Tag Archives: journal

A Wonderful Discovery

Posted on November 15, 2013 by funnygurl2

A few months ago I was forced to get a new cell phone.

I could not use it anymore because of the screen. Oh, I know what you are thinking, but it was not PHYSICALLY broken. One day I tried to take a picture of my son in the middle of the grocery store, and the screen just went black. (My son didn’t break it. He is not ugly, he is adorable!)

Maybe he was SO CUTE he broke the phone…

It would display the phone’s start-up images, but after that it always just went to black and stayed that way.

I am a hard core fan of “slider” phones. I bought a Kyocera Rise. It is both slider and touchscreen, so that I can train myself to use those miserable touchscreen keyboards for my next phone, when slider keyboards will be impossible to find.

This is my first phone that has APPS! I was so excited to get 3 specific apps:

1. A QR Code Reader*
* It does not always work because my camera does not seem to have auto-focus 😦

2. Moonfrye – a scrapbook app from Ms. Punky Brewster herself**
**Only available for iPhones 😡

3. Weather app with doppler***
***I actually have two of these, but one now has “my current location” stuck on my work location, not my home :O

Since I loved my new phone so, I tried experimenting with using its calendar, rather than my hard-copy paper day planner. It was an excuse to use my new phone more often. Also, I kept finding myself needing my work schedule and not having it with me. I always have my phone with me though. It seemed logical. But I didn’t like the fact that I didn’t have any way to color-code or sort my events in my calendar. It just wasn’t quite as handy as I had hoped.

Then a brilliant idea hit me –> look for a calendar app with more features!

But then I was overwhelmed by the number of calendar apps out there. Luckily the first one I tried was Cozi. Because I LOVE IT!

Don’t try to read my schedule. I am not actually going to do most of those things today anyway.

While I still can’t color-code events, I can sort them by who will participate (me, my husband, my son, my dogs). And it also has a separate area for To-Do lists, also divided up by person. I love that it is backed up on a real website [cozi.com]. I love that it is designed for the whole family to share it (although I can’t get my husband to use it…yet). Once I realized I was going to be spending a lot of time with this app, I went ahead and paid for the ad-free upgrade with more features. Now I can send my husband email reminders, and track birthdays too.

I do with it had a section for just random notes to myself. If I think of a potential blog topic, I have to put it in my To-Do list. In my day planner, I always jotted down what my total hours worked were in a week, so that later I could compare it to my paycheck. In Cozi, I had to bastardize the shopping list function to enter my total hours. (And for now, a paper list on our refrigerator works just fine for a shopping list.)

Besides that, I really do love it. There is even a journal feature which I treat like my own personal Facebook. I put the events that are too boring for Facebook on it!

I have run into a problem with Cozi though. Now that I have entered everything imaginable into it, including my weekly TV shows I watch, I don’t get to use it as much as when I first downloaded it. But they just added a new feature for Contacts.

Hmmm. That could keep me busy for like a day.

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Posted in A day in the life and tagged app, appointments, calendar, contacts, Cozi, day planner, electronic, family, journal, Kyocera, list, Moonfrye, planning, Rise, shopping, to-do. Bookmark the permalink.

Candy Bar Diet

Posted on January 1, 2013 by funnygurl2

If you steal my idea and make millions from it, I will sue your ass. And that will probably be easier than if I just tried to make millions off my idea myself.

A few years ago, I created a Candy Bar Diet. I think it is a brilliant idea. Most people don’t understand it.

The core of the diet is to track the calories you eat in a day using the magnetic, dry-erase Handy Dandy Candy Board, featured in the back of the book that explains the diet. The Handy Dandy Candy Board uses adorable candy bar magnets to track the calories you eat in a day. I created a mock up that I used myself. It was much more fun than keeping a food diary.

The following are the excerpts from the book and pictures of the mock-up.

Handy Dandy Candy Board – Daily calorie tracker and goal © not-quite-a-diet 2010

Introduction:

Candy Bar Calorie Counter

It’s “not-quite-a-diet”

How It Works

Candy bars (the normal sized ones here, no cheating with King-sized) are generally average out to be 230 calories. No matter what you eat in a day, you know you are always thinking: Can I still squeak in a candy bar? Of course you can! Especially if you think of all your calorie counting in terms of candy bars!

Start off with the maximum number of calories you want to collect in your flabby body in a day. Let’s say 1600 calories. Divide that by the average calories in a candy bar: 230 calories. That would mean you could eat calories equal to 7 candy bars in a day. And now with the dry erase, magnetic Handy Dandy Candy Board, it is easy to track to your daily goal.

