What I Wonder: Is Honesty Truly the BEST Policy? If so, why don't we use it more?

Honesty IS the Best Policy . . . or so "they" say!

Last Friday after we closed on both of our houses and had a delicious lunch, Dom and I took a quick 1.5 hour shopping trip.  We needed to pick up William's box springs from the mattress store and look at some furniture for our master bedroom.  Before we did either of those things, he jumped into a new store called "5 Below" and I ran into Old Navy to look for some post-baby tops.  He found a car charger for his phone (he's lost two or three now) for FIVE bucks!  I found three shirts that I am hoping will fit me after I have the baby.  After I had paid for the shirts and was about to leave, the cashier did the typical smile and "Have a great day" phrase.  In my head, I responded, "I am having a great day!  I didn't simply buy these three cute tops at a discounted price, I just went through two closings and now I own a beautiful home in Perrysburg!"  But instead I just smiled back and said, "Thanks.  You too."

Don't you wonder why people don't share more?  I know the response is to be polite and just say thanks, but why don't we share our good news with complete strangers?  And if we did, what would they say in response?  The opposite is also true.  There are times when I am having a terrible day and a cashier says, "Have a great day!" and I want to respond, "You know what?  I am not sure that's going to happen, because I'm dealing with __________________ today."  Instead, I still try to smile and say thanks.  Such is typical American culture, but it makes me wonder what life would be like if everyone was simply honest about their lives at that exact moment.  Do you ever wonder that?

I think I'll try this out over the course if the next week and let you know how it goes. Feel free to join me on this honest journey!

??? Questions ???

I want to document some of the questions that are running through our minds about the logistics of the next 2-3 weeks. And please don't panic, because we aren't!

Here are the questions Dominic and I are currently pondering:

? - What time will baby come? Morning? Noon? Night?

? - Will baby be born on a weekend or weekday? - Pulling for the weekend!!!

? - Will baby be a June or a July baby? - Aka what birthstone will he or she have?

? - Will I make it past the 4th of July? - I sure hope so!

? - Will I make it to my due date? - I'm actually the weirdo who is still pulling for going LATE!  Fingers crossed that this baby will be a Sunday baby just like his or her big brother, Mama, and Daddy. :) Or better YET - a Sunday the 15th baby like his or her big brother AND Mama!

? - Will Dominic be at work 80 miles away when baby comes? - When we had William, he worked in Perrysburg.  Even better, he wasn't even working! We went to the hospital over the weekend!

? - Who will handle William when baby comes? - I know this will just fall together when the time comes.

? - How long will I be in the hospital? - Fingers crossed that it won't be as long as last time!

? - Will baby be a boy or a girl? - We have to buy clothes either way, since William's will be the wrong size for the season.  Or perhaps baby #2 will just be in a onesie and diaper all summer.

? - What will baby's name be? (especially if it is a boy since we still haven't officially finalized one!)

? - How much will baby weigh? - My prediction is that this baby will not be as big as William was.

? - How long will he or she be? - See above prediction.

? - Will this baby be tongue-tied like William was? - Man I sure HOPE not...

? - Will this baby be on the bilirubin blanket like William was? - See above statement.

? - Will I be finished with all of my work stuff before baby comes? - Uh, I better!

? - Will we have the baby before or after we move? - Preferably AFTER we move, but that's not likely.

? - When will we paint the bedrooms in our new house? Currently the plan is for Dom to paint sometime around July 4-6.  But will we be having a baby then?

? - When should I schedule to get the carpets cleaned? - As long as the paint is done this will probably be the weekend of the 7th, but that is my due date... So.... who knows!

? - What washer and dryer will we buy? - Leaning towards the top-loaders now that the front-loaders have had so many negative "Mom Reviews".  We're also sort of waiting until we get a nice Lowes coupon in the "change of address" package because we were told by the Lowes worker that you can get that discount ON TOP OF the sale they are currently having (10% off appliances). Not bad, especially once we use our Discover reward gift cards!

? - Will we have our master furniture ordered and delivered early on or put it off until later? - I sure hope it's the former and not the latter. I don't feel like dealing with this once we have a baby.

? - Will William be ok in his big boy bed? - We may find out tonight!  Dom and William are currently on their way to get the new mattress and we are transitioning him tonight in order to to slowly start all of his many changes.

