Bookworm

Kindness

Found this story on someone's blog and couldn't resist sharing:

". . . in May we had ordered several pairs of shoes from Zappos for my mom. . . Out of seven pairs, only two fit. . . The rest were here waiting to be returned. Because of various circumstances. . . the shoes were never sent back. There’s a time limit on the return of 15 days. Remember this. When you do a return to them, they pay the shipping, but you have to get the shoes to UPS yourself. Remember this, also.

When I came home this last time, I had an email from Zappos asking about the shoes, since they hadn’t received them. I was just back and not ready to deal with that, so I replied that my mom had died but that I’d send the shoes as soon as I could. They emailed back that they had arranged with UPS to pick up the shoes, so I wouldn’t have to take the time to do it myself. I was so touched. That’s going against corporate policy.

Yesterday, when I came home from town, a florist delivery man was just leaving. It was a beautiful arrangement in a basket with white lilies and roses and carnations. Big and lush and fragrant. I opened the card, and it was from Zappos. I burst into tears. I’m a sucker for kindness, and if that isn’t one of the nicest things I’ve ever had happen to me, I don’t know what is. So…

IF YOU BUY SHOES ONLINE, GET THEM FROM ZAPPOS.

With hearts like theirs, you know they’re good to do business with. [Link: Writing - Cooking - Life � Blog Archive � I Heart Zappos]

US Bridge Map - Interactive US Map of Bridges

Do you drive over any structurally deficient bridges on your daily commute?  I just found out that I drive over one that was built in 1929.  This is the most useful Google Maps mashup I've ever seen -- US Bridge Map - Interactive US Map of Bridges.

Monday Thoughts

• I'm really glad I took some pictures over the weekend and put masses of 2007 shots up on Snapfish.
• It was worth taking the extra time this morning to get two birthday cards in the mail instead of waiting until tomorrow. 
• It was worth taking the extra time to drop off some book donations in the public library's drop box.
• I'm really pleased with the Firefox extension called Better Gmail, particularly the ability to integrate Google Reader (for RSS feeds) into the same window as the email function.  (I use Gmail primarily for "storage" or emailing things to myself instead of for correspondence.) I was using the web-based version of Newsgator for feed reading and there are things I like better about the 'Gator interface.  But what I decided to do was to subscribe to my top 10-20 favorite feeds in Google Reader and keep the rest in Newsgator.  So now I'll just keep a perpetual Google Mail/Reader window open at work and keep Newsgator closed.  I'm hoping that a side effect of reading fewer feeds at work will mean that I do more writing and more work.
• Found a great new tool for tracking/logging work: the Printable CEO Emergent Task Timer.  It's in alpha release, built in Flash; can use it web-based or download a PC or Mac version.  Couldn't be easier to use -- click to fill in a bubble (reminiscent of childhood tests) and click to type what you did in that 15 minute block of time.  At the end of the day, print it out.

Happiness. . .

"There are four stages for enjoying a happy event:

• anticipation
• savoring
• expression
• reflection

So, with each happy event, we should think about:

• actively looking forward to it
• relishing it in the moment—which may mean, among other things, not talking on your cell phone or checking your emails
• talking about it with other people, writing about it, etc.
• thinking back on it—a task for which mementos like photos or scrapbooks are very useful."
  [Link: The Happiness Project: What I learned about happiness from my love of Harry Potter: lesson #2.]
  

Happiness

"Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a leading expert on well-being, is establishing what he calls the world's first Ph.D program focusing on positive psychology and the analysis of happiness, at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif. "Even though the things that make people happy seem ephemeral and immaterial, they are the most important things in life, and they have not been studied very seriously," says Csikszentmihalyi, a professor of psychology and management and author of Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience.

His program, co-founded by assistant professor Jeanne Nakamura, an expert on creativity and mentoring, isn't about quick fixes. Rather than teaching people how to be happy or educating happiness coaches, the school will train graduate students first in statistical methodology and then in specific research techniques. A small group of graduate students, about 10 at first, will use those tools to survey and analyze the variables that affect people's satisfaction. The first group will enroll this fall, and the program has already started receiving inquiries. Candidates from a variety of academic backgrounds will be considered for admission." [TIME]

What would you take with you?

