Things To Do

This has been a lazy couple of weeks, clearly, as I’ve been mostly off the low carb diet since the night before our braai last Saturday, and now we have ANOTHER party to attend tomorrow. Well, I’m showing up with a salami and cheese plate in hand if only to keep my fingers out of as much of the other not low carb food as is going to be there. I’ll already be drinking up a storm and probably eating too many deserts, I don’t need to stuff pasta and chips in my face too.

This of course means a Costco run, which I hate but have, blessedly, been mostly excused from since I’m dating the most sainted man ever who doesn’t necessarily mind going to the store. However, I made the mistake last week of mentioning my willingness to hit Costco myself since I need kitty litter. I didn’t end up going last week, and now Feller is holding me to that promise of going alone. Apparently, he is also suffering from some shopping fatigue.

I also need to get myself and all our bags and bags of recyclables down to the recycling place because Trader Joe’s bags full of glass and plastic bottles and cans are taking over our kitchen a little. At least I’ll have a few dollars in my pocket for my trouble, but not nearly as much as I think I should be getting for how much saving the earth we’re doing.

On the upside, I have been quite diligent about getting my hiney to the library every day after work and finishing a module or two before heading home. It’s turning into quite the nice habit, and, at least for now, I’m still getting home before Feller so I can take care off my chores and just relax and enjoy spending time with him when he arrives.

Of course, I have been SLIGHTLY less diligent about some other things: the basket of clean, unfolded laundry sitting in the middle of our bedroom floor for example. I’ll probably fold it tonight, just in time for there to be MORE clean laundry to fold on Sunday.

Also, I continue to be INFINITELY thankful for the he cooks/I clean arrangement Feller and I have. I love not having to worry about feeding myself in the evenings. It’s the best ever, and I eat a lot less pizza because of it.

Random Thoughts

I went for a run in Mountain View the other day. That little city is ADORABLE. It’s covered in plants and flowers, and all of the houses have charm and character, even the cookie cutter subdivision houses. Or maybe all the growing things give them charm and character. There’s a great farmer’s market (and OH MY WOW, I TOTALLY should have bought WAAAAY more strawberries and cherries and peaches than I did because I SWEAR TO GOD, the farmer’s market produce is the best stuff I have ever put in my mouth EVER (maybe not ever ever)), and I found a little park during my run. It had a patch of grass, picnic benches, a jungle gym and a swing set. I may have paused during my run to swing. That totally counts as exercise, right?

While I was paused, I had the thought that THAT was the kind of place in which I want to raise my kids. Someplace beautiful and green with a great community and lots of stuff to do.

You know what’s weird? Whole milk. I don’t think I’ve ever had it before a couple of days ago, and … it’s weird. I’ve spent years drinking non fat milk, which is like the Keystone Light of milk. Not that it’s kind of disgusting or that it’s the only beverage you’ll find at a frat party, but in the way that there’s really not much going on besides a little color and a slight beer-y (milky) taste, so it really doesn’t taste much different than water. After only experiencing that, jumping to a Quality Beer or whole milk is a little jarring.

Going to my church small group always reminds me that I need to make the effort to do that more regularly. Now that school’s paused, I have NO EXCUSE not to go. I love those ladies SO MUCH, and they refresh my spirit. They help me regain the peace and joy that comes from Christ, and they remind me that I am blessed and loved and a daughter of God. And right now, I’ve got a lot in my life riding on Faith that I need those reminders, I need to get connected spiritually with God and great people who are going to uplift and encourage and believe with me in God’s plan for my life and an outpouring of blessings and favor. I’m SO blessed right now, but I know God’s got even bigger and better things in store. So, barring some extreme circumstance, I’m going to every Connect group and making an effort to get to church sometime on Sundays, maybe in the morning while the feller sleeps.

What the hell? I’ve gotten a bunch of Facebook friend requests the past few days from people I know and who have been on FB for awhile. What’s making them all think “You know who I need to friend? AMY.” Weird.

Randomosity

At home libraries encourage literacy. This means my kids’ll be SET; my home library is a little insane.

I love this post about the Crazy Place girls go to over stupid shit. I also really like the entire Stratejoy. I haven’t had much chance to explore, but I can get behind place that’s all about being uplifting and encouraging and getting me the heck through life.

Hey look! Cleolinda wrote Clash of the Titans in 15 Minutes! And it’s HILARIOUS! I will call him Badass…THE DESTROYER

Look! Malinda Lo, author of Ash is going to be doing a signing in San Francisco Saturday! This time FOR REALS, I’m going and getting my copy of Ash signed.

