Please book me and my buddies a double double at the Sheraton!

It costs $27 per day to house research monkeys at Stanford. So if you have several monkeys, it can add up fast. I get a corporate rate of $180 per night at the Sheraton, which equals approximately seven monkeys in small un-luxurious cages at Stanford. You could get way more than seven monkeys in a king size bed at the Sheraton, and they’d be a lot more comfortable, even if it was a tad crowded. In fact, housing monkeys at the Sheraton sounds like a research project in and of itself (what would they watch on HBO?). But in order to make it work, we’d need one piece of missing information. Is there a surcharge for more than two monkeys in a room?

Rabbits are only $15 per day at Stanford, so you could get even more bang for your buck at the Sheraton with rabbits. But that’s the problem. You start out with 12 rabbits, and you end up with 364. That’s a lot of rabbits, even for the Sheraton.

These shelves hold traditionally bound Korean books, created with handmade paper

Even so, I couldn’t imagine giving up the tactile experience of reading an actual book. There is just something wonderful about holding a book in your hands. But I have a history of shunning new technology only to embrace it later. I was NOT giving up my records in favor of CDs, and now I only buy music digitally (and we are not even going to talk about my eight track tape player). I got on the DVD bandwagon a little more quickly, partially because they are so much easier to store than VHS tapes. And when digital download of movies becomes faster and higher quality (for the average person), I’ll be there.

But books aren’t like anything of these other mediums. Books have been around a long time in various forms. They’ve stood the test of time a lot longer than any other media. I liked my records, but I LOVE my books. Yet I couldn’t help but be intrigued when e-readers started coming out. I loved the idea of being able to carry around dozens (even hundreds) of books with me at once. I take the train to work, and so I always need reading material. With an e-book, if I finish my book while I am on the train, I can just download another. I found that idea pretty appealing.

I considered a Kindle for a long time, but I held back, partially because I have so many real books and partially because I didn’t want to spend money on a device that only does one thing. If I decided I didn’t like reading on it, then I had basically thrown the money away. If you’ve read my iPad review, then you’ll know that was the device that finally got my attention. If I decided I didn’t like reading books on it, it still does a zillion other things.

It took me about 10 minutes to decide I love reading books on my iPad. I read two series of books on the iPad, and I just flew through them. When I’d finish one, I could immediately start on the next. I didn’t have to wait to get home to grab the next one, or go to a bookstore. Even if I didn’t already have the next one, it only took a couple minutes for me to find and download it. The only drawback is that is very susceptible to glare, so it is difficult to read in full sunlight. I have to carefully choose my seat on the train so that I can still see what I am reading.

Reading a few books on the iPad really helped me to separate form from content. I still adore actual books, but as long as I can make myself comfortable while I am reading, it doesn’t really matter how the content is delivered. This leaves me with a dilemma. What should I do with the gazillions of books in my house? I had been slowly working my way through them, and I certainly don’t want to buy e-books of books I already own, but I’d love to divest myself of a huge chunk of them. Most of them came from BookMooch, so they entered my home fairly cheaply. If there was some way to cheaply transfer them onto my iPad without tons of labor, that would be great. I am not quite handy enough to make my own book scanner, although that would be awesome. I guess my plan will be to do another weeding and see what I can get rid of now, although I’ve already done a pretty good job of getting rid of things I don’t think I will read.

What will I keep? I have a big collection of books about Korean history and culture, many of which are out of print, and those are staying. There are a few art books (how-tos) with lots of full color illustrations, and those are staying (although I would like to see how one of those books would look on the iPad). I’m keeping my books on animal intelligence, plus a few favorite authors. But that leaves many, many books that I want to read and then get rid of permanently. It seems silly to buy books to read on the iPad when I have a house full of books yet to read, but I find myself less and less willing to carry around a book. No one is more surprised than I am that I don’t want to lug around a book anymore. The main thing holding me back from completely making the switch is the financial aspect. There is no reason to be buying new books for the iPad if I have plenty of actual books left to read. Buying books online isn’t really much cheaper (if at all) than buying hard copies.

