Then I received the Kate Spade inserts for 2013 along with the wine Holborn I purchased:

Now I’m not certain which one to use. Kate Spade has a monthly planner and gorgeous two-page pretty picture type things before the months. BN has monthly “events pages”. I also set up the BN with color coding, while the Kate Spade I kept black and white. At this point I’m leaning towards Kate Spade. What do you all think?

(This is assuming that a busy schedule doesn’t drive me back to my FC 2ppd or FF ppd of course.)

Well, I did it (and then some). That’s one goal which WAS accomplished this year. It’s a small thing, and comparatively easy (I love to read!), but still. It’s an accomplishment.

Here are the 52 books, in order of completion. These were all finished in 2012, but not at a rate of one a week! Rather, I’d go weeks without finishing one and then finish four in a week, things like that. In reviewing this list, I’ve noticed that I read a fair amount of Christian non-fiction and teen fiction.

1. The Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster
2. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey
3. The Me I Want To Be, John Ortberg
4. Reading The Bible Again For The First Time, Marcus J. Borg
5. The Help, Kathryn Stockett
6. The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan
7. The Bible Jesus Read, Philip Yancey
8. The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin
9. When She Woke, Hillary Jordan
10. A Praying Life, Paul E. iller
11. Thinking Straight In A Crooked World, Gary DeMar
12. Lit! Tony Reinke
13. The Believing Brain, Michael Shermer
14. Time Of My Life, Allison Winn Scotch
15. Misquoting Truth, Timothy Paul Jones
16. The House At Riverton, Kate Morton
17. In Our Control, Laura Eldridge
18. One Day, David Nicholls
19. Austenland, Shannon Hale
20. If God Is Good, Randy Alcorn
21. Matched, Allie Condie
22. Crossed, Allie Condie
23. Making It All Work, David Allen
24. One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp
25. Love, Loneliness, Abuse, and Murder, Jim B. Pulley
26. Spousonomics, Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson
27. Uninsured in America, Susan Starr Sered and Rushika Fernandopulle
28. Radical, David Platt
29. A Feast For Crows, George R. R. Martin
30. Free For All, Don Borchert
31. The Way In, Rita D. Jacobs
32. The Reading Group, Elizabeth Noble
33. Insurgent, Veronica Roth
34. Not A Fan, Kyle Idleman
35. Sink Reflections, Marla Cilley
36. The Irresistable Revolution, Shane Claiborne
37. The Purpose-Driven Life, Rick Warren
38. Confessions of a Prayer Slacker, Diane Moody
39. Redeeming Love, Francine Rivers
40. Gossip Girl, Cecily von Ziegesar
41. Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs
42. Love Wins, Rob Bell
43. The Pledge, Kimberly Derting
44. Article 5, Kristen Simmons
45. Birthmarked, Caragh M. O’Brien
46. Erasing Hell, Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle
47. The Selection, Kiera Cass
48. Bloodhound, Tamora Pierce
49. Mastiff, Tamora Pierce
50. Prized, Caragh M. O’Brien
51. Promised, Caragh M. O’Brien
52. A Year of Biblical Womanhood, Rachel Held Evans
53. Reached, Allie Condie
54. Ruby Red, Kerstin Gier
55. Letters From A Skeptic, Dr. Gregory Boyd and Edward Boyd

I’m talking about a $9.99 vinyl planner from Barnes and Noble.

It’s really quite sad that this planner has better rings than my Finchley.

I actually bought this planner for the calendar pages – it’s a weekly layout, and it’s pretty. The more staid planner pages available in a refill pack in a separate part of the store were too staid and the structure didn’t fit what I liked very well. Plus, my new planner came with stickers, a notepad, and a bookmark, too. It’s fun and girly, it’s true…We’ll see how the layout works for me.

Sadly, these don’t appear to be available online currently – except through resellers charging premium prices. Ugh.

I’ll post pictures in another entry later on, as it’s late and I don’t feel like doing all the uploading right now…

I’ve kept the same set-up since August or so, when school started. I work part-time, take a full load of grad school classes, and I am married with a toddler. Before too long I was clinging to my Filofax like a life raft. I was afraid to tweak my set-up or change calendar pages in case I lost information along the way! I have to say, though, that this set-up did work well. I rarely missed anything. I did change up how I kept track of school assignments, but I will be doing an All-Stars post on that later on.

This is my personal brown Holborn. It has been serving me well since August, when I bought it. I’ve grown to like it more and more as time goes on. The pockets arrangement is just wonderful, and I like brown.

As you can see, however, it’s suffered some scratches.

I have it completely stuffed. It wasn’t like this originally, but as time went on I added more and more pages with notes. (I’ve also put in another full month of 2 pages per day, and it fits!) You can see how much the Franklin Covey pages stick out. It didn’t bother me much originally, but lately it’s been bugging me. I think I may have to switch to another brand, since I don’t like the thought of switching binders – the Franklin Covey offerings just aren’t as good.

Side view.

