[juliebarkley]

Juliebarkley tweaks and tends the garden that she has nurtured. Some plants are healthier than others, and some have many flowers while others have only a few, but all are growing. And there is room for more plants in the tangled tumble of the garden bed.

 

She steps back to get a better look. The edge of the bed is eroding. Hmm. Looks around. It would be nice to have a place to sit. A bird feeder over there. And some raised beds for the vegetables.

 

The flowers in the garden need a good environment to support them, and it is time to give that environment a little attention.

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Building off the gardening theme from the last two challenges. The habits I've built are going well. I have not added more in a while, though I have many things to try and still plan to (I just got a bit derailed by illness and holidays). Hoping to get more planted and tweaked in the weeks ahead.

 

For this challenge round though, I'm going to focus on the other part of the Tiny Habits recommendations: one-time actions that support your habits and help you achieve what you want to achieve. This could be things like finding a tool that makes the behaviour you want to do easier (ex. get a pill sorter if you have trouble remembering which pills to take when), improving your environment (move the fruit bowl to make the fruit you want to eat easy to see), etc.

 

I'm going to expand that to any one-time action that permanently (more or less) makes my life better in some way, whether it is part of a current goal or not. It can be something that gives me more time, makes something less annoying/easier, reduces future maintenance, makes my environment less cluttered/more organized/otherwise more pleasant to be in, saves me money, and so on. As long as it is a one-time thing, not a maintenance thing. Filing papers doesn't count, even if it badly needs doing, because it will need doing again. Fixing the filing system or getting rid of old papers does, because the fix makes things permanently easier, and the papers are gone forever. There are grey areas here, but I think it's clear enough. So my goal is to do at least one of those one-time actions every day, big or small.

 

Oh, and I have a new reading challenge set up. I made a list of authors and will try to pick one daily via RNG and read a short story of theirs. If it doesn't end up being daily (and I will certainly miss days), the world will not end. The goal is to sample influential authors to broaden my horizons rather than to stick to a rigid goal. If there is anyone that should be on my author list (especially non-English authors whose name I might not recognize), please do suggest!

 

Happy challenge, and happy 2023 everyone!

[KB Girl]

Happy 2023!

 

One of the best things I did in this category was buying a cordless vacuum. That chore really went from awful to just grabbing it no problem. Hope you find a lot of those kinda things

 

[juliebarkley]

My first one-time action effort had a sting in the tail. I set up reminders for my photo card and health card renewals. This part was successful, so I should have to worry about my ID expiring on me without my realizing it any more. They both have to be renewed this month, and can now both be renewed online, so I attempted to do that. Key word: attempted. I did the photo card first, and it took my money, sent me an email with the temporary card in a PDF, all good I thought. Only realized the problem when I went to renew the health card. Because I did the photo card first, I needed the version code from the temporary card. Open email. The file is corrupt and cannot be viewed. Darn. So I now have to hope my new ID card arrives before my old one expires (unlikely), and I have to walk down to the Service Ontario because I renewed in the wrong order. Lesson learned - renew your health card first. (I won't remember this lesson five years from now.)

 

Actually, that's not the first effort. Yesterday, I hung hooks in the closet so that I could hang my purse and work apron, and got a basket for my shoes so that I could remove a rack and save space. It's so much tidier there now, I'm less likely to forget my apron, there is a place for my boots... it's wonderful.

 

Off to do some habit planning for the new year.

[juliebarkley]

2 minutes ago, KB Girl said:

Happy 2023!

 

One of the best things I did in this category was buying a cordless vacuum. That chore really went from awful to just grabbing it no problem. Hope you find a lot of those kinda things

That's a great example! I love it when you find a tool that just works perfectly for you.

[Scaly Freak]

4 minutes ago, juliebarkley said:

Lesson learned - renew your health card first. (I won't remember this lesson five years from now.)

 

Do you have a way to add a note to a reminder that will trigger five years from now?

[juliebarkley]

8 minutes ago, Scaly Freak said:

Do you have a way to add a note to a reminder that will trigger five years from now?

.....I hadn't thought of that. Let's see if I can pull that off. Thanks!

 

Edit: Done!

[juliebarkley]

No additional one-time actions to report, but I did get my first short story in. I drew Théophile Gautier, and it looks like his most famous story is La Morte Amoureuse/Clarimonde. It reminded me a great deal of Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu. A nice start to the project.

[juliebarkley]

One-time action was uncreative today - I recycled a few papers from my backlog pile, and got rid of one book.

 

Story was The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant. It was all right. The intro article that got me there recommended The Hand as being a "truly terrifying" Gothic story of his, so I will read that one tomorrow, I think.

 

And my son passed his driving test today!

 

[KB Girl]

4 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

And my son passed his driving test today!

 

Excellent! congratulations. 

[juliebarkley]

19 hours ago, KB Girl said:

Excellent! congratulations. 

I will pass it on.