Has anyone else made the switch from all actual books to all e-books, or somewhere in the middle? I’d like to hear about it.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

San Jose, California – June 30, 2010 - A spokesmutt for the Canine Civil Liberties Union announced today that the CCLU has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Chiqui Bay of San Jose, against her human companion Kara Sjoblom-Bay. The younger and furrier of the Bays claimed that Sjoblom-Bay has violated doggie labor laws by having Chiqui parade around wearing a sign asking for votes in the Blog Your Way Around the World contest.

The chief complaint against Sjoblom-Bay is that the signage states that Chiqui will “earn one doggie treat per vote.” According to CCLU lawyer Spot T. Rekard, “the clear industry standard is three treats per vote.” Rekard said that one doggie treat per vote amounts to sweatshop labor.

When contacted for her reaction to the suit, Sjoblom-Bay said simply, “Chiqui can’t count.” Pressed further, she added that the best way to help Chiqui was to go to Blog Your Way Around the World and register and vote for Sjoblom-Bay’s travel blogging essay. The goodwill created by this simple act will directly result in an increase of doggie treat consumption, she suggested.

Chiqui’s publicist, Fluffy O’Hare, said the increasing celebrity Chiqui has enjoyed during her advertising stint does not diminish the negative impact of the paucity of treats she has had to endure. Weakened by the lack of treats, O’Hare said that Chiqui had grown weary of the spotlight and, “just wants to be alone.” However, should the frequency of the treat dispensation increase to a level commensurate with the effort she puts forth, then Chiqui indicated that she would consider increasing the number of public appearances she makes.

“Chiqui is amenable to a settlement if Sjoblom-Bay is ready to deal,” Rekard said. He added that he admired Chiqui’s dogged pursuit of justice.

For additional information:
CCLU Contact: spottrekard at kara-bay dot com
Publicity Contact: fluffyohare at kara-bay dot com

UPDATE: I am having a print giveaway on my Bay Leaves travel blog. So go check it out at Bay Leaves.

Winning this contest could send me back to Costa Rica and seven other amazing destinations!

Here is the link to my entry:

Kara’s Blog Your Way Around the World Entry

Please share this with anyone you think might be willing to vote for my essay. As of today, the top entry has 389 votes, but the contest ends December 31, 2010, so I expect the number of votes to go much higher.

One note about registering to vote: You may receive emails from some of the sponsors. The sponsors are all big companies, so I am not worried about major spam from them, but you might get a few emails related to their travel services. I know that Backroads sent one out, but I was already on their mailing list anyway. There does not seem to be any way to opt out of these emails when you register. So I recommend one of two things. You can use a yahoo, gmail, hotmail or other similar mail account that is reserved solely for activities that might generate some spam. The other option is to scroll down to the bottom of any emails you receive from the sponsors and use the link they provide to unsubscribe.

Thank you for your help.

For my birthday this year, I told Stephen I either wanted a boulder or an iPad. I wasn’t kidding about the boulder either – I really want a GIANT rock in our yard landscaping. And it’s cheaper than an iPad (though not as much as you would think). I guess Stephen decided we would get more for our money out of the iPad, so that is what he opted for. I decided on the 3G model because I felt that even if I started out just using the wi-fi, I would have the option to turn on the 3G when we were traveling and had iffy wi-fi access. I didn’t want to limit my options with the wi-fi only model. I activated the 3G for the first month, just to make sure everything worked properly. I didn’t want to wait until I needed it for a trip, then find out I had a defective iPad. I was able to use the 3G service in my brother’s barn out in the middle of nowhere in Iowa, so I was really pleased.

Everywhere I go, people go crazy over my iPad. A friend came over to see it the afternoon after it arrived and immediately went out and bought the same model. On a recent flight, I sat in the middle seat between two strangers and spent much of the trip providing an iPad demonstration and answering questions. The big thing people seem to want to know is whether they can replace their laptop with an iPad. It depends entirely on what you use your laptop for. I used mine mostly for word processing and watching videos. Word processing isn’t quite as good on the iPad when I am on a train or something and can’t easily use a real keyboard. But the video quality is outstanding. I also have a bad back, so I never liked to carry around my heavy MacBook, but I can toss my 1.5 pound iPad in my purse or backpack and barely notice it. We do need a laptop on vacation for photo processing and burning DVDs, but for that we will bring Stephen’s MacBook Pro.