At some point I started using my Filofax as a wallet. I spend a lot of time at coffee shops, and realized that I didn’t need to carry around my wallet when all I needed was an ID and credit card. Now I carry my auto insurance card, health insurance card, credit card, ID, student ID card, and card-sized diploma in the slots. The pocket beneath them has coupons and my sticky flags. US standard size papers that I need get folded in fourths and put in one pocket, and cash lives in the other pocket (where the purple paper is poking out). I have a clear flyleaf, and then my Filofax and Philofaxy cards.

This is my clear plastic envelope which makes up my real front page. That’s me and my husband when we were dating. :)

The backside. A note from my best friend, and a quote from an excellent book.

These are my tabs. The dividers are regular Filofax ones with the tabs cut off; the tabs are Martha Stewart ones by Avery. MLS is the degree I’m going for.

I decorated the dividers with stickers from Half Price. The post-its remind me what’s in each section. This is my “God” divider, which basically means it has anything to do with faith/church.

My MLS divider. I am a graduate student, studying library science. I will be doing an All Stars post about this section later on.

My “Me” section.

My pledge to stick with one set of calendar pages. I’m considering breaking it though…*innocent face*

Family divider. Currently it’s got a Day-Timer Hot List post-it on the other side with my list of gifts to get…I’ve only got 3 people left!

This section is sorely neglected…

This section is somewhat of a “miscellaneous” section, but most of it is important miscellaneous information – such as “important phone numbers” in case my phone goes dead or is unavailable and someone needs to get a hold of people close to me.

It also holds my Filofax brainstorm page, which has been neglected for several months. Turns out that being busy constantly takes away the need to do anything related to Filofax tweaking.

Here’s an example of a daily page. The daily tracker box is where I put my husband’s schedule. The notes page is an “inbox”.

And here’s a month. I can’t take a picture of a past month because there’s too much personal info! I do color-code my months – birthdays in light green, work in orange, deadlines in red, schoolwork in blue. I outline the actual day boxes with a colored pencil matching the pages, because I have trouble distinguishing between notes space and day boxes otherwise. I also write down my husband’s work shifts once they happen, and put how many hours I work in the notes space after each week.

More Filofax musings at the end of my calendar pages. I have a transparent flyleaf at the end to protect my pages. It helps the binder close better – though, the leather covering the zipper helps as well.

Stickers from Sandra on the other side of the flyleaf! I have some post-its and stickers from Sandra in that envelope. I rarely use these pockets, however.

The backside. You can see the wear.

As you can see, the rings are rather full…

Open to today. I have the current month and the next month in here.

And my today marker…

I never pay attention to these stickers. That’s a bad thing.

So, that’s my fall Filofax. I’m grateful that it’s served me well. Now that I’m on break, however, I’m starting to think about tweaking again. The daily pages are wonderful…and they are Franklin Covey, so they stick out. Also, they take up a LOT of space. I also end up forwarding tasks a lot, too.

I’m considering testing a GTD/week on 2 pages set-up while school is out. I don’t need the 2 pages per day right now, and I don’t think the to-do list is serving me well when I have no real deadlines (though it worked fairly well when I was in school, I think…I’m going to go back and analyze that). But I don’t have enough room in my Filofax for context to-do lists AND 2 months of 2ppd. I’ve also noticed that I need lines, and times are helpful. The cotton cream week on 2 pages from Filofax is beautiful, but it isn’t structured enough for me to be able to use it well. My mother’s Christmas present is the DayTimer Coastlines week on 2 pages, and I’m contemplating getting it or something similar. We’ll see! If I decide to keep the 2 pages per day, I might try DayRunner pages – very similar format, but Filofax sized instead of Franklin Covey sized.

It is utterly fascinating to see what people say about the *exact same* debate and the *exact same* book. Many times during the presidential debates, I saw statuses/Tweets of conservative Republicans and ardent Democrats juxtaposed on my news/Twitter feed. These updates were talking about the same part of the debate…and coming to completely opposite conclusions, every. single. time.

Certain conservative evangelical complementarian Christians have a huge problem with Rachel Held Evans’ book – they feel that her salvation is in doubt and that her book is mocking Christianity. Meanwhile, other less-conservative possibly-egalitarian still-evangelical Christians love the book and appreciate what it is trying to say.

In both of these situations, the bias is crystal clear. The conservative Christians I mentioned earlier cannot see the good in Rachel Held Evans’ book, because their paradigm makes them so biased that it is *impossible* for them to see it. In order to see the good, they would have to accept the possibility that she had something good to say – but their paradigm tells them that isn’t possible. For the Republicans and Democrats, it can be the same thing. The conservative Republican paradigm does not allow for good Democratic policies, or for Obama to want good for the US. For the more extreme Democrats, the idea that the Republican policies could be good for the country is an impossible thought.

