Willa's Journal

Thursday, March 4: This is my brain on . . .

My dad's supposed to go home today. I still haven't heard whether he was actually discharged or not--I talked to my mom around noon, and she didn't know anything other than that the doctor had said that he could go home. Which of the many doctors that would be, though, I don't know . . .

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I don't remember what the context was now, but Eugene asked me for some information the other day and I got out my Visor and looked it up. He said, "You really use that, don't you?" and I said, "I use it for everything! It's my brain."

I keep my checking account registers on it. I keep track of how many miles I walk on the treadmill. I calculate my gas mileage every time I fill up.

I can tell you what time it is anywhere in the world, how many Japanese yen equal one dollar, or what phase the moon is in. I have records of all of our doctor visits, prescriptions, and medical tests, which has come in handy a few times, particularly lately, and records of hotels and airline tickets.

I know everybody's birthdays, addresses, and phone numbers, and I keep a running shopping list so I can always look and see what I need to buy without creating a new list every time.

I could tell you how many skeins of sock yarn I have (but (I won't), and how many books I have checked out of the library (3) and their due dates.

Every time I get a new job or task at work, I enter it into an outline, which is linked to my calendar program. I'm an inveterate list taker, and I often wake up at night to write something down on the notepad next to the bed. I feel naked without a nopepad and pen at all times, and I used to keep several lists going at once. Keeping all my "stuff" in once place lets me write it down and then forget about it until I need to remember it--I no longer feel like I have to constantly keep my lists in my head.

I sync the Visor pretty often, although not as often as I might if I had a PC, because so many of the applications I use don't have a Mac desktop component, therefore I can't actually enter anything except through the Palm Desktop application. I do back the Visor up religiously, and have a recurring event set up in my datebook to remind me to do it at least twice a week (Wednesdays and Saturdays). Along with reminders to run virus checks (Sundays), back up the Mac (Fridays), get my oil changed (quarterly), pay the bills (Saturdays) . . .

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