I feel that even a year ago it was unheard of to know your doctor’s email address – let alone think you could email them and HEAR BACK from them via email (your mileage may vary). As far as I was concerned, doctors just didn’t use email; customer service, be damned.

I used to have to speak to a human to schedule an appointment. Now, I can schedule (or reschedule) one online at 3am when i’m thinking about it instead of waiting for business hours and hope I get through.

Probably the biggest shift I noted, though, with my recent visits is the records management piece. At one place, I signed my HIPA forms, read the financial assistance information, and other documentation at a privacy-shielded computer at the corner of the front desk. I even signed everything like I was signing for my credit card at the grocery store.

Even if the forms weren’t 100% electronic, EVERY. SINGLE. OFFICE. had one of these guys. I mean, I have one too (similar model) and it’s the greatest tool i have to handle the household paper monster – and maybe i’d just been going to really old-school docs before – but i feel like i went from seeing these nowhere in docs offices to seeing them in every. single. one. Rock on, medical professionals. (I should have been a portable scanner sales rep within the last five years.)

That scanning piece also helped a ton when needing test results being sent to another doctor. I remember as a kid, my mom always asking for results to be faxed somewhere in addition to getting a copy for herself so she could manage things if the communication failed somewhere without having to re-contact anyone.

At another office not only was my paperwork all electronic but my scans were also right there on the monitor for me to see and the doc to manipulate (think the arrows, circles and lines sports casters draw for us to understand what’s going on in a football game). Coloring, contrast and enlargements were possible right there in front of me. No more mental images of the doc holding patient-confusing xrays to the florescent light.

Even at the Maryland Library Association Conference in May, Dr. Jay Parkinson will be speaking about all this – People would visit his website; see his Google calendar; choose a time and input their symptoms; his iPhone would alert him; he’d make a house call; they’d pay him via Paypal; and he’d follow-up by e-mail. IM, video chat, or in person. Doctor of the Future, indeed. (See his talk at TEDxMidAtlantic in 2011)

It’s a brave new world, folks.

All that said, not every office was as high tech, high touch as the next. Phone menus continued to be long and arduous and sometimes getting a person, almost impossible on the first try. But big strides are happening and it’s awesome.

Still, all this tech can’t replace a doctor that takes their time with you, answers your questions (or better, explains things before you ask or when you can’t ask) and provides reassurance or comfort. Some things, only humans can provide.

—-
on a side note – i feel like i’m the only one who reads all those admittance forms straight through before i sign them. Docs, summarizing it for me is helpful, but doesn’t mean I’m going to skip the reading piece. If you want me to sign, (and sign and sign and sign.. i may have only signed more for my mortgage) then I have to read. Patience, please.

possibly related posts:

1. Google as Big Brother?
2. if it can go wrong, it will.

May lots of joy and peace come your way!

possibly related posts:

1. the simple pleasure of consistent design
2. Google as Big Brother?

And then, because it’s easier to change your environment than your behavior, i set out to make sure that i didn’t just declare these focus areas, but that i made sure I could stick to them. I started out by tweaking my google calendars. I’m a very visual person so in order to tell if i’m spending my time more in one area than another, each focus got a color and I made sure the calendars reflected this. But i realized that I needed go one step further – I don’t just spend my time getting things done or meeting with people (stuff that gets scheduled), I also spend my time communicating about all those items and I’d want to make sure email was set up in a similar way, organized around my five focuses.

Here’s where I realized the problem of consistent design across products and just how much it can throw someone off if they’re expecting one thing and getting another. Let’s start with format.

gcal makes the entire calendar in the cal list and each event in that calendar whatever color you’ve specified, very pretty and easy to figure out:

Gmail isn’t as pretty. Check out what similar category colors look like in gmail:

The other interesting thing is that the colors you have available to you aren’t even the same! Sure, gmail and gcal are different products, but they’re still Google products and you’d think there’d be some consistency with the little things like this (especially after their massive look & feel overhaul). See what the colors look like in gcal:

and gmail:

I’m not going to discuss google reader (whose new look & feel doesn’t even render correctly in safari) and google docs who both don’t have the ability to add colors to categories at all.