We are all biased, of course – it’s impossible to avoid. But sometimes, bias takes on the character of absolute truth. When we use our “absolute truth” as an excuse to treat people with disdain and even hate instead of kindness and compassion, we create a horrible mess. But in too many cases, that’s exactly what happens. I think it’s time to stop the crazy and start thinking the best of others again, when at all possible.

In my first year of public school (which was 10th grade), I carried around Purell hand sanitizer and used it frequently. Now, whenever I use Purell, I get echoes of feelings of 10th grade.

Today, I washed my hands using black raspberry and vanilla hand soap at someone else’s house. Driving home, I tried to place it – the sense of expectation and order. I figured out that’s the hand soap we had right around the time I had my daughter. Before her birth, I spent time sitting and reading and studying…and I was very expectant. Odd how the echoes of those feelings come back to me.

So far I’ve left it this way, because I consider this a personal blog, which means I can get away with that, right? At the same time, I’m not sure politics/life posts really mix well with planner posts.

Thoughts?

Dear Ms Bloomer

This letter is a response to the interview recently conducted with you by FeaturesExec Media Bulletin, and is being posted simultaneously (more or less) on a number of blogging sites in the UK, the US and beyond.

What binds us together as bloggers is that we are all members of an international community and website devoted to all things Filofax, and are all passionate about personal organisation, and the Filofax brand in particular. We have read, as a community, and with increasing disbelief, your comments concerning the Filofax brand, and this is our response.

We note from your comments that, as a result of a ‘usage and attitudes study’ you have conducted, you have been led to the conclusion that the distinguishing features of Filofax users are that we ‘like to write notes’, and that we are ‘very interested in fashion/stylish accessories’. We can assure you this is not the case in either respect, and that we find being pigeon-holed in this way to be demeaning and insulting in a way you most probably cannot understand. We are a community whose passions are for good organisation and a flexible, functional system to underpin that organisation. Some of us, perhaps a minority, have considerations of fashion, but all of us care that our systems of personal organisation assist us in the lives we live and the tasks we undertake.

In short, if all we wanted to do was to ‘write notes’, it is highly unlikely we would invest in relatively expensive binders, refills and systems such as your client provides. We wonder just who you have asked to participate in your ‘usage and attitudes study’. Whoever they are, we can assure you they are unrepresentative of your client’s core customer base, many of whom have been loyal customers for over twenty years and now feel ignored by your client.

We want to suggest to you that the direction you are taking your client in is ultimately going to prove fundamentally damaging to their business. The fashion ‘business’ is notoriously fickle and fast-changing, and you seem to have convinced your client that ignoring and alienating their loyal core customer base will bring dividends in terms of a new, fashion-conscious, high-spending corpus. We want to suggest to you, and by extension to Filofax themselves, that when the fashion ‘carousel moves on, your client will be left neither their newly promised client base, nor the client base you have led them to abandon.  Do you really think this is smart business advice?

You say in your interview that you consider your brief with Filofax to ‘make (your client) fashionable again’. We would suggest to you that your client’s products, if they were ever ‘fashionable’ at all, were so because they fulfilled a function and a need which was perceived to be important to their customers. We now have growing evidence of a lowering of standards of manufacture in Filofax binders, of poor paper quality in refills, and of a lack of willingness to listen to your customers’ opinions. Several of our members, on voicing opinions similar to these, have been invited by Filofax (or whoever runs their Twitter feed) to communicate those opinions directly to your client. This has been done, and no further comment or reaction from your client has been forthcoming. We would like to know whether this is really the kind of public relations you wish for your clients? Or are you merely concerned with putting fashionable, well-heeled ‘bottoms on seats’ at London, New York and other Fashion Weeks with the aid of free give-aways of ranges of binders priced beyond the reach of the average core Filofax user and similarly poorly manufactured? We would suggest that your ‘fashion focused press office’ would be better employed communicating with the loyal, core customer base of your client, the majority of whom, it now seems, are on the point of abandoning your client’s brand in favour of providers who will listen.

We write as concerned individuals and not as representatives of the community to which we belong. However, it is worth noting that many of us have a very high annual spend on Filofax and related products, and we suggest that Filofax is in danger of sacrificing this loyal customer spend in exchange for something far less reliable in the long term.

In conclusion, we have every confidence that these opinions will be ignored as ‘unfashionable’ by your ‘attitude studies’ and ‘fashion focused’ executives. However, we care enough about the Filofax brand to communicate these opinions plainly to you, and to hope that Filofax will one day return to the business in which it flourished for over seventy years, of providing highly functional, attractive but reasonably priced, personal organisation systems to those who need them, which is an increasing number of people in the societies in which we live.

Here are the bookmarks that I chose. You can see that they are almost exactly the height of the Today marker.

I placed the Today marker on top of the bookmark and made sure they were aligned. Then I took a pen and colored in the hole space. (I took this picture before actually doing it – when I did it, I flipped them around so that I was marking on the back of the bookmark.)

After doing that, I got this. I then used a single hole punch to do the holes. After that, I took scissors and cut carefully just on either side of the black line to create the slots.