READING

One of the main reasons I wanted the iPad was as an eReader. I had considered the Kindle, but it seemed kind of expensive for something that only did one thing. So when the iPad was announced, it was obviously the perfect device for me. It does the main thing I really wanted it to do, but it does a zillion other things too, and it completely integrates with the hardware and apps I already had. As an eReader, it is wonderful. I love that I can not only use iBooks and the integrated store, but also the Kindle app. Before my iPad came, I downloaded a ton of free classics on Amazon. I also experimented with downloading an ePub formatted book from Project Gutenberg and putting it in iTunes. It opens just fine in iBooks. I have the Kindle reader program on my iMac too, but I don’t anticipate using that nearly as much as I will my iPad Kindle app. In terms of reading, I have a slight preference for iBooks over the Kindle app, mainly because iBooks tells me how many pages I have left in a chapter, which I find incredibly useful when I have limited time to read.

It is a little harder to read books outside, but I use it the most on the train to and from work, and don’t have any problems. I only wish I could magically convert my hundreds of actual books to eBooks in an instant. I have many books that will never be available in an electronic format, and for the ones that are, I don’t want to pay for them a second time. Unfortunately, many of the eBooks are not much cheaper than hard copy books, at least compared to the discounted Amazon price. However, there is something to be said for both the portability and hopefully an eventual reduction in the killing of trees.

VIDEO

Another popular activity on the iPad is watching video. I don’t download movies, so I don’t have a lot of content, but I do download episodes of Glee and Castle in iTunes, so I have those. I also have a couple Blu-Ray movies that came with a computer download copy (Mamma Mia and Up), so I’ve got those on there too. Everything looks FANTASTIC on the video player. I couldn’t help but watch all of Mamma Mia the first weekend I had the iPad, just because it looked so good. Once I turn off the 3G after a month, I unfortunately won’t be able to watch streaming video on the train, which is perhaps better so I will keep up on my reading. The Netflix streaming app is great. I’ve never thought the picture quality of their streaming content was that great, but it is certainly no worse than it is on my iMac or my TV. Like the iPhone, the iPad has a built-in YouTube app. I haven’t played around with it too much, but what I’ve viewed looked good. ABC has a player, which I have heard raves about, but haven’t used too much. I download Castle in iTunes, and I don’t watch too many other ABC shows (or any other channel for that matter). I don’t have cable or even network reception, so any tv viewing has to be online or on DVD. I do use Hulu for several shows and I wish they had an app, but I am assuming their agreements with the various networks and content sources don’t allow that (but of course I can go to their website on Safari on my iPad). I wish that the iPad had come out about a month earlier, because I really could have used the streaming video while I was home recovering from surgery. In bed, I could only lie on my back, with my torso and my knees raised, so the iPad would have been great.

NEWS

The number and quality of the various news apps is good and will undoubtedly get better. Combined with viewing news sites in Safari on the larger iPad screen, it is a great device for keeping up with current events. I particularly like Reuters and BBC. The NPR and This American Life apps are great, although the TAL app can be a little crashy (as it is on the iPhone too).
There are a couple disappointments. The New York Times app is just a few articles of the editors’ choosing, so I would rather just use my NYT RSS news feed. The Time Magazine app just allows you to buy issues of the magazine ($4.99 each), and doesn’t include much in the way of sample content. Since I can read some of their content for free on their website, that’s what I’ll do. If I don’t subscribe to the hard copy of a magazine or newspaper, I’m not going to buy them online either.