Why is it so important to have a consistent design & features across your interfaces? It makes your product easier to manage, use, and customize. Most importantly, it limits customer pain when they’re trying to figure out how to do things, where to go, or if they’re even still dealing with you (instead of having gone to an outside org or product). With libraries, we know the whole “oh this is an EBSCO product so I know what it will look like and what features I’ll have available to me.” But do you give two thoughts to how your library website and your library catalog integrate (or, more usually, don’t)?

The Darien library website has a consistent feel even into their catalog because they’re not using their OPAC’s interface for customers. But take a look at St. Mary’s County Library in Maryland and now their catalog. In the middle, I think The Free Library of Philadelphia did a good job at integrating a stand-alone OPAC interface with their regular website look & feel (check it out).

So while i figure out what i’m going to do with my organization in gmail and my other applications, how are you making sure you have a consistent look & feel in your organizations?

Ps – this doesn’t just apply to your online interfaces… do you have tax forms by the door in Branch A and behind the reference desk in Branch B? Is renewing a book super simple online and really complicated in the branch (or vise versa)? Just sayin’

possibly related posts:

1. Internet Desintation
2. How do you stay organized?

add an extra level of fun if you’re like me and you have more than one library’s card and look up those books in each of those other library catalogs (i have dreams of a statewide catalog that will let me search at once the libraries i have access to but that’s another post).

Most of the time i find one of my libraries has the item i want but sometimes they don’t. when this happens, my ILL department gets a phone call or a visit (their office is right next to mine). more often than not, though, the item I want is “too new” and isn’t being lended.

Last week, however, my library surprised me in the best way. I saw that one particular item i wanted wasn’t owned by ANY public library in Maryland. On a whim, i submitted a “purchase request” for the item and THE NEXT DAY, i had received an email back saying they’d reviewed their holdings and needs and determined that they’ll be purchasing the book. Oh, and we’ve put it on hold for you so when it comes in you’ve got first dibs.

That was October 26th. On November 10th I got an email saying it was ready for pickup and this morning I was able to get in and grab it. All new and shiny and just for me.

There are a lot of things that libraries do – specifically mine – that I would do differently if it were my choice but this is one of those wonderful moments of customer service excellence where i really felt valued as a customer. I was listened to, my requests acknowledged and then and followed up with or acted upon quickly.

Not every library has the budget or collection development policies that allow them to purchase whatever their communities want but it’s these moments of listening to your customers that will set you aside.

When i say listening i’m not talking about that in-one-ear-out-the-other business that placates no one. I mean active listening – making sure the person whom you are listening to understands you’ve heard them (there’s the acknowledgement piece) and then now that you’ve heard what they have to say, it’s on your plate – some action is needed – evaluate that policy, form a team to look at a new service model, add their comment to the list that’s going to be reviewed next month, or put that purchase request in the queue.

But it’s not enough to listen to your community when it speaks to you – because they may not always seek you out for a conversation or submit a comment card – you also have to hear what they aren’t saying…

Case in point: Karen Hyman spoke at the Tri-County Summit in Western Maryland on Friday on Great Libraries. An example of a library doing great things included a NJ library where there were couches upon which a group of older gentlemen used to sit and complain about the noise from the children at the nearby circulation desk. You might say the gentlemen should get over it or that the children should be quieter but the library took the couches and moved them to a quiet corner of the library and put a few chairs in place of where the couches were. The gentleman’s group moved and are happy now! No one asked them to move the couches, but the library paid attention to their community, or parts of their community, and made a change for the better.

Paying attention to and making changes for your community also includes your internal community and not just your end-users. In 2008 and again in 2010, I did a series of “Listening Tours” for AskUsNow! partner institutions. They were meetings with myself and whatever liaison or staff wanted to attend. The meetings had no agenda and I had no assumptions. I went in, kept quiet, and listened.  A lot of good came out of those sessions – some of them turned into mini-refresher trainings, others into bitch sessions that ended up solving some problems, and allowing librarians to get things off their chest. Regardless of the outcome, everyone had a chance to be heard which was overwhelmingly appreciated. They were heard, and I listened. And then acted. and our service and morale were better for it.

What is your community saying? Are you paying attention? Are you asking? And most importantly, are you acting?

possibly related posts:

1. Get over it: “Pay for blog feeds? yuck!”
2. Xtreme Customer Service or TTWWADI must die.

Free Radicals are resilient, self-reliant, and extremely potent. You’ll find them working solo, in small teams, or within large companies. They’re everywhere, and they’re crafting the future.