I am a dumbass, let me show you. I’m flying home next weekend. My flight leaves in SEVEN DAYS. I am verily excited. One of my friends asked me yesterday what my itinerary is, when I’m getting in, when I’m leaving, the usual. I’m all “Oh sometime Thursday night, let me look!” And I looked and I looked and I LOOKED EVERYWHERE BUT NO PLANE TICKET WAS TO BE FOUND. FOR MY TRIP IN SEVEN DAYS. THAT MY WORK WAS SUPPOSED TO PAY FOR. Thankfully, the ticket I booked, after applying some leftover credit, ended up being the same as my ticket for the wedding the week after that I booked three months ago, so my manager was cool paying for it. Thank God I checked yesterday instead of waiting until the night before or the morning of to print my boarding pass. THIS IS HOW I KNOW GOD LOVES ME.

My music library is in SEVERE need of more Dolly Parton.

The feller made me dinner the other day (have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE people who feed me? LOVE THEM. My bff & her fiance fed me about once a week for awhile, and it’s possible that the only reason I still speak to my dad is because he was the maker of food growing up (that’s not the ONLY reason, gosh). At any rate, the surest way to build up my good will for you is to provide me with food; I’m easy like that and not ashamed to admit it), and I feel inspired. Not quite enough to actually, you know, COOK regularly, but my (VERY DEEPLY BURIED) culinary interest was piqued. The meal, while a little time consuming, was EASY and delicious, and I feel confident that I could recreate some approximation of it. Maybe Sunday night, I’ll do some cooking.

And APPARENTLY, you can make cinnamon rolls out of Amish Friendship Bread dough. Did you know that? I DIDN’T but it sounds DELICIOUS, and Imma try it this weekend.

ETA: Oh yeah, here’s a funny blog post about grammar/spelling mistakes: I care about this alot

From the same blog, here’s a post about procrastination! *headdesk*

And look at the SEXY SEXY shoes I’m gonna buy for the wedding. I want to make love to them.

ETA 2: OMG I WANT THAT. And HEY! 15% off everything at Sephora. MWHAHAHAHA

Order in the Chaos

Last year for one of my classes, I was supposed to read Everything is Miscellaneous. I only read about half of it, but WHAT A HALF. David Weinberger talks about creating a sort of controlled chaos with digital content which makes searching for things easier, such as using LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of tags to describe a photo or a blog post or the like. His reasoning is that if you tag something with every possible thing you could use to describe it, then it exists in more places and could be easier to locate if you only remember that it was yellow or about a ball or whatever. And I DRANK HIS KOOL-AID. I DRANK IT RIGHT UP. I think he makes a lot of sense, and he COMPLETELY converted me to tags, where before I wasn’t terribly interested in using them ever. Which is why I always have multiple tags on blog and flickr posts and why I have 117 shelves in Goodreads.

Last night, as I was watching one of my class lectures (whoo! look at me go!), the instructor mentioned sorting email and different tools and ways to do that. And now, I am OBSESSIVELY SORTING MY EMAIL. My work email is kind of a catch all. I don’t EVER delete anything, but I don’t really sort much so EVERYTHING is hard to find. But today starts a new regime! Everything’s going into a folder! It’s like a compulsion now, I can’t help myself!

It kind of is weird to me how into SORTING AND TAGGING I get, especially considering I’m not terribly organized at home or even with school stuff, but then I remember that I have that Thing about patterns. That Thing where I REALLY like patterns and kind of compulsively arrange things into patterns without even realizing it. I’m making a shawl right now in which I am supposed to place beads randomly throughout, and LET ME TELL YOU, the only reason why I’m not mathematically figuring out where to place each bead so it’s even everywhere is because I’m lazy. I’m eyeballing the even bead placement instead.

So I’ve been very impressed with my performance so far in school this semester. I’m not even close to perfect, but I have gotten assignments turned in on time, and I’m making an effort to watch the lectures and check my email regularly. It’s a very refreshing change from previous semesters when I pretty much didn’t do any work until the last two weeks of class. And while watching the class lectures aren’t the highlight of my day, it is nice to be able to watch them at my leisure at home on my couch while I’m eating dinner or in my bed before I go to sleep. I love that don’t have to put clothes on if I don’t want to! That is the problem with traditional classes; GOING to them, putting clothes on, it’s all so much effort. But I think the best thing is that I don’t have to stretch my short attention span. If I get bored or my mind starts to wander, I can pause the lecture, go putter around somewhere else for awhile and then come back to it and not miss anything. It’s AWESOME.

Gun Control

Gun Control, originally uploaded by Being a Dilettante.