Favorite fiction, juice your guitar skills, nail down award travel, and be on time!
Howdy folks!
This week on Traipsing About: Kick off 2018 with stellar fiction, the website every guitarist needs and another to track award points/miles, plus how to avoid being late.
C and I have bike touring on the mind lately! Here's fun in Croatia with our buddies Jen and Dave from the Long Haul Trekkers.
Fantastic Fiction to Kick Off 2019
Last year I read some GREAT fiction books. While I tend to focus on nonfiction and biographies, getting lost in a novel is amazing as well, especially in the cold, rainy winter.
Check these out! 1. A Gentleman in Moscow - LOVED this playful historical fiction! The witty dialogue, the language, the quirky characters and depth of spirit for the primary figures pulled me in.
2. Little Fires Everywhere - The pacing, story line, competing characters and commentary on a “safe, secure” life all carried me along in this engrossing book.
3. City of Thieves - set in Russia at the end of WWII, this book's dialogue, wit and story line nailed it.
4. Shantaram - a deep, colorful book set in India and loosely based on the author's CRAZY life.
5. Iron Gold (Red Rising trilogy #4) - another scifi masterpiece in this series. If you haven't read the first trilogy, do yourself a favor and make. it. happen. Like, stop whatever you're doing and go read them!
Got any recommendations for me? I'd love to hear them!
Active Melody: Best Online Guitar Tutorials I've Seen
If you play guitar, chances are your skills plateaued at some point. Mine did, but only for about 10 years... (sigh)
Enter Active Melody. In two months, Brian the Super Genius Instructor transformed my playing. I'm more comfortable jamming with others, filled in holes in my knowledge of music theory, and best of all, I'm having way more fun playing creative pieces and improvising. Guitar renaissance!
Sound amazing? It is. AND it's way cheaper than other membership sites at $7/month.
Two recent favorites: St. James Infirmary and Blues in B Minor. There's deeper instruction and guitar tab tools for premium members, but you can learn a lot from the free Youtube lessons too. Enjoy!
Award Wallet:Track All Your Airline Miles and Points in One Place
We've got airline miles and personal/business credit card points spread across the points galaxy. Until I started using Award Wallet, if you'd asked me which company, how many, and when they all expire, I'd have shrugged and written you off as a friend for being nosy.
Now things are different! Instead of a wily airline blasting our miles to smithereens because their expiration reminder went to my spam folder, we're on it. Our account shows both my and Chelsea's miles in one place, making trip planning easy.
As an added bonus, Award Wallet has a spending analysis section. "Hey, you're getting 1x points on this recurring expense when it could be higher with this card." I switched my business card and got 80,000 points AND 3x spending on my business expenses, which adds huge points per year to my account!
Seth Godin's blog is one of the world's biggest for good reason: he's thoughtful, concise, and consistently delivers excellent writing.
This article - How to Be On Time - is helpful for anyone who a) plans to meet anyone, ever or b) works with others and hates long meetings... OK, FINE, this article is for everyone! Just read it. It's short.