Who Are the Free Radicals? A Manifesto.

We do work that is, first and foremost, intrinsically rewarding. But, when we make an impact, we expect extrinsic validation: We don’t create solely for ourselves, we want to make a real and lasting impact in the world around us.

We demand freedom, whether we work within companies or on our own, to run experiments, participate in multiple projects at once, and move our ideas forward. We thrive on flexibility and are most productive when we feel fully engaged.

We make stuff often, and therefore, we fail often. Ultimately, we strive for little failures that help us course-correct along the way, and we view every failure as a learning opportunity, part of our experiential education.

We have little tolerance for the friction of bureaucracy, old-boy-networks, and antiquated business practices.As often as possible, we question “standard operating procedure” and assert ourselves. But even when we can’t, we don’t surrender to the friction of the status quo. Instead, we find clever ways (and hacks) around it.

We expect to be fully utilized and constantly optimized, regardless of whether we’re working in a startup or a large organization. When our contributions and learning plateau, we leave. But when we’re leveraging a large company’s resources to make an impact in something we care about, we are thrilled! We want to always be doing our best work and making the greatest impact we can.

We consider “open source” technology, API’s, and the vast collective knowledge of the Internet to be our personal arsenal. Wikipedia, Quora, and open communities for designers, developers, and thinkers were built by us and for us. Whenever possible, we leverage collective knowledge to help us make better decisions for ourselves and our clients. We also contribute to these open resources with a “pay it forward” mentality.

We believe that “networking” is sharing. People listen to (and follow) us because of our discernment and curatorial instinct. As we share our creations as well as what fascinates us, we authentically build a community of supporters that give us feedback, encouragement, and lead us to new opportunities. For this reason and more, we often (though, not always) opt for transparency over privacy.

We believe in meritocracy and the power of online networks and peer communities to advance our ability to do what we love, and do well by doing it. We view competition as a positive motivator rather than a threat, because we want the best idea – and the best execution – to triumph.

We make a great living doing what we love. We consider ourselves as both artisans and businesses. In many cases, we are our own accounting department, Madison Avenue marketing agency, business development manager, negotiator, and salesperson. We spend the necessary energy to invest in ourselves as businesses – leveraging the best tools and knowledge (most of which are free and online) to run ourselves as a modern-day enterprise.

Head over to 99% to read more about the Manifesto and more about what the 99% is all about. It’s one of my daily reads.

possibly related posts:

1. Publication FAIL: offer everything free online full text or go away.
2. saving the world: one plastic cup at a time

From Seth’s Blog: Form and Function

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions as to what this all means. :-)

possibly related posts:

1. Computers in Libraries: Teens are users
2. changes to Netflix & thoughts about pain

haven’t seen it? check it out. (sorry it’s not embedded- I’m writing this on the iPhone in the car (i’m passenger) and can’t figure a way to embed it.

so what’s shazam and why am I so excited? Shazam is one of the apps that will recognize music playing near you and tell you what the song is, let you buy it, etc. and the reason I’m so excited about it is it’s effing brilliant. its the next thing in short code access! (and frankly I’m a little annoyed I didn’t think of it myself)

it makes perfect sense to use shazam like this since at it’s core it’s a program that will give you visual info output for an audio input. just like qr codes (which are visual, visual).

let me pause for a second- need to brush up on the what’s and why’s of qr codes? I wrote about them in 2007 & again in 2010 when libraries started to clue in.

okay so why care about this? because it’s another way to get more info to your customers. got a radio ad for your library? now people can go straight to your website after shazaming (yes i’ve made it a verb) the ad. put something up on YouTube? local access? the college station? shazam! and your customers can auto dial your ref desk, see your hours, or instantly be routed to your catalog or downloadables. really the possibilities are endless- not just with shazam, but this is a model: what else can we use for something besides it original purpose? with the world of mobile devices, crazy apps that basically do everything hut fold your laundry, the possibilities are insane.

I haven’t seen a lot of talk about this move yet, but check out the article in business wire.

so, my brilliant readers, how would you use audio qr codes to promote your library and give people quicker, mobile access?

possibly related posts:

1. QR Codes and libraries
2. (geolocation + augmented reality + QR codes) libraries

This morning, Netflix subscribers got an email. Here it is in its entirety, i’ll meet you at the other end of it:

Dear Julie,

I messed up. I owe you an explanation.