Examples

That 20oz of Coke you just drank with 240 calories? That equals a candy bar. The honey bun you ate for breakfast at 460 calories—sorry, that’s 2 candy bars. Ate out for lunch & don’t know the calories? Be honest with yourself & give it your best guess. A cheddar bacon cheeseburger would probably be at least 3 candy bars. No complicated math. No tracking every tiny Pez candy. Feel free to round, but be honest with yourself. If you cheat, it will only harm yourself. I don’t care how much you eat in a day. I just want you to appreciate my adorable candy bar magnets, which I was inspired to create while squandering my life & my creativity in a cubicle.

Your Tools

Decide on your calorie/candy bar daily goal. Write it on the dry erase, magnetic Handy Dandy Candy Board . Place a candy bar magnet on the board every time you consume 230 calories in your day. The magnets are kept in a convenient storage pocket until you need them. Where do those calories come from? That is entirely up to you!

There is also a handy journal included to track your progress, if you are into that sort of thing. There is a Calories-to-Candy Bar Conversion Chart. Once the day is done, clear your candy slate & start over again! Conveniently sized to travel with you throughout the day as you rack up the candy bars, er, the calories:)

Why Count in Candy Bars?

This just happens to be how my brain works! And I AM guilty of eating multiple candy bars in a day. Whenever I tried to keep a journal of what I ate, I never made it through one day. I never made it through more than ONE MEAL! It was boring & tedious. But I realized that I was finding myself saying “well, these 2 toaster pastries equal 2 candy bars…maybe I should just eat the candy instead?!”

If you tried a strict dieting plan & became discouraged, this might be a good place to start over. By making it easier to track what you are eating, you are more likely to actually keep it up! Try the calorie counter with sweet indulgences figured right in!

Sometimes just keeping track of what you eat can encourage you to eat less. If your board is filling up, and it’s a choice between cheesecake or dinner, you might just choose dinner. If it’s a Friday night after a long week of work, you might choose cheesecake. But you will be educated & know that by eating both, you could be packing on the pounds.

The Facts

Typically a person needs 2,000 to 2,500 calories a day. To maintain your weight, you would want to eat around 2,000 calories (9 magnetic candy bars worth a day), depending on how active you are. If you want to lose weight, you would want to eat less.

Your best bet for an accurate calorie count is on the “Nutrition Facts” label on your food packaging, or in some cases on the company’s website. MAKE SURE you read the Serving Size, and be sure to multiply your servings by the Calories per Serving. Once you have that number, it is easy to use the Calories-to-Candy Bar Conversion Chart to add the appropriate candy bar magnets to your candy bar board.

And FYI…Eating 9 candy bars in a day is not recommended & will definitely result in a tremendous stomach ache.

Also, more than just calories go into making you fat, such as, well, FAT. This is a highly simplified system, therefore we only track calories. Consider yourself warned!

Calories-to-Candy Bar Conversion Chart

Candy Bar Log

Storage pocket for Handy Dandy Candy Board candy bar magnets. © not-quite-a-diet 2010

That is the Candy Bar Diet. Do you think it would work for you?

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Posted in A day in the life, UnProfessional Photography & Artwork and tagged bar, calorie, candy, counter, diary, diet, food, Handy Dandy Candy Board, journal, not-quite-a-diet, track. Bookmark the permalink.

Dreams – Part Two (Adventures in Dreamland)

Posted on November 2, 2012 by funnygurl2

To read about the evolution of my dream journal, please read Dreams – Part One (Dream Journal) https://imnotstalkingyou.com/2012/11/01/dreams-part-one-dream-journal/

When I dream about home, I most often dream about the trailer I lived in between the ages of 8 and 23. The other night I even dreamed that my son was there, which is really weird because that place is long gone. My son has never been there. He wasn’t even a glimmer in my eye last time I was there.

This where i am when I dream of home. The saddest picture ever. I came of age in that home, and then it was just pulled out to the curb to be sold for best offer.

I also dreamed I had to grab my son and hide with him under the bathroom sink in the half (more the size of a quarter) bath because mobsters were coming to shoot us. (The whole time, I kept thinking in the dream, “Was there really enough room for me to hide under that sink?”) When I woke up, I was scared of the mobsters with guns blazing, of course, but not surprised. I have dreams of people with guns chasing me every so often.

Illustration from my dream journal about my recurring wrist dream.

The first dream I can ever remember having was also one of the few recurring dreams I have ever had. That was when I was really young – 4 or 5. In my dream I was wearing my blue hooded sweatshirt and running away from bad guy sin a big grey factory. There were big tanks and all sorts of walkways from the ceiling. The bad guys saw me and shot me. I help up my wrist and there was just a hole through it with black sides. No blood, not a realistic wound. I could look right through the hole in my wrist at the bad guys.

What terrible person would chase this girl through a scary factory and shoot her through the wrist?

Here it is in poem form:

The recurring dream

On a night i no longer remember
i got tucked into bed
covered up my head
and my mind turned on me