Trapper Keeper

Listening to: "Hot Cheetos and Takis." This song, my goodness. I'm pushing it on everyone -- with an admittedly so-so success rate, but you need to be into it so we can be friends. "Gangnam Style" was so last month, this week it's all about H-O-T Cheetos.

This is an informative article from AAWW's Open City blog about "Gangnam Style" though: "Beyond the Horse Dance: Viral Vid 'Gangnam Style' Critiques Korea's Extreme Inequality. Okay, fine, I'm not truly over this song yet. Not at all. I just requested that my friend please, pretty please, play it at her upcoming wedding. With luck maybe she'll play both of these songs. Snack, snack, snack...

Back in school, if I forgot my planner for a day, or geezes, managed to lose it outright, my life was over. I couldn't remember anything I had scheduled, or what homework assignments were due, or maybe even what day of the week it was. In college, your planner was your security blanket. Plus, sometimes friends would leave you a note on a distant date and they could be assured you'd find it. (If a note falls in a forest and it's not written in a day planner, does it get read? Chances are, probably not.)

Ah, memories.

Somewhere along the way I lost the need for a paper planner. But I know a lot of people still rely on them. For example, my sister, neat freak and slightly Type A, once left her planner after a visit back home and she insisted I FedEx it up to her. Next day air too. So super serious.

What do I rely on now to run my ultra busy life? Google Calendar of course! It's come to my attention that a lot of people use Calendar totally wrong. As a public service announcement, I need to just show you how it should be done. The rule is "one color for each type of event." Calendar provides you with a multitude of wonderful colors and no limit on how many individual calendars you can create.

I have one for birthdays, one for work stuff, one for writing stuff, one for upcoming bills, one for Celtics games, one for travel info, etc. The most important calendar I have is "daily" which is just the generic tag I put on things I'm doing. Like next week I'm hitting up Sea World and attending a friendship bracelet making party, those go under the orange "daily" calendar.

Since I know I'm absolutely horrible at remembering when things are supposed to happen, I just offload my brain to Google Calendar and rely on technology to keep me on task. And instead of asking when a friend is in town, over and over, I just jot it down in my Calendar. Plus, a great side benefit of using all these colors and event calendars is that it looks really impressive at a glance. People will commend you on your busyness and being so "I'm right on top of that Rose."

However, I never let anyone look too closely at my Calendar, as they'd realize it's all just fluff and I'm barely busy at all. Shhh, our secret.

If you're still about the paper planner, my friend Susie (boygirlparty) makes the best ones. That's a definitive statement. The absolute best ones. Plus her to do lists are ridiculously great too. Foxes, octopuses, elephants, you're gonna want them all.