is this thing on?

I’m in the mood to blog today. It’s probably because I feel so melancholy and uncomfortable in my life lately. I blame it all on the staycation I took at the end of March. I’ve always longed to take a week for myself to focus on enjoying my house and my life instead of filling all of my paid time off with lots of travel. This year I received an extra week of vacation for reaching my 5 year anniversary at work which means I could still travel the same amount and also live out my dream of a solo staycation. Folks, it was magical. Too magical. It’s now 38 days later and I’m still not ready to be back at work. Here’s what I learned in the midst of the magic: 1. I don’t mind cleaning the house when I have the time to do it at my leisure 2. I don’t mind cooking or grocery shopping when I have time to do it at my leisure 3. I don’t mind exercising when I have time to do it at my leisure 4. I eat better when I’m left with my own pantry/refrigerator and don’t have coworkers constantl...

Ha ha! I have 35 minutes left to complete my catalog of 2011! I will admit I didn't exactly hold up my end of the deal very well but I sort of hung in there for most of it so...not too shabby! I've recently (like today) determined that I'm about a month behind real time. It was just today that I got a hankering to start decorating for Christmas. However, when December 1st rolled around, no way. Don't be surprised if you get some Happy New Year! wishes from me at the end of January. I'm old. I can't keep up. Brian and I were just looking back through our picture file from the year. I realized we did a lot of little get-aways this year instead of one big trip. We did a ski weekend in the mountains, we went to Oregon, Vegas, Pennsylvania, Evergreen, San Francisco, and Washington. And then there was the kitchen remodel which tends to ominously take over the majority of our pictures. All in all: a good year! So, the last two weeks. Here's the rundown: I got new p...

Oh my, this is worse than I thought. I thought I had at least made it to mid-October before going AWOL. My goal this year was to post a picture every day and then it evolved to giving weekly updates and then I don't even know what happened in September... but 2011 is almost over and I'm not just going to fizzle out. With that, here's a recap: Brian got older! His birthday present consisted of the tickets to Bumpershoot so it was pretty low-key but I did run around on my lunch break decorating and coloring the pet's feet with markers so they could 'sign' his cards so he could hopefully feel special when he got home from work. He also got the latest Bon Iver album which I'll admit was a benefit to me as well. I think it was also September that we welcomed our new refrigerator into our family. All new additions to a family require some adjustment and this was no different. As in, it was too tall for the alloted space so Brian had to saw off some of the over...

Lately, my daily walks include worm rescue missions. I can't walk away when I see a worm performing the death squirm on the sidewalk. I can't stand to see anything wriggle slowly towards death but worms are the lucky ones because I'm not terrified of touching them. Today there was a giant worm in a puddle. I went to rescue him but it would violently squirm away from me each time I tried so I said, "Fine, go ahead and drown" and continued on my walk. 15 minutes later I still couldn't shake the image of the worm dying when I could obviously bully him into cooperating. I mean, it's not like he's stronger than me. So, I back-tracked and found a twig that I thought would help me get a handle on him. He had actually made it out of the puddle, which I'm sure he felt pretty stoked about, except that he was inching his way into the street. I said, "Way to waste all your energy to be run over by a car. I mean, these people run over bunnies and squirrels...

Hola! We spent the first weekend of the month (also known as Labor Day Weekend) celebrating our labors in Seattle. We met Brian's parents there and stayed with my brother-in-law Aaron who graciously opened his home to us. We spent the majority of our time at Bumbershoot which was both fun and exhausting. Did you know that Bumbershoot is another word for an umbrella? A festival that is basically called Umbrella in Seattle- get it? However, we were lucky and had cloudless, sunny skies the whole weekend and left our bumbershoots at home. This is titled "They underestimated the popularity of School of Seven Bells" and probably should have put them in a bigger venue. The line was super long. Probably the best snack of all time- right Kristen Correia? Brian and I sat on the roof-top patio of Aaron's building to enjoy the view and I'm pretty sure I drank half of this bottle myself. When I got back to work, some of the student workers had decorated my desk with stickers...