Give Thanks...For Working From Home

 The storm moved in this morning and died out in the afternoon. It left an inch or so of snow which was easily dispatched. Now, the sun has set and I'm sitting on the couch in our family room, our dog sleeping beside me. 

Sundays are wonderful, but inevitably, my thoughts drift to tomorrow morning...Monday, and all that it entails.

Back to work.

Just over two years before the world went insane, I was fortunate enough to be chosen as a telecommuter. We set up an office space in our unfinished basement and thus began a new chapter in my working life. Back then, only a few workers within the organization were allowed to work from home. I felt blessed. By the first week of telecommuting, I realized just how blessed I was. By staying at home, I shaved off two hours each day in driving, a total of eight hours, which means instead of being away from home ten hours a day for five days, I only had to work four--I was given an entire day each week. I also got to sleep in an hour later which meant I could stay up later. Throw in wear-and-tear on the car, the cost of gas, and it all added up.

In a few months it'll be five years working from home. As I consider beginning my work week tomorrow morning, I'm more grateful than ever that I get to stay home. If I had to go to an office, it would take me at least a half hour each way, not to mention another storm is expected to hit overnight. It would probably take longer to get to and from work. Before, I had access to public transportation. That doesn't exist up here.

I know there's blessings I've been given by working at home. I'm sure there's others I don't even know about. It has allowed me to be closer to my family, literally and figuratively. Studies say working from home makes a person less likely for promotion. I say, it's worth it. I can't imagine having it any other way.

Looking For A Good Text-To-Speech App...

 There was a time when I listened to books, listened to a lot of books. I burned through so many books I was running out audiobooks at our local library.

Not really, but I did run out of books I wanted to read.

I was reading at least one, and sometimes two books every week )then I discovered podcasts and my audiobook listening has dwindled to almost nothing...). I got so addicted to audiobooks, I tried to find an app for my phone that would take any book and turn it into an audiobook, mostly so I could enjoy books written by my author friends whose books were not available in audiobook format.

I finally found an app that worked quite well. It was called PDF to Audio Offline. Today I got a new book to read. I fired up my phone and tried to add it to the app. The problem--I needed to download it again since I hadn't accessed it in some time. That's when I discovered that app was no longer available.

Bummer.

So, I went on a hunt. I searched for a new text-to-speech reader. I found one and started the book. I first tried to increase the reading rate to 1.5 times. It played for a few seconds then I got a message that I would have to pay $12/mth for the privilege of having the material read quicker. 

Nope.

I decided the normal rate would be okay, but I noticed the speech was not reading the words correctly. In fact, it was creating new words that were not in the text, example, it turned "just" into "fust."

Nope.

I downloaded a couple of other apps and haven't been able to get what I once had. I'll need to do more hunting.

We live in such an amazing times. The very thought that we can take any book, download a digital copy, then be able to have a program read it out loud boggles the mind. I'm hoping there's an app out there that will allow me to do it. We'll see.