Mappy January
A Penthouse Suite for free, A city-wide water fight, Exercise like a baby, Visit Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, Waking Up free trial, Get 4.3% interest on your savings, Eat at a vegan buffet
New on my MappyEverAfter website:
We stayed in a penthouse suite at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego for New Year’s weekend, for free (with credit card points and a Globalist status)
New Year’s party video
How to improve your credit score.
From the Archive: Pi Mai in Laos is still one of my favorite New Year celebrations and was one of the most fun videos to make
Experiment: We exercised like babies (DNS)
Travel: Staying at the biggest animal sanctuary in the US
Health: Waking Up meditation app by Sam Harris, 30-day free trial
Money: Wealthfront High-yield savings account with a
4.3%4.55%4.8% APY (updated on March 25th)Mental Hack: If you have to choose between guilt and resentment, always chose guilt
Eat: Vegan buffet at Best Friends
Just because: Everyone can draw. Graham Shaw will prove it to you. Grab a pen and paper.
Note: I will always tell you if I’m getting any referral bonuses and how much they are. The only one in this letter is as follows: If you open a Wealthfront Cash account using my referral link, you and I both get
4.3%4.8% interest on our savings for 3 months. After that, the APY changes to the regular 3.8%. You can then send your own invitation links to friends and family and unlock 3 more months of the 4.3% interest, for up to 12 months.
New on my MappyEverAfter.com website
Here’s one on how we stayed in a humongous penthouse suite for free (well, with credit card points) and a video from the New Year’s party at the hotel where we got hundreds of balloons dumped on us.
I also wrote an article on what constitutes a good credit score and why you’d want one.
From the Archives
I’ve had some amazing New Year celebrations over the years but Pi Mai in Luang Prabang, Laos is still one of my favorites. It’s basically a 5 day long, city-wide water fight. Here’s a short video I made (watch for my cameo at the end)
Experiment - moving like a baby
Some clever people in Prague figured out that babies all over the world spontaneously learn to move in specific patterns. They are the masters of functional mobility.
As we age, we forget how we’re meant to move and develop all kinds of pains, symptoms, and syndromes. If even a part of one muscle is dysfunctional, the whole system gets out of whack.
Apparently, if we re-learn how to move like babies, all kinds of wonderful stuff happen within our bodies (namely, remedying dysfunctions of the locomotor system and associated syndromes by stimulating movement control centers in the brain).
The clever Prague people started calling themselves The Rehabilitation Prague School, gave the baby movements a fancy name - Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (or DNS) and started teaching it to anyone who’d listen. The best way to learn is from a certified teacher, but if you live in a DNS desert, the second best option (unless you have a baby handy) is to scour youtube for the few videos that attempt to explain it.
So, Mark and I tried it. The movements are deceptively simple, you know, “a baby can do it”. But something happens to you. Something pops. Something stretches. Something slides into place. And suddenly you feel better.
We’re still at it (we want to give it at least 30 days) but so far so good.
Here are some resources:
A 19-minute flow with detailed instructions on breathing and movements by a renowned DNS therapist Michael Rintala, D.C.
Here’s a YouTube playlist with 52 DNS exercises explained in detail.
Once we learned the movements, we used this sped-up video, also by Michael Rintala, D.C. It’s recorded at high speed so you have to slow it down to 25-50%.
Travel - Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah
Imagine houses, enclosures, and pastures scattered across 6 square miles of a beautiful red rock canyonland of southern Utah with the wild brush, trees, and creeks between them. Each section has a name: Dogtown, Cat World, Horse Haven, Parrot Garden, Marshall’s Piggy Paradise, Wild Friends…
You can visit for a day or stay at one of the cabins in the Sanctuary, camp, or book a room at a hotel in nearby Kanab. You can eat at the Angel Village Cafe, take free tours, volunteer, play with many of the animals, and even host a sleepover with one of the furry inhabitants. Or, you can find your new best friend and adopt.
We’ve wanted to visit Best Friends for some time now and last November we got an opportunity to go and volunteer there for 3 weeks.
We took all the tours, played with kittens, petted horses, cuddled dogs, fed bunnies, scratched goats and piggies, listened to chatty parrots, ate at the Cafe every day, and made friends.
And we’re going back again next month!
Health - a free month of Waking Up meditation app
I’m a fan of Sam Harris. I use his Waking Up app daily and I don’t get any bonus for recommending it, I just think you might like it. I wake up and play the 20 min. (or 10 min if I’m short on time) guided daily meditation, then sometime during the day I listen to a 1 min. little insight called “Moment” and at night, before sleep, I listen to Deep Rest Yoga Nidra. The interviews and talks are also good, as is the introductory meditation course. There’s a lot to choose from and new content is constantly added.
The subscription price is steep - $15/month or $130/year but they offer 2 levels of scholarship: a partial one at $50/year and also a full scholarship where you get premium access for free.
You can give it a try for free for 30 days here
Money: Wealthfront high-yield account, 4.3% 4.55% 4.8% APY
The day after I sent out this newsletter, Weathfront announced that on March 24th they’re raising the APY on savings by another 0.25% so I’ve updated it below.
One of the few advantages of raising interest rates is that you can earn higher interest on your savings.
Wealthfront has a new promotion going: If you open a Wealthfront Cash account by clicking on my referral link, you and I both get 4.3% 4.55% 4.8% interest on our savings for 3 months. After that, the APY goes back to 3.8% 4.05% 4.03% which is already good, or you can extend the bonus for up to 12 months by referring your friends, family, or enthusiastic strangers.
There are no fees of any kind, no minimum deposits or balances, and the cash accounts are FDIC insured for up to 2 million dollars each.
I’ve had an investment and cash account with Wealthfront for years and one of my favorite things about it is that I can split my money into different “buckets” for different saving goals, all within one account. I wrote about it in the July Mappy Monday.
This is the offer I got: (update on 3/24/23 - the offer increased to 4.8%. all my links will take you to the best current offer)
Mental Hack - Guilt over Resentment
“A therapist once said to me, “If you face the choice between feeling guilt, and resentment, choose the guilt every time.” It is wisdom I have passed on to many others since. If a refusal saddles you with guilt, while consent leaves resentment in its wake, opt for the guilt. Resentment is soul suicide.
Gabor Mate, ‘When The Body Says No’
Eat - Vegan Buffet at Best Friends
This month, instead of a recipe, I’m giving you a glimpse of the food at the Best Friends Sanctuary’s Angel Village Cafe in case it might entice you to visit.
The Sanctuary runs an excellent $5 (!) all-you-can-eat vegan buffet, open every day for lunch from 11:30 to 1. They offer warm meals, a salad bar, desserts, and a coffee and tea station, overlooking the beautiful Utah canyonlands. Even if you’re not vegan you’ll like it. The meatless meatballs were my favorite.
Just Because - A Quick Cartooning Lesson
I was thinking one day, Wouldn’t it be great to learn cartooning? I found this video, sat down with a pen and paper, and 15 minutes later I had a page full of fun drawings and a bit of artistic confidence.
Give it a try and send me some of your favorite creations here: hello@mappyeverafter.com
So there you have it. Hope your January was swell and that you’re planning to devote more time to pranks, hijinks, and general tomfoolery this year.
Be Mappy,
Mags
P.s.: If you have any questions or comments, leave them below. I'm a pretty friendly and responsive lass.