ENTERTAINMENT

I have downloaded ONE free game for the iPad, Clickomania. It is just a matching game, so it gets old fairly fast. I didn’t bother putting games from my iPhone on my iPad, just because they are so small and don’t look good when expanded. I prefer the free games (like most people), but a lot of the “lite” versions of games are just ads for the full version, so I’d like to avoid those. I may download a couple paid games once I find some I am sure I will get a lot of use out of. I also downloaded Civilization Revolution for Stephen, and he is already addicted. They did a really nice job with the iPad version.
I’m going to put Entertainment Weekly’s Must List app under entertainment rather than news, but I quite like it. The Must List is just one page in each issue of EW, but they’ve made so much more out of it for the app. If they mention some video you should check out, then they include a link so you can immediately go watch it.

THE APP STORE

I know lots of people complain about Apple strictly controlling the content available for their mobile devices. But the fact is it works. The variety and quantity of apps available on iTunes is amazing. Sure, some of it is crap, but there are more than enough fantastic apps to keep most people satisfied, even if you just stick to the free ones. One coming improvement that I am extremely excited about is the ability to put apps in folders. It is just too darn hard to find things among pages and pages of apps. Even with some past improvements (originally made for the iPhone and iPod Touch), organizing them is still a pain. I long for folders and I can’t wait until fall, when iPhone OS 4 is supposed to be available for the iPad.

THE CONS

There are definitely some legitimate complaints about the things the iPad doesn’t have, although I have previously written about how silly I think all the vitriol has been. There are plenty of people who hate Apple simply because it’s Apple, so you kind of have to sift through all the nonsense to find the actual problems. A camera seems like a must for the next generation. Although for now, I can just take a picture with my iPhone and email it to my iPad.

A USB port wasn’t necessary for the iPhone or the iPod touch, but it would dramatically increase the ways in which one can use the iPad. I would love to be able to hook it up to an external hard drive or a printer. There are ways around this limitation, but I am generally too lazy to do anything but wait for a future generation of the device.

One drawback that will hopefully lessen over time is the dearth of cases for the iPad. There are a few available, but the most popular ones are incredibly difficult to obtain. After a couple fruitless trips to my local Apple store, I finally gave up and ordered Apple’s iPad case online. I am hoping it arrives this century, but the website currently says “Ships 3-4 weeks”. I’d like to at least get it before we go on vacation in July or August.

The fingerprint issues are the same as with the iPhone. I just carry a couple of those cloths for cleaning glasses in my purse.

The absolute worst thing about the iPad is that we only have one. I dread getting on a flight with my husband and battling to see who gets to use it. I’ve been entering contests to try and win an iPad for him, but the odds are long.

FLASH?

This is the one complaint about the iPad that doesn’t bother me. Some folks may really miss Flash, but I don’t care in the least. The effect that it has on my web surfing is minor at most. I am not saying it isn’t legitimate for some folks to want Flash, but for me it is a non-issue. I’ve seen various figures tossed around, such as 75% of websites use Flash, but so far I haven’t had a single problem viewing websites on my iPad.

IS THE iPAD WORTH IT?

For me, the answer is a resounding yes. Because I take the train to work every day, having the iPad has been wonderful. It does all the things I need it to do and more. It’s not the mobile solution for everyone, but I dare you to spend five minutes with one and not want it – even if you don’t NEED it. It looks great, it works great and it is fun to use. I never thought I could love an inanimate object more than my iPhone, but it turns out I can.

Stephen is giving away three 10×15 fine art prints on his blog in conjunction with being featured on iwearyourshirt.com on April 18. He has tons of beautiful travel images on his site, so head over to his blog and check out the giveaway. Deadline to enter is Monday, April 19, 2010, at 12:00 noon pacific time.

I suppose you could accuse Stephen and me of being cheap, but with our dream of early retirement, I’m going to just call us forward-thinking. We have been saving diligently, both in our 401K plans and in other non-retirement investments. We try pretty hard to keep our expenses low. We don’t have cable, we’ve cut our dinners out to almost nil, we do our own gardening (which puts us in a minority in our community), I use BookMooch to get used books instead of buying them new, etc. The other benefit of a frugal lifestyle is that it makes us feel more prepared for the unexpected, like a layoff or a medical problem. We don’t want an unforeseen complication to derail our plans – we can delay them, but we don’t want to give up our dreams.