Voila! A customized today marker without a lot of trouble! :)

I read a lot.  I don’t read very fast due to time constraints, but I always have one or two books going at once—a physical book and an audiobook to listen to in the car while driving to and from work.  I don’t own any audiobooks but I own plenty of physical books.  Because I consider them to be an essential part of my décor, I will never not have any.  I do weed out my collection from time to time, mainly when I can no longer display them in an eye-pleasing manner.  Yes, for that is how I organize my bookshelf, in a way that’s pleasing to the eye.  I used to buy most of my books, but in the last few years, I have bought very few.  Now it seems I get most of my books from the library.  I work for one, so why pay for books when I have such easy access to them?  I still will buy a book now and then—if it’s an author I love, if I want something new to take on vacation, etc.  Many of the books I already own have yet to be read, so I’m trying to not buy as many so that I can get through what I have first.  But you know how it is, I will check out a new book before getting to the ones I at home.  Oh well, that’s just the way it goes.

So what does my bookshelf look like?

My shelves consist not only of books but also pictures and very few knick-knacks.  (I’m not a knick-knack collector but I do have a handful.)  The shelves reside in our entryway by the front door.  There’s a lot of space there that’s hard to fill, but the bookshelves fit perfectly.  I desperately need new ones (I got these from a coworker when she moved a few years ago and they were 15 years old then).  Sadly, there is no room for a chair to make it a quasi-library, but maybe someday when we move from our condo to a house we can have a library/office.  The living room or patio works for now.

The organization of my book shelf is not rocket science but it probably doesn’t make any sense to anyone else but me.  Some people books anywhere but not me.  I put paperbacks of similar size together, as well as hardcovers.  I have a small collection of young adult novels that are together.  The few non-fiction titles I have are also together.  I do have a few author collections, and of course those are together.

Adriana Trigiani:

Jennifer Weiner:

Marian Keyes:

Sophie Kinsella:

Jodi Picoult:

I have several signed copies of Jodi’s books, and I have read most of them.  Perfect Match was the first book of hers that I got—given to me as a gift—I had never heard of her, but this was the start of my loyal following.

I used to buy old books—classics mostly—because I like the look of them, so they are grouped together as well.

Celia Garth isn’t considered as classic, and not very well known, but it’s a much-loved book in my family so I took my grandmother’s copy when she passed away.

You can see that I have a small Jane Austen collection going on as well.

The Christmas Tree is also not a classic but I love it.

You may have noticed that there is more than one copy of To Kill a Mockingbird on my shelf.  That is because it is my favorite book.  In fact, I have three copies.

The first copy I got was the small paperback edition.  This copy was well-worn by the time I got it as a hand-me-down, and since I read it every few years, it has a lot of wear to it.

The inside binding is even wearing thin.

My mother gave me the hardcopy when I graduated school.  I have always wanted a first edition of the book, but they are very hard to come by and are wicked expensive.

The trade paperback edition I got when I led a book discussion on it for work.

Some of my other favorites include:

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (has a very Jane Eyre feel, another book that I love)

The Christmas Tree by Julie Salamon

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (check out the upcoming movie, as opposed to the original)

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith

The Myth of You & Me by Leah Stewart (I have previously mentioned why I love this book)

Honorable mentions go to:

Summer by Edith Wharton

1984 by George Orwell

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

So.  Having shown you a bit of my personal library, you may wonder how I go about picking my next selection (well, maybe you don’t care, but too bad, I’m gonna tell you anyway).

First, I have to say that I do the very bad thing of choosing my books by their covers.  I know it’s a cliché; people shouldn’t do that.  But honestly, it’s my jumping off point.  This is not to say that I won’t read books I don’t like the look of—if someone recommends something to me, I might read it (if the storyline interests me).  But there are so many books out there; I have to have a starting point.  And this is it.  I prefer simple, clean, organized covers (you’re shocked, I know) rather than a ton of color or something that looks hand-drawn rather than photographed.  Some examples are:

Shelter

Secret Daughter

Objects of My Affection

(These titles aren’t necessarily on my list, but doing a search through Barnes & Noble, they are covers that appeal to me for some reason.)

Once I’m hooked on an author, I will more than likely read other books by that person regardless of what the cover looks like (though to be honest, I’m always disappointed if their new book’s cover doesn’t appeal to me—I’ll still read it though).

This selection process has backfired on me too—I will choose a book because I love the cover so much, not pay attention to what it’s really about, and absolutely hate the book (sorry Twilight fans).

With all of that said, I do have a process by which I research my books (and movies and music).  I keep a list of how I can search for new titles (again, you’re shocked, I can tell).

When I have time, I go through my research list and check each resource listed (once I have checked a source, I make the text unbold so that I know where I left off).

You can see how many favorite authors I have:

Again, the same bold/plain text rule applies.

There are several book sources I check as well:

Once I have found a book I am interested in, I add it to my ever-growing book list.

Yes, just like my Filofax, my booklist is color coded.