It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology. Let me explain what we are doing.

For the past five years, my greatest fear at Netflix has been that we wouldn’t make the leap from success in DVDs to success in streaming. Most companies that are great at something – like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores – do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us). So we moved quickly into streaming, but I should have personally given you a full explanation of why we are splitting the services and thereby increasing prices. It wouldn’t have changed the price increase, but it would have been the right thing to do.

So here is what we are doing and why.

Many members love our DVD service, as I do, because nearly every movie ever made is published on DVD. DVD is a great option for those who want the huge and comprehensive selection of movies.

I also love our streaming service because it is integrated into my TV, and I can watch anytime I want. The benefits of our streaming service are really quite different from the benefits of DVD by mail. We need to focus on rapid improvement as streaming technology and the market evolves, without maintaining compatibility with our DVD by mail service.

So we realized that streaming and DVD by mail are really becoming two different businesses, with very different cost structures, that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently.

It’s hard to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary: In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to “Qwikster”. We chose the name Qwikster because it refers to quick delivery. We will keep the name “Netflix” for streaming.

Qwikster will be the same website and DVD service that everyone is used to. It is just a new name, and DVD members will go to qwikster.com to access their DVD queues and choose movies. One improvement we will make at launch is to add a video games upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for Blu-ray, for those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games. Members have been asking for video games for many years, but now that DVD by mail has its own team, we are finally getting it done. Other improvements will follow. A negative of the renaming and separation is that the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com websites will not be integrated.

There are no pricing changes (we’re done with that!). If you subscribe to both services you will have two entries on your credit card statement, one for Qwikster and one for Netflix. The total will be the same as your current charges. We will let you know in a few weeks when the Qwikster.com website is up and ready.

For me the Netflix red envelope has always been a source of joy. The new envelope is still that lovely red, but now it will have a Qwikster logo. I know that logo will grow on me over time, but still, it is hard. I imagine it will be similar for many of you.

I want to acknowledge and thank you for sticking with us, and to apologize again to those members, both current and former, who felt we treated them thoughtlessly.

Both the Qwikster and Netflix teams will work hard to regain your trust. We know it will not be overnight. Actions speak louder than words. But words help people to understand actions.

Respectfully yours,

-Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO, Netflix

p.s. I have a slightly longer explanation along with a video posted on our blog, where you can also post comments.

I wasn’t annoyed before (maybe i just wasn’t paying attention?), nor did I think I was owed an apology. But now, having gotten both an apology and an explanation, i’m a little peeved. Why? because of this: “the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com websites will not be integrated.” Which means I will have to maintain two queues of movies- which is the exact opposite of the simplicity I was describing life suddenly had in my last post.

Having just canceled our TV service, Netflix was/is going to pick up the slack when we really did just want to veg in front of the screen. I had always enjoyed when movies on my DVD queue were suddenly available for streaming- it allowed me to watch it right then AND remove it from my ever-growing and very-not-simple DVD queue.

I’m not sure why this decision was made – to forgo simplicity and the wonder that is a single, integrated interface in order to accomplish this maneuver- but it’s not what I would have chosen. That said, we’ll be sticking with Netflix (and/or Qwikster) until we figure out what the deal is and how it’s going to function in our lives.

I file this move under “pain inducing” instead of “pain reduction.” It’s our job – when we’re in a service professor or providing a service to customers (like Netflix)- that we look at our services and products and make decisions based on LOWERING the amount of pain a customer has to go through to do things. Five clicks before they can log in and renew a book? Painful. Having to log in twice when doing two different things on the same website? Painful. It’s these moments of pain where the customer gets to make a choice – is this amount of pain worth the effort or is there an easier way (path of least resistance) to accomplish my goal? If there’s an easier way somewhere else – you’re losing business.

This serves as a moment for libraries and vendors to think about not just our interfaces and the pain we’re causing (or keeping from) our customers but also how we make decisions, handle problems, and respond when the community reacts. Are we meeting our own expectations? Our customers?

possibly related posts:

1. on form and function
2. Book lending; Netflix style

While walking through, you can usually find me snapping photos of design ideas for changing the house *yet again* and eventually, before I end up at the exit, I’ll have had the sudden “need” to purchase a small, usually cheap, organizational apparatus or *yet another* sheet set or kitchen item to make my house (and life) finally click. Today, however, i was already more than halfway through the showroom before i realized – not only had i absolutely no desire to buy anything, i suddenly saw the big picture and the whole key to the perfectly organized house and life.

