OVER THE YEARS I’ve tried to take each of my five kids on a number of short, 3-day-2-night, one-on-one mini vacations—usually starting when they are about 10 or 12 years old. At one time I was trying to make it an annual affair for each of them... But that got to be too expensive and difficult to do.

Before the digital camera age, I would typically buy a couple of one-time-use cameras, put one in my pocket and give the other to my son or daughter. When we got home, I would take the two cameras in to have double prints made, then create two albums—one for him or her, and one for me. I treasure each of those little books.

I recently had a business trip scheduled to New Jersey where I was to spend a day in a dental practice teaching their team how to use the new social media marketing tools we had built for them. It looked like a great opportunity to combine a business trip with my first mini vacation with my nearly 12-year old daughter, Anna.

On Tuesday, July 5th we flew from Salt Lake City to Newark, New Jersey and spent the night in a small motel near the dental practice where we spent most of the day on Wednesday. By late afternoon we were on our way into New York City to check into The James Hotel in Soho for three nights.

We spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday kicking around the city. We did a lot of subway riding, a little shopping on Fifth Avenue, and a lot of eating at fun places! Our hotel was fun and hip with a nice view of the city’s hustle & bustle below.

On Thursday night we had great tickets (dead center, 10th row or so) to see Wicked. It was really a lot of fun. We both loved it.

Anna is a big “Cake Boss” fan. On Friday we took a bus out to Hoboken, New Jersey to visit Carlos’ Bakery! As we were approaching the bus stop nearest the bakery it dawned on me that there may be a line to get in. I was relieved to see that the line in front of the bakery was short. As we approached the bakery, I asked someone in line which end of the line was the end. The woman laughed as she said, “This is the SECOND line. You have to stand in the first line to get a ticket to stand in the second line.” She pointed down the street to a line that stretched for blocks...

We stood in line #1 for about 3 hours to get our ticket to stand in line #2! We had fun and visited with some of the others in line. About half way through the wait, somebody said that a TV crew was behind the bakery filming an episode! So, we took turns with another family holding our place in line while the others went star gazing behind the bakery. We had a great time.

Of course there’s so much to do in New York that we’ll have to go again. Love you, Anna. I had a lot of fun.

WHEN YOU WASTE TIME, DO YOU WASTE IT WELL?  When you waste time, do you savor the “downtime, experimentation and joy” (as Seth Godin says) that can result from having done so?

My opinion is that one day we’ll all be held accountable for time wasted poorly.

How do you waste time well?

NOW, I AM A FEW MONTHS INTO THIS LITTLE EXPERIMENT.  I’m using Viddy in an attempt to better journal my life.

If you’d like to know what this is all about, read the last post below.

Again, these videos have only one objective—to trigger memories of significant things that happened in my life during these months. They aren’t meant to be pretty. They’re meant to be functional.

Here’s the second one:

I AM A COUPLE OF MONTHS INTO AN EXPERIMENT.  I’m using Viddy in an attempt to better journal my life.

It’s nearly impossible lately for me to find time to write in a journal. Even quick blog posts have been few and far between. So, here’s what I am trying to do...

Every day or two I just pull my phone out of my pocket and capture a 15-second Viddy. My self-imposed rules? No retakes. No editing. No fretting about quality or art direction. In fact, Viddy knocks down the resolution for quick upload and storage. With one touch on my phone I can upload the 15-second video to YouTube for archiving.

These videos have one objective—to trigger a memory of something significant that happened that day. They aren’t meant to be pretty. They’re meant to be functional.

Every month or so I’m planning to drag the next batch of 15-second clips into iMovie and export them as one video. The total amounts to about seven minutes a month. That means over one year I will have created about 1.5 hours of video (in 15-second snippets) that visually captures my year. At that point (or someday in the future), I may add an audio track to the video to narrate and add detail.

Here’s the first one. I’m about ready to do the second one. Good idea? Techy goofy? Both?

MY SON, BLAKE, ACTUALLY GETS ALL THE CREDIT. Earlier this week he found 1000memories.com. I set up a page for my mom and invited family members and friends to join and share. After talking about it on Facebook, there were several other friends who found the service and loved it. Word of mouth advertising works.

If you knew my mom, please contribute. And if you didn’t know her, you may just enjoy the page.