Tag Archives: luxury

Little inventions

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Imagine driving down a rainy highway without windshield wipers. Dealing with a painful hang nail without nail clippers. Always having to put on shoes with buckles rather than laces. Or even phones without touch screens.

I love seeing new, inventive products come out, like a tooth brush that brushes all your teeth simultaneously in 20 seconds. Everyone needs to brush their teeth. Almost no one does it extremely well or for long enough. Along comes this little invention to save time and be more effective.

Now I’m not jumping out to buy one. I’m not convinced this isn’t a little gimmick that won’t really do what it promises. But I just love seeing inventions like this come out. I like seeing how people solve little problems we didn’t know we had. Or problems everyone have and think there is no solution to.

They say necessity is the mother of invention, but I think luxury is too. Humans are constantly finding ways to make life easier, and more enjoyable… and creative ideas abounds.

What’s a little invention you don’t necessarily need, but absolutely love?

Comfort and luxury

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I’m lying down stretching. It’s 36° out but that doesn’t matter because I’m in an air conditioned trailer. It’s a very comfortable temperature and I’ve got just enough space to lay down my yoga mat and spend some time working on my flexibility and mobility.

How lucky we are to have the comforts we have today. Convenient transportation, good dental and medical services, and cool air to ward off the laziness hot summer days can inspire. Compare this to what our ancestors had to deal with. An infected tooth could have meant death. A rock cave would be the only respite from the summer heat, that didn’t involve getting wet. A half day car ride would have been days of riding or walking across bump terrain.

Now, I can just turn up the air conditioning, stream some music, and stretch in comfort. Even at a camp ground, ‘roughing it’, I am lapping up the luxury of modern conveniences… and feeling lucky to have the comforts I do.

Fog and moon

A couple days ago some fog rolled in. Coming home from a dinner, my wife and o say a large coyote wandering down our street. Thankfully our daughter has already brought our cat in for the night. As we got out of our car the coyote was strolling past our driveway and I let out a little shout to ‘Keep going’, spurring it into a faster pace as it went by.

Last night I had a hot tub and the fog was still around. It was eerie seeing the bright moon through the misty fog, and it made me think about what life was like living in caves a couple hundred thousand years ago. No doors to keep out the wild animals, and all kinds of superstitions around the weather and the meaning of different events.

Back then, life was short and ailments like a tooth ache that today could be fixed with a root canal could end up being a fatal and unrecoverable infection. A bad winter could mean starvation. A pack of wild animals could wipe out an entire family. The world was a harsher, more dangerous place.

Today we sit in the comfort of our cars, our homes, and even our hot tubs. We are protected from wildlife, weather, and even other people. And when we look out at the moon on a foggy night it’s not nearly the same experience as our great ancestors. No, to us the fog and moon are an enjoyable sight, a moment to contemplate the hardships of a time long gone… from the comfort of modern amenities.

Luxury, therapy, and a good day

Today I splurged and had a relaxing massage that was purely for enjoyment. It was a deep tissue massage and I needed to ask the masseuse to go a little deeper at the start, but then I just sat back and let her do her work. Normally I spend an entire hour with my therapist’s elbows in my back. Today’s massage included arms, hands, legs, and feet. There was time before hand to sit in a hot tub and do a couple cold pool dips (not something I plan to repeat soon, but glad I tried).

Then the massage room had quiet music playing and between camomile and lavender scent, I chose the lavender. It was so nice to sit back and relax, being pampered without thinking about therapy and having to breathe through intense pressure on my back. It took a mindset shift to just enjoy and lap in luxury.

I read a great quote in James Clear’s weekly email newsletter yesterday:

“The question is not: will today be a good day? 

Every day is a good day. 

The question is: how much good will you get out of today?”

I enjoy my therapeutic massages because I suffer with regular back aches and pains, and I could easily have gone into today expecting a similar experience… and I would have been disappointed. Instead I just appreciated what I had. Admittedly this is a lot easier to do, choosing luxury as a mindset, but it’s a good reminder that how we frame things matter.

Today has a lot of good to be found. Tomorrow will be good despite hours of travel time. Regardless of the day, regardless of the challenges, regardless of the unexpected circumstances, we have opportunities to find good in every day.

Wifi enabled fridge

We are shopping for new appliances as part of our planned renovation and I have to say that I don’t get it. Why would I need a wifi enabled fridge? At no point in my life have I ever spontaneously wondered what the temperature of my fridge was? Besides when I first got a fridge, or when I found some frozen lettuce at the back of the fridge (once), I don’t recall ever changing the temperature of my fridge.

Maybe in the future a ‘smart’ fridge might be able to tell me if I need to go shopping before I cook a recipe; or tell me my milk is low or expired; or suggest meals based on what might be expiring soon and what I have available. But right now it doesn’t serve a purpose that I can think of. Right now I don’t need to be connected to my fridge… it doesn’t need to be enabled. And I don’t need a Samsung with a screen on my fridge either. I’ll stick to magnets to hold family photos and memos.

Maybe at some point in the future the need will be there, but for now, I’ll pass on wifi enabled appliances… I see this feature as having very little function, and just being one more possible failure point on an appliance that already won’t last as long as it would have if built years ago.

If I’m missing out, please enlighten me. Who has a wifi fridge and how are you using this feature?

New Headphones

I finally bit the bullet and got some Airpods. I had to go for the more expensive Pro version because the regular Airpods don’t fit my ears. I’ve been buying cheaper headphones and time and again they have failed me. My most recent pair are just under a year old, and now I routinely need to turn one off in order to get the other to connect. I have another pair of over-ear headphones that I use when I exercise in the morning. They are great for the exercise bike and row machine, with excellent noise reduction, but they ‘click’ when I am running on the treadmill, which is quite annoying.

It seems crazy to me to spend so much on a set of headphones but I have tinnitus in one ear, and I’ve realized that good headphones are better than always complaining. I spend quite a bit of time listening to audio books, and podcasts, and I can definitely pay better attention when I’m not struggling to hear. It’s interesting to me that something like headphones now feel like an essential item. I rarely listen to music, but I do so much listening for learning and for pleasure that I’ve realized I spend hours a week with my headphones on.

Well, that’s me rationalizing a luxury purchase… no buyer’s remorse here, I’ve got snazzy new headphones, and I’m going to enjoy them. 🙂