 

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Today's task was to get my remote backups via Airport Extreme set up and running (finally). Unfortunately, I didn't finish. It was one of those tasks where it feels like something goes wrong, or you need to look something up or go fetch something or whatever at every single step, then repeat each step more than once in order to move on. I did make progress - I got everything plugged in correctly, got the Airport Extreme correctly configure, connected to the internet, and viewable on all devices. What isn't viewable yet is the drive it is supposed to be hosting. I believe that it is because it is formatted in a format that the Extreme doesn't support, so it will need to be reformatted. However, since that drive also has the only backup for my main computer, I would need to make a temporary backup to a different drive before reformatting that one and repeating the whole process again when (hopefully) it displays correctly. This is where my patience for this task finally ended for today.

 

We are currently under a freezing rain warning (the rain has been coming down in buckets, and the temps are dropping hard). The last few weeks have had snowfall warnings, other freezing rain warnings, flash flood warnings.... Winter is still trying to kill us, just not in the usual ways.

[Alanna]

I love the concept of this challenge! I will be following for ideas :).

[Ranger Hal]

9 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

We are currently under a freezing rain warning (the rain has been coming down in buckets, and the temps are dropping hard). The last few weeks have had snowfall warnings, other freezing rain warnings, flash flood warnings.... Winter is still trying to kill us, just not in the usual ways.

We had freezing rain a couple of weeks ago. Stay safe!

[juliebarkley]

18 hours ago, Alanna said:

I love the concept of this challenge! I will be following for ideas :).

Welcome aboard!

 

13 hours ago, Ranger Hal said:

We had freezing rain a couple of weeks ago. Stay safe!

We seem to have been spared freezing during the heavy rain, so we are mostly okay.

 

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My one-time task was going to be to finish up the remote backup setup, but that has hit yet another of many snags so far. I have to create two complete new backups - one on an old secondary drive, so that I have something for when I reformat the drive I'm currently using into a format that (hopefully) the Airport Extreme will recognize. Then obviously, redo the backup on that drive. For the secondary drive though, the cord that belongs to it seems to have wandered, and so I am using one from our cord box. I think it has slowed data transfer speeds considerably, because after four hours (though granted, it took over an hour to finish preparing the backup), it has transferred only 920MB of 92.88GB. 😩 At this rate I will finish the backup sometime this year....

 

So I will have to throw in a boring-but-necessary bit of paper or other object discarding to meet goal today.

 

I rolled Fritz Leiber today, who I've thought about trying before, so I picked out three stories that seemed fairly different: "Gonna Roll The Bones" (about a man playing craps with the Devil; "The Big Time" (which sounds like a combination sci-fi and locked room mystery); and Ill Met in Lankhmar (the first Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser story, I believe). Doesn't look like I'll get to any of them today though.

[juliebarkley]

I did not have time to do a one-time action today or reading. There was time for food, TTRPG, and now sleep, but nothing else.

 

My first backup did finally finish though. I set it up to run all night, and it finished minutes before noon today. With some luck, there's a chance I can get my backup system working by the end of the day tomorrow. Luck has not been my friend in this project though, so we shall see.

[KB Girl]

fingers crossed you'll have some luck this time 😌

[juliebarkley]

9 hours ago, KB Girl said:

fingers crossed you'll have some luck this time 😌

Fingers indeed crossed, but they will have to wait until tomorrow.
 

I've been exhausted all day. My shoulder injury is making it hard to sleep, and I just couldn't face battling with the electronics again today. I can't face battling with much of anything today, to be honest. So I sent a few things from my try pile to the donation bin, shuffled some money around (another step in the process of sorting out my investments), and I think that's it for today. I will throw on a podcast I've been looking forward to and knit. And after that, read or sleep. My body and mind are telling me that I really need to rest right now, and I am going to listen.

[DoubleTrouble]

Sorry to hear about your shoulder. Did you get it checked out?

[juliebarkley]

5 hours ago, DoubleTrouble said:

Sorry to hear about your shoulder. Did you get it checked out?

Hello and welcome! I will be making an appointment for my shoulder (and a few other things) tomorrow. Will probably be a few weeks before I can get in though.

 

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More fruitless bashing at the remote disk setup. Good news: I don't have to reformat any disks. Bad news: still can't get the drive to show on the computer that is actually important. I am trying a different thing. I will finish trying it tomorrow, as I am once again at the end of my patience. This was not, in on any level, supposed to be this difficult. I just want to share a hard drive to a network. WHY IS THIS SO HARD???

 

So, new one-time task for the day. This is an odd one.

 

I have a stick. Nothing fancy, just a a fairly straight stick of appropriate length. I found it not too long after I moved in. My plan for said stick was to strip it of bark, put a row of nails in it, and use it to hang my jewellery (which is all currently stuffed in a box). I used to hang it all from a few pins in the wall, and it looked very nice in my own opinion anyway. So when finished, this should serve the dual purpose of making the room pretty and making my jewellery accessible. I finally stripped the stick a few days ago. So I will feed the stick with olive oil tonight, to make it prettier. Tomorrow I shall go get some nails so I can finish it up.

