Small annoyances

For the past year, Jon and I have been living with a leaky faucet and two kitchen drawers that were really sticky when we opened them! Finally we called the landlord to fix a few things around the house. It took a little while, but now we are astonished at how used to the broken things we were, and how nice it is to not have the constant dripping of a faucet, and the pitcher beneath to catch the water, and how much we were used to tugging at the drawers to get them open. It is so nice to have a kitchen that functions so well now.


It has made me think about what other small annoyances we have gotten used to in life, which we simply accommodate, while with a little effort and communication we may be able to get rid of! I think the gluten-free diet was me finally fed up with some digestive issues... such an easy thing to solve with simply eating healthier and avoiding foods.


I'm still pondering what else we might be missing- maybe it's stuff we keep around in case we need it, and it just clutters up our life, or maybe some habits that we have which, without them, we'd have more time for other life-fulfilling things.


We'll see what happens, however the whole experience has motivated me to not accommodate the small annoyances in life, and to actually take action to eradicate them!

Recent lessons learned from Overlord Google

First the :-(

Google doesn't like it when several people share an account. Thus, it now categorically refuses to have our profile name on Google+ (yeah, we're giving it a try) be "Sara & Jonathan Jerdan" or the like, and it is now simply "Sara Jerdan" even though I use it too, although I do believe Sara is more active on it than I. Also, they don't like it when people change names too often, so say we decided to pretend, for usability's sake, we were one person with the combined first name Jonathan-Sara for example, or say we wanted to display the first name Sara and middle name Jonathan, well too bad, have to wait 30 days before we can change it away from Sara Jerdan.

Really Google? You made online maps so simple to play around with (anyone remember Mapquest? what a drag), you made email boxes simple to use and customize, document sharing is now a breeze. But you don't have the flexibility to accept the word "and" in a profile name? -1

Then the :-)

The hangout feature in Google+ is very nice. Video-chatting is quick and possible with multiple people at once. And where it exceeded my expectations is that it is possible for one account to join a hangout from two different computers at the same time! They do allow that. So if in spite of all the big G's efforts two people were to share an account, they can video-chat with each other when they're not in the same place. Pretty nifty! +1

Reader's remorse

Last night, before heading to bed, I made the mistake of picking up Jon's "Christianity Today" and catching an article about the evangelical's theology - or lack thereof - on the body. For one who has done a fair share of thinking and discussing about this, I was riveted, and before I knew it - midnight was well on it's way.

Of course it didn't feel like midnight then. Nor was I truly tired, fully energized by new thoughts and ideas to this very important topic.

I didn't feel like I needed to go to bed then. But once I woke up..... boy, did I feel like I need to go back to bed now!


This is what I call "readers remorse" - when you wake up in the morning with the painful realization that the stories and ideas that kept you so captivated all night long, will not be captivating you all day, and the sleep that would have been yours has long since vanished. You spend the day in a hazy fog, wishing simultaneously both to go back to bed, and to get once last look at the article you barely had time to finish before reason slowly crept in (or your spouse kindly reminded you that you had to work the next day). You regret reading past your bedtime, you wish you didn't find such stories so interesting, and you also know - without a doubt- given the same situation again, you'll probably doing the same thing. Because you love to learn, you can't help yourself, and given any opportunity to do more learning, sleep simply won't take priority.

That said, tonight's goal is to finish this blog post, read a little more, trouble shoot some computer challenges (both Mac and PC, sad), and then go to bed, putting all reading material out of sight or - at least- out of my hands!