Amusing Things Part 1

OK, this video never ceases to amuse me.

Taking a Sick Day for Anxious People

I've never quite thought of myself as a workaholic, but it's funny to see how hard it is for me to take a day off since I started working. Now, this isn't a day off like "I need a mental health day" - that's a whole different can of worms. I do believe those days are necessary, but tell that to my guilty conscience and overbearing standards for myself!

Today, I've got: a sore throat, an achy body, a head full of cotton, and a stuffy nose. Now, if that's not a nasty cold that actually DEMANDS a day off - I don't know what is.

So here's the catch - I CAN'T RELAX. I mean, I slept until about 10. I ate Indian food for breakfast (possibly not the greatest choice, blurg). I set myself up a sick box next to my bed with everything I could possibly need in it (external hard drive with movies/tv, ibuprofen, tissues, headphones, journal, crossword puzzles, etc). I should be lounging about, reveling in the excuse to do nothing. But all I feel is stir crazy.

I can't be the only person who feels like this, right?!

This is a pretty hilarious post about 20 things to do on your sick day.

Here's how my day has gone so far:

1. Wake up at 7am, body's natural get-up-for-work clock is on it. Go back to sleep.
2. 9am - "Are you sure you're not going to work?" zzzzzzzzz.
3. 10am - GODDAMMIT I can't stay asleep any longer because my nose is threatening to explode.
4. Get hair under control (I look like I got electrocuted).
5. Lie on bed moaning.
6. Blow nose. (repeat every 5 minutes)
7. Peruse Google Reader. (repeat every 5 minutes)
8. Lose tissues in bed. 
9. After 15 minutes of raging, find tissues on floor at foot of bed.
10. Watch 3 episodes of Community in a row before I remembered that I planned yesterday to try to space out tv watching with other, more productive things. Fail. Watch another episode of Community. 
11. Eat Indian food leftovers from last night. Begin to regret eating Indian food.
12. Indian food seems to have settled, thank the baby Jesus.
13. Decide to go see The Debt in theaters because it is the only movie that looks even remotely worth watching. Showtime: 2:15pm. Current time: 11:37. DRAT.
14. Blog.

So. There we have it. Still no idea of how to tame my inner workaholic/meany voice. Mostly I think I'm just bored. 

Ideas??

Hello Hello

Single Gal Dinner #3

In other news, goat cheese pizza from Trader Joe's!

Seriously, Trader Joe's frozen stuff is amazing. Some things from TJ's I like:

• Green Chili & Cheese Tamales (eat with some good nutritious soup & some fruit)
• Individual quiches of varying kinds (my fave is broccoli & cheese)
• Potato latkes (ya rly)
• Veggie lasagna

With this delightful little pizza, I ate:

And drank:

Pellegrino and red wine (not mixed together, of course!)

Live a little :)

Exotic Cheeses, Every Day All The Time

My favorite kind of day is one that includes many different kinds of cheeses. Luckily, Kate and I are of a similar mind on this front!

We started the day at Absinthe in Hayes Valley - lovely lovely lovely as always!

Kate the villainess

Faced with an entire menu of beautiful brunch goodness, we decide on cocktails and cheese with a side of Peach Brown Sugar pancakes. Of course. Because that's how we roll.

Abbaye de Belloc cheese with white-wine apricot preserves

 We also had a tasty Hudson Valley domestic Camembert with apple slices and toasted walnuts, AND (my favorite of the three) a magnificent Cana de Oveja from Lorenzo Abellan’s Farm, Murcia, Spain with fig compote.

Of course, not ones to do anything halfway, we made the pilgrimage to Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes in search of more cheeses - stinky, bloomy, delicious, the lot of it. (Also, what is this place? I want to go to there.)

And we came away with some LOOT:

• Garrotxa Spanish Goat Milk Cheese
• Casatica di Bufula (water buffalo milk cheese, amazing with Food Should Taste Good multigrain chips)
• Fiore Sardo (sheep's milk hard cheese, fantastic with Cowgirl Creamery membrillo)
• Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog (of course)
• Cowgirl Creamery Wagon Wheel

What an amazingly fabulous and cheese-filled day. Separate post coming about what we made for dinner...

Love! D

Rainy Day Movies

Listening to rainymood.com at work keeps me sane most of the time. The ocean or the rainforest or any of those other ambient sounds never relaxes me enough, but the sound of rain is only the best thing ever.

I know that when winter comes, I'm only going to want more sunshine.. but more often than not, when it's sunny I feel the weight of the tyranny of a beautiful day.

My lovelies, what are some of your favorite rainy-days movies? The ones that you watch over and over again even though you've seen them a million times, that feel almost as good to fall into as your bed covered in pillows?

