Nightly Roundup - Day 352

Luck is not chance-
It's toil-
Fortune's expensive smile
Is earned. - Emily Dickinson, poem no. 1350

Marriage - Check


Kids - Thirty minutes of balloon volleyball with the left-over birthday balloons. Mom in the moment for at least 83% of the time;-).


Business - I continue to expand and develop this idea of dual use items. I think it could also be expanded to adults like me that hope to inundate themselves with positive thoughts each day. I've written about my kitchen counter covered with tape players feeding my subconscious happy thoughts each day;-). And of the posters and magnets and books. I think the same concept could also apply to the dishtowels, plates, tea mugs and toothbrush I use.

I read in a 2007 New York Times article that we see 5000 ads a day!

Yankelovich, a market research firm, estimates that a person living in a city 30 years ago saw up to 2,000 ad messages a day, compared with up to 5,000 today.

And if advertising is essentially a way to get a person to feel they need to buy a ABC product to make them happy or that without XYZ product they are somehow lacking, unfulfilled or not quite up to par, that's a lot of heavy duty subconscious programming. By using the same concept, but turning it on its head, so that in your own home, you are SURROUNDED by positive messages whether from Emerson, Lincoln, Plato, Aristotle or Descartes, particular messages that you chose for yourself, rather than a group of marketers, it seems this would help balance things out a bit.

And I also thought how cool it would be to expand the concept to the great works of art. If a child or adult went to sleep with a quilt showing 20 of the greatest works of Monet or Picasso or Renoir, would this also provide a bit of visual education and sense of well being?

The action step for today was to email a woman who is starting an internet company that involves doing a environmental footprint for items purchased. I met her for coffee to discuss her idea as she was looking for feedback from potential customers and she told me about the mentor program that I'm applying to. I am hoping we might meet again for tea to get her feedback on my business idea. Updated to add we are on for next Tuesday.

Book - Blog.


Garden - Got in a bit of time weeding the big south border. That is one of two big borders/gardens that I plan to have done before winter sets it. (I originally typed in "hoped to have done" but my Dennis Waitley tapes have been admonishing me to avoid hope and may and I wish for more affirmative words;-).


Spirit/catchall- My 30 brainstormed ideas for increased creativity.

FI - Was successful in not spending a dime today.

Health/beauty- Dry skin brushing. Will do a blog on this later.

Organized, beautiful house - A new category. Daryl, from Vermont Cottage has this wonderful web site of dream ideas for a perfect home and it made me think of Oprah's idea that your house should rise up to meet you - that your surroundings impact you on several levels and you might as well make that impact as positive as possible. Also, with cold weather coming on, my nesting instincts kick into high gear so I had Greg help with hanging a wonderful shell light that I'd gotten for $30 early in the summer at an antique store and had stuffed in a closet. I also tackled one of our closets with the goal to get rid of 10 items. I was successful. I put five things in my growing garage sale pile and five things in the donate box.

Business Vocabulary - Check - Looked up Hedge funds, net asset value, portfolio managers and commodities.