list love

i love making lists! just look at my desk, post-its all over the monitor and daily to-dos lovingly lurking in my peripheral vision:

sure, i could consolidate all of those notes into one spot, some handy app like listography…but i’m still pretty attached to the ol’ pen-on-whatever-paper-you-can-find. and i bet many people who claim to be organized would agree. jotting down thoughts, ideas, tasks, reminders, etc. is a fundamental part of putting things in order. so, especially if you’re looking to get organized, you should learn to thrive on list-making!

need some inspiration? ok, it’s three years old, but here’s a solid 10-point list of why all kinds of lists are just so lovable. enjoy!

goodbye vegetarius

after about eight years as an egg-and-cheese-eating vegetarian (technically a lacto-ovo vegetarian), i am now full-on in meat-eating mode. (alright, that sounds kind of gross but not quite gross enough to switch back.)

being a vegetarian really became a part of my identity. for a class assignment, i even started a blog about vegetarianism (can you guess what it was called?). i remember having to recite things about myself on the first days of each spanish class in college. “soy una vegetariana” was always one of my go-tos. this eating habit started my freshman year, when i decided, pretty simply, that eating animals creeped me out. so i quit meat cold turkey.

the transformation back to my pre-vegetarian days was not nearly as abrupt. when i started getting chicken cravings last year (no, i was not pregnant), i spent a few months thinking about why i was a vegetarian and if eating meat really would bother me. long story short, i had my first bite — of some white fish i couldn’t name — on a trip to california last summer. it took me another few months to actually start calling myself a meat-eater.

it’s weird even to be writing this post, but it’s been an interesting new phase of my daily food intake, and i’m content. so, as the title says, this is my official adios to vegetarianism (for now…).

twenty twelve

the world has already rung in the new year (and i certainly did my fair share of celebrating!), but today — two days in — really feels like a fresh set of 12 months. and a sunny one at that!

i’ll take today’s brightness as a sign of what’s ahead:

i keep saying 2012 sounds so “futuristic.” probably a bit obvious when describing it prior to midnight on saturday, but even now that the year is here, saying “twenty twelve” or even “two thousand and twelve” just sounds so much like some apocalypse movie in which our planet is taken over by the robots we created.

while that makes 2012′s future sound pretty doom and gloom, i have a good feeling about what this year will bring (a wedding for sure!). and i know that’s easy to say on jan. 2, when virtually nothing’s happened yet and our resolutions are still being excused for tomorrow start dates.

nevertheless, i vow to soak up and reemit all the positive vibes i can in this space-y-sounding year … even if there is a robot takeover! (but let’s hope there’s not.)

happy 2012 to all!

overblown packaging

in the past few days, we’ve received shipments of gifts (to give) nearing the double digits. and in opening each of them, i’ve realized one particular pet peeve:

whether it’s extra paper, plastic, styrofoam, cardboard, etc., the additional “stuffing” that comes shoved into some of these orders is just preposterous!

look at this box:

it’s huge in proportion to the two rather flat gift cards that came in it. and what did this sender do? pack that box full of inflated plastic pillows and cut-up pieces of another box. (naturally, i stomped this excess over to the recycling bin in my immediate annoyance.)

so, to pretty much any place/person shipping pretty much anything: consider the proportion of product vs. packaging. it will end up saving everyone time (and most likely money, also).

midnight [color]

almost just as a necessity, i’ve been thinking alot about colors. (i am getting married after all, and picking colors seems to be one of those catalytic decisions in the process.) as someone who is “into” style – whatever that means – i pay attention to color as a descriptor.

when i worked at a consignment store in washington, d.c., we’d entertain ourselves with determining which colorful adjective to use in labeling articles of clothing. pewter, mint, egglplant, burnt sienna…

so in a recent search for dark-colored tights, i realized that all colors should (and most do) have a “midnight” version. like the midnight navy tights i never found! dark, thick, deep tones with an almost-forgettable hint of a familiar hue. see the inkling of midnight colors against the black bar:

this post is more of a request for whoever it is out there in charge of naming and selling colors. the wizard of oz, perhaps?

(and by the way, we’re going with berry-ish, gray-ish and baby blue-ish.)

inner saboteur

the only way to explain this title is with one word: self-sabotage.

it’s a too-constant constant in my life. a fight between my selves.

but am i guilty of self-sabotage? or am i the victim of it?

either way, we can definitely handle the battles, but it’s time for the productive/inspired/focused me to win the war!

revamped butt-holders

(ok, so it’s more like two-and-a-half words, but they still sound great together!)

i’ve never really done “home” projects on my own. sure, i’ve completed plenty of crafts and homemade thingamajigs. i’ve even helped others paint rooms, fix holes in walls, switch doorknobs, that kind of stuff.

but this is probably the first real DIY project i’ve done, and it’s not even as crazy as i could get with project-ing! it was the simple re-covering of chairs that had already once been covered.

we went:

and voila! new, blue, flowery seats for our bums!

(and a bright addition to an otherwise colorless dining nook.)

underwater ride

i hopped on the capmetro #19 bull creek bus today to be transported down the drag during my lunch hour. as we cruised along the street waves (ok, potholes), i noticed something.

the picture doesn’t quite do it justice, but that bus looked like it was completely capable of shifting from a land machine to a submarine — and back. just check out the shape of the front window:

cushy seats, short-people-friendly “stop” buttons (basically at hand-level) and some aesthetic efforts made this 2.5-minute bus journey….well, better than most.

i don’t know where the city is hiding these spacious, futuristic rides, but it’s time to borrow them from atlantis and let us lowly terra people experience the luxury.

super cleaner

in the past few weeks i’ve come to what is in my opinion a very realistic conclusion about what my super power would be.

suuuuuppppppppeeeeeeerrrr cleeeaner!

after recognizing the therapy session i get out of cleaning my own apartment, i’ve taken a side job cleaning for a friend of mine. sure, it’s not something i enjoy doing 100 percent, but i’m pretty good at it!

hence the super power.

while the idea needs some more fleshing out, here’s what i’m thinking: as the super cleaner, i’d be fast and efficient at not only cleaning, but also getting rid of evidence and covering my tracks. i would obviously need some sort of fighting ability, so perhaps my speed in cleaning is caused by spinning incredibly quickly. when i needed to defend myself, i’d run over my enemies like a tornado!

sounds good enough for marvel. someone tell ‘em the idea’s for sale!

trash heads

often i look at situations and think, “what happened here? who was in charge of this [situation/operation] and made this decision?”

a perfect example is the trash pick-up this morning. as instructed by our landlord, we put out all of our trash and recycling bins, with a note attached to one of each requesting that the trash peeps take them away, because we had an extra pair.

they took one trash can without the note attached and left the note-bearing recycling bin.

something clearly got lost in translation.