The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video we’ll go through the conversation you should have with your older teenager about consent.  Okay — with the #Metoo movement raging on right now, consent is definitely a hot topic.  The story that recently broke about Aziz Ansari is particularly relevant.  First a quick definition of sexual consent in this context.  All it is — is the agreement by two parties to participate in a sexual activity. This activity does NOT have to be sex — this also covers touching or kissing.  And yes, I will acknowledge that this is an embarrassing conversation to have with your kids, but I think it’s important that we do.  And here is why — consent requires direct and open communication about an awkward topic.  If we are too wrapped around the axle to talk with our kids about this, how can we expect them to communicate well with each other? And the other thing?  It is HARD. We are asking them to act in direct op

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll share the tools I use to turn formatted text into plain text on the PC and on the iPad or iPhone.  We’ve all had this problem before — you are cutting and pasting some text from a website or document and the formatting is all messed up. Maybe it brings with it some strange fonts or it has peculiar column formatting or, more frequently for me, giant spacing between lines.  If this has ever happened to you, I don’t have to tell you that trying to fix it within Google Docs or Evernote particularly can be an exercise in frustration.  You try to get rid of the space here and it appears in the next line. I have two ways of stripping out the text formatting before I even attempt to paste depending on whether I’m working on a PC or an iPad.  Let’s go through them both. PC - Gmail If at all possible, I try to find ways to do things on my PC that don’t require me to download additional softwar

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll go through all of the reasons I love my Apple Watch.  My husband and I both get a big Christmas present from his parents each year which we are instructed to choose, wrap, and put under the tree.  Two years ago, we both got Apple Watches.  To be honest, I didn’t think I was going to like mine. I thought all of the buzzing alerts on my arm would make me crazier than I already am.  At best, I thought it would be kind of superfluous since i already had a phone. Turns out, I was wrong. Just a quick note — i got my watch a couple of years ago, so it is the old style that requires my phone to be with me for internet access.  Okay — let me walk you through the features I use regularly and love.  Screen  - You have a bunch of options for the watch face. Some are quite beautiful.  Not surprisingly, I chose function over form.  This modular style gives me 6 modules to access right from the face

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll share some of the fascinating gems that I picked up from Greg Dean’s book Step by Step Stand Up Comedy. I’ll include the best answer I’ve found to the question — what makes a joke funny? My friends and family think it is strange that I have this obsession with comedy and specifically, what makes things funny. After all, I’m not a cut up, I don’t churn out jokes and puns, and I am almost never the funniest person in the room. But I love to laugh, comedians are some of my very favorite people, and frankly, wanting to know how comedy works springs directly from my deep interest in how human behavior works.  It turns out it’s not really not that much of a leap.  So, I have been reading some books about comedy. Most of these, not shockingly, are NOT exactly what I’m looking for — they are more for the comic practitioner than someone interested in the nuts and bolts of humor, but I was thrill

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share the second part of my system that I used to overhaul my own closest, get rid of stuff, and figure out a personal style.  In the last video, I shared some tips that I got from reading the book The Curated Closet by Anuschka Rees.  In this one, I will cover the wardrobe system I developed using an app called PM Pro.  Here's where we left off.  I had taken a billion full length selfies of all of the outfits in my closet.  I wanted a better way to sort and categorize these photos on my iPad or iPhone, so I went looking for something that met my criteria and found the  PM Pro App. That stands for Photo Manager Pro. So, here are the things that I like about this app: Stores photos locally  - rather than just being another app lens through which to view the pictures already on my Camera Roll, this actually makes a local copy of the photos and stores them inside the app itsel

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share my system that I used to overhaul my own closest, get rid of stuff, and figure out a personal style.  In this first part, I'll share some tips that I got from reading the book The Curated Closet by Anuschka Rees.  In Part II, I will cover the system I developed using an app called PM Pro.  In trying to prune down my belongings, Marie Kondo-style, I found myself totally overwhelmed by my closet. I have some tendencies that make it difficult to have trim, stylish closet. First of all, I’m cheap — meaning I tend to prioritize quantity over quality.  I really don’t like to shop — except at Marshall’s where it frankly feels more like a treasure hunt. And even then I have a outside limit of a couple of hours before I’m done.  I’m super reluctant to get rid of things AND I don’t like to spend much mental energy on what I’m wearing.  BUT I do feel better when I look put togethe

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video I’ll share some ideas on how make lasting habit change and to stick to New Years resolutions this year using Google Forms and Boomerang.  This is the time of year, when everyone is geared up for habit change.  We are ready to turn over a new leaf, straighten up and fly right, make a fresh start.  This year we are going to behave differently than we did last year!  I’m not an expert on behavior change, but I AM a lifelong student, so I’ll share a little of what I have learned and some tech tools i use to support these efforts.  First,  Smaller changes are more likely to stick.  We’ve all tried to do a giant system overhaul like going on the Paleo diet, or exercising or meditating for an hour a day.  I don’t want to say those things are doomed to fail, but it is unlikely that you’ll make it a full 3 weeks doing any of those things.  And maybe that is all you need — after all 3 weeks on a liqui