Other than depriving ourselves of any life enjoyment whatsoever, it started to feel like there was no place left to cut expenses. So Stephen has started diligently tracking our expenses, which is of course what every money expert tells you to do anyway. He has just started, so it may be a little soon to see patterns. However just being forced to save every receipt and track every penny has already encouraged us to get more creative and see some new ways to save money.

Just this morning, I cut our garbage bill in half. We kept the same 64-gallon garbage can the previous owners of our house owned. They had two children and produced far more garbage than we do. Some weeks, we don’t even bother putting our cans in the street because there is so little garbage in them. So I called the city and asked to exchange our 64-gallon can for a 32-gallon can. Now we’ll pay $27.50 a month instead of $55 a month. That’s a savings of $330 a year – money that can go toward our retirement instead. And I just don’t feel deprived by having a smaller trash can.

I also just canceled the long distance on our landline. That’s only about $8 saved per month, but it won’t be long before the landline goes altogether. Because we have DSL through our phone company, we just have to talk to them about how we repackage our services without the landline. We could potentially save another $30 a month or so.

I am starting to see more places we can cut as well. I subscribe to five magazines, which just isn’t necessary. Three of them, I could easily browse through in a bookstore. A fourth, which I recently allowed to expire, usually isn’t that interesting. As I write this, I’ve decided I am going to either cancel or allow three more to expire. This will also cut down on paper we need to recycle. The fifth magazine is Consumer Reports, which we refer to frequently. But you can access everything online, so maybe I’ll see about an online only subscription. I do enjoy reading magazines, and I am only slightly embarrassed to admit that I occasionally look in the recycling bin next to the mail bins at work to see if there are any interesting magazines the doctors didn’t want. You can’t really beat free.

I know it’s a good idea to see if there are any benefits your employers offer that can save you some money. My employer gives me a free train pass, so if I take the train to work, there is absolutely no cost to me, other than a little extra time. Well, it’s $30 a month to park at the Caltrain station, but I couldn’t possibly drive for that little. I have been driving to work far too often lately, which started when I hurt my back last summer and didn’t want to chance getting stuck at the office with a limited shuttle schedule to the train station if I really needed to go home. It is ridiculous not to be taking advantage of the free transportation every day, so from now on, I am resolved to take the train unless I have a doctor’s appointment or need to go to our main campus. With my improved back situation, there isn’t any reason not to do this.

Another great benefit my employer offers is up to $800 a year for classes. If I take the classes from Stanford Continuing Studies, they don’t even have to relate to my job. For some time, I have been considering applying to grad school in creative writing at San Jose State, because it offers evening classes and wouldn’t interfere with work. However, Stanford Continuing Studies has an excellent writing program and I don’t need a degree – I just want the training. So I’ve decided to just make sure that I use up my tuition grant every year because if I don’t use it, I lose it. This will only allow for one class a year, but that is certainly better than no classes a year. I am signed up for a novel writing class that starts on Monday.

One really important thing is to be aware of where you really don’t want to cut expenses. The two non-essential areas where we tend to focus our disposable income are technology and travel. We have a Netflix subscription for a little under $20 a month. When they started charging a premium for people that rent Blu-ray movies, I changed our subscription from three discs at a time to two at a time, but we’ll keep the service. We rarely go to a movie in the theater and as I said earlier, we don’t have cable (or any network reception for that matter). When I hurt my back last year, being able to lie in bed and watch Netflix streaming content on my laptop was wonderful. Now we can even stream to our tv through our PS3, so we are hoping that Netflix continues to add to the movies and television available for streaming, even though the quality isn’t as good. We also watch the tv shows Bones and Flash Forward on Hulu, which has been great, and the advertising is extremely minimal.

We also debated a lot about whether to order an iPad, but finally decided to do it (as a birthday present for me). Because we use Macs and iPhones, the iPad is well-integrated with our other technologies. Stephen really wants me to cut down on the huge number of actual books in the house, which means an e-reader will be useful for me. I already have lots of other content for the iPad, in terms of music and video. The iPad is not cheap, but I have to admit that the amount of enjoyment I am going to get out of it probably far outstrips the price. I do know what I like! I am however trying to decide on a reasonable monthly iTunes budget, because my current unlimited budget concept isn’t working! But I do want to be able to download a new album from one of my favorite artists when I feel like it.

Cutting costs also won’t have much of an effect on Stephen’s photography related purchases. He makes enough money from his photography to pay for equipment, so coupled with the huge amount of satisfaction he gets from it, there really isn’t any reason to make cuts here. Again, the amount of enjoyment he gets far exceeds the cost.

The other area of importance to us is travel. We try to take at least one two-week vacation every year. We’ve gone to some pretty amazing places, and we have so many more that we want to see. However, because one of the reasons we want to retire early is so we can travel more, we still try to be as frugal as possible when we travel. We are not the fancy hotel types. Often we go overseas, but this year we will probably take a driving trip somewhere in the U.S. Our driving trip in the American southwest a couple years ago was amazing. We haven’t yet narrowed down our choices for this year, but we know we’ll remain west of the Mississippi.

I am sure that as Stephen continues to track expenses, other areas to cut will become obvious. It’s just important to strike a balance between keeping expenses low to reach our goals and allowing ourselves to indulge in some of the things we enjoy now. I’d love to find out what other people are doing to cut expenses. If you have any creative (or mundane for that matter) ideas, please comment below and share them.

This sounds like a ton of fun. Rachelle Rogers Knight’s reading journal, Read, Remember, Recommend, was released yesterday. In honor of the book release, Knight, better known online as Bibliobabe, has started a one year fiction reading challenge. With all the stuff going on in my life right now, I don’t have any hope of reading the most books, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun to participate!

The journal itself sounds like a cut above most of the reading journals I’ve seen. Most reading journals don’t offer reading lists, and Read, Remember, Recommend has lots of different categories of lists, including National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner award winners. Each title has a series of check boxes, allowing readers to indicate whether you have or want the book and if you’ve read or would recommend it. There’s lots of books (and websites for that matter) that recommend books to read, but I really like Knight’s way of combining the recommendation and journaling elements. This is going on my wishlist! The book is listed as paperback on Amazon, but I’m told it’s actually spiral-bound, which is great. Journaling-type books are much better when they can lay open flat.

Because of the interactive nature of the book, it’s not available as an e-book. But something that would be REALLY fun (are you listening, Bibliobabe?) is an iPad app that would allow you to access the lists and keep track of the checkboxes in the application. It could work on an iPhone too, but because of the e-reader capabilities of the iPad, it would be an especially appropriate app for the device. If it allowed you to add your own notes about various titles, that would be even cooler. Given the choice between having yet another actual book in my house, or buying an app, I would definitely take the app. Since that isn’t currently an option, though, I’d really like to get a copy of the book and sign up for the challenge.

Update 4/6/10: I found I already have about 47 of the titles listed in the journal at home, so I guess those are going to the top of my reading pile.

Korean Children key ring from JooSweetie

One of the first Korean themed items I found on Etsy was this key ring from JooSweetie featuring a little girl in a hanbok with a Korean flag tag. On the reverse, there’s a little boy in hanbok. The design is adorable and very rugged – I’ve had mine for nearly two years and it still looks great, even with daily use. She also has some really cute magnets with the children on them.

Yi Sun-Sin pendant cut by Petsalad

Hangeul thank you cards by Puddle Jumpin' Cards

Korean holiday cards by Grace Hester Designs

Korean Alphabet Quilt by EmiShimosato

Pumpkin tea notebook from PretzelsNPumpkin

This is just a small sampling. If I am ever able to grab a treasury on Etsy, I’d love to do one with Korean goodies. It seems as if it is possible to find just about anything you can dream up on Etsy, so if Korean stuff isn’t your thing, a quick search will probably reveal whatever you seek.

Stephen has opened a shop on Etsy for his fine art photography. He already sells photos on his own website, Bay Images, but Etsy will likely expose a different audience to his work. I’m really interested in seeing how the Etsy shop works out. I haven’t used mine for anything other than getting rid of old art magazines and supplies, so I haven’t done any marketing at all. If anyone has some great Etsy marketing ideas, I’d love to hear about them.