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I've decided my PDA is too expensive because it keeps breaking and I keep having to get a new one. However, I really, really loved some things about it, so I am going to try to find other ways to do those things.

First, I bought a new address book. My old address book from high school was just not designed well enough. My new one is not perfect, but it has a lot more space, it's smaller, and it's prettier. (More space, yet smaller? That's because the old one wasted a lot of pages for gift lists, birthday lists, and other odd things I never used much.) Also, it cost only $2 and came with a matching note pad, note pad holder, and tiny refrigerator magnet picture frames. I resisted it last week because I didn't need another address book, but then I re-evaluated my situation.

Now I've decided to take one of my blank books that are too pretty to toss and turn it into a price book. This helps me pay attention to how much things cost at different places, so that wherever I'm shopping, I can stock up on things that are a bargain at the place I'm at. I'm still trying to decide how to organize it. Purely alphabetically? Or will I find a way to continue to use categories like grains, dairy, protein, and toiletries? I have decided that I'm going to cut the page edges like they do on address books, so you can flip directly to where you want to go.

Another thing I miss is my section of restaurant reviews. I think I may have to build a hipster PDA for this. That's just a stack of note cards clipped together. You use one card for each place and can easily add a new place and take out old places and keep things alphabetized. So many restaurants have business cards, I may trying to make use of those along with other tiny business-card-sized cards. I'll have to see if there's enough room to write all the comments I want to write. If not, I guess I can just add a second card.

The last thing I miss is my list of things I'm looking for such as certain books if I find a good price. This category also includes measurements such as the size of my air filter and the size of my windows and the sizes of pants I wear in different brands. I haven't gotten around to thinking about a solution for that category yet.

**

Last week I gardened for forty minutes. Yesterday I counted nineteen bug bites from that adventure, just on my left leg below my knee but above my ankle. Remind me again why people like gardening?

Today I gardened forty more minutes. I got rid of some more johnson grass, beggar's lice, and that sticky weed that I've since heard referred to as "velcro weed." I also cut down a few evil trees, some of which I have already chopped down before, which have new branches growing out the sides of the old stumps. That's so not fair.

On the other hand, my rose garden was still virtually weed free.

**

I've been seeing more buildings around town that are being built in that style of one big building covering a whole block with shops on the ground floor and apartments above. If only those could come with parking and be more soundproof than apartments I've lived in before, that would definitely be my favorite lifestyle. I'd love to just have a patio garden and walk most places. But I also enjoy being able to jump around in my house and sing along with recorded music at any time of the day or night without worrying about bothering my neighbors. And I really don't want my friends never to visit me just because there's no place to park. And none of them live anywhere near good mass transit systems, partly because most of my friends are going the suburb route and partly because we don't have any. One couple does live near an edge of town that has some okay bus routes, and one lives in central condo.

Oh, right, I also hate condo fees and condo associations. I guess I'll keep working on this gardening thing.

Maybe the best idea is to own an entire fourplex or sixplex. Then you are the condo association! And the condo fees are much more predictable.

**

Woo hoo! Another one of my friends has started journaling online! (You never know what's going on during 24 hours of technical difficulties; the universe may be changing.) Mac the Mike begins by not setting your expectations too high: "Expect regular updates on when i cut my toenails, etc."

PDA replacement

on 2006-05-14 06:24 pm (UTC)
Posted by (Anonymous)
This is Tam. Mosch (my roommate, for those who don't know, which of course does not include the Living Deb) keeps all of these types of things - address lists, to-do lists, lists of things he needs to buy at various stores, etc. - in a binder. He carries the binder in his side bag, which he carries everywhere the way most women carry a purse.

So if bringing a binder everywhere is something you can stomach, that might be a solution. Obviously you could generate content for the binder on a computer, or write it on notepaper, with equal ease. (Unlike a PDA, a binder does not use electricity or cost very much, and breakage is generally trivial, since you risk losing only the cheap binder itself, not generally the information inside.)

on 2006-05-15 09:04 am (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] mac-the-mike.livejournal.com
I live in one of those buildings with the integrated retail shopping, although my place doesn't have as much retail in it as the places you describe in Austin. But, I'm also within walking distance to a grocery store (next door), an Irish Pub (across the street), a video rental store (across a different street), a play theatre, a record store, a camping/outdoor-stuff store, and best of all a Dart Rail station from which I can go downtown, which is great because parking downtown sucks. I'm definitely a huge fan of "urban living" as they call it. One of my neighbors doesn't own a car. She doesn't need one. She can walk to work.

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