3.27.14 - Spring Break So Far

Well, it's been nice to be done with grading and have that one thing off my to do list. I also had a chance to run some errands on Tuesday. I went to a craft store to get supplies for a paint party with my family (who are visiting the area over break). I love craft stores. Aisle after aisle of cute and creative ideas. I often feel I don't understand the idea of "retail therapy"--I don't really like clothes shopping and I especially dislike spending money, ha, but when I'm in a craft store I get it. If I had more money, that's where my shopping spree would be.

Anyway, so I went to get canvasses, and they happened to be 50% off for the week (woohoo!) As I was checking out, the clerk asked if I would like to by a $1 book to donate to the local Boys & Girls Club. The books were pretty nice looking for only a $1, so I bought five of them, and felt good about it. And the clerk seemed really happy about it too--you could tell he wasn't pushing the books solely as a part of his job, but that he really cared about the Boys & Girls Club.

So I felt great leaving the store.

Jack came home on his lunch and we practiced swing dancing again. I love dancing with Jack. It's so fun and energetic, and it makes me feel very close to him at the same time. We often end up laughing a lot at our mistakes, and then we get slap happy and have a hard time continuing without giggling, it's hilarious.

After he went back to work, I drove the couple of hours to San Francisco to meet up with my family. Side note: I love the view of downtown San Francisco when driving over the Bay Bridge. So magestic.

It's always nice to see my young step- and half-siblings. My step-brother (age 11) was very excited for me to show him the home videos from our Disneyland trip last fall. I love taking and editing home videos, and I really enjoy when other people seem to really enjoy them, as he does. So that was fun.

Also that afternoon, a friend of mine had a podcast debate, and he did decently well. More importantly (to me), my youngest sister called in during Q&A and asked some great questions of the debate opponent. I found that extremely satisfying and was really proud of her.

Later that night after the kids went to bed I got to hang out uninterrupted with my stepmom for awhile and visit, which was also really nice. We get along very well.

So that was Tuesday.

Wednesday (yesterday), my sister, her husband, and my niece arrived. Then we had our paint party, woohoo! I love paint parties. I got the idea from last New Year's, when we had a paint party at my youngest brother's place.

We don't even bother with junk tshirts for the youngest ones.

My painting, beginning and end. :)

During the paint party my step-brother continued to watch home videos, this time switching from Disneyland to last Thanksgiving. At some point one of the videos had a song from The Little Mermaid on in the background, and I started singing along from the other room. My step-brother ran into the room, gave me a huge grin, and then ran back to continue watching the home video. It was adorable.

So spring break is going great so far. The only downside is I have a lot of work to get done in between classes, but I plan to start making a dent in that as soon as I post this.

Natural appreciation.

3.23.14 - new friends and new fans

This morning I had coffee with a woman I met through my program. We'd chatted before class for a few minutes a few times, and we seemed to get on well, so I just decided to take a shot and ask her to hang out, and it went great! We chatted candidly for over 2 hours, and only left because we both had other things to take care of at 1pm. It seems like we have plenty in common, so maybe this is a new friend. Plus she lives in my area and has every intention of staying in my area for the foreseeable future, unlike some of my friends who are moving this summer once they graduate the program. So it would be especially cool if she and I became friends, since we will both be around here for awhile.

Then this afternoon the maintenance guy came and installed a new ceiling fan for us (the old one broke). It's much newer and nicer looking, and even though it's a small thing, every time we get some small new addition to our apartment, it makes me appreciate the apartment all over again.

THEN I made brownies with a mashed banana replacing 2/3rds of the oil, and they were delicious. I took most of them when Jack and I went to play cards with some friends. That was also really enjoyable--we were listening to a very upbeat playlist on the drive and back. The guy hosting made a chicken Alfredo dinner with salad and bread and butter, and we made milkshakes for dessert (some of them with blended brownie). We played Tichu and fed my friend's pet tarantula.

Overall a very enjoyable, social day.

My friend's rose-haired tarantula. She's pretty timid.

3.20.14 - Warmer nights & band concerts

Today I walked up to Starbucks to get some work done. The weather was so nice, it was a very pleasant walk. While I was there I gave up my table to two women who needed the space more than I did, and later I gave the time to a teen girl waiting for her ride to show up; I know these actions are almost nothing at all, but it feels nice to be helpful to people, even in really tiny ways.

