Lani and the kids
19 May 2007

When you have two preschool children, time becomes your most precious commodity.  They are both asleep right now, and I think, “Do I balance the check register?  Do I clean the kitchen?  Do I write a blog entry?  Do I chop vegetables for tonight’s dinner?”  There’s too much to do and way too little time.  In the past few years, spare time has become something to be treated with reverence and gratitude.

And I have too many projects I want to do.  This is what is in “Japanese Schoolgirl Watch” in the June issue of Wired:

The Nintendo Life Coach
Gals in Japan are using Nintendo DS to do way more than play with Mario. A flood of femme-focused self-help software now runs on the touchscreen handheld. Female Power Emergency Up! DS promises to “Change your destiny in three months!” by measuring skills in love, fashion, beauty, diet, and fortune-telling(?!), then challenging girls to increase their scores.

Well, I tell you what, that got my mind buzzing.  I would LOVE to write some silly and yet oddly compelling little program like that!  I showed it to Matt and said, “What about an RSS feed self-help game that people could play on their cellphones?”

So… yet another project.  Yes.  But yet another super-fun project!

However, in the real world of children, bills, and a messy house, I have Deb and carloads of teenagers visiting next Friday. (I’m really really looking forward to it.  Deb and her entourage of brilliant, exuberant, wonderful teenagers is always fun to have for a visit.)  And I want my house to be clean for their visit.  So that mundane, not-so-fun project is my current project.

But I am constantly sidetracked.  So I’m trying to tell myself, in the voice of Gold Five from Star Wars, “Stay on target.”  Or maybe the voice of Will Farrell as Mugatu in Zoolander, “Do not be distracted by the beautiful celebrities.”

If I stay focused, surely I can clean a single house in a week… surely.

Just in case you don’t have the voice of Gold Five or Mugatu in your head, I’m posting the mp3s. Then, when you are trying to stay focused, you’ll be able to play back these encouraging words from your memory (you have to click the play button twice):

Gold Five:
[audio:http://www.angelsdesk.com/angel/audio/target.mp3]

Mugatu:
[audio:http://www.angelsdesk.com/angel/audio/celebrities.mp3]