I read this book in January, and I loved it. I can't wait to see the movie- I had no idea they were making it until I saw this ad in a theater.
This semester has been better than last in every single area of my life. I'm doing a much better job of maintaining a good work/life balance, I'm able to work out thanks to not having a broken foot, I know what to expect and I'm comfortable at my school/with my students, and I see the light at the end of the tunnel to keep me going- what's up, May 27th!!
I figured I'd recap how January went in terms of my 3 Main Goals. The above pretty much covers One and Two, so I guess I'll go into a little more detail about Three. In January, I lost 6 pounds towards my goal of 18 pounds. I didn't count calories or obsess over anything, I just went back to eating mindfully and working out. Speaking of the latter- holy shit I was out of shape! It reminded me of how I work out primarily to be a fit, healthy, strong person, not just to "be skinny, yay!" Being able to tackle a hike, or go on a long bike ride, or do a hard yoga class, or go snowshoeing without feeling as though my heart is going to hummingbird out of my chest and explode in front of my face- that is why I work out. I love lifting weights and seeing myself get stronger each week. I look forward to the random crazy poses in yoga that challenge my flexibility, balance, and strength. I truly enjoy a brutal interval workout in spinning that makes me question whether or not my legs can even keep moving, and then they do. I think that Goal Three has probably been the foundation for making Goal One and Two so much more doable: I have more energy and I'm in a better mood, and (totally obvious observation alert) what do you know, that makes life in general a lot easier. As to the GoodReads 52 books in 2012 goal, I'm about 2 books ahead right now, and I'm finding, as I did last year, that having this goal is great for curtailing mindless internet surfing.
January pretty much zipped right before me before I could blink, and it's strange to think that I have only 4 more months left before I am a certified teacher with only 4 classes left towards my second master's degree! Our lease is up the end of May, and we're not sure yet if we're staying in Colorado through the summer until I find a job overseas in Aug/Sept, or if we're going to spend the summer bouncing around the U.S., road tripping and visiting friends before I take up said overseas job. I'm hoping for the latter, but that depends on job situations out of our control. For now I'm just enjoying teaching, getting myself back into shape, and having dedicated free time to spend with Bobby and our friends, actually having a life outside of school/work.
Just a collection of cell phone pictures from my mornings on the way to school and our weekend snowshoeing trip. No editing or fancy filters, kind of grainy, but I like 'em.
School is going well, teaching is great, and I've been reading a lot lately. All in all, life is good.
An illustration of my thirst for knowledge. What mysteries lurk beneath the bell??
I am totally immersed in school work, researching, and student teaching. I spend hours researching the most mundane things that are brought up in my graduate classes, simply out of curiosity. I'm reading at least a book a week- on top of school books- about education, lesson planning, child psychology, and anything else to do with kids and the teaching of said kids. Between my 3 full days a week at the school, plus commuting, the things I'm volunteering to do and the graduate classes and homework, plus the random obsessive researching, I'm pulling about 50-60 hours a week. That's before you add in the volunteering I'm still doing for the two non-profits I have worked with for over a year now.
My school is awesome, and I really adore the kids. My mentor teachers are great. What's weird is how I can be so passionately excited one day, and then so exhausted and almost ready to pack it in the next. I've never had this experience before. On the days I'm exhausted and overwhelmed, it's not that I truly want to quit. It's that I am humbled by how much I have to learn, and I am sometimes paralyzed with fear that I'm not doing it right, or that I'm failing the kids, and sometimes the gravity of my potential impact on them (even as a random student teacher) really hits me and it freaks me out. After only a month there, they are fiercely loyal, and kind, and protective of me in such sweet and peculiar ways. We have inside jokes. I suggest books to them, they suggest books to me, and we wave to each other in the halls. I'm bone tired, and I feel like I've been there for a year instead of a month, but it's really incredibly satisfying. The happiness that it brings them when I do something as simple as check out a book for them that I think they'd like seems like more than I deserve. I'm reminded that, although so many people claim to not want to teach high school students because they're already "set in stone", they are truly still so impressionable, and young, and innocent, and can swing wildly from one future to another.
Other than all that, I'm ready to get off of these damned crutches. One more week. And then I'll really be flying. In other school news, I start my final class towards my post graduate certificate in sustainable development. Me + school, together forever.
Anytime I tell people I broke my foot, they naturally ask me what I did. The problem is, there really is no accident story, no specific fateful incident that cracked my poor foot bone. I mean, do you want to know what I was doing the night before I woke up with my foot so swollen I couldn't move it without pain?
I was learning to can peaches with our friends.
I know, I know, I need to be more risk averse. But seriously, stress fractures are kind of a straw that broke the camel's back kind of thing- apparently that part of the bone just weakens and weakens until one day it flops onto its chaise lounge, puts its hand to its head, and says "I give up". And then it cracks.
The good news is, canning peaches was fun and canning is not as scary as it seemed to be. I mean, botulism is pretty damned terrifying, don't get me wrong, but after doing some reading I've learned that fruits are acidic enough to make botulism risk virtually nil as long as they are processed correctly.
Speaking of processed, I thought it only right that the old timey-ness of this endeavor should be captured with a vintage filter.
The key to not dying of botulism- the water bath.
Off and on during the process, the boys played video games. Yes, they helped, but once all that was left to do was boil the jars they took to playing a terrifyingly weird Japanese video game.
Willow, eating up the attention, blissfully unaware of how she is hindering Bobby's progress in rolling a giant sticky ball through an imaginary world.
A little sugar water, some lemon juice, and local, organic peaches picked up at the farmers' market that morning. Purrrrrr-fect.
The finished product. I was super excited to can my own peaches after this, but then, you know, I woke up with broken foot extravaganza and I've only cooked one time since then.
Paige and Matt have a huge backdoor garden, so they sent us home with a baggie of cherry tomatoes and some beets. All in all, between the farmers' market that morning, the canning, and the good night gifts of fruits and veggies from their garden, it was a most excellent way to celebrate, unbeknownst to me, my last day of mobility for 8 weeks.
I been hangin' around (somewhere in Capitol Hill in Seattle)
I had the best of intentions to avert such a long silence on my blog, but things got hectic, and here's why. My last post was on Thursday, July 7th. I then spent all of that day and the next cooking, cleaning, laundering clothes, packing, and organizing because on Friday, July 8th, we hit the road for a 3,000 mile/12 day road trip. I thought I'd have more time than I did, but I didn't, so my plans to blog a lot on Friday afternoon before we left were tossed right out the window. But I'm back! Here's where we went:
Summer Road Trip 2011
A night and a morning in Thermopolis, WY to check out Hot Springs State Park
2 days in Yellowstone:
Madison Campground reservation first night
Mammoth Hot Springs Cabin Reservation second night
Yellowstone to Seattle, WA- with a long visit to Helena, Montana- to visit friends for 3 days and check out their new place
Amtrak to Vancouver to visit our Canadian friends for 2 days
Back to Seattle for one last night out on the town
Portland, OR for one day/night
Portland to Salt Lake City (with a long stop in Hood River Oregon for lunch, and a stop in Boise, Idaho for dinner)to stay the night and visit my cousin before she leaves Utah for Texas
Home to Colorado
While we were gone, our friends stayed in our place for a few days to apartment hunt for their upcoming move, which is one reason I wanted it to be clean. We got home on Wednesday at 1 a.m., Bobby went straight to work a few hours later, and I got to work cleaning/unpacking/doing laundry. Thursday afternoon, our friends Brooke and Chris stopped by on their way home from a family vacation in Wyoming, and they were here until yesterday morning- a second reason I wanted the place to be neat and tidy. Bobby and I napped like professionals yesterday, an unexpected gift since the aforementioned moving friends had originally asked for our help in moving them in Saturday afternoon. The plan was to say goodbye to Brooke and Chris and head straight over to Tyler and Amanda's. Turns out they got in a day early and unpacked everything. So we napped away the afternoon, met up with Jenny for some frozen yogurt, and crashed out relatively early. I wish I could say I continued catching up on sleep fest 2011 with a deliciously lazy sleeping in session, but nope, I woke up at 7:45 this morning without an alarm, just as I did yesterday.
But don't worry, it's 10:12 and I'm typing this in my underwear with an unwashed face and unbrushed teeth. Bobby just woke up and I'm going to convince him to go to Snooze for brunch. In random updates, my plants are still not dead, and they grew 6 inches while I was gone. Oh, and I barfed 30 minutes into a 3-D midnight showing of Harry Potter 7 in Canada (sorry, neighbors to the North!) so we're having a re-do this afternoon with our friends Matt and Paige. I think first I need to put on some pants though.
I did, eventually, make those muffins. I do so love a potluck, because it's such a good return on investment. I make one thing and in return for that contribution I get to sample a buffet of food? Sounds good to me.
We headed out on our bikes, since the main entrance is from the bike trail. I really can't get over how damned charming it is to cycle along a bike trail flanked by fields with horses and weeping willow trees, and old school wooden fences. The trail follows a little creek, and periodically you go over quaint little bridges that always make me think of Anne of Green Gables.
It's a short ride to the CSA, and when we got there the party was already going full swing. The farmer, Luke, had the grill fired up and was providing complementary hot dogs, burgers, and veggie burgers. Local beer was on tap, also flowing freely. Dogs were roaming about with their families, and babies and kids were running all over the grass and lounging on blankets under the trees. There was, of course, a small army of bicycles clustered along the fence. We added ours to the group.
Aww, lil' trailers to haul your nuggets on the bike!
We picked up our share for the week- lots of yummy greens. Kale, lettuce, and spinach came home with us.
Field of organic veggies + dad and baby + bike. Basically a perfect picture overview of the hippie/green culture of our town.
We added our muffins to the buffet table and loaded up our camp plates with communal food. Thanks to a lot of people we didn't know, we ate very well that night. Our fellow CSA'ers were super friendly on top of being good cooks. We spent an hour or two there, re-filling our plates, chatting with different groups of people, and petting whatever dog happened to stroll by. Right about the time we finished our food, thunder started rolling and rain started falling. We cycled back in the rain- just enough to be more than a sprinkle, but not enough to be miserable. Once home we threw open all the windows, turned off all the lights, and lit some candles. We sprawled out on the floor, enjoying the breeze, being lazy listening to the storm and watching the sun set through our back patio door. There is something so soothing about listening to a storm, hearing the trees sway in the wind while the rain beats down on their leaves. I don't know if it's just because I grew up in Texas with a good 3 months of heavy thunder storms rocking me to sleep every year, but it's like an auditory sleeping pill. Altogether it was a pretty excellent night. I already geek out over the happiness that fresh picked, dirt covered veggies give me, and when you add in a nice get together, good food, a bike home in warm rain, and an evening thunderstorm? It's almost more simple joy than I can handle.
The entire year I lived in Japan, I biked all over the place without a second thought. I had a free bike courtesy of the outgoing teacher, which I painted bright green and purple thanks to some 100 yen store spray paint. I would bike double digit miles most days, without a helmet, and with the knowledge that 3 of my acquaintances had been hit by cars while on bikes (none seriously injured). I biked on snow, on ice, and in rain. So, one would think that upon moving to Fort Collins and possessing a bike again, I would take to it like a fish to water.
Not so much.
Don't get me wrong, I still loved cycling, but I had a hard time adjusting to the bike culture here in America. Bobby and I did quite a lot of weekend biking last summer. We volunteered with a no-kill shelter, and every time we walked the dogs on the weekend we would bike there. We went on excursions for Mexican food in nearby towns with friends. Bobby rode his bike to work every day during spring and summer. And we would ride bikes to our Monday night yoga classes. I would bike to the gym on my own, as well, and I'd take friends out on the trails when they came to visit. But in general? I was very intimidated with cycling in America. In Japan, there were bikes everywhere. Mothers would be on a bike with a baby in front and a baby in back, no helmets in sight. It was a very common thing in the culture of the city in which I lived, and thus bicycles were something that drivers were used to accommodating. On top of that, in Japan, bicyclists used sidewalks. America, on the other hand, favors the bicycle lane approach. Let me tell you, there is a big difference between cycling on a wide sidewalk and cycling in a thin bicycle lane with cars whizzing past you going 50 miles an hour.
Another difference was that I had to get used to my new bike. It's a commuter bike, not a cruiser bike. When I first rode it, the wheels felt so incredibly thin and flimsy, as though every rock in my path would send me flying to the pavement. Eventually, with all the riding we did last summer and fall, I got used to it, but I was still timid when I went out on my own, and I would often avoid cycling and take my car when I could have taken my bike. Last winter, as we put away our bikes, I told myself that this summer I would be more confident on my bike, and bike more often. I just had to get over my feelings of awkwardness and my lack of confidence, and do it.
So that's what I did. A week or two after we got back from Texas, Bobby and I were set to meet up for lunch. It's 4 miles from our house, half of it on the bike trail, half of it on the street, and I have to cross traffic to go left twice. It was no big deal, and I felt incredibly lame for ever letting it bother me.
Bobby with delicious food and my sweet pink tire'd bike
Happy face
Bobby was surprised I rode my bike instead of taking thee car. He knew that I was pretty much only comfortable with riding to and from the gym, or sometimes the grocery store. I seriously cannot believe that I let myself get such a mental block about it. How ridiculous.
This is part of the trail on the ride home that day. Since then I've been cycling all. over. the. place. I'm merging in traffic, I'm making left turns at lights, and you can get over it, car, because I have the right of way. I can't even remember what it felt like to feel nervous at all. Yesterday, as an example of how much time I'm spending on my bike, I did 20 miles. I biked to the gym, to lunch with Bobby, to the grocery store, and back home. Then we biked to dinner, hit up two stores to run errands, and visited Sonic on the way home for free root beer floats. We left as it was getting dark, with our headlights and tail lights flashing. We were going at a meandering pace along the bike trail that feeds into our apartment complex. As we were traveling, we would ride through pockets of cool air, that felt like walking into a freezer. Sometimes the air would be warm on top, then cold on bottom, like swimming into a deep part of the lake on a hot day. the crickets were chirping, the sky was clear, and the moon was out. It was beautiful.
I think that's my favorite thing about riding my bicycle. I'm connected to the experience of getting somewhere. I feel the sun on my arms, I'm sweating a bit, I'm grateful for breezes. The smallest hills, unnoticeable in a car, are very noticeable on a bike. I notice the landscape more, since I'm in it and going slower. I'm manually adjusting to the slightest changes in the terrain as I work through my gears. Stop lights are not annoying, they're a break after that hill kicked my ass. If I need to make a left (bike lanes are to the far right, so one has to cross traffic to make lefts) and there is a lot of traffic, I can simply slow down in my bike lane, wait for it to break up and pass to the left easily. Shortcuts are easy to take, and wrong turns are just occasion for a bit more exercise. As soon as I hit "publish" on this post, I'm going to the library and the grocery store, a 10 mile round trip that Bobby and I made a few weekends ago together, and one that I've made several times on my own since then. I am currently having a love affair with my bike and spring.
I'm in such a great mood, even this hipster car can't annoy me!
After a week and a half of uncharacteristically rainy, gray days the sun is out in full force today. The skies are blue, the mountains are snow capped and majestic, and the birds are chirping. It's like the spring switch was flipped over night. I am, once again, sitting in Panera Bread as I type this. It might be the sunshine, or the great sleep I've been getting, but I'm in an infinitely better mood this time around. We get internet on Monday and the backlog of pictures that are clamoring to be posted and captioned will get their wish soon enough!
I'm *so* glad the world didn't end on the 21st. I have way too much to do.
I'm smiling because I didn't know that two years later I'd be dropped like a hot rock on a gym floor, resulting in a decade's worth of pain and doctor's bills. Cheerleading, you were fun, but you were SO not worth all that.
I had good intentions of doing weekly wrap-ups but March got away from me and here we are, at the end of Week 4. I did my 3rd run of Week 4 yesterday, and it was great.
I did Week 1 twice, in order to slowly get used to running barefoot. So, my 3rd week of running I was following Week 2 parameters for C25K- run 90 seconds, walk 2 minutes. But here's where things get weird- I started toying with how long I could run, and on my first run instead of following Week 2 parameters I just decided to run the entire first 10 minutes, and then do the last 10 minutes alternating 2 minutes of running with 2 minutes of walking. So, you know, NOTHING at all like what I was supposed to be doing. And you know what? It felt fine. Still no pain, easy 5.0 pace, no worries. I probably could have run the entire 20 minutes but I held back. After that the rest of the week I followed Week 2 parameters to the T, even though after that first run it felt almost too easy.
Week 4 (this last week) I was supposed to be following Week 3 parameters. Again, I kind of played around with this and settled into running 3 minutes and walking 2, repeating that three times, and then running the last 5 minutes. This is also very different than what I was supposed to be doing, but as I mentioned at the very beginning of all this, I'm not at all starting from a "couch" level of fitness, so I'm doing C25K to slowly build tendon/muscle strength so I don't get injured. But because I'm feeling fine- better than fine, I'm feeling amazing, and I totally credit the Vibrams and correct running form as a result- I'm playing with it a bit. This last week all of my runs were at a 1.5% incline, walking at a 3.5 pace, running at a 5.5. Even upping the running by .5 more, and going from a 0% to a 1.5% incline, and running more, I still feel fine and dandy.
This is amazing. It is almost miraculous. I can run again, after over a decade of being sidelined by crippling hip pain anytime I even attempted so much as a mile or two. And it doesn't hurt, at all. I look forward to it, and enjoy it, and I like pushing myself and seeing what I can do. I can't even express how happy this makes me. On top of all of this, my hip has felt even better since starting to run. I feel like my SI joint instability is tightening up, and my alignment feels fully right for the first time since my injury. Between yoga and running barefoot I feel like I have a brand new hip and back. Yoga got me there 80%, no doubt, but that last 20% is all running. And it is glorious. I step off the treadmill and feel like I've conquered the world, even though I'm still just alternating running/walking at a fairly moderate pace and doing a fairly modest distance. The other day we were riding in the car, and I turned to Bobby and said "I really feel like 5K's are just the start- I think I could actually run further... maybe half marathons! Or... full marathons!". We'll see. For now I'm ecstatic that my body is cooperating with me, finally.
This is a necklace of dried carnations. Bobby and I each received one on our first date, two years ago today, at Kalachandji's, a fabulous vegetarian restaurant with a beautiful Krishna temple adjoining. We ate our food out in the courtyard, and afterward we padded, barefoot, around the temple. Two Krishna devotees- one Jewish, one Catholic, neither feeling any strife between their respective religions and Lord Krishna- pushed threaded needles through fresh pink and red carnations, making our necklaces for us while they talked about divine consciousness and supreme love. We wore the carnations out of the temple, and kept them on at the coffee shop where we ended the night. Our second date wouldn't happen until almost a month and a half later, and after that we would date one another while dating other people for almost 6 months before making things official and exclusive. But that first date started it all, even though, admittedly, I wasn't sure on the first date that there would be an "all" between us.
We didn't have a love at first sight kind of first date, but I'm glad things worked out the way they did between us. After months of dating and friendship I was sure of the kind of person he was before we began a serious relationship. When I moved up to Colorado last May, I saw that string of carnations hanging in our closet. Mine had been crushed in an interim move to my little downtown efficiency, but Bobby's was still in perfect condition, and we both see it every day in our shared closet. We're not traditionally romantic- Valentine's Day is about as important to us as any random day of the year, and our beginnings are quirky and a bit odd to say the least- but in little things like this our sentimentality comes out.
Today was a quiet Sunday, spent eating a late breakfast and checking out the Ansel Adams exhibit at the Museum of Art downtown. Later tonight is a veggie sushi feast at our favorite place, Mt. Fuji. Altogether a very good day :)
This weekend was one of those weekends where I simultaneously got a ton of things done but also had a lot of downtime to just curl up with a book next to Bobby on a lazy Sunday afternoon. We didn't do anything out of the ordinary- in fact, we skipped our planned West Coast Swing dance lessons in favor of staying in on Friday and Saturday night. A few things that stood out on the good weekend list:
I made a hodge podge breakfast smoothie on Saturday morning out of random things in the fridge that needed to be used up- 1/4 a cup of pureed pumpkin, about the same amount of blueberries- plus an overripe banana, a tbsp each of ground flax seeds and chia seeds, a splash of almond milk, and what I *thought* were frozen peaches from our CSA...
See the little orange guys hanging out at the bottom? I just found out (as I was typing this) that they were not, in fact, peaches. They were little chunks of butternut squash. I found this out when Bobby (who is, as I type, making a peach/strawberry/rhubarb crumble) asked "is this...cantaloupe? what is this?" and I told him they were peaches. Then he says "no, THESE are peaches" holding up another container. Moral of the story? Chunks of frozen butternut squash taste damned good in a smoothie with unlikely counterparts such as pumpkin and blueberries. Lesson learned!
So, this is a bittersweet moment from the weekend. My beloved green, eco-friendly, all natural rubber yoga mat bit the dust after a little over two years of use (I'd say about 3 times a week for an hour of power/vinyasa flow, so it did admirably). I wanted to replace it with the exact same brand and type, and this was the only mat we could find in town that met the requirements.
Why, hello there.
It's been unfurled in the study room for over a day now, because as you can imagine it smells strongly of what it's made out of- pure rubber. I can't wait to use it tomorrow morning.
And last but not least, I finished a project on my 2011 Goals List. This is the blue baby blanket that I started... wait for it...THREE YEARS AGO. I know, it's awful! But look, just by putting it on a goals list, it's magically done a mere two weeks later. Originally a few people around me were pregnant and its home was kind of up in the air, and now I need to find a place to send it to.
This is triple stitch crocheting, for those of you out there who are familiar with such terms. I finished the last 5 rows- including cutting every.single.piece.of.yarn. for tassle- and the tassle on both ends in about 3 hours while Bobby and I watched another DVD of Egypt lectures (his parents sent us 7 DVD's of a professor lecturing on Egypt in preparation for our trip and they are fascinating). It was nice to kill two birds with one stone, and since it's literally just a lecture on DVD I didn't miss out on anything by having to glance down at my hands periodically.
I learned to crochet when I was 5 or 6, and a part of me is still in awe that by twisting yarn in a certain way around a little metal hook this is what's created.
Of course, as I realized here, it's just as nice for an adult to curl up in as well. So I suppose that broadens the field of who might be receiving this little guy. I'm just glad I finally finished it! I also finished Kate's birthday quilt (also on the goals list), so I'll post those pictures later. In other good news not proven by photographic evidence- I met my Spanish study goals for the week. I sat down at the kitchen table and studied for two and a half hours this weekend, which not only got me off to a good start but helped me flesh out a study schedule that I think will be effective. I'll go into more detail on the goals progress in monthly reviews though, so for now I think I'm going to get ready for bed so I can curl up with a book and some of that peach/strawberry/rhubarb crumble that I'm starting to smell from the kitchen :)
Bobby and I just got back from an awesome backyard party complete with a huge treehouse festooned with string lights, a D.J., an entire goat roasted on an open fire, and tons of friendly, laid back, interesting people.
If I could sum up the energy of our town, it would be in that little party. Dogs and kids running around, perfect fall weather, people jumping off the treehouse in the harness and rock climbing rope they keep up there specifically for that purpose, someone made homemade chocolate chip cookies, they keep backyard chickens and have a garden and live in a funky little house in Old Town, one of the people who works at our CSA was there and we made friends... it was a great night all around.
I just washed the fire smell off of me and am about to crawl in bed but I just felt all warm and fuzzy inside so I thought I'd put it out there to share. I really deep down adore living in Colorado. It surprises even me how much I feel like this is home.
Chicago was awesome, and I already miss Jo, but I was very glad to get back to our little mountain home. Tonight as I was finishing dinner, I saw a bit of pink through our patio doors. I got up to check it out, and the entire sky was filled with an awesome sunset. Bobby took a quick picture, and pretty much as soon as we got back inside and cleared the dinner plates it was gone. I'm so grateful to live in such a beautiful state, in such a great town. I'm really looking forward to experiencing another snowy winter, and it's fast approaching. Bobby says the snow starts late September/early October. I couldn't get enough of it in Japan- and it was the worst winter in over 100 years when I lived in what they call "Snow Country" to begin with- so I'm pretty sure I'll do just fine here in Colorado.
I'm busily organizing my pictures from Chicago, trying to figure out how I want to post them, so those will be trickling in over the week, as well as the pictures from Kate and Anna's visit- about a month late, but they'll be here!
Bobby left this morning for Colorado, and after what is hopefully a safe and pleasant 15 hour drive he'll be in what will be our new home. Well, I suppose first he has to actually *find* our new home. We already have heaps of promises to visit, and have decided to get a two bedroom for the space and the ability to accommodate friends and family. We decided on the downtown area if possible, because it's walkable and central to arts and events. I also can't wait to go back to bike riding, my favorite thing about living in Japan was being able to bike everywhere, but Texas is pretty much nowhere near even thinking about considering being bike friendly.
This last weekend was a blur of going away parties, b'day parties, pictures, packing, and organizing everything we needed to do. I slept in on the air mattress we purchased to use my last few weeks here, and eventually to use in the aforementioned spare bedroom. I love the feeling of camping out in apartments, my favorite part about them is when you first move in or are about to move out, and there is so much space and simplicity. All that's left is to move out the borrowed desk and loveseat, and then I'll just pack up my clothes/toiletries and the air mattress in my station wagon and head out. The next few weeks will be filled with family and friends and new babies on the way, so I'll get to see lots of people before I head out.
I'm so excited for this next year. Who knows what will happen, but I'm trusting in good things.
So happy to be almost debt free, done with classes, sitting on a 4.0, sending a paper off to get published, seeing friends and family, traveling and going to the pool and reading books for fun, sleeping in and staying up late, going to concerts, playing pool, volunteering, camping, going on week night dates and playing downtown...
I could go on and on. Let's go summer. Don't tell school, but you're my favorite.
"Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of." Ben Franklin
I did so much this weekend, and got to see and catch up with so many friends and family. I think I've pretty painlessly sussed out the best way to build my schedule so that I don't go insane. The thing about having such a tight schedule is that I swing wildly between seeing no one/doing nothing but school and work, and then having a jam packed social schedule where I have morning, noon, early evening, and late evening plans. I tried to tell a guy who wanted to take me out "seriously man, I'm busy. Not like those people who say they're busy but they're not *really* busy". He assured me he understood. After the past two weeks of trying unsuccessfully to pin me to a date and finding my dance card constantly full he finally said "You really ARE busy!"
Yes. Yes I am. But I had fun in the gayborhood Friday night with my friends listening to bad techno music and watching them learn to two step, and Saturday in yoga Arielle and I rejoiced in her being able to touch her toes, and Saturday afternoon my step-mama and I went to the King Tut exhibit and played in this crazy light and glass exhibit, and Saturday night I had a great talk with Scotty and just lazed around reading books and talking about life with Arielle and Kristen, and today I went to church with Lauren and Chris, and then church again with Karin and Josef, and later tonight I get to watch the L Word with friends I haven't had the pleasure of seeing in a long time.