I went home and made a quiche. I love cooking as long as I don't feel guilty about taking the time to do it. Jack had a concert--he's playing trumpet this semester--and he was supposed to dress up for it. He looks great in a suit, so handsome. Initially I was going to go with him and watch, but when I realized they only took cash, plus it was going to be longer than I thought, I decided to skip out and go next time.

As I drove home the sun was setting, and I was listening to The Blanks' cover of "Hey Ya," which is both funny and sweet-sounding. It's really hard to beat good weather and good music and good traffic while driving, especially at sunset, which is a naturally pretty time.

When I went back up to school to pick Jack up from the concert, there were all these people exiting, and 4 or 5 symphonic band players were playing in the hallway as they left--covering Daft Punk's "Get Lucky," haha. There had also been a high school band performing that night, and it was kind of fun waiting on the steps out front for Jack and watching all the high schoolers meet up with their friends and parents. It reminded me of some of my better memories from high school, of marching band and how fun all the band geeks were. At the same time it made me kind of glad I'm not in high school anymore, because you can see the social awkwardness they're still working through. Still it was nostalgic.

First day of spring (official)

3.18.14 - Elephant Bar

Tonight I got home from classes kind of late--near 9:30pm. Jack had only gotten home 10 minutes or so before me. We decided to go have a late date night since we probably won't get another chance this week. We went to The Elephant Bar, and only the bar area was open. There was almost no one there, which I really like--it means less noise and distraction, and faster service. The food was delicious (plus we had a coupon!) I had a margarita, and the very taste of it reminds me of good memories with Renata in summer 2008 (one of my best summers). But best of all, Jack and I had a chance to just sit and talk, and our talks were especially good. It's always nice to have a chance to talk about your day or what's going on your life, but it's even nicer to find things you've never talked about before, to feel you've gotten to know each other even a little bit better, even after already being together a long time. So I really enjoyed that. We also talked in a very concrete way about the future--the next year, mostly, and beyond that. I used to have a hard time doing that, and now I don't. I really enjoy that too.

My dinner. Mmmmm.

3.16.14 - Pre-bedtime psychological soothing

I've been reading too many online debates lately, which makes it harder to land on the positive side of things. Luckily for me, I have a lot of friends and family to vent to/laugh with, and that really evens things out. In the last 48 hours my days have been brightened by AH, RB, ES, NS, NB, SB, AJ, MM, RG, CH, and ES. Off the top of my head. And Mom and Dad, separately. Specifically, Dad texted all the siblings last night to ask what they were doing, then forwarded our replies to each other. It was a nice little moment of connection.

There are a lot of joys that I end up repeating, but I think they still count. Not every joy is continuous, so it's nice to note when some are. In this case, it's how proud I am of how hard-working Jack is. Our finances are in so much better shape than they were 6 months ago, and it is mostly due to him. And I sure am glad he loves his job. He's hard-working either way (I've seen how hard he worked at a job he didn't even like) but it's a lot easier for him when he enjoys his job so much.

Another continuous joy: he's really good-looking. I feel lucky. :)

I'm grateful for my elliptical machine and having a show interesting enough to make me want to work out. I made it a goal to work out every day in March, and now, just over halfway through, I have succeeded so far. And it's been an hour each day except for one, which was 45 minutes. I think that's pretty good.

This might seem trivial, but I'm grateful for the program puush. I use it all the time and I sure notice when it's not working.

Recently I've been doing work that involves looking at different foundations to see what kind of grants they provide. It's been pretty uplifting to realize how many hundreds (or thousands, really) of foundations are out there, each giving tens of thousands to millions of dollars per year to charities. So many people out there working to help. It's great.

And one little things. Had this convo with a friend this morning and chuckled to myself:

3.13.14 - Date night (skating & ice cream)

Tonight Jack and I had a great date night. We went roller skating on a Groupon and it was super nostalgic. The place really reminded me of a place I used to go skating in high school, and we went during family night so there were a lot of kids there. There were kids of all ages, but especially middle schoolers, and watching them interact strongly reminded me of what it was like to be that age. It was simultaneously nostalgic and sweet to know it's over, because that's kind of a rough age.

We got some pizza and soda and sat and watched the skaters for awhile. Then we actually went on the rink. I was a little nervous because I probably haven't skated in 15 years or so, but it came back to me immediately. They had the main lights off and fun colorful spotlights going, and the music wasn't bad at all. Mostly stuff I don't know--I never listen to the radio--but still enjoyable. I loved the feeling of the air rushing past me as I went, and it was fun to watch the really little kids walk-skate around. Jack skated in circles around everyone for awhile, but he got tired after maybe 40 mins or so, not sure, so we decided to go. It was so inexpensive to get in, it didn't really matter if we left early.

