Reblogged:Four Wins From the Past Month

[Gus Van Horn blog]

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. Before we moved, I had been working to incorporate more walking into my routine, with the goal being about five hours each week.

I'm close to having that routine back, but trips into New Orleans looked like they might make that challenging.

One day, I had to go to a mall to pick up a gift for my wife's birthday only to discover that the store would be closed for another 45 minutes after I'd arrived. Circumnavigating the mall while timing my walk, I found that it took about half an hour.

Since the mall is on the way for almost any trip I might make into town, I have a good way to get in half an hour of walking when I go to town, regardless of the weather, as long as I plan for it.

2. The area code for my cell phone number happens to be one of the top three that criminals use for scam calls starting with the first few digits of the target's number.

A week or so ago, I accidentally picked up such a call and was blasted with at least thirty more in total that day.

Annoyed that my phone doesn't simply have the ability to block calls from entire area codes, I found an app that gives me this capability, and spares me other garbage calls via crowdsourcing, as well.

CallControl also allows whitelisting of numbers that might otherwise be blocked by such rules.

3. Cooking has been a hobby of mine for a long time, so I have built up quite the repertoire over time.

But when we had kids a little over a decade ago, lots of those delicious things went unmade for a long time, mainly due to the time constraints inherent in our routines.

Since the move, our routine has been very different, and that has allowed me to go back and rediscover some things. One pleasant surprise was that there were several things, dirty rice among them, I thought nobody would like that much turning out to be big hits.

This has really helped me be able to send a variety of hot lunches to school with my daughter, who hates bread and has mostly bread-heavy choices at her school cafeteria.

(Her idea for packing hot lunches in the first place has now not just gotten me out of that jam, but led to these rediscoveries.)

Image by Tim Boud, via Wikimedia Commons, license.

4. Back in our St. Louis days, we lived within walking distance of the Loop, and I liked the option of being able to walk over to a non-Starbucks cafe with my laptop and work or think for awhile.

Ever since we left, doing that has involved at least a 20-minute car ride each way.

But now, we're in a more walkable area and that includes being within walking distance of a couple of non-Starbucks cafes.

It's nice to be able to do this again, and it's a nice bonus that I can order a café au lait without the person across the counter looking at me like I have a horn growing out of my head.

-- CAV

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