Black – titles that I can only get in physical book format

Blue – titles that are available on audio, whether in CD format or as an electronic download

Green – titles I own

Orange – items I have placed on hold at the library

Red – items I currently have checked out

Bold – titles I have a high interest in, regardless of what category it falls into

I also keep a list of upcoming books, items that haven’t yet been published.

Again they are color coded:

Black – anything that does not yet have a specific date

Orange – titles that have a specific date that is too far away to request

Red – titles that I can request but whose date I want to add to my Filofax

Green (not shown) – titles that I have in my Filofax (I carry only three month’s worth of calendar pages with me, which is why I need the distinction)

Once an upcoming title has been placed on hold, I will move it from the upcoming list to the regular book list.

For anyone who might be wondering, I do try to update my list every time I check something out or return it.  It doesn’t always work out that way, but the color coding helps with this too—if I forget to remove an item from my book list, I can see that it needs to be when I open my file.  Anything in red that I’m not currently reading needs to be removed or made a different color if I never did get to read it.

I keep all of these lists as Google Documents.  My list is way too long to keep in my Filofax (currently I have 272 titles on my list).  Also, I need the list alphabetized by author so that I can search to see if a title is already on my list or not—sadly, my Filofax won’t put the list in alphabetical order for me, and I can’t search an un-alphabetized list very well.  I don’t want to have to reprint a written list every time I add or remove a title.  Plus, using Google Docs allows me to access my list when I need to, and since I’m using the computer to do the research anyway, it just makes sense for me to use this format.

I hope you have enjoyed my explanation of my book choices and that I haven’t bored you to tears.  Thank you to Bluebonnet Reads for allowing me to provide this guest post!

The second diary format I used was very kindly mailed all the way from France by Steve of Philofaxy. It is the Filofax cotton cream week on two pages, with the days all the same size and a notes space above Monday. I honestly love this layout – it works quite well. My problem with it is that it’s very compact, and I just don’t think I can squeeze everything I want or need to note in a day-specific way into this diary.

Today, the third diary format arrived – Franklin Covey 2 pages per day (in the Serenity pattern). I ordered these because I am starting grad school in just over a week, and several people recommended the 2ppd, saying that I would need the room. (Thanks Laurie, Rori, and Zoe! and anyone else I’m forgetting!) I’ve used the page per day layout before with success. This diary also comes with a month on 2 pages, which is absolutely essential for use with daily pages.

I just finished getting all my appointments, etc. written over. The daily sheets are still quite bare, as most of my to-dos are still on the context sheets and grad school hasn’t yet started, but I expect they will fill up rapidly. I do feel like there’s a lot more room to breathe, which is nice. The pages are sectioned: appointments, to-dos, a “daily tracker,” and notes. I’m going to use the daily tracker for my husband’s schedule, and I think this will work VERY well. In the past I’ve taken the top line of the appointments, or just the “margin” of a day space on a weekly page, and neither of those have worked too well. The daily tracker box gives me room to note details if I like, and it means his schedule is not taking up space where my schedule needs to be! The notes page will be used as an inbox-type thing as well as having the extra information I will need for assignments.

So, there you have it. I am planning on forcing myself to stick with this format. My problem is that I sometimes try and fix what isn’t broken! Ack! I really must learn not to do that.

2) Ooh soft and smooth.

3) Woo, no gaps in the rings!!!

4) Hm. The rings seem to almost be *bent* where they close, kind of like my Franklin Covey classic’s, but a tad bit moreso. But still, no gaps yay!

5) Man, this is FLOPPY!

6) This is not the same type of ring mechanism as my Finchley – this one has things (I presume it’s the attachments) on the metal.

7) Ooh fun stuff that came inside the Holborn

8) ooh lots of pockets!

9) …I need to go to work soon and my kid does not appreciate how awesome Filofaxes are.

Sadly, this post has only one picture. I know, it’s blasphemy – but there has been too much going on which involves my family, or friends, and it’s all on my planner pages…and I’m too lazy to blur out *that* much stuff. Sorry! *looks sheepish* I do, however, have this picture which explains how I use the weekly pages. The green highlighting is the most recent stuff and what’s remained consistent over the past couple weeks. I’ve turned the bottom part of the righthand notes page into a space for weekend to-dos, as the weekend days have less space. (Also, please note that the color is off in this picture – the pages are much whiter than they appear.)

There are also two sets of monthly calendars – year at a glance for July-Dec 2012, 2013, and 2014, as well as vertical monthly calendars (line a day) for July 2012-Dec. 2013. I’m using the spaces between months in the year-at-a-glance part to record important monthly notes, like people graduating or when the pest guys come. The vertical monthly calendars I’m using to record our income and any super important events. I also put my bill-tracking sticky flags on the vertical monthly pages. There are also some notes pages at the back, which I’m using for important lists, including gift ideas, a wish list, and a Someday list.

