Things I Learned This Week

With an ever-decreasing attention span thanks in majority to modern technology, I absorb a lot of little, interesting tidbits over the course of a week. Facts, thoughts, things of note, glimpses into something deeper. I feel like dispelling these in one place, all at once, might be useful at least to myself. Like I’m puking up my short term memory. “My, but that’s what Twitter is for!” you declare. Well, yes, asshole, I guess you’re right. Shhhhh… Let me play around with writing formats, okay?

• My faith in Sean as a coach increases. Not only is he coaching our friend Nicole in self-defense/murder before she jaunts off to Turkey and Jordan for weeks, but he also somehow convinced me to run the 8K leg of next month’s Shamrock Run. Now, I used to jog on a regular basis. In fact it was my principal workout several years ago. I loved taking a run along the Columbia River in The Dalles or up through blossoming cherry orchards on winding country roads. With a good playlist, I just kept going. Then family genetics caught up with me, as all the women in my family said it would, and my knees cried for a ceasefire. I stopped, and since then haven’t really done much else in terms of running beyond sprints and occasionally jogging a bit to warm up before another workout. But the fact that Sean will be there beside me (you will, right honey? Please??? Shit.), encouraging me, telling me I’m kicking ass, just like he always is when we workout together, makes it seem a million times more doable. He is the only guy I’ve dated with whom I actually enjoy exercising. He makes me test my limits and push myself further, but safely. He knows I can do it and tells me as such. For that, I thank you dear.
  Now, to pull out my knee high, bright green socks emblazoned with the word BEER on each leg and get this thing done.
• Stinky, sulfur-rich veggies (onions, garlic, cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts) are super good for you. I vaguely knew that taking the extra effort to chop up an onion and add it to a recipe was worth it for reasons beyond just taste. Here’s a great article why.
• Fashion blogs and Pinterest are simultaneously helping and not helping my wardrobe. Pro: I’m thinking of new, fun ways to combine and wear pieces that I already own. Con: I want to buy, buy, buy. Which is bad in itself, but considering I’m also changing dress sizes regularly (I went down two sizes in a little over four months and am now the smallest size I’ve ever been as an adult), it’s just impractical. It’s bad enough I’m buying 1-2 pairs of (cheap!) jeans in each size with which to just get by.
• My dear friends in Florida won’t be making it to our August wedding, but for the best reason possible: baby #2 is due right around then. Sad I won’t be able to see them for the first time in 5 years, but very, very happy for them and their growing family. I said it’s okay as long as the baby is named after me. Stephanie for a girl, Stephen for a boy.
• RuPaul’s Drag Race is so, so great. Photo shoots + costume design + fashion show + lip synching to the death + queens = I want to watch this all day, every day.
• Figuring out how to utilize our accumulated air miles for our Italian honeymoon is really confusing. I’d elaborate further, but that sentence trumps any explanation simply due to gross FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS.
• Stripping my diet to almost all unprocessed basics has caused me to look at holistic versions of a lot of things in my life. And whenever I flirt with the concepts of holistic medicine, I think of this and wise up:
  
• Another experienced climber dies on Mt. Hood. It goes to show you that even something that is climbed as often as Hood can be unpredictable and dangerous. Kind of like the time I was coming down from its summit and a giant chunk of ice almost took out my head. Scary stuff.
• According to the new and improved USDA Plant Hardiness Map, my little corner of Portland is Zone 8b: 15-20F. I’m coming down with a touch of my annual eeeeeeeeeeeeee!spring-is-coming fever, and have already started brainstorming this year’s garden. Considering I’ve gardened in something like a desert for the past several years, I’m very much looking forward to a whole season in this “new” climate.

 

Resolutions

I’ve long been against cliche New Year’s resolutions. One, because I’m soooo anti-establishment. Two, because I’m lazy. Three, because goal-setting seemed too new age, self-help for my liking. My goals were usually school related, or as something as broad as “don’t suck.” It worked for the most part, and I never finished the year disappointed at my lack of follow through.

