#3095 The Foxtel app

So I put my Foxtel app to use tonight during dinner prep.

I actually watched a 56 minute documentary on Stephen King, then followed that with another 20 minutes of the Barbie movie, this time with baby girl.

I kept asking her, “we can watch this on the big screen?” (TV).

But she was like, “no, I want to watch it on your phone.”

The novelty. 😁

I must say, it is working though. I rarely get time to sit and watch something on the TV, but preparing food? Something I do all day! At this rate I’ll have watched everything on the list in no time. 🤣

#3093 The apps that connect us

Yesterday I was grateful for the apps that keep me entertained on my phone.

Today as I ponder, I realise there are so many apps that connect me to the closest people in my life.

Messenger, sms, whatsapp, instagram, and now the new one, signal…

I have group messenger apps, one with my mum and sister, the other with my besties.

Then I have separate messenger chats with nearly all of these people. Plus my cousins.

Oh, but then I speak to all of these people via instagram too. 🤣

Additionally, one of them on whatsapp.

And one of them on signal. 😄

That’s not counting the sms.’ I message Hubbie mainly on this platform, along with half of the above people, and then I have baby girl of course, who messages me via messenger kids. 🥰

So if I ever do feel far away from these loved ones, or feel lonely, I need only open my phone and text to one of them in a variety of ways.

People like to knock technology, but really, without these apps, life for me would feel a whole lot lonelier. 🙏

#3092 The entertainment apps

I’m about 130+ eps behind watching Bold and the Beautiful.

I say that because it’s this fact that made me wonder if I could access Foxtel on my phone, and watch my recorded shows through there, for example during dinner prep, where I can just catch up on whatever I want in the background.

I did try hard to work it out this evening. Through repeated attempts and live chats with a Foxtel support person, I gained access to the Foxtel app on my phone (some log in issues prevented me at first) but then learned that no, I can’t access the recorded shows from my phone, the recorded shows are recorded onto the IQ box, connected to the TV… which isn’t connected to my phone.

So while I can’t catch up on Bold (boo – perfect show to watch in the background) I can watch things off of the Foxtel list… and guess what I started watching tonight?

The Barbie movie.

It came out when baby boy was a fresh newborn, so I heard heaps about it, but of course never got the chance to watch it… until now!

Also, we recently gained a free 6 month subscription to Disney+, so along with watching Foxtel shows on my phone, I can now watch Disney+ shows ’til the end of the year too!

Now granted, these ‘watching shows’ timeslots will come in 5 minute blocks, I can see it already… 🙄 but look, I figure any time doing something for me as a time out, is better than nothing, right?

Time will tell. But just the fact of having these things available to me, makes me feel like I’m somewhat winning. 😊

#2492 The fuel app

Today I’m performing a public service announcement, and I promise you this is in no way sponsored.

I just want people to save, as we have.

Petrol.

Petrol is expensive. EVERYTHING at the moment is expensive… Water. Gas. Electricity. Food. Today I saw basic honey for $8. $8! It wasn’t even a special Manuka variety or anything.

I pour my petrol at the local 7/11, because it’s super convenient and on my route as I go to drop off and then pick up baby girl from school. Last week when I went to pay for my petrol, the manager told me to get the ‘my 7/11 fuel app’… he said I would save on every trip, because prices were going up.

No shit sherlock. As above, everything is going up!

Today I downloaded the app, on both my phone, and Hubbie’s phone. You can find it on your apple or play store app. Anyway, when you allow the app to access your location, it searches for the five closest 7/11s to you, and then will lock in the cheapest price for you, for a whole week.

If we had just gone into our local without using the app, we would have been paying $2.34 a litre, because our cars use the premium stuff… Hubbie’s choice being a car fuss pot and all. 🙄🤣

But, because a 7/11 about 15 minutes away from us was the cheapest, we locked in the price of $1.89 a litre, for the next week.