You don’t need organizational tools, bins or schemas to help you organize if you just have less stuff.

I mean, my “epiphany” might be your “duh” moment, but this definitely was an “ah-ha” moment for me when the last few years suddenly just came together. Here’s how i think i finally ended up here:

I’m pretty sure it all started with high fructose corn syrup. Hang with me for a sec, this will all make sense soon. However I got on the HFCS kick, about 3-4 years ago i decided to take a stand against the rampant use of HFCS in everything and start reading labels and only buying things with sugar in them. Let me just tell you how annoyed i was to find HFCS in my cough medicine and my beloved childhood brand of apple sauce. Starting out, everything in my fridge with HFCS in it, got an X on it  and when it ran out, i’d look for an HFCS-free alternative- and let me tell you, that was not easy. Today, however, companies have gotten the memo and you can find plenty of “throwback,” “classic” or similarly branded items with sugar, like they used to have.

After that came the rest of my diet… I had read Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food and it opened my eyes (again) to the eating local and more consciously concept that somehow, over the years, had gotten lost in my life. Around the same time, a friend of mine invited me to a screening of FRESH at a nearby church where local growers, raisers, and makers of food were set up and my whole life changed. I learned about CSA’s and since that very moment we’ve been completely ignoring the existence of the middle of the grocery store (if not the grocery store all together), buying meat only from happy grass fed cows* or happy roaming chickens, making sure our milk and eggs are from said happy animals and buying what we can at local farm stands and markets for the fruits and veggies. I’m still working on a source of cheese, yogurt, and other similar dairy products that meets my now serious requirements (but i’m pretty sure within the year i’ll be making them myself).

Somewhere along the line of the HFCS crusade, the last straw was that i could only find canned mushrooms that were grown in PA (40 miles north), shipped to China for processing and then shipped back for canning. And so began my moratorium on anything made in China. It had the added benefit of making me think i could do my part for the ”carbon crisis, continuing the local idea, and voting with my dollar as far as international trade regulations were concerned (hello lead paint). It didn’t take long to realize that everything we buy is made there and gave me a mental image of a land full of factories, instead of the beautiful China my aunt speaks of from the  70s. Regardless,it is possible to find things made elsewhere (or god forbid in the USA). You may have to look a little harder, pay a little more or simply go without, but i think it’s worth it.

Similarly, i started to bug my normally receptive parents about their use of paper plates and cups over their regular dishes, and their need for paper napkins and paper towels instead of reusable cloth ones (which we’d been using for a few years now). because of the environmental issue (one word: WALL-E). I’m happy to report that I finally won that battle a few weeks ago. My next goal with them is to switch them to biodegradable trash bags.

About two years ago, when we moved to our current place, we learned the county had a very aggressive recycling program that accepted essentially everything (seriously not kidding) without it needing to be rinsed, cleaned, or sorted AT ALL. I’ve always recycled but now we were tossing out a huge bin of recycling and only a tiny half-filled bag of trash each week. If we composted (it’s coming, i can tell), we’d have no trash at all.

So all this is going on in the food and environmental sphere of my life, and over in sphere B, i’m still fighting the seemingly never-ending battle with my stuff. It needs to be organized, cleaned, picked up, and purged CONSTANTLY and it seems that every spare moment i have (not many) includes a to do list that has “organize X” or “clean up Y” right at the top. But even when i did that, it never looked or felt like I had made a dent.

I constantly felt overwhelmed. My home office was a dumping ground and it was a constant battle of moving piles from open spot A to open spot B in order to move something else just to have space to do stuff. Instead of spending time on projects, work, or just doing nothing, i spent time trying to get a hold of the “stuff monster.” We live in plenty of room for two people, but i felt like i was being crowded out.