"If you only had a backpack's worth of stuff to take with you...or a trunk, or a car's worth...what would you take?  Having decided that, look at all the other stuff you own.  Why didn't you choose those things?  Can you replace some of those things with better things that can make more of a difference in your life?" [Link: Richard Kuo's Personal Blog : Optimize your life #2 - Go minimalist] 

The problem with this scenario is that you don't know where you're going (or staying).  Are you going on a trip or evacuating ahead of a natural disaster?  Are you moving?  Or am I completely overthinking this because it's just supposed to be a mental exercise. :-)

Happy Labor Day, Y'all

"Labor Day is a perfectly nice holiday, as good as a Monday off ever gets. But a Monday off is really just a wrinkle in time. By the time you sleep late and have a leisurely cup of coffee, the holiday is half over, and Tuesday — and a whole new season — is looming ahead. What we really need is Labor Week, a seven-day antidote to the very American habit of overworking. Not just another week of August, which we managed to fill up with work this year anyway. We’re thinking of a week with no news and nothing newsworthy, a week of national, collective pause in which the gears of ordinary life fall silent." [NY Times]

I'd go further.  I think from Christmas Eve through New Year's Day should all be a national holiday.  It's always difficult to get time off that time of year because everyone wants to spend time with friends and family.  And let's face it, we're thinking more about baking cookies and wrapping gifts than we are about work. 

A Netflix Hangover

"The digital revolution has introduced us all to the life-altering phenomenon known as asynchronous entertainment. We can now enjoy movies, TV shows and our favorite media sources wherever, whenever, we want. But a decade into this monumental shift, the drawbacks are coming into focus. Episodes of “The Daily Show” and “Letterman” pile onto our DVR television recorders like copies of The New Yorker, begging to either be consumed or wastefully discarded. Netflix movies line up on our shelves like airplanes on a runway waiting to take off. And all of those blog postings relentlessly flood into our Web browsers every hour, every day. There’s certainly not time for all of it. Is this entertainment? It feels more like homework." [MSNBC.com]

This article amused me.  It's true -- it's so easy to queue up all sorts of stuff that, unless you're unemployed or retired, you don't have a prayer of keeping up with.  And even if you are a wonderfully cultured, well-educated human being, you might sometimes opt for the middlebrow or lowbrow items and let the highbrow wait for when you aren't so tired.  (Working Mom of small child here.)

Play! Enjoy life!

"As a society we've placed a higher value on the idea of home as a perfect, spotless ideal than as a place to play and enjoy life and teach our children about art and nature and messy stuff. Just take a look at. . .daytime television.  There's one [show] in particular that I won't mention by name, but the woman goes through her day sharing tips on the use of capers and garlic presses and the delight of folding a fitted sheet just the right way so that it fits in the linen cupboard just like a flat sheet. . .  How many people out there are watching that and thinking, "gosh, my fitted sheets are all fluffy and rounded and I have to kind of jam them in between the hand towels and the crock pot because I don't even have a linen closet. I'm such a loser." STOP THE MADNESS!! A home that doesn't border on antiseptic cleanliness, but is full of laughter and glee, of silliness and puppet shows, of music and art is probably more healthy anyway. We need some germs to keep our antibodies up."  [Art by Diahn]

Know When to Disconnect

"In the roundtable discussion on "Consuming the New Media" that I took part in, Peter Beinart predicted that, in the future, the greatest luxury will be being disconnected from all the new technologies, freed to think new thoughts and come up with new ideas. So perhaps the most important idea to come out of this Ideas Festival, where everybody was walking around in-between sessions talking on cell phones or tapping away on BlackBerrys (or listening to iPods on hikes), was the thought that future bliss will be dependent on figuring out how to put the bloody things down.  After Beinart spoke, Charlie Firestone, the moderator of the "Consuming the New Media" panel, turned to the audience and asked Michael York, who had earlier given a presentation on Shakespeare, if the actor could think of any insights Shakespeare might be able to lend to the discussion. York, always ready, said yes and quoted Hamlet's final words: "The rest is silence." Leave it to the Bard to deliver the perfect topper." [The
Blog | Arianna Huffington]