True

HA!! :-)

All in the Family

If I'm going to start blogging again, I might as well get going tonight!
After spending some time with family lately, some of whom I rarely see, and some I see all the time, I had a great "a-ha!" moment that caused me to chuckle to myself and simultaneously feel infinitely better about myself and the choices I make in my life. What realization could have such an effect on me? It came to me all at once that I was born into a family of dream-followers and eternal career-changers. Of all my parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents not a one of us has followed a college degree with a life-long career in that same field. Many, many of us have college degrees...but you'd be hard pressed to find a relative of mine who sticks with a job, or even a career, for their entire life. It's been interesting to dissect my family in this way.  It comforts me when I agonize about not knowing what I'm doing with my life yet, to know I'm in good company. I admire every one of my relatives for following dreams, making choices, living with consequences, and pursuing adventures. I have been lucky enough to grow up with the freedom to truly be anything I want when I grow up, and the love and support I need to take my time in figuring it out. Not only that, I know that I don't need to pick a career and stick with it. I'm not bound by the confines of making the "right choice". Nothing is permanent anyways!

I'm at home in the company of teachers, librarians, pilots, electricians, computer nerds, translators, science nerds, maintenance workers, temp employees, retail workers, environmental specialists.... with degrees in linguistics, anthropology, teaching, nutrition, biology, sociology, environmental studies, spanish and some unfinished degrees...and some pretty talented artists, photographers, gardeners, musicians, writers, leather workers, quilters, athletes, dancers, cooks, veterans, travelers, and story-tellers in our spare time! (lots of us span many of these identities and will continue to invent ourselves for the rest of our lives)

Thank You...

Tomorrow is December, everyone!!! Can you believe it?! In honor of Thanksgiving and this year coming to an end, here's my list of the top 10 things I'm thankful for:

1. My family, especially the ones I don't get to see very often and who live in far off lands
2. Having a place to live with rent I can afford and that's just minutes away from work!
3. My awesome little car, Ron, just reached 150,000 miles and he's still going STRONG!
4. Reminders that if enough people work together, they can make a difference
5. My amazing, patient, goofy, and loving boyfriend
6. All the girls I work with, who make it worth showing up every day
7. The intimidating but liberating feeling that I can do, or be, anything I want when I "grow up"
8. The most supportive and awesome mom and stepdad any girl could ask for
9. My health
10. Adventures with people I love

Happy (late) Thanksgiving, and happy December!!! <3

Tastes Like Memories

A certain super-cool cousin of mine wrote a blog recently about her favorite foods. Not necessarily the most delicious or culinarily impressive, but the foods that hold the best memories in their taste for her. I loved this idea so much I decided to steal it and write my own list of foods that have the best memories for me. The ones I can just taste or smell and be transported back to that memorable experience. These foods all have a story. Maybe the story or the food will be familiar to you?!

1. Sonlight chocolate chip cookies (none other like them in the world)
2. fruit loops and diet coke for breakfast
3. Cracklin Oat Bran or "big Os"
4. homemade waffles with hand-whipped cream and Aunt Jemima
5. Papa John's pizza and deep conversations with my mom
6. Haagen Dazs' dulce de leche ice cream, eaten with a fork
7. Lucky Charms in the kitchen of the house on 17th street
8. graham cracker and homemade frosting sandwiches
9. chicken pot pie
10. peanut butter pie
11. totino's meat lovers' pizza, with the meat picked off and Demetri Martin comedy
12. chai and catching up with old friends
13. baked potato with A1 sauce
14. swirly bread
15. sleepy time tea
16. Smarties, lined up in a row by color
17. kraft mac and cheese in Britta's yard
18. otter pops
19. popcorn from the old air popper, with extra butter and salt
20. Christmas eve sugar cookie dough
21. crab apples from Grandma's back yard
22. brie, eaten with a knife
23. caramel frappuccinos and shopping with my mom
24. Peaberry's Frozen Bear
25. Jalino's slice of cheese pizza eaten on the lawn of Boulder High
26. toast and Lipton tea for dinner, MV Explorer
27. pho, Vietnam
28. McDonald's french fries while falling asleep in the car, age 3
29. warm milk to fall asleep, Jasmin's house
30. Junior Mints, at almost every movie I've ever seen in theaters
31. Dip n Dots, Louisville century 12
32. sea urchin on a dare, San Diego
33. Stingray and thai food, Malaysia
34. graham crackers and apple juice in Grandma and Grandpa's kitchen
35. Cinnamon apple spice tea, extra sugar
36. cinnamon pop tarts with Katie, college dorm
37. strawberry rhubarb jam - Grandma's and Gold Hill Inn's
38. homemade ice cream
39. raspberry lemonade and late night conversations
40. cotton candy, Denver zoo
41. free/stolen hot chocolate, Denver Botanical Gardens
42. Sherpa Sampler (with saag panir)
43. homemade pizza - every Friday
44. s'mores around the campfire (toasted on a rake)
45. candy and soda and sitcom theme songs with Tanya
46. Burger King on top of Victoria's peak, Hong Kong
47. sno cone on the beach in Hawaii (Thanksgiving dinner)
48. freshly baked chocolate chip cookies with a rum and coke, while deepening friendships
49. toasted pumpkin seeds
50. sipping ramen soup while watching Titanic, home sick from school
51. Illegal Pete's bean and cheese burrito and Boulder outdoor cinema - Usually Monty Python, Princess Bride, or Ferris Bueller