In an attempts to at least curb the incoming stuff, last Christmas I put serious limits on the gift giving. Gifts is what my dad does. It fills him with joy to buy things that he thinks you will enjoy – and even more joy when he sees you open it on Christmas morning. In fact, until last year when I started imposing those limits on Christmas  (just call me Scrooge), Christmas morning gift giving was an almost all-day affair, each of the three of us taking turns opening one item at a time. But all that stuff takes up space and i was at my mental limit. Dad did okay last year – he tried, he really did- but it was painful and I still ended up with stuff because no one knew how to change the tradition of an all-day gift opening fest when there seemed to be nothing to fill the space with. The boy and I were creative with our own Christmas, however, wrapping games we already owned and playing them after they were unwrapped. This year, i’ve put a COMPLETE MORATORIUM on stuff at Christmas at home. One gift each, if you must at all; high premium on experiences over things; homemade items are good. Things made of plastic, in China, or something that won’t last forever are verboten.

If you’re wondering if my stuff problem extends to the bedroom, it does. The bedroom closet, that is (sheesh, people). A tshirt and jeans girl (& no shoes if i can help it), i never understood or was taught the concept of an outfit. What Not To Wear intrigued me, but always left me mostly baffled when it came time to apply the theory. Mostly solo clothes shopping was basically hell for me, and i continued to buy pieces, instead of seeing the whole picture (which is funny because i’m really good at seeing the whole picture everywhere else in my life and work). This all leaves me with a closet bursting at the seams with things that maybe kinda go together, but not really. And regardless of the things i owned, I still basically wore the same few things. Enter Kendi Everyday. I’ve had Kendi in my rss reader for maybe a year now but only recently have really started to pay attention to her 30 in 30 project – 30 items to make 30 outfits in 30 days. Basically – forcing yourself to see your clothes in a different way, and make them do new things for you. I had the unique ability to wear a skirt and have it still look like my normal tee and jeans uniform- no extra finishing pieces, no accessories, nothing special – slap it on and you’re on your way. But in the last month or so i’ve seen more new combinations in my closet than i have ever. For example, I had no concept of just how different a whole outfit can look just by tucking in a shirt. Bless you, Kendi. (Outfit Mentor status also goes to my friend A whom i very much miss shopping with (especially now that i know what i’m doing.)

So where does this leave us? Well, enter two of the final pieces of the puzzle: 1) my complete abhorrence for my current commute and my intense desire to work closer to where i live / live closer to where i work at some point in the not-so-distant future and 2) my reading of The Feast Nearby (also, a blog). Dreams of living locally, biking around town, knowing my neighbors and canning my own chutneys and whatnot (because with all this local veggie buying, winter is going to suck), everything consolidated for me.

Somehow a life that was never about stuff, turned into one of not just stuff, but complacency and a disconnect from nature as i tried to find my way in the world. I bought into the completely ridiculous idea that if i dressed a certain way, bought into this new productivity practice, or purchased a new thing, something would click and it’d all be okay. But letting go (of expectations, material things, and completely bullshit ideas of the kind of person you have to be to do x, y, or z)… making careful and conscious choices about my life (and the stuff in it)… and following the bliss – naysayers be damned – is my true path now. And i can’t tell you how glad i am that i’ve found it, even if it seems to have taken forever.

So the journey has been long, but the destination isn’t yet here. I’ve been selling our stuff on ebay like mad, we’ve ditched our TV service (with the added benefit of confusing and annoying The Company and saving a lot of $), I’ve relearned the word “no” and we continue making good choices for ourselves – happy cows, sustainable building materials and being creative with what we’ve got and making what we don’t (if we must).

All this to say, with less stuff, you really can do (and be) more.

———-

* I can tell you with absolute certainty that there is a difference i can feel between meat from a happy cow versus an unhappy one (think the difference between open field and feed lot). i feel better after the meal, it’s easier to digest, and tastes completely different (read: better). My mom was skeptical but let me buy them a pound of “happy cow” (as it’s now come to be known in our houses, though i’d imagine that if the meat is in my procession at some point the cow was no longer happy). They kept it frozen for a while but finally cooked with it. Mom was astounded- she didn’t feel a heaviness and sloth that she usually does after eating beef and she noticed the difference later too as it didn’t make her stomach do flips during digestion. WIN!

possibly related posts:

1. ToDo: 2009
2. Book lending; Netflix style

Julie’s Natural Disaster Experience Checklist

Flood
Blizzard
Nor’Easter
Hailstorm
Tornado
Wild Fire
Earthquake
Volcanic eruption

yeah, Tsunami isn’t on that list. That one never ends well.

possibly related posts:

1. CIL2008: the ‘lights
2. my CiL panel presentation