On the way home we stopped by an ice cream parlor we'd never noticed before. It really reminded me of Disneyland. It had white lights flashing in different patterns along the edges of the windows, and old-timey piano music playing. All the staff had cool, old-timey uniforms with black vests, and hats like Bert from Mary Poppins:

We got to sit in a booth perfectly placed to view a large part of the (very large) restaurant, and watch all the customers and servers go by. The decor was cool--stained glass lamps and velvety (?!) wallpaper and the menus were newspapers! We ordered malt milkshakes and the "fake chicken dinner" - which includes basically the insides of Butterfingers that look like chicken pieces, vanilla ice cream with caramel, which looks like potatoes and gravy, and these green mints that look like peas.

At one point the ice cream was running behind for some tables, so the waitress came out and entertained with some really corny jokes while the customers waited. ("What's the difference between me and a calendar?...A calendar has dates!") yuk yuk! As we were finally leaving (into a beautiful, warm spring night, I might add) Jack wanted to swing dance with me outside for a little while, because the music was perfect for it. So that was pretty adorable.

3.13.14 - Come and go with me!

I added a bunch of oldies to my iPod, including Beach Boys, Dion, Dell Vikings, and all that really upbeat doo-wop stuff. I've also been listening to some pretty upbeat country stuff, with this one being, by far, my current favorite:

Anyway, today I had to run an errand about 10 miles away, so I took residential roads with the windows down listening to all this great music and singing along. And the weather is beautiful right now. I think I'd appreciate it in any case, but I keep hearing about how winter is lingering in other places of the country where my family lives, and it sounds awful. Makes me so grateful to live where I do.

Daylight savings begins.

IIIIIII want candy!

3.6.14 - research and kitties

I got (paid) work done all morning, then worked out half an hour over my normal work out time because I was so absorbed in Prisoners. I also finally finished a draft of some important papers necessary to my research. That was a big one.

Plus, saw this super cute post today. Favorites:

Reminds me of how long my mom has had her cat.

3.5.14

Yesterday I stopped everything I was doing and cleaned almost the entire apartment while listening to a Blake Shelton youtube playlist. It's amazing how much better I feel when the apartment is totally clean. I also got work done and worked out, so it was just a productive day. After class I came home and Skyped with Neil for a long time; it was good to catch up.

Then this morning my laptop finally returned! Not only does it have a new hard drive, they cleaned the screen off too, nice bonus. I've spent the last hour or so reinstalling everything I had, so now it's a clean slate, and it'll be nice to be able to access all of my files without having to hunt down a jump drive.

While I worked out in the evening, Jack went and got the ingredients for me to make more red onion sausage soup, which was delicious all over again. While we ate it started raining and there was even thunder, which is pretty rare around here. Love it. We also got to Skype with Neil and Everett for at least an hour. It was almost like hanging out in the same room, and we got to talk a lot and laugh a lot and I'm just grateful for technology.

Also, I recently found one of those Hope for Humanity posts. These were my favorites:

3.1.14

Whoaaaaa long time with no update.

So in the past couple of weeks I've made a new friend I really enjoy talking to, and that's been generally brightening everything. Also had some great dates with Jack, both in terms of delicious food and, more importantly, in terms of taking our time and really getting a chance to talk. It's possible the dates seem all the better because we don't see each other (awake) all that often this semester.

But that's another joy in a way because it's due to him totally kicking butt at both school and work. I have never taken on a load as heavy as the one he has right now, not all at once, and I'm so thoroughly impressed with how well he's handling it--not just handling it, he's excelling. The other day he went to SF with some coworkers for what he thought was a networking meeting. Turns out they tricked him, and it was a ceremony to give him an award for his outstanding job performance! He was thrilled. Pretty awesome.

Also last night we went and out and got a bunch of errands done together, so it was that feeling of satisfaction at crossing off things that have been lingering on the to do list, plus also getting to spend time together. Today we also practiced swing dancing, which we never do enough, and I don't know why because every time we do I have such a great time.

Now if I can just finish my taxes and a school-related thing by the end of the weekend, I will be super proud of myself. On to that.


OH! And I forgot to say: I'm making spinach sausage loaf for dinner. Mwahahaha!