Boulder State of Mind

While I wait for an episode of Glee to load (yeah yeah, I'm a Gleek...especially because I use the word gleek) I think I'll write whatever comes to mind right now.

I've loved my time living with the wonderfully awesome Heidi here in Denver, but it is soooo time to move back to Boulder. While I love the apartment here and the roommate, and the fact that there's a Sonic down the street (orange cream slush = YUM!) it's been getting harder and harder to drive that 40 minute drive back and forth all the time between Denver and Boulder. I guess it's just an experience that needed to be had in order to come to this conclusion: I don't have to always live in Boulder, but as long as I'm in Colorado...Boulder it definitely is. No point in living NEAR the coolest town in the state if I'm not actually going to live there. Even if Boulder doesn't have a Sonic. It doesn't have a Trader Joe's either which I am increasingly sad about, nor is it the most diverse of people or the cheapest place to live, but what does Boulder have? It holds within its borders almost ALL of my best childhood memories, it has the most amazing backdrop of mountains, it has a good balance of cold and hot and in between weather and a ridiculous amount of sunny days per year, it has beauty and precise care down to a science of almost freakish perfection while still managing to be spontaneous and rugged, and still remains just the right amount of artistic and weird! I fall in love with Boulder all over again each day when I drive toward the mountains from my current home in Denver. Someone once asked me how I can stand to leave home to travel. I answered something like this: I feel compelled to travel to new and completely different places often, and never fear leaving my home behind because I know it will always be there when I return. It will always hold my childhood for me and keep it safe, and every time I come back it's still there to offer new memories and old comforts. Thank you, Boulder! I'll always come back to you no matter how long I'm gone <3

One Adventure Always Leads to Another

I've finally gotten in front of my computer to write a little about our trip to Oregon and Washington! Yesss!

After the last time we tried to fly somewhere, this trip was EASY! Direct flight with a far superior airline. We rode Frontier both ways and they even served us warm chocolate chip cookies! Then as we were landing back in Denver a flight attendant announced that "please remember that Southwest does NOT serve you warm chocolate chip cookies!" Noted.

Day 1 began at 4am. Yuck. It is VERY dark still at 4am. Anthony and I threw ourselves together and were out the door, walking with luggage and all to the Boulder bus station to catch a bus to the Denver airport. The scene of us walking down a dark street in what felt like the middle of the night with suitcases struck me as funny, like maybe we were two kids trying to run away from home. Not a single problem to the airport, nor on the flight in to Portland, OR. We arrived and Anthony's dad picked us up, drove us the 1.5 or so hours to the coast and I was immediately aware of not being in Colorado anymore, a feeling a absolutely love! (I love Colorado, but knowing that you're far from home on an adventure is a great feeling, so seeing different trees, landscape, and even the air felt different!) The pine trees were HUGE! Leave it to the northwest to have enormous trees. Another place on my list of where to go will be the redwood forests in California. I hear those trees are pretty big :-) Made it to the coast and it was locked in with fog but I could smell and hear that the ocean was nearby, even if I couldn't see it! First order of business at the beach cabin was bathroom, food, nap, then hit the beach for a long walk and exploring and taking tons of photos.