[Mistr]

I like your approach of focusing on small habits and permanent improvements.

 

On 1/7/2023 at 7:32 PM, juliebarkley said:

I can't face battling with much of anything today, to be honest. So I sent a few things from my try pile to the donation bin, shuffled some money around (another step in the process of sorting out my investments), and I think that's it for today. I will throw on a podcast I've been looking forward to and knit. And after that, read or sleep. My body and mind are telling me that I really need to rest right now, and I am going to listen.

 

I hope you are feeling better today. You reminded me that I needed to change the amounts for my direct deposits, which I have now done.   Sorting investments comes next.

[Scaly Freak]

20 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

More fruitless bashing at the remote disk setup. Good news: I don't have to reformat any disks. Bad news: still can't get the drive to show on the computer that is actually important. I am trying a different thing. I will finish trying it tomorrow, as I am once again at the end of my patience. This was not, in on any level, supposed to be this difficult. I just want to share a hard drive to a network. WHY IS THIS SO HARD???

 

Because Jupiter is ascending, oranges are purple, and the sky is a watermelon.

 

It's a computer. They do things out of spite.  

[juliebarkley]

12 hours ago, Mistr said:

I like your approach of focusing on small habits and permanent improvements.

 

 

I hope you are feeling better today. You reminded me that I needed to change the amounts for my direct deposits, which I have now done.   Sorting investments comes next.

Me too!

 

Excellent! A contagion of good finances!

 

2 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

Because Jupiter is ascending, oranges are purple, and the sky is a watermelon.

 

It's a computer. They do things out of spite.  

Can you speak their language? Tell it it's had its fun, and it can stop now. Please.

 

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I completely ignored the computer project of doom today and instead focused on a different project. One that went pretty well, even though it appears I can't hammer a nail straight to save my life. It's a bit full, but I think it still looks nice in the space, displays everything well, and yet still leaves it all easily accessible. Spoilered for hugeness.  (Btw, the white line is the corner of the wall, not a weird line running down randomly.)

Spoiler

 

So I made home decor that is also a storage solution. Now I just need to figure out how to store my bracelets.

[KB Girl]

That looks very pretty! I kinda want one but I don't wear jewellery x) 

[Scaly Freak]

18 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Can you speak their language? Tell it it's had its fun, and it can stop now. Please.

 

Well... I am somewhere between conversational and fluent in PC Hardware, I can muddle along in Server Upgrades or Laptop Specs if you're patient with me, and I used to be very good at Game Modding. 

 

However, since they are computer languages, none of them has a word for "please". There is a word for "fun" though. It's spelled almost exactly the same way as the word for "rage", for some reason.

[juliebarkley]

9 hours ago, KB Girl said:

That looks very pretty! I kinda want one but I don't wear jewellery x) 

Thanks! I don't wear it much either since it gets covered up, but it does make me feel happier and prettier anyway when I do. So I really should more often.

 

4 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

Well... I am somewhere between conversational and fluent in PC Hardware, I can muddle along in Server Upgrades or Laptop Specs if you're patient with me, and I used to be very good at Game Modding. 

 

However, since they are computer languages, none of them has a word for "please". There is a word for "fun" though. It's spelled almost exactly the same way as the word for "rage", for some reason.

Languages tell us so much about the culture, don't they?
 

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My evening got a little derailed before it really began. My son was trying to back into the driveway when he ran into a snowbank with the corner of his car. Shouldn't have been a big deal, but the parking sensors kept going off every time he tried to reverse. When we inspected the back, it looks like he's either broken a clip on the bumper or (hopefully) knocked it just enough to unclip it. Replacing the bumper over a clip from a very minor bump would be a real shame (and expensive), so I hope it just needs a bit of a shove back into place.

 

For obvious reasons, this rattled him. So we played some board games for a couple of hours before he went to bed. I no longer had time to do the thing I had planned and was running low on ideas, so back to getting rid of some paper. Which I did. But I also, while trying to catch a thing that was falling, managed to hurt my shoulder worse than I ever have yet. The pain wasn't so bad, but my whole arm was nearly numb and I felt like I couldn't grip with my hand or move my arm properly. Kind of sucked the fun out of that activity. So I think I'm done for the day.

 

Oh, and for @KB Girl, I finished the illusion knitting! Pictures under the spoiler.

Spoiler

This is what the scarf looks like viewed straight on. Simple stripes. Gryffindor colours, perhaps.

 

However! These colours also symbolize the fire of a volcano, which revealed an inscription in Black Speech on the One Ring when heated. Like we see here, when we view it from an angle...

Neat, eh?

 

[Scaly Freak]

Illusion knitting makes me almost want to take up knitting as a hobby. That's awesome.