7ToF: Mexico, WiFi, and our pitiful NCAA Bracket

1. Mexico was great. Just in case you had any doubts. We stayed at a little place about an hour north of the Los Cabos airport. Apparently, it is their shoulder season because we were practically the only people there midweek. When the weekenders started rolling in on Thursday, we were a little bit pissed that they were taking over our private pool.

imagine James Taylor singing "Mexico"

2. One of my favorite things about it was the way they had their wireless set up. The hotel units circled the pool, and then there was a beachfront restaurant. You could only connect to their wireless if you were at the restaurant (or sitting on one of the benches outside). It was perfect--no problem to go and check your email or text messages if you wanted to, but no internet in the rooms or by the pool. It made me wonder if we could figure out a way to restrict the wireless at our house to a single room--easy to access when you need it, but not too easy.

3. I think I'm coming to the end of experimenting with online access (see relevant posts back in January). I'm glad I took a break for awhile, because it let me see how my brain feels when I'm relatively disconnected vs. how I feel when I'm "always-on." Honestly, there are some times when "always-on" is what I want. But usually, I feel better if I'm only accessing the internet when I actually consciously want to use it, as opposed to just automatically reaching for my phone every few minutes. Of course, I'm not always perfect at doing this. But I'm better at it than I was before.

4. One of the things I've had to adjust is being an information junkie. I love trivia. If you're a trivia nut, Google is the most amazing, terrific, sublime thing ever. You can find out any little thing you ever wanted to know from Google. You can track down the name of that British mystery series you read ten years ago. You can figure out where you've seen Sally Hawkins before (she was Anne Elliott in the BBC version of Persuasion). It's become second nature to me, anytime I don't know something, to grab my phone and look it up. It's hard to even remember what it felt like back in the day when you had to wait till you got home to look something up in a dictionary or an encyclopedia. But when I grab my phone while having lunch with friends, it doesn't matter if I'm googling movie trivia or checking text messages, it's rude. I'm trying to stop.

5. And just to prove how imperfectly I am accomplishing this: I downloaded a new game this week, which both reminded me how much fun games can be, and also how quickly I get sucked into spending 2-3 hours a day on them. This week, it was fun and relaxing. But I think I will probably delete the game in another day or two. For one thing, I've reached the point where you have to start buying things to keep going. They get you hooked on the levels that you can win for free, and then gradually amp up the difficulty until you can't progress without paying for extra tools or boosters or whatever. Really irritating, but since I'm so cheap, it also acts as a natural deterrent-- I'm OK with spending $5-ish on a game that I'm enjoying, but past that point, there are other things I'd rather spend my money on. About a million other things.

6. Like everybody, our March Madness bracket got trashed. I used the CBSSports app, which allows you to create three brackets for free. We picked Virginia to win it all in the first one (they lost in the first round), Cincy to win it all in the second one (they lost in the second round), and for the third one we used the "auto fill" option for random selections, which gave us Villanova as national champion (still possible). Pretty sad when the random auto fill is smarter than you are.

7. You remember about a month ago when we were discussing how to weed out books when you have too many of them? I complained that all those "clear your clutter" advice people are not much help when it comes to books, because they (apparently) don't like books. They generally think you should get rid of them. But not long after I wrote that, I read somewhere (apologies for not remembering where) a comment that said, "Seriously, if you've had a book for five years and you haven't read it yet, are you ever going to?"

My first reaction was dismissive. I have stacks of books that of course I'm going to read some day. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought maybe they're right. I could go through my as-yet-unread books with that thought in mind-- am I really going to read this someday? and I bet I could get rid of a bunch more. Because we are still in need of major decluttering around here and I could use the shelf space. Hmmmmm. I am thinking about  this. (The house-wide decluttering project is #1 on my list once I finish my job.)

Part Two of the Obliger Life post is coming, I just couldn't get it done in time for Friday. Have a great weekend.