Wednesday, December 12, 2012

I XOXO MY NEW BLING from WATSON KENNEDY


I am wearing 2 new pieces of jewelry. 
They are both silver and gold,  go with everything, and
are decorated with positive thoughts that go with everyday.
 Both were gifted to me... selected from the fab jewelry trove at Watson Kennedy.
Lucky me!
A super big thank you to Ted and Cairn, wonderful givers!

"Live imperfectly with great delight"
"Dwell in Possibility" has a little gold rectangle that can be flipped over the quote so that only the word "in" shows.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

I XOXO AN OLD-FASHIONED SHOE SHINE: Simmie at the MN Airport



I passed his station. He eyed my boots, I caught his glance. He was looking down at them disapprovingly. I proceeded past him to the coffee bar, ordered a latte, and considered a shine. My boots were awesome but they definitely needing some TLC.

Latte in hand, I walked back to his shoe shine station. “Hi, how much is a shine?” “8 dollars.” “ I caught you staring at my boots like 'Girl, you should let me shine those for you!' Right, isn't that what you were thinking?"  I climbed up into the chair, placed my vintage tan Acme boots into position, and knew that I was in the right place. I then proceeded to find out as much about him as I could in the length of time it took him to return the luster to my boots.

Simmie, short for Simeon, was born and raised in Minneapolis. His uncle was a preacher. He is twice-married and has six children total, a bunch of grandchildren and great grandchildren too. Simmie worked for the Minneapolis Transit Authority for over 25 years, driving a bus, and now rides the Light Rail for free to his job at the airport.


He is semi-retired and works Monday and Tuesday. It’s a 12 hour shift that begins at 5:30 a.m. He works in the G gate, toward the higher numbers. The best part of the job is the different people he comes across. “I always ask their names, like I did you,” he says.

He first learned how to shine shoes in 1963 but didn’t practice the craft much until 7 years ago when he started with one of two companies that rent airport stand. On an average good day he will shine 35-40 pairs of shoes. Sometimes more. Morning time seems to be the indicator of a day’s success.


In Simmie’s ungloved experienced hands my tan boots started shining like caramel. “What’s the most important part of the shine,” I asked him. “The cleaning. The shoes have to be cleaned,” he answered. Once cleaned, Simmie puts life back into shoes via a process that includes conditioning, applying color, and then going over the hide with repeated soft brush strokes and a few professional snaps of his cloth. For the finale, he deepens the color of the sole. This he assured brings out leather. 

“You’ll be walking better and smiling,” Simmie predicted. By Jove, he was right.  I had happy feet and was contented knowing that I treated my boots well. I smiled all the way back to the gate. And people smiled back.

Thank you Simmie!



Sunday, December 2, 2012

I XOXO Apple Care: Battery Life iPhone Issue Fixed

 
I thought I would pass on some information that I recently gathered after placing 3 phone calls to AppleCare. I was having serious battery draining issues on my iPhone as in it was fully charged at 2 a.m. and was totally drained by 6:30 a.m. with no apps running but the basics. An in-store appointment at the Genius Bar did not help. But after my third call to Apple Care, the problem appears to be fixed.

If you are having iPhone battery life issues, and don't have AppleCare, here are some things you can do. Start by going into your settings. From there:

1. Under NOTIFICATIONS: set to "Manually"; limit # of things IN NOTIFICATION CENTER, I only have "phone, messages, and calendar" in there now. All my other apps are NOT IN NOTIFICATION CENTER.

2. Turn off BLUETOOTH whenever you are not using one, otherwise battery is always looking for it.
(you can do the same for WIFI)

3. Under PRIVACY > LOCATION SERVICES, limit what you have running. I am only running Maps and Weather. I don't necessarily want FB and Twitter to keep tabs on me.

In addition to futzing with my settings, I also restored my phone via iTunes. But this did not seem to help it as much as changing the settings did.