. It removes us as victims. It dispenses with martyrdom and games. It helps us own our power. It creates respectful relationships.

It feels safe to be around direct, honest people. Be one.”

Instinctively, I’ve always found direct people to be those that I loved most in life. Though what it was about them that I loved I could not have said until very recently.

I want to be this person. Meager attempts at it have only encouraged me in the matter by allowing me a taste of the freedom I have always desired. And it is so sweet.

It is not to mean, I learned recently, telling everyone everything. Your private thoughts are yours alone and shared with whom you choose. Neither do we throw tact out the window. But instead of side-stepping the question or not saying what it is you want or being too afraid to bring up a sore point, you do it. And, if I may borrow a good friend’s words, you do it scared. Because I can hear the things I ought to be saying or asking at the times I ought to be saying them in my head, but fear shackles me.

No more.

Share this post!

Alt + Enter are my new best friends.

Is anyone else using Firefox 3.0 and driven to distraction because typing in the url or search window and hitting Enter means that whatever you just called up appears in the tab you are currently viewing instead of its own new tab?!

Just for clarity – and emphasis! – the newest Internet Explorer does not subject me to such ill manners. Thank goodness, computer genius husband had the answer = hold the Alt button when you hit Enter, and presto chango a new tab appears with the website or search requested, so that you don’t lose the one you are gracing with your presence at the moment.

While on the topic, can I share my love for iGoogle? I’ve used my Google e-mail account – gmail for short – for years now, and it turned out to be quite a wise idea seeing that we moved three times since then and telling the whole world your new e-mail address has got to be the most unfunny activity in the modern world.

But back to iGoogle… it’s another of the many services Google offers in addition to gmail. I investigated a bit this morning and discovered that you do not have to have a gmail account to use iGoogle as your homepage.

My browser’s homepage – meaning the webpage that comes up first when you open the internet browser – was always simply set to something that I never particularly cared about it. It was a means to everything else fun on the web and not at all fun or helpful itself. Now it is both, and I highly recommend trying it out so you can play too.

Let me list it’s helpful qualities:

• You get to pick what and how much you want – hors d’oeuvres or the whole enchilada? You decide.
• It integrates with other Google applications that I use… alot.

That doesn’t sound like much. Sorry. But for me it’s HUGE! lol

Basically it means that it’s become my jumping off point to what I do online. The obvious weather report is there, but I also have my Google calendar and gmail and a list of links to the websites that I use most often, aka bookmarks.

The fun part of iGoogle is the themes and gadgets. Lemme ‘plain.

Themes decorate your page with color schemes or pictures. Change it as often or as little as you like. I simply can’t say how much I appreciate looking at a page that I got to pick the design for it – everything else online was someone else’s choice.

Gadgets are what let you put the mini-gmail and mini-calendar on your homepage, but they also let you do just about whatever else you want. Games, news feeds, helpful things, search engines, you name it and they have it. My current favorites are the Picture of the Day that displays places around the world that you have to see before you die and then the Art of the Day that randomly shows a piece of artwork. They make my iGoogle homepage useful and pretty!

To get started, go here.

Before I go, random thoughts:

• Using Gmail for your email and iGoogle as your homepage is awesome because you can access it anywhere.

• Once you add gadgets to your homepage, they can be moved around and placed on the page wherever you would like them to be. Just drag and drop them.

• Google’s calendar can now be synced with your Outlook calendar as well as with other people’s Google calendars. I like this so much because it’s become the best and easiest family planner in the world for us. Either of us can, again, access anywhere, edit, add events and no more excuses that someone forgot about something going on, myself included. The calendar will even send you an email with your daily agenda!

• Feel free to comment/email if you get stuck. Just remember, you won’t break it. Play around and you’ll discover all sorts of things.

This is the way that I use iGoogle. What have you made yours do?

Ps. as a result of poking around for this post, I’m trying YouTube and Digg gadgets for some more fun. hehe

Share this post!

How quickly lessons are forgotten!

Wednesday night rolls around. Al-anon Meeting night.

Did I want to go? Absolutely.

Did I want to leave the warm comfort of my home and go out and tell people about my weaknesses? Nope.

Would I rather have ignored that they don’t exist at all and I’m completely in control of my life? Yeap.

Step #1 is so powerful and a constant reminder.

“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.”

That is my greatest temptation and it’s ever before me. It’s just so darn easy to not go when you are feeling good. There’s an itch almost in the back of your mind, a slow unraveling that unless knitted quickly back in place will only get larger. You know that you need to go to the meeting, but when it is small, it’s very easy to ignore.

Deception and denial. Repression. Everything’s fine. Stuff it down deep where you don’t have to look at it. Tempting.

Not that I’m saying life needs to be one long counseling session. Not at all. It’s not about keeping the sad and broken things in the forefront. It’s about keeping reality in view. And it’s about learning how to live better from that vantage point. I laugh easier, I play harder, I smile more… when I go to the meetings.

Share this post!