I’ve also taken up color-coding, which means I’m carrying around a bag of pens everywhere..but that’s okay! I use purple for personal things, dark green for anything to do with family, blue for grad school, orange for work, brown for faith-related things, red for can’t-miss important stuff, and black for everything else – which usually means housework and errands! Both appointments and to-dos are color coded throughout the planner, and notes sometimes are as well. I’ve also got stickers from the lovely Sandra which will brighten the pages right up!!

So far, this is working great for me. I love the weekly view, and how light and portable it is, and how it’s a bound book. I do wish there was more notes space. I tried taking a pocket Moleskine cahier to work the other day, though, and it worked wonderfully as an inbox, so that might be the solution. However, all of this is subject to change depending on what my planning needs are once I start grad school!

Thanks for reading. Feel free to leave a comment with questions, comments, vilification for being too lazy to take more photos…but please don’t be too mean. ;)

There are so many things wrong with this that I’m not sure where to start.

The comparison itself is a truly awful one. Wild animals most likely have plenty of their own food sources available to them, all for the price of a hunt. If they don’t, then they may very well be endangered and people will be worried about their prospects. Also, notice that no one complains about the zoo animals’ unhealthy dependence on humans; there, you’re not supposed to feed the animals because it screws up their diet. There’s more to this than just “animals will grow dependent on handouts”. Human beings in the United States, on the other hand, need money to pay for food, and in order to have money they need to have a job. They also have to worry about transportation, and housing, and utilities. Jobs can be difficult to get, even when you are qualified or over-qualified. When a person has a job, it may be one that pays poorly. Or it could be that the person recently experienced an unexpected reduction in income, and their financial commitments are now too large for the income but may be hard or impossible to escape. Whatever the reason, money is tight. The person is most likely perfectly capable of working, shopping, and cooking; it’s a question of how much opportunity there is to do those things. Yet somehow, a lot of other people don’t care a whit about these situations, unlike in the animals’ cases. To compare a poor person to a lazy animal is insulting and inaccurate. It’s a bumper-sticker “explanation”, and the only thing it does is harm.

Poverty is a complex issue. It can hit even the most well-educated, hard-working, upright people and leave them applying for food stamps and welfare. Poverty is not a respecter of persons. It is a grating experience, and once you’re in the cycle it can be incredibly difficult to escape. This is doubly true for those who grew up in poverty, especially if the poverty is accompanied by low levels of education. These combined can make it hard to get a job, as this blog post explains. Poverty is losing your job because your car broke down, you couldn’t afford to fix it, you couldn’t get to work, and you got fired. Poverty is working multiple minimum wage jobs and having a large portion of your wages go to subpar daycare. Poverty is having no recourse to credit cards in an emergency and having to resort to loan sharks. (For more, see Nickel and Dimed.) And guess what? It could happen to you. But if you’re reading this, you’re probably better equipped to get out of it than a lot of people.

I’m sure there are “welfare queens” – but I’m equally sure that the vast majority of people on government aid have it because they need it, or because they qualify and they’re taking advantage of it because it makes life easier. Yes, they may be spending their money poorly. The answer to that is not to take away their money, or to make a burdensome list of requirements to get aid, or to automatically disqualify anyone with anything remotely nice (computers, iPods, etc.). The answer is to educate people on money management, and why they want to change their spending habits.

The most important thing, though, is to listen to people’s stories. Understand where they’re coming from. Don’t distance yourself and be satisfied with leaving the poor to be the “other” – the lazy welfare queens of your imagination. Treat other people as *people*, not stereotypes. Maybe then things could be changed, a person at a time. And when you see a person with an iPhone pulling out her food stamp card in the checkout line, think about it: maybe it’s an iPod that someone gave her. Maybe she’s bound into the contract, doesn’t have another non-smart-phone to switch to, and buying that non-smart-phone would cost more than she can afford, so she’s stuck paying that extra $20 a month. You don’t know, so perhaps you should stop judging.

I don’t reread books, I used to say. I like to read books once and get on with it. Rereading is boring, and there are so many other books in the world! I grew out of that. ;) I still don’t reread books often, but these are the ones I keep coming back to. They’re also my favorites. Unfortunately I’m not very good at saying things about books (besides “it’s wonderful, it’s amazing, it’s so beautifully written, you should read it”) so bear with me!

1. The Bible. As a Christian who loves to read, this one isn’t too surprising. I keep forgetting what’s in there and finding it again. It’s beautiful, confusing, challenging. It’s also very important from a literary standpoint – you will miss a lot of allusions in a lot of Western literature if you have no knowledge of the Bible!

2. The Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling. I read the first four books in a month when I was 13, and waited impatiently along with everyone else for the others to come out. I did the midnight releases, read the fan fiction, was a member of the websites…everything. I even got to meet some of my friends from the websites in real life! I keep coming back to these books because I love the world she created, the amazing story, and the way the books comfort in their familiarity. Oh – and I own British editions (all found at Half Price bookstores in the DFW metroplex…because that makes perfect sense!…) which makes it so much better.