? - How long will it take us to move? We have until early August to move out of our home on Mapleway, so we know we will be fine but we are hoping we can move all of our big stuff in a day or two.  The tentative plan is to move our big stuff the weekend of July 15-17.  Of course that depends on when the baby comes!


And this was just the short list.  Hence the reason why I am focused on Philippians 4:6 right now.  Worry about nothing and PRAY ABOUT EVERYTHING!  Or the verse below from Isaiah - one of my favorite books of the Bible. I know that God is in control, and He is the only one with these answers.  Therefore I am calm and leaving it up to Him!!!

Thank you, Lord, for handling all of these many stress-ers.  I appreciate not having them all on my shoulders.  I am already carrying enough baby weight!

Techie Tuesday: Featured App - Aurasma

Since it seemed like last week's Techie Tuesday post received some good feedback, I decided to stick with featuring an app for the iPad/iPhone/iPod again this week.  In fact, I might just do this every Tuesday until I can't think of anything else to feature!  Today I will feature the app for Augmented Reality called "Aurasma".  If you haven't heard of it, you better hold on... b/c it's pretty CRAZY!!!

The Aurasma App for Augmented Reality

I wanted to start with Aurasma, because Augmented Reality is all the rave right now in technology.  I first heard about AR at eTech last February, and the idea just blew my mind.  If you don't know what it is, I will do my best to paint a picture, but I would encourage you to watch this video to see Aurasma in action. 

Aurasma is an app that allows you to focus in on a picture of something and see far behind that image.  What do I mean by that?  Once you get the app downloaded, take out a twenty dollar bill, and focus your iPad/iPhone over it with the app open.  You will see that the bill turns from a piece of green paper to a multidimensional video/music/moving image.  It's unreal and terribly hard to explain on a blog.  Trust me - it's something you have to see to believe. There are TONS of images you can focus in on in order to "see beyond" its flatness.  In fact, the coolest thing about Aurasma is that you can actually make your OWN versions of augmented reality.  I have done this twice... the first with a guitar and the second with a Wizard of Oz book.  On the guitar I was able to link a video and a picture of a guy playing the guitar and the Wizard of Oz book turned into Dorothy stepping into Munchkinland after landing on the Wicked Witch of the East.  Don't get too excited; neither of these were that cool and neither provided anything worth using in the future other than simply figuring out a LITTLE about how to make my own augmented reality.  Why would this be good to know?  Well, I wouldn't mind setting up a system in my English/Theatre/Speech classroom where the students could take pics of posters in my room that would lead them to instructional videos/music/etc about that topic.  Currently that isn't really possible because my kids don't have iPads and are not allowed to use iPods in the room.  Yet maybe in a few years this will all change.  Regardless, I want to stay on top of technology so it doesn't run me over!  Seriously, before February if I would have been told about this app I would have thought the person speaking about it was from the future.  Actually, it's kind of like that.  There is so much "from the future" that is available today, it's virtually unreal! PUN INTENDED!

When I was first introduced to Augmented Reality, I was informed that people are using it everywhere for tons of different purposes.  The most interesting thing I heard about was that there were specific t-shirts being made for augmented reality.  I heard that some people are wearing them at college sporting events and you can walk up to the t-shirt wearer and zoom in on their shirt and their school mascot will come alive and their fight song will play.  To me that seems a bit intrusive.  I mean, think of it... complete strangers are walking up to you and zooming in on an image that is plastered across your chest.  Yet I guess if you bought the shirt, you want people to do that... so it's your choice!  Anyway, I haven't been able to find anything like that to show you but I did find this video on marketing with Aurasma. Pretty crazy stuff, eh?

This Techie Teacher Recommends Aurasma for:

• Teachers! Play around with creating your own augmented reality for a more inner-active classroom.
• People who are interested in new marketing techniques.  This is like the next "QR Code" phase.
• People who are creative and want to tell stories within stories within stories.
• People who want to stay on top of what's next in technology.

This Techie Teacher does NOT Recommend Aurasma for:

• No one really!

Main Downfall of the App (if any):

• Augmented Reality is new and expanding every day.  I wouldn't say that there is a DOWNFALL to this app, it's just that you might not use it all of the time unless you create your own.
  

If you think that Augmented Reality is just a fad that will be leaving soon, think again.  In my opinion, this is just the tip of the iceberg of the future.  Here is one final video on the possibilities for Augmented Reality within the new few years.  In fact, I bet that this video becomes truth in less than a year's time.

What are your thoughts?