Our New Digs

Friends and family know that my wife and I recently relocated to another place here in historic Franklin, Tennessee but here is an update for other readers, including a photo. As has become our custom since moving toward a more mobile lifestyle, we are leasing a fully furnished apartment, complete with art and antiques, and it even includes utilities so I simply write one check each month and that is it.

Our home is a wing of the circa 1868 Miller-Beasley House and was formerly operated as a bed and breakfast called Rebel’s Roost. It has about 1,200 square feet and even includes a guestroom for overnight visitors. But the piece de resistance as far as my wife is concerned is the bathroom. It not only features a dual-sink vanity and radiant-heat flooring but best of all it includes a whirlpool tub!

Suffice it to say that we are “living the dream” and we are very thankful to God for blessing us so. It is indeed above and beyond all that we had dreamed of, and we are reminded of a passage of Scripture that states: “So it shall be, when the Lord your God brings you into the land…to give you large and beautiful cities which you did not build, houses full of all good things, which you did not fill, hewn-out wells which you did not dig…”

The Pursuit of Elegance

I realize my last post also covered a book about Steve Jobs but I just read another thought provoking one along the same lines, albeit not one exclusively about Apple, and since the movie Jobs is out I thought it timely to write about. It is titled In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing by Matthew E. May and it presented some good stuff worth sharing here.

“Apple lovers had become accustomed to Jobs’s flare for spare. They knew that minimalism, especially relating to buttons, was his obsession. The keyboard for the original Macintosh had no direction keys for the cursor. Until 2005, the Mac mouse had only one button, rather than the traditional two of most computers. Mr. Jobs had long criticized industry-standard multibutton computer mice as ‘inelegant,’” writes May.

“He had removed on/off power buttons on desktop units. He had removed buttons from elevators in multilevel Apple retail stores, along with standard retail queues and counters. Rarely if ever could he be seen wearing a shirt with buttons,” May adds. One of the striking things to me about that statement is how Jobs even applied minimalist principles to his wardrobe.

It is something I have done myself. While I often wear shirts with buttons I actually prefer ones without, such as zippered pullovers, sweatshirts and turtlenecks like Jobs loved. And whereas Jobs favored lace-up running shoes, I prefer slip-on footwear like loafers, further minimizing my dressing time, not to mention time spent going through security checkpoints.