3. The Blue Sword, by Robin McKinley. It begins with a glass of orange juice, then the heroine gets kidnapped by the mysterious desert people who have really awesome horse skills and tents, and ends with…well, I can’t tell you, that would spoil the story! I love many of Robin McKinley’s books, but this is one of my favorites – and is one of the few books where I’ve gotten shivers, and haven’t wanted it to end.

4. The Other Boleyn Girl, by Philippa Gregory. I first read this book in my second semester of college, when I was living with three other girls and feeling rather tense around my then circle of friends. The descriptions of Mary’s relationship to the royal court really resonated with me because of this. Plus, I’ve always loved books about Henry VIII and his wives. This was one of the first books that I chose to reread – I’ve read it about 4 times.

5. The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffeneger. Utterly beautiful writing and an intriguing story – a red-headed artist who loves a time-traveling librarian…but he can’t control it. Possibly my favorite book. It’s currently on loan.

6. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood. One of the few books where I made an effort to read slowly in order to soak up every nuance of her glorious prose. It’s a chilling dystopian tale of a Christian theocracy.

7. Jane Austen’s books, especially Mansfield Park (since I’ve read the first half of it about 4 times and the second half twice). I grew up with these books, and what can I say, I love slow-paced fiction with witty observations on society. These books are remarkably easy on the spirit. The homages they’ve spawned are delightfully heartwarming, especially the movie/TV series Lost in Austen (available on Netflix) and the book Austenland.

8. The Lord of the Rings books. Unlike most home schooled kids, I didn’t read these until I was 20 – but when I finally got through all the walking, I loved them. I’ve since reread them and they’re just as wonderful the second time.

9. The Sherlock Holmes stories. I first read them at the age of 12, and have loved them ever since. The best copy to read is the facsimile of the original newspaper stories – the illustrations are wonderful. Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch is a brilliant adaptation. If you have never read Sherlock Holmes, YOU NEED TO.

10. The Little House books. These shaped my childhood – I wanted to be Laura – and my fashion sense, for a bit. I’m looking forward to reading them again when Zoe gets older. Not pictured because I don’t actually own them (gasp).

Honorable mentions: Gone With the Wind, Creative Journal Writing, Jane Eyre, The Chronicles of Narnia, Ender’s Game, Anne of Green Gables, Little Women.

What are the books you reread?

But even so, even if the word “marriage” shouldn’t be used in regard to civil marriage/unions (for straight and gay people), there NEEDS to be a way for every individual to arrange who will be able to be with them in the hospital, who will be able to make the final decisions if necessary, who will make medical decisions for them in an emergency, who inherits…etc. That way needs to be foolproof and respected by others, so that no one’s loved one experiences being shoved aside and disregarded by other relatives. Civil marriage is the single easiest way to have all that happen. I know that one can do power of attorneys, but I don’t know how many hospital visiting privileges those confer.

This is simple human decency. It’s non-negotiable.

I’ve been pondering this post for a while, but have only now decided to write and post it. The timing seemed appropriate, what with North Carolina. Not like my view matters much in the great scheme of things, but you are reading my blog, aren’t you? ;)

I am a Christian. I might even call myself an evangelical Christian, though it’s hard to say – those terms tend to mean little, and I know I disagree with evangelical Christianity on some things. Being a conservative Christian type, I found myself needing to come to terms with the Bible and homosexuality, and what, if anything, I should be trying to do about it as a Christian in the US.

Concerning the Bible and homosexuality, so far in my life I’ve been most convinced by what the GCN folks would call the Side B argument – that homosexual activity is a sin, and Christians who are gay should live celibate lives. I know that others argue differently, and I’ve read those arguments too, but don’t find them as convincing. So, I believe that my religion says you are sinning if you engage in homosexual activity. I don’t think you are automatically condemned to hell, anymore than the straight person having sex outside of marriage is condemned to hell. You’re just messing up. I mess up all the time – I just don’t happen to mess up in that particular area. It’s not a temptation for me. If you aren’t a Christian, then what I think is a sin doesn’t really apply to you anyway. I’m not going to bash you over the head with my beliefs. I probably won’t even mention it unless it comes up.

So, what should I as a Christian in the US do about gay marriage?

NOTHING.

As a Christian in the US, a Christian who believes that homosexual activity is a sin, I think that gay marriage should be legal.

Why? Because all the social arguments against homosexual activity fall apart upon scrutiny, others were once valid but have become invalid as the definition of marriage has changed, and the other arguments are religious. Religious arguments should not be valid in creating legislation in the United States, because the United States is not a theocracy. Feel free to practice your religion all you like, but you cannot turn your religion into law unless you have other, quality, non-religious reasons for making that law. Those who are against gay marriage have yet to find such reasons. Honestly, I don’t think they will. Our culture sees marriage as being all about love and building a life together. According to that definition, there’s no good reason not to let two people of the same sex engage in civil marriage. The state will continue regulating it because that’s what they do.

