Sure, it seemed that doing a lot more work and making more money this week would be a great experiment for me. To give you a little background, at this stage of our lives, my husband brings in the majority of our income as I spend a good amount of time working on our assorted “projects”. Projects like getting our books off the ground, designing our Web sites and doing the hundreds of other things that are behind the scenes to owning and operating three corporations. It generally keeps me busy for 12 hours a day, but I get to work from home, I can take a nap during the day, and I can stop work whenever I want. But this last week I have taken on an increase in customers for web consulting or design, and these particular jobs required that I do a bit more driving with face-to-face meetings.

So I got an inside look at what Jim does every day as a mobile computer technician. Going to places I’d never been before, rushing out of the house to be somewhere on time, and on more than one occasion, trying to solve a problem on the fly that I didn’t fully understand yet. On top of all of that I was using other people’s computers, PCs, which made me feel like a two year old, frustrated because I didn’t know how to do anything. Oh, how much I appreciated my reunion with my iMac and my Magic Mouse!

So was it worth it to take on more jobs, to bring in more income, to “get ahead”? I’m really not sure. Of course we’d like to save up some extra money, but at what daily cost? This week my husband and I were more like roommates than spouses, seeing each other in passing as one of us ran out of the house to do another job. We didn’t have as much time to work on our writing projects in the morning because of the demand of the extra jobs, and we didn’t stop and watch the sunset at night.

Sure a week or two isn’t going to kill anyone, but it seems like this “getting ahead” thing could be addictive and hard to break free of because there will always be something that you are trying to save a little bit more for. But at the end of your life, all you might remember is working, and not being with the people you love, doing the things you love most. So I’m going to try to remember that and keep a little better balance in my life.

What did make the tsunami warning a little bit more fun were all the friends and family we heard from across the country, reaching out over phone, text, and Facebook to make sure we were safe. Ahh…we felt loved! Since we had to stay home, Jim did what he did best in times of emergency and made some delicious blueberry waffles, and certainly waffles make tsunami warnings a little bit more fun. Not to mention whales. Prepared with our binoculars for some wave action from our stadium seating of the ocean, we did have a chance to watch whales surfacing and flitting around in the water for a couple of hours.

Technology also makes potential disasters a little bit more fun. We have no cable television and no batteries for our radio, so our connection to what was happening on the island was through our computer. We listened to KBIG broadcast on the web and watched scenes of the Hilo Bay Front over the Internet as well. We were able to update our Facebook status to give immediate relief to anyone who was worried. And having this technology really helped us feel connected to what was happening locally and nationally.

And one more shout out to technology: I truly appreciated how incredibly lucky we are to have the detection and warning systems in place through the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. The fact that we had so much warning to prepare for an event like this made it seem surreal, especially in the aftermath of the Haiti disaster and the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.

For now until we decide where  to go next, we’re going to keep posting about any people, places or things that make our lives a little bit more fun.

Have you seen the new Simpsons' stamps?

The lesson for today is that no matter what, your stamp must be on the very outside of any package you send, or it will be null and void. What? Are you serious?

That’s what I asked the postal guy today as he rejected my pre-paid $4.80 priority mail stamp. I needed to add the extra 15 cents to it as it was old, and he said “Sorry, but we can’t cancel out your stamp and issue a new one if it’s taped over.” Can I just add 15 cents on the outside? Nope, the stamp is completely null and void. But you can buy a new one for $4.95.

Why was it taped over in the first place? I was trying to protect the book inside so had used packing tape around the priority mail envelope to make it stronger because sometimes the packages get abused in the mail system and I just wanted to ensure the book made it there in one piece. That was one expensive free copy of Where’s the Map!

Trying a new game called "Bite the Bag"

Now let me address something that I’ve been thinking about since writing these posts. There have been a lot of new things that we’ve tried that I’ve realized we didn’t prefer- so you might construe that to mean we weren’t really having “a little bit more fun” by trying something new.

I disagree. It’s the idea of changing up your routine and being willing to try something different that makes you feel alive, and feeling more “alive” is always more fun than doing the same thing over and over again.

The times when Jim and I discovered that we preferred the old way we usually did things, we confirmed our preferences, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to try to change up the routine again. It’s exciting (and that’s a little bit more fun) to try something new, even if it’s as simple as making a new recipe.

As humans we change over time, and you never know when you are going to discover something you LOVE to do. The biggest example I have is swimming: If we hadn’t tried adding swimming to our routine, we would never have known how much we love it. I can’t wait to uncover other experiences that change my life in such a significant way!

What did we do on Day One? We parked in a new parking spot at Hapuna Beach. This might not sound like a very exciting way to kick off a 30 day challenge, but it is more about the experience of purposely trying something new every day and seeing what you learn from it than it is about having each new thing be as exciting as launching fireworks from your front porch (which we do not recommend, by the way!)

So, up until today we had parked in the same area near the snack bar and walked down one of the craggy, kiave thorn and kukui nut covered trails leading to the beach, slipping and sliding our way down, stopping to pull kiave thorns out of our crocs along the way. But this new (to us) parking area connected with a wide paved trail that led right to the area with the cleanest bathrooms, the best showers, the most shade, and one of the better spots to get into the water. No thorns, no rip your skin off turbo powered lawn sprinklers to deal with, just pure, beach-going bliss. This is not to say that we won’t try one of the many other available parking areas in the future, but for now we are pretty happy with our car placement upgrade.