June, 2011

The new house feels more like home now that we’ve had three visitors.

Yes, we’ve only been here one month. But remember, I had 10 visitors in my first year here. And people say Casper is in the middle of nowhere…

1) My sister who lives in Colorado helped me move in the first weekend. Unfortunately, we didn’t have much time outside of putting away my kitchen and running to Walmart/Menards/Target. We did have enough time to stuff our faces with sushi.

2) Two weeks ago, my brother stayed for a few days after a bachelors’ weekend in Vegas. He spent the first day on my couch, nursing a hangover of the magnitude you’d expect from a group of frat brothers celebrating three upcoming weddings. Once his stomach settled, we ate well and made it up to Casper Mountain for a mini hike.

3) Last Thursday and last night, Eric, a high school friend, stopped in Casper during his 48-state motorcycle trip. Casper was a little out of his way, but I’m glad he stopped in. He’s documenting and reflecting on his travels in a blog worth checking out.

Only after taking him to dinner at the Wonder Bar did I realize I took all three visitors there.

Another high school friend might stop in on the way to the Tetons in July. Who’s next?

Now that it’s been a month since the biggest change in my life to date, it’s only appropriate to blog about it.

Nearly two years later and I finally get a picture in front of the welcome sign.

Josh, my boyfriend of three-ish years, moved to Casper three weeks ago. The Star-Tribune hired him to produce videos, piece together photo slideshows, find enterprise stories around Wyoming and cover breaking news. Basically, he was hired to be a super journalist. Only a few weeks in, he’s covered flooding, Wyoming’s drum and bugle corps and a legendary bucking horse outside Pavillion.

He’s been here a month and it really hasn’t felt strange any step of the way.

Although we lived 14 hours apart for the last two years, we saw each other quite a bit — at least once a month for the first year, a series of coincidental days off and vacations. It worked, we thought, but knew it was far from ideal.

But when Josh finally left academia for a photographer job, we lost that flexibility. Finding time became more difficult. More of our trips involved at least one of us working.

So he decided to move west and start something new.

Everything about the move just worked out. I found a house to move into the weekend he arrived.

We were so excited for the move, you’d think we would be all unpacked by now.

But we’re not.

We got rid of about half the boxes after we bought two bookshelves but the second bedroom is still full of boxes marked “office.” Only a few pictures have been hung — the rest are leaning against walls behind doors so we don’t accidentally knock them over.

We’ve been in Colorado for three of the last four weekends and working almost every day we weren’t gone.

We say we haven’t had time to settle, but maybe we haven’t because we don’t want to. Hanging pictures and finding places for every little knickknack admit that we’re here, and we’re here to stay for a while.

This is my ninth address in four years and his third job in two years.

We do well with change. Permanence is another story, one we’re writing every day.

This month’s post topic: Hack my workflow.

I’m looking forward to reading what others have to say because I my workflow can get out of hand on erratic days. Also, I don’t use many tools and purposely unplug every night.

On the other hand, I use a lot of tools — smartphone with apps, Google (GMail, Calendar, Docs, Reader, Alerts), Twitter, Facebook, Chrome extensions, RSS feeds. Maybe it’s my youth, but all these “tools” are just part of my day. I grew up multitasking, so the idea (and capability) of having 10 browser tabs, Tweetdeck, story notes and a few PDF files open at a time is not intimidating — it’s how I work.

I decided to focus on a few things I do that have dramatically improved my daily life.

Evernote
This notetaking software syncs your notes to an online account so you can access them from anywhere — cell phone, home computer, public library. Notes can be tagged and organized in “notebooks,” which are fully searchable. You can save cell phone images and web addresses too.

I’ve only used it from my phone a handful of times, but each time was a particularly desperate measure. Once, I drove two hours away for an interview and the subject wasn’t answering his phone. I remembered I had his home number saved in an Evernote, found it on my phone and got a hold of him that way. Another time, I enjoyed an awesome bottle of Spanish wine while eating dinner with family in Colorado. Instead of writing down the winemaker, varietal, etc, I snapped a photo of the label and saved it in Evernote.

Google desktop search
Before Evernote, I saved all my notes in Word documents, organized by story, then month and year the story was written. It sounded like a good idea at the time, but when I wanted to revisit a topic later, it took a while to find the old notes. I haven’t moved notes pre-August 2010 over to Evernote yet, so being able to Google my computer has been very very helpful. It works with Google search terms too, like “filetype:PDF”

Send to Kindle, Chrome extension
This extension will send text shown on a webpage to your Kindle, for free. (I view the story in print or full-page mode first.) I can save several long reads at a time, load them to my kindle and read them in the car, while I’m getting a pedicure, while I’m getting my oil changed, etc.

PDF/Excel shortcut
Did you know you can copy spreadsheet data from annoying PDF files by using the ALT key? Changed. My. Life. Just hold the ALT key and select a box around the data you want to copy, by column. CTRL+C that crap and CTRL-V it in a column in Excel.

Exercise
Morning runs and evening walks bookend stressful days. The run wakes me up, gets me going. The walk forces me to quit working for 30 minutes or so and clear my mind.

I once wrote a story about a school that believed so strongly in the link between exercise and brain activity that they require regular exercise breaks during every class period. They put kids on treadmills and then sat them down in front of a reading computer program. The kids’ reading skills skyrocketed over a short period of time.

A to-do list. On paper.
So so so old-school, I know. But once something makes it on my daily list, it will get done (or slightly modified in order to get done.) At work, my lists are on a Post-It pad so I can stick it to my notepad and take it with me. The pad stays in front of my at all times, probably the only thing I can locate on my desk within milliseconds.

Pre-vacation to-do list, before I added at least 6 more items

At the end of the day, I peel off the sheet and start the next day’s list. I transfer any leftover items and bang out the first things that come to mind, check my calendar and write a few more down.

The list is a plan waiting for me first thing in the morning. No matter what happened before I get to work — car problems, burnt oatmeal, computer didn’t start up properly — I can get started on at least one thing on the list.

JCarn post