I totally read it on Some Guy’s Blog

Mail

I have a good GMail system that I love. I used it to sort through approximately 5,000 e-mails from over two years into a pile of less than 30. Two wrenches are in those gears right now. All my workstation time is on Mac OS X now (yes!) and the new FireFox 3 betas are already the best browser there, in my opinion. But curses! my Better GMail extension is not yet available! Second wrench—I have to learn to get back to my starred messages (a.k.a. action items). Take it to the next level.

Church

I joined a church, the UUCC. I think we’ll have more on that as it develops, but it’s one of the elements in our Charlotte life that Megan and I have already come to value very deeply.

Music

Megan made fun of me for calling a recent playlist “a mix tape,” because clearly it’s not getting anywhere near a cassette player. We don’t even own a cassette player (although I still have a few of my KTRU shows on tape—the dream lives on!).

I simultaneously acknowledge that she is right, and rue the woeful downgrade in the coolness of sharing personal music. A “playlist”? Really? A “mix” doesn’t even sound any better! Do I have to send people the MP3’s or do I make a real CD? Are they going to download these tracks? Yuck. Much less cool.

Also, was having a Walkman ever cool? I mean, people working out had them, and that was obviously cool. But what about everyone else?

Music

On an related note, it blows my mind that having an iTunes library comprised largely of a network file share is such a problem. I don’t want to keep 160GB of music on my hard drive. HELLO!

Music, one more time (hit me!)

We didn’t go to a concert in Charleston, SC on Saturday night because my leg hurt so badly. We ended up having a low-key weekend with plenty of relaxation thrown in, as well as a haircut.

Money

Megan and I are also having budget talks. It takes a long time to go from “we have no real way of tracking or planning for expenditures” to “we know what expenses we incur each month, and are planning to spend in ways that more closely match our values in the future.” We are getting very close, but it’s been a journey filled of discoveries and new understandings. I highly recommend it to everyone.

Eight Steps: “

[Technorati tags: Cartoons, Chickens, Life, Death, How-to, Instructions]”

(Via Savage Chickens.)

Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone: “

This is awesome, only because it’s so rare to see sanity in these matters:

Was I worried? Yes, a tinge. But it didn’t strike me as that daring, either. Isn’t New York as safe now as it was in 1963? It’s not like we’re living in downtown Baghdad.

Anyway, for weeks my boy had been begging for me to please leave him somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own. So on that sunny Sunday I gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call.

No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn’t want to lose it. And no, I didn’t trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn’t do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, ‘Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I’ll abduct this adorable child instead.’

Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence.

Long story longer, and analyzed, to boot: Half the people I’ve told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It’s not. It’s debilitating—for us and for them.

“

(Via jwz.)