Hubbie put this to the test when hours later he went to fill up his tank. It was only half a tank, and yet he saved…

$14!

$14! That’s like, most of his takeaway coffees for the week! With so many prices going up, already paying premium petrol, and then tending to often drive further because we do live so far from our family and friends, this discovery is huge for us.

What makes it even better, is if you lock in a price but then the price in store miraculously drops lower, you will ALWAYS pay the lower price!

That’s too good to be true!

I will be sharing this and telling anyone and everyone who will listen.

Just a little win for the pocket today. 😁💰

#1503 Day 5 of getting there: ZOOM into the future

Just because there is a pandemic happening at the moment and we have imposed self-isolation all over the world, doesn’t mean we can’t see our people, right?

Enter, ZOOM!

And so many other technologies to help us connect, online.

Zoom is just one of those apps resting on people’s lips at the moment. Others are houseparty, messenger, WhatsApp, and Skype, among so many more.

These apps are allowing us to stay connected with people in our life, without even leaving our house, or risking anyone being infected with ANYTHING.

Therefore, being the change of season, and us girls being due for another catch up… yet not being allowed to, due to afore-mentioned ‘PANDEMIC,’ we turned to technology to give us a lending hand.

And I’ll say… YAY! It was a success.

And you know what? I think being self-isolated at home, and connecting online, we will see each other more, than if we were to try schedule actual physical meetings in person.

LOL. And all it took for us to see each other more, was for there to be a world crisis…

Who knew?

#1475 Maths can make you happy

Do you know how close I was to posting another coffee-related post today? That would have made it three in a row.

But I refrained. I found something harder to capture visually, but much sweeter.

It was after school and baby girl was using Mathletics – it’s a maths app that assists learning at home as well as in the classroom.

She somehow happened across a live challenge area of the app – of course – and was suddenly given 1 minute to complete maths equations suited for her level.

Before I realised what was going on, I turned to see her going –

“4 + 3,” holding up her hands with four fingers  on one hand and three fingers on the other, and proceeding to count them together to make 7.

She did this five more times with different equations. I just stared, watching her quickly work out how to add up the numbers to find her answer, amazed that she was doing it accurately.

She got 6 out of 6.

It was one of those moments of growth I was so happy to have been able to witness. I had just recently been to a parent info meeting at her school that touched on children not just  knowing the answer, but knowing how to work it out too.

Seeing baby girl work it out in front of me, was the simplest yet most satisfying thing to see.

Our children grow up in front of our eyes, and catching those moments of growth as it happens is the greatest reward us parents get, for all of our sacrifices, sleepless nights, tears shed, endless moments of worry and stresses about the future.

Let’s take all the rewards we can. ❤

 

#450 Online cloud storage

Still on technology.

Isn’t it one of the greatest ideas of our time, that there is an imaginary place up in the clouds that stores our much-needed data, and keeps it safe in case our hardware goes kaput?

Isn’t it great, that this imaginary place, is REAL?!

I first used online cloud storage with my old phone and its hand-in-hand Dropbox app, storing all my photos online. This was insanely useful at the time, since we had baby girl, and as any parent knows, your camera roll will contain 10 photos of the one moment, with just a move of the head or an expression on your baby’s face being different.

And I couldn’t possibly delete any one of them! They were of my baby girl for goodness sakes.

So I dropbox’d them. 🙂

Now, with my new phone, the app is Drive. Although I’m seriously behind in many organisational facets of my life, today I made some progress in uploading and then downloading said photos to Drive and my laptop, and knowing that not only do I have hard copies on my computer, but also up in the clouds, is actually a relief.

Often I think that the abundance of too much technology makes us feel more pressured and obligated to abide to certain routines: that is, of backing up, updating, moving folders and files, printing hard copies, etc, etc. Life certainly seemed easier in our parents’ day, but then again, they have no where near the amount of photos of us, or the memories we shared with them, as we do with our kids.

So, I will take the obligations, if it means more smiles as we look back. Tit for tat.