As I’ve gotten older though, it’s starting to make a little more sense. Now that I’ve graduated school (um, almost 7 years ago now) and have had time to establish myself as an actual, real adult, there’s a broad span of decades before me left to chart out. I’ve got a great job, a career path in mind, a rad life partner to whom I’m almost 8 months away from swearing my life, a health and fitness regime that’s working well, and a pretty ideal life in the city, chickens, cats and all. So what’s left? Where do I fine tune the details? I guess this is where my resolutions take shape.

• Keep track of what I cook.
  Not for the sake of monitoring carbs/calories/nutrients/whatever, but because I often forget the delicious meals I’ve made in the past and end up making them only once. Interesting food combinations, meals we say would be great to serve our parents or at a dinner party, ones I want to fine tune later when a different ingredient is in season… I think some kind of journaling is required here.

 

• January challenge: no cheats on eating paleo.
  No sugar in anything (nor any sweetener type products like agave syrup), no booze (first time I’ve made a point to not drink for an entire month), no dairy, no “just a bite” cheats, no dark chocolate squares, nothin’. I’m making penance for my holiday-induced sins and gluttony and want to start fresh.

 

• Take time to read more.
  I listen to audiobooks every day on my 2-hour commute, so it’s not like I’m not consuming  literature. In fact I’m just about to finish the fifth mega book in the Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire series. But I have a decent stack of books on our coffee table that I’ve only partially read, and I’m pretty sure they give me the evil side-eye every time I walk past to go work out or veg with a Hulu show or movie on Netflix.

 

• Carve out time each week for wedding planning.
  It’s less than 8 months away and I have some big things to accomplish, the most pressing of which is beginning AND completing the search for the all-important dress. Then there’s  caterers, a florist, rentals, Sean’s suit, the wedding party’s gear… it’s a lot of stuff that I’ve been vague about thus far because the wedding seemed so far away. Time to git crackin’.

 

• Continue having Active Sundays with Sean.
  Almost every week for the past couple months we’ve made a point to do something active together on Sundays. Oftentimes they’re different than our usual workouts. Hikes, trying new fitness classes, exploring a neighborhood, random circuits in the nearby park… It’s a fun way to not be complete slugs on an appealingly lazy day, and doing so together.

 

• Be better about doing the dishes.
  I love to cook, but I hate doing dishes. Compounded by our lack of dishwasher in this house (something we didn’t realize until the day we moved in), our busy schedules, and our small kitchen, and it’s easy for the room and us to be overwhelmed with the work to be done. We’ve been on top of it lately and it’s felt great. I’d love to continue that.

 

• Foster better relationships with people and strive to have more intimate events.
  Our groups of friends often end up only getting together in large groups via massive event invitations on Facebook. We say hi, comment on the costume we’re usually wearing (we’re a group that enjoys a good costume party), have a few moments to chat, and then we’re all drunk and the photos posted online contain more memories than what I can actually recall. Lately I’ve been trying to have smaller gatherings with more meaningful conversation or activities (even some without booze), and they have been great.

 

• Maintain a creative outlet.
  Namely with graphic design, as my job doesn’t require too much out of the ordinary and I need to keep myself sharp and sane.

 

• Maintain freelancing gigs.
  Right now I have a steady social media freelancing job, and I want to continue that as well as create new opportunities. Plus that extra money is going directly into wedding savings.

 

• Plan our honeymoon.
  We’re looking at heading to Rome for a couple days before flying to the Italian island of Sardinia for a week or so for our honeymoon. I’ve done a lot of initial research (and I’ve been to Rome before), but final arrangements need to be made. In light of that, also…

 

• Take a refresher course in Italian.
  At one point in my life I was near fluent, but that was 8 years ago and only the basic sentences remain. I need to go back through my books and utilize Rosetta Stone.

 

Summer Fun in the Northwest

While the east coast has had to endure record setting heat waves, earthquakes, floods and now hurricane season, the biggest complaint we’ve had on the west coast this summer has been that our summer hasn’t been hot enough. I’m not saying I wasn’t one of those (and still am), but in comparison to other regions of the nation, we’re getting off easy. All we have the The Big One lurking over our shoulder, and man, I ain’t giving that dude a second thought.

Despite the feeling that we’ve been gipped months and months of hot, sunny weather, I’ve somehow managed to cram in a lot of diverse, sunny fun in the past few weeks.

