Resolutionizing: 2018

Hi team...I know I've been ghost-silent around here for far too long, but I have a good excuse, per usual. And that good excuse is that I have been on the brink of death - slight exaggeration, but not really that extreme. My family cut our planned ski trip to Tahoe short by several days due to my delightfully phlegmy lungs, and I've spent the last week more or less tucked in bed doing next-to-nothing while coughing, sleeping and reading to kick off 2018. BOOOO. 

With that said, I never let a year turn without doing two things - recapping the year past and appreciating all its goodness, and making resolutions for the year ahead. Being a basic bitch, I couldn't let a little sickness stop me from starting 2018 the same way, so without further ado, a few small resolutions and, as usual, my bigger goal for the year! 

1. Explore more of the Bay Area. 

I LOVE CALIFORNIA, and I am so glad I moved here. That said, I've quickly fallen into my usual patterns of having "my" spots, and while that's an utterly lovely feeling, I can't let one of the biggest cities in the country go unexplored. Here's to a 2018 full of more time in SF (and Oakland and San Jose and Berkeley and all over the Bay!), new wineries, different restaurants, and most of all new outdoor adventures in this wild, gorgeous area I call home now. 

2. Try harder at dating. 

I hate Millennial dating, and I am terrible at it. In 2018, I may not want to date, but I need to put more effort into that - whether that's trying harder to build on existing connections, biting the bullet and getting back on the apps (UGH), or even just seeking more opportunities to meet people. I may be fine with things the way they are in my personal life, but I also know I won't be fine with that forever, and practicing dating is a painful but necessary exercise. 

3. Do more yoga.

I have fallen so hard for yoga in the last year and a half-ish, and with a plethora of opportunities for yoga in my day-to-day life, I have no excuse for not hitting the mat more often. I'm currently averaging 1-2x a week, but would love to increase that to 3-4x over the course of the coming year. 

4. Write more regularly.

This was a resolution last year, too, and I'm sad to say it's the only one I truly failed at. While my lack of time writing has been due in large part to living a life that is fuller and more lived off-paper, I truly do treasure the archive I create here and the feeling of connection this blog gives me. I plan to stick to a more stringent writing schedule this year, and to be better about chronicling things - even if it's a "quantity over quality" exercise from time to time. 

And my big intention for 2018: 

Be open. 

I don't know why this felt like such a necessary intention for the year, but this has been stuck in my head since I started ruminating on this year's goal back around Labor Day. Last year, I set the goal of "being intentional," and it was honestly the most successful goal to date. The way it manifested itself was definitely unexpected - choosing to let some friendships go, focusing on what fulfilled me, and, most significantly, taking the giant leap of moving across the country - but I can genuinely say that as 2017 wound to a close, I found myself extremely contented with the amount of thought and consideration I put into what I do. 

As for "be open?" It's a tough one. I think very few people realize how private and closed-off I really am, despite the seeming transparency of, you know, writing a blog and sharing thoughts with hundreds of people on a regular basis. I am extremely protective of myself, and I think that often leads to me closing myself off to a degree - not just from new people and experiences, but from sharing how I really think and feel. I protect myself by holding things back, and at the end of the day I think that sometimes bites me in the ass when things go unsaid or unexpressed. 

In 2018, I want to teach myself to be less afraid to open up - to seek and savor new experiences, to cultivate new friendships and relationships, and to be more candid and less guarded along the way. While the thought/phrase "be open" is, inherently, open-ended, I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing - I feel good about seeking out a year that is a bit more undefined at the outset. 

Happy 2018, campers - here's to a year of yoga and writing and love and openness and adventures ahead :)

a micro-post on routines

YIKES another accidental ten-day break from writing - shameful! It's no excuse, but I've been busy with work lately, a bit under the weather, and of course packing plenty into a social calendar that's gotten a bit intense over the last several weeks. We've had friends in and out, and I've been in and out too. Add to that Daylight Savings and colds throwing a cramp in my sleep, and you've got one cranky, unmotivated, spastic Liz running amok in Northern California. 

It's gotten me thinking much more about how I need to get in better routines throughout the week. A few turbo-thoughts: 

- I set my alarm for 6am every morning but don't actually get to work until around 8:30. At the peak of my summer ass-kicking routine, I was waking up, journaling for a bit, reading (often the New York Times, or else the book of the moment), and ensuring my life was organized and ready to go for the day. Today, on the other hand? Snoozed until 6:45 after a restless night, watched like 30 Instastories, and didn't make my bed. Now I'm sitting at work, low-key obsessing over the fact that there's laundry I need to fold and my room is a mess and of course that means my life is a mess...and it's throwing me off in general. 

Goal: get back to the 6am wakeup, and actually, you know, wake up. I liked the journaling over the summer, but I think I'm going to try to get in a mini-workout before my 7am shower - it's better at getting me going than lounging in bed reading, after all. 

- I've been on a major cooking binge lately - for some reason, this time of year, I always find myself drawn to the kitchen. It's been such a fun activity to dive deeper into these days, especially with a huge kitchen and two hungry, appreciative/complimentary roommates. That said, I'm spending a lot of my after-work time waiting in the checkout line at Safeway, screwing around in the kitchen, and cleaning up when all's said and done. I genuinely enjoy it, but it's not the best use of my time. 

Goal: Grocery-shop on weekends and have a meal plan for the week so I only have to hardcore cook a couple times a week. Be better at putting together lunches for work that are grab-and-go, whether that's individually packaging leftovers or prepping for a week on Sundays. In general, do more work up-front to make dinners easier to pull together. 

- And of course, there's the evenings themselves. Having roommates who are around a lot has been great - we genuinely enjoy each other's company, and choose to spend time together after work almost every day (which is really fun). What it isn't, though, is super productive - maybe someday I'll tell you about the week we watched Disney movies every night, or the time when Dave and I binge-watched Emily's vintage season of "The Bachelor" (to prep for Arie's return this January, duh) in about five days...

Goal: Work out after work, before even coming home or sitting down. Use evenings to write more, or to get out and do things instead of parking in front of Netflix. Swap evening wine/beer/cocktails for water and tea a few times a week (at least!). And actually start going to bed at a normal hour instead of using my 8:30 arrival time at work to justify hitting snooze so many times the next day! 

Just a quick brain-dump to get something, anything, down on digital paper today - but happy Monday, campers, and hope you're all kicking ass! 

Inventory: Fall 2017

Making: lists...books to read, things I need at Safeway, Christmas gifts to purchase, and general life to-do items.

Cooking: way more than usual lately - I think a roundup of recent recipe wins is long overdue.

Drinking: Kusmi Tea's almond green tea, which I picked up for the first time in Paris in 2015 and have restocked several times since then. 

Reading: "Salvage the Bones" by Jesmyn Ward (definitely going in the "Loved" category for November!).

Wanting: a pair of Rifle Paper Co's gorgeous embroidered Keds. 

Looking: forward to eight whole days at home for Thanksgiving - already counting down! 

Playing: Dots & Co/ Two Dots on my phone in between appