Musings

I'm very excited to begin the Year of Used ! It interesting to think about...I haven't owned a car for 9 years, I belong to a local carshare group, take public transportation in the winter, I haven't paid for cable TV in 4 years, I shop at consignment stores, re-use boxes and containers wherever possible, frequent the used bookstore...etc, etc....but I can do more. I was at a bookstore recently and wandered over to the travel section. With a trip planned to Paris in April, I thought hey - I need to get a travel book - perhaps Rough Guide or Lonely Planet . And then I thought no....I can wait and borrow one from a friend or the library. I don't need to buy a new one . That's purely a result of the seed planted in my brain by the Year of Used . It's like that with many things. As a kid, we never recycled anything. It all went into the trash - papers, bottles, cans. Composting is the same - now that it's a part of my life, there's no way I'm

CardStar CardStar is a dream app! I discovered this app when looking for a simple solution to the problem of always forgetting my library card. You can search by category and add the cards that you use by entering either their number or by scanning them using the Barcode Scanner app. Categories include: Airline, Association, Beverage, Car Rental, Convenience Store, Cruise Line, Drug Store, Entertainment, Gas, Grocery, Gym, Healthcare, Hotel, Library, Local, Museum, Restaurant, Retail, Service, Train, Travel. CauseWorld Check-in apps are all the rage right now with the most popular being Foursquare & Gowalla. However, if you want to use a location based check-in app & make a difference at the same time, then CauseWorld is what you want. In addition to earning badges, you also earn Karma points, 5 points for each check-in. These points can then be donated to a cause of your choices. Donations range from 1 - 200 Karmas. One of my favorites is Donate a Book which, for 100 Karmas,

Adobe Reader This one's a no-brainer. If you want the ability to read PDFs on your Droid, getting this app is vital. Amazon MP3 The Amazon MP3 app makes it super easy to download new music to your Droid. You can, of course, connect your Droid to your computer and transfer music onto the Droid. For the occasions when you want to download it direct, however, Amazon MP3 makes it a snap. Bebbeled This app falls into the game category. The goal of this game is to score a required number of points in a limited number of moves. Moves are made by touching groups of like colors which earn you points. The more "bebbels" you group, the more points you earn. There are several different levels. WARNING: THIS GAME IS HIGHLY ADDICTIVE! HOURS HAVE BEEN LOST TO THIS GAME! :-) Beer Map ( Cost = $.99) A project of the Beer Mapping Project, this app helps you to locate beer. Filter for breweries, brewpubs, bars, & stores, including homebrew stores. The default search is near your cur

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name…and they're always glad you came [1] . You likely recognize those lines from the theme song to the popular ‘80s sitcom, Cheers . The song describes a place that serves as both an escape from daily life and yet one that is familiar and where you are always welcome. Twisted Pine Brewery is the Cheers of Boulder, CO. When I first moved to town I remember driving East on Walnut Street and seeing what looked to be a sketchy bar in an industrial complex on the North side of the street. This assumption continued for the next two years until my good friend, Brett, invited me to join him for a beer. I saddled up next to him at the bar and commented on the Twisted Pine hat he was wearing . Wow, I thought, he must really love this place. But then Brett let me in on a little secret. Every time you come in wearing a piece of Twisted Pine gear you buy 1 beer and get the next one for free (I’m now the proud owner of both a shirt an

from p.8 of Jan. 2010 edition of Real Simple magazine... "Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants." - Esther De Waal, Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict.