Top Ten Reasons Why I Love My Mom

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10. She has a really loud, genuine, infectious laugh.

9. She takes a lot of interest in other people, and always asks new acquaintances questions about themselves to make them more comfortable. (Please note: the below picture is of my sister, and not a “new acquaintance.” I just thought it was a nice picture.)  MORE REASONS, PLEASE!

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Filed under Family, Holidays

Things I Would Like To Like to Be Near

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I think that maybe the title of this post is not grammatically correct, and I do not care. I would like to make it clear that I tried. Moving on!

So, we’ll be moving in the next few months, and it has come to my attention that we’ll likely be ending up somewhere that will need a bit of (ahem) TLC in order to look nice. As such, I have been scouring the world’s number one spot for stealing other people’s ideas, Pinterest, to try to find fun ideas that I could potentially incorporate into yet another living space in which am not allowed to paint or knock down walls. Grrrrrr.

I’m not feeling that Hemingway-ish at the moment, so let’s just dive into some pictures and talk about them. Any suggestions you (yes, YOU! You there.) might have would be extremely welcome regarding making a drab rental look less drab/rental-ish, and also if anyone would like to give me a nice house in the Bay Area, that would be really terrific and I would be super appreciative.  We’ve got work to do!

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Filed under Interior Design, Life, Moving

On Life Changes

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[the setup - and yes, he was smart enough to bring booze AND chocolate]

Here’s the deal: this is going to be a quick-ish life update post, and then we’ll have the funnies and the eats coming quickly thereafter. Deal? Deal.

For those of you that have somehow managed to avoid this news (and kudos to you: I have been most persistent), My Man and I got engaged about a month and a half ago. It happened in gorgeous, perfect Moab on a gorgeous, perfect evening (well, it was cloudy – perfect to me) while some weirdos watched from a nearby RV (yay!), and I am very, very, very happy.

There is something very seemingly “grownup” about the process of getting engaged – suddenly, people seem to think that you are capable of making huge life decisions and that you know what you want from your future, and that maybe you can afford to buy furniture or a house or something. Allow me to be clear: we don’t and we can’t and we have no idea what is going on. We are both still just as confused as we were a month ago, except the difference is that we know we’ve got a buddy (is it weird to call him a buddy?) to work through the confusion with moving forward. And that’s kind of nice.  Tell me more!

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Filed under Life, Love

How To Not Be A Jerk, and also Green Smoothies.

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I’ve been thinking, guys.  Dangerous stuff.

Over the course of my lifelong quest for perfection, I have found many things.  First of all, the very act of being on a lifelong quest for perfection has a tendency to turn any human into an awful, anal-retentive beyond belief totally stressful bore. It’s a bummer.

But what does that mean?  Continue to strive for perfection, but relax sometimes?

Okay. How hard is that? For me, REALLY hard. I can compare this in some ways to the Atkins diet.  Please come along with me on this metaphorical exploration. Let’s go!

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Filed under Food, Life

Be More Canadian.

Guys.  Are we all agreed that new year’s resolutions totally suck?

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Here is (I think) a great reason why they suck: if I hypothetically had to give myself a really solid resolution to start off 2013, one would definitely be to blog more often. I’ve had some really amazing feedback from folks who I really dig about this little old blog, and I would love (in theory) to keep that ball in motion as much as possible.

Can I be real for a second?  2012 was kind of a gnarly year in my life. There were difficulties.  There were learning experiences. I left one job; I started a different job. There were also great things. There were triumphs. I ran my first-ever (and second, and third) 5K race (32:08!). I discovered how truly amazing my support network is. I made some awesome friends. Those parts were great, but the hard parts were really, really hard.  The hardest.  Where are you going with this? Well, I’ll tell you.

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Filed under Uncategorized

Zen, and the Art of Life/Body Maintenance.

Since I’ve never really tried to pigeonhole this blog, I’m not going to qualify this post at all – I’m just gonna jump in.

2012 so far has provided a lot of challenges for me in almost every area of my life – my family and relationship thankfully being somewhat exempt from that trend.  However, I spent the first few months of this year going up against some pretty major challenges with both my job and my health.  Since my health keeps me on my feet and my job keeps me in cute shoes for those feet (etc), both of these obstacles have required a ton of energy, more than a little stress and a boatload of determination to navigate. Deep stuff, man…read more

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Filed under Life

People I hate at the gym.

This is a life update, so don’t expect anything epiphanous.  Epiphanary.  Ephiph…never mind.  There are NO EPIPHANIES in this blog post.  Okay?

I know that I haven’t really deigned to post about anything other than my vacation that was now five months ago since that happened, and that’s significant mostly because it’s one of the more interesting things that’s happened to me since last October.  That’s the truth.  I wouldn’t lie.

However, this post isn’t here for me to apologize, otherwise I would probably just keep on living my life.  Instead, I have chosen to write about the place I have been spending the 2nd most amount of time since January – okay, third, after my house and work.  I’ve kind of been on what you might call a “health kick.”  And by that, I mean that I “still eat Chinese food.”  I just “eat less.”  And “run afterwards.”  You know?

Anyway, spending a lot of time on cardio machines has given me a really valuable chance to reflect on the kinds of people I don’t like at the gym.  After a recent conversation with some co-workers, I realized that the list has grown rather long.  And that’s okay.  Because I have a blog – otherwise known in this particular scenario as the place for me to record these gripes for other people to read or not read at their leisure.  Work it out, I love reading

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Filed under Life