 

I brewed beer for the first time with other beer loving ladies…

That's me, gloved up, straining the malt grains for our LOLA Hibiscus IPA

 

We drove into the middle of nowhere for the fantastic, intimate and scenic Schoolhouse Rock festival.

View as we were leaving, the historic schoolhouse on the left, Mt. Hood in the background.

 

I gave Diego a mullet.

This is me trying to not let his hair blow into my mouth. Diego, waking and sobering up the next morning: "I have a MULLET??!! A guy that looks like me should not have a MULLET!!"

 

We hosted our first barbeque at the new place for the 4th of July.

Not included in this photo: bocce ball tournaments, Osama Bin Laden fireworks, barbecue grill

 

We got two new chickens and were completely surprised with a beauty of a chicken coop from my dad’s girlfriend Bobbie.

Nora, the scatterbrained Polish crested hen, and Nimbly, the bullyer who loves to be held Araucana

Adorable primary colors!

 

I made a men’s size 3XL white t-shirt into a disposable dress at a friend’s “Dirty Thirty” birthday party. The messy foods brought by the horde expectedly evolved into a big ol’ food fight.

And that's defintiely a can of OG Four Loko.

 

We got engaged.

 

Sean and I walked with in the Oregon Brewers Festival Parade together for the first time, followed up by a drunk day at the fest. For me with was a day of work (rough, eh?), for him it was a vacation day taken to drink beer and sleep under trees along Portland’s waterfront park.

Another day in the office.

SLEEPY BOY!

 

We brought our families together for an awesome evening of dinner at drinks at our wedding venue. (pssst: now 364 days away)

View to the east from the gorgeous grounds where we're gittin' hitched.

 

Strippers did a really shitty job washing my car.

At least it benefited the Humane Society. And it was strippers washing my car.

 

I embarked upon my first mountain backpacking trip with my dad and stepsister up the 10,040′ Middle Sister mountain.

We took over 300 photos over the 3 days of this trip. It was *that* scenic and fun.

The crew at base camp before we schlepped back on our heavy packs and headed downhill.

 

I attended my first kickboxing fights.

Sean's teammate on the left, in the Impact JJ trunks, handily won that fight.

 

We also had our engagement party at Sean’s folks’ lovely home, attended many BBQs and gave up (read: never started) watering our lawn. I also got way into hot yoga, started eating a mostly paleo diet (minus the occasional beer, because dammit it’s my job) and am down some lbs in an attempt to lose 30 before I turn 30 next summer (which coincides nicely with getting married).

What’s next? Well today I won two tickets for tonight’s Decemberists, Okkervil River and AgesandAges show at McMenamin’s Edgefield, so that was a spur of the moment awesomeness. The weather is brilliant for an outdoor concert, too. Tomorrow we’re screening the UFC fights on a projector screen in our backyard while barbecuing with a group of friends. Next weekend we’re heading up to Seattle for the Bumbershoot music and arts festival. My annual frolicking in the hops fields for work is coming up, as is a family and friend sojourn up Mt. Hood for a weekend in the historic Cloud Cap cabin.

In other words, despite few days in the 90s or higher, I don’t think I have much to gripe about.

Done Got B’trothed.

That’s right! I am now an engaged lady.

Promised to an occasionally grizzled dude.

(us a week before the proposal)

Who, despite me being fairly sure he was going to propose at the coffee shop where we had our first date mere days before my birthday, managed to surprise me with a whole group of family and friends, smiling, laughing, clapping and waving handmade signs across the street.

Since I said yes (there really wasn’t much doubt), he declared it a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

We've had jokes rooted in this sign and other 9/11-based politics since our first date. Yep, we decided "This might be going somewhere!" when we shared our first politically incorrect joke.

And I declared it a smashing success because he bought my dream ring, a vintage number I had found months prior.

MY PRECIOUS.

Oh, and because I’m marrying the guy I love to bits.
Bits, I tell you!

"Show the ring!" "How am I supposed to hold it up without looking ridiculous?" Apparently not like you're going to backhand the camera.

So that’s some news, I guess. 🙂

Holy frickin’ hearts…

The wedding video from the nuptials of Lauren of I Love You Much is kinda of my favorite thing right now. Way to take a static, mostly cheesy genre and make it outstanding. And original. And authentic. And awesome.