Mine are:

Amelie

The Breakfast Club

Miracle

Casino Royale

Enjoy your weekend! I'll be snuggled up tonight with my deluxe Snuggie (hell yeah don't judge) and probably some hot chocolate and maybe caprese salad (just to confuse my sense of the seasons even more).

xoxo D

Time Gaps

I've been thinking a lot lately about wasted time. I spend two hours a day on the bus on the way to or from work. Then I drive home. Often, I wait for something. For the bus, for someone to meet me, in line at the grocery store or the post office.

I read an interesting post today from Marc and Angel Hack Life. I find a lot of their posts to be a bit trite or overdone, but every once in a while they hit the nail on the head. This particular post was about doing "good-karma" things with your little bits of free time (anywhere from 5 mins to 3 hours). I don't know about you-all, but sometimes it's the waiting, the bits and pieces of time I have, when I'm too agitated to just sit and be, that get me - I tend to fall into thought-spirals or stare at my phone waiting for it to entertain me. It got me thinking - what is my list of good-karma things to do in my "time gaps"?

**Note - I hate the idea that we have to fill every minute with something. I'm not endorsing that kind of anxiety - in fact far from it. This is rather an exercise on my part - to spend my extra pieces of time doing something productive or wholesome instead of refreshing Facebook obsessively.

1-5 minute gaps

• send someone a nice text about how much you love them or with a funny joke.
• grab one thing you don't need anymore and throw it away (or start a Goodwill bag)
• read a quick inspirational text to get you thinking (here are some examples)
• grab your own grocery bags to take to the store, or put them in your car
• smell a pretty flower; maybe pick it to put in your hair
• put one thing back in its place
• wash 3 dishes
• think of someone you haven't seen in a long time and wish them well with all your heart
• watch a funny Youtube video to make you laugh (these ones are pretty great)
• hug an animal (make sure you ask if he/she/it doesn't belong to you!)
• click t0 get sponsors to donate at the Hunger Site (no commitment, just literally clicking a button and then advertisers donate $)

15-30 minute gaps

• flip through your recipe box or a cookbook or your browser bookmarks (I know you use Chrome by now..), pick a new recipe, and put it on your calendar to make it sometime in the next 2 weeks. [these look tasty!]
• write a postcard to your family member/best friend and include an observation of something beautiful.
• go on a walk with a jar of water and water 1 plant that looks sad and like it needs some love.
• call your best friend and talk about feelings (sometimes this may take longer if you are me).
• find a place you'd like volunteer for an afternoon or a few hours.
• plan a day to volunteer and put it on your calendar.
• call your grandma or grandpa and ask them to tell you a story. (grandparents are awesome!)
• do something silly to make someone else laugh.

1-3 hour gaps

• Make dinner for a friend who is overworked and hates cooking! Tell them they can bring something if they want but no obligation.
• Plan an afternoon with your friends to go somewhere and volunteer together, like a community garden or a shelter lunch.
• Educate yourself about something new. Google Books, How Stuff Works, and hell yeah Wikipedia are a good place to start. Also the real-live library which is my favorite!
• Take at least 1 bag of giveaway stuff to Goodwill. They take just about everything and have store everywhere.
• Think of 1 way you can improve your home and plan it out. My current ideas are: 1) organize the corner of my living room that should have a couch in it, 2) convince my building owner to order a compost bin for the building, 3) figure out a good laundry system that prevents a month of laundry backlog.
• Invite someone over to do nothing with you. Drink wine, read poetry to each other, whatever you want. Just enjoy being with someone you think is awesome and who you know thinks you're awesome.

Enjoy.. of course the irony is how long I've spent on the computer composing this. Oh well. Worth it. Gonna go read poetry in bed now.

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

AS virtuous men pass mildly away, 
    And whisper to their souls to go, 
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
    "Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."                     

So let us melt, and make no noise,
    No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys 
    To tell the laity our love. 

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
    Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres, 
    Though greater far, is innocent. 

Dull sublunary lovers' love 
    —Whose soul is sense—cannot admit 
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
    The thing which elemented it. 

But we by a love so much refined,
    That ourselves know not what it is, 
Inter-assurèd of the mind, 
    Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one, 
    Though I must go, endure not yet 
A breach, but an expansion, 
    Like gold to aery thinness beat. 

If they be two, they are two so
    As stiff twin compasses are two ; 
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show 
    To move, but doth, if th' other do. 

And though it in the centre sit, 
    Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it, 
    And grows erect, as that comes home. 

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
    Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
    And makes me end where I begun. 

-- John Donne

Here Today

Gone tomorrow.

[I do not end where I'd begun.]

normal day music

Have some music!! (Google Reader Folks, you have to click through to the actual website. Deal with it.)

The Bird and the Bee is AMAZING. <3

Self Portrait

Do You Know?

I wish I knew the time in Narnia..

Dim Sum Nice Food

Good Mong Kok Bakery, Stockton St. SF, CA

Take One Give One

Two Renn Fayres Ago