Personally, I think civil marriages/unions and religious marriages/unions should be completely separated. If you want to be married and have it recognized by the state, then do that. If you want to be married and have it recognized by your religious group, then do that too. If you belong to a religious group that doesn’t recognize the union you want to enter into as a valid marriage, then you can try and change it within the group if that’s the type of group it is, or deal with it and/or leave if it isn’t. Some Christian churches are happy to recognize gay marriages as valid. Others won’t. Both should be left alone by the state.

So, there’s my 2 cents…Feel free to comment and disagree, with civility and assuming good motives on the part of others. I reserve the right to delete comments if absolutely necessary.

Anyway. Here’s what my day looks like:

I use Franklin Covey’s page per day Serenity insert. Note the full page for Sunday.

On the left, we have the task list. I put time estimates in the “priority” box. The only task I moved today was one which is incredibly time-consuming thanks to a decent sized dining area with a grouted tile floor. I despise that floor, actually. I also still need to get cash from my husband, but I can easily do that later. Everything else is done! YES!

On the right are appointments. I use the top line to record my husband’s work schedule – today, for example, he starts work at 5pm. We usually go to church on Sunday mornings, but my daughter was ill so that didn’t happen. Instead I decided to go to Barnes and Noble and study for the GRE, where I once again reminded myself that I have forgotten pretty much all the algebra I ever knew and I will probably fail. Unless, of course, I use my awesome planning skills to create a plan to relearn all the algebra I ever knew in the span of 4 weeks. So I bought a prep book, and I still need to create the plan.

Not many notes, as usual – there isn’t much space. Most random notes go in my “inbox” in the front of my Filofax. Sometimes I will put a quick reminder of what I did that day in order to transfer it to my five year journal later. Yes, my memory is that bad.

This is a pretty good representation of what my pages look like. I’m contemplating laying all my April pages out on the floor and taking one massive picture. Or two, to get both sides. Hehehe…haven’t decided whether I will or not.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this glimpse of my life!

The second method is mostly chronological, with appointments, tasks, and notes all attached to dates. You schedule your to-dos in order to make sure you have the time to get them done. You keep your notes on the daily pages and refer back to them later. Project lists could be kept on monthly pages. Julie Morgenstern is an advocate of this way of doing things, and her book Time Management from the Inside Out explains it well.

Both methods claim that they will change your life and help you get things done, even though they are opposites – and both have worked for hundreds of people. Having read books on both methods, I can see why. It really boils down to what works for you. Some have found huge success with GTD methods, while others have tried them and found GTD doesn’t work for them. Others find that scheduling everything works for them.

Personally, I tried GTD and found that I needed a daily to-do list. Now I’m firmly in the schedule-everything camp, and while I still move tasks more often than I like, I’m finding it works pretty well for me. I still have a separate notes/”inbox” section instead of using daily pages, though, as my page-per-day insert doesn’t have enough room for me to use the inbox as my only notes area!

There are plenty of lovely inserts that one could use in setting up a Filofax for these methods. Personally, if I were going to have a GTD set-up, I would use Filofax WO2P or WPP in cotton cream, with Filofax to-do lists and notepaper to make up the rest. My current chronological set-up uses FC PPD. I’m still pondering switching to 2PPD for the extra notes space, but as it is the PPD layout is great for my tasks and appointments.

What method do you use? Have you tried the other? Feel free to leave links to blog posts, as well – I love reading blog posts about such things! :)

The store was Paradise Pen. I discovered that $1500 pens exist. They had a shelf of Filofaxes as well as a display with various inserts. The Filofaxes were prominently Apexes, Classics, and Finsburys, along with Flex covers and inserts. There was a compact Classic and a compact Finsbury (…I think that’s the right word – the personal size ones with smaller rings). There were one or two minis, and I think two or three A5s – the rest were personal. There was a pocket green Chameleon and a pocket Hampstead which were both very nice. I was surprised how floppy the Chameleon was. I seriously considered buying the Hampstead, which had all sorts of interesting pockets, but I don’t use a pocket and can’t imagine fitting into one again so I didn’t. They also had some refillable journals by Oberon Design, some Rhodia notebooks, and a few other notebooks and things.

We didn’t stay at the Galleria very long – the stores were too upscale. So we went to North Park instead. There we found two particularly exciting stores. Paper Source had all sorts of interesting journals and books, not to mention stationery and just plain paper. I could have spent way too much money in there, but the only thing I purchased was a “Quotable Kid” journal. My daughter doesn’t talk yet, but now I’m prepared! ;)

Fossil was the other store. I’ve been in there before, but this time I actually found something I wanted to buy – a really cute wallet! I spent $60 on it, which is the most I’ve ever spent on a wallet, but I think it’ll last a while. It’s technically my birthday present from my husband. :) I love the interior layout – I think it’ll work really well for me.

It’s lighter than that in person – the funky lighting made it look darker.

Of course we did other things too, but they don’t really relate to anything I usually blog about, so yeah. ;) Hope you enjoyed reading!