Day 2 involved sleeping in, heading into town to explore, bought a kite, walked along the beach more, flying the kite and sunbathing, going to the local grocery store to buy food for making dinner, as it was Anthony and my night to make dinner for the family. After much debating what to have and discovering that the local store has a distinct lack of meat other than beef and fish, we found some chicken for the grill as well as burgers. One of the most beautiful sunsets EVER!

Day 3 involved wet suits, surf boards, boogie boards, and a hike through the wilderness to find our car. SO fun and exhausting. The water is freezing cold, just like the water in Maine, and a lot of California. I haven't really experienced any particularly warm beaches. Guess I should head farther south for that. That night we also had a beach campfire which combined the deliciously familiar smell of campfire with the beautifully foreign scene of a beach and ocean...can't get any better! And of course, we made s'mores.

Day 4 was packing up the cabin, going out for an awesome (if delayed) breakfast in downtown Cannon Beach, then embarking on a 4 hour drive to Seattle in which I was bestowed the honor of being horribly carsick the entire time. Lame. Once we got to Seattle, though, we had a great dinner in downtown Kirkland with Anthony's parents and they showed me the waterfront and we walked around  down by the boats all docked, some with crazy partiers which seemed odd since it was a Sunday evening, but maybe when you have a boat and it's a beautiful night it doesn't matter if you have to work the next day. Seize the day!

Day 5 our first day in Seattle, borrowing Anthony's parents' Mini Cooper (I had no idea what a fun little sporty car those things are!) We first went to Capitol Hill, then downtown, to the Market, drank some coffee, visited a couple friends of Anthony in their downtown office where we discovered a few of Anthony's paintings were hanging, tried to find Dave Matthews' house...You know you've got an awesome boyfriend, by the way, if he spends half an hour driving around and around while you try to spot Dave Matthews' house...thanks babe! Then we drank more coffee. Had a really delicious dinner, check out some night views of Seattle, then ate at Iver's fish and chips place down by the water.

Day 6 we went out for breakfast in Kirkland, then drove to downtown Seattle, did a little shopping and wandering, drank lots of coffee, visited the U district (University of Washington campus and surrounding shops, restaurants, housing, etc) a crazy mountain bike course underneath a highway, went to Gasworks park, drove around some more, picked up my little buddy Andy who just arrived in Seattle to start college at Seattle University and went out for some of the most delicious sushi any of us had ever had, walked for a while, went up to Capitol Hill and hung out there for the evening.

Day 7 We set out for Bellingham, WA the home of Anthony's sister and her family, and Anthony's college, Western Washington U. Also visited a small rural town just outside Bellingham where some friends of Anthony lived. They were what I would call trendy hippie artists with two pet ducks. In Bellingham we went for a walk along the waterfront with Anthony's sister and her freakin' adorable baby and of course drank more coffee, went up to WWU campus, then had dinner at a local brewery, then hit up a wine bar downtown, then back to the brewery for a fun reggae night/hula hoop extravaganza.

Day 8 headed back to Seattle, went to the airport, boarded the airplane, ate some chocolate chip cookies on the plane, flew home, collapsed into bed in complete satisfied exhaustion!

During our trip to the northwest, we decided two more adventures to go on the list are to start in southern California and drive north all the way up the coast, stopping in wine country, doing some camping, and seeing all kinds of other beautiful places we find along the way. The other trip is to take the ferry from Bellingham to Alaska. Oh yeah, and to visit Vancouver also. So that's 3 adventures, or maybe one really big epic adventure! We'll see :-) One adventure always leads to another doesn't it?

Fall in the Air

Happy Tuesday evening!
I am SO glad it's cooler and a little bit rainy! There's that hint of fall in the air now that I absolutely love. It gets me excited for fall, pretty leaves, pumpkins, chai, and scarves. I had a productive day (after sleeping in until 11!) ran some errands, finished packing for Oregon and then went to Zumba with Sara. There's something about dancing around a gym with 40 other women (and one man) working up a sweat to great music that's so much fun! Hopefully I can afford to continue doing it.

I'm currently curled up in bed watching Rent and drinking tea, so it's a nice end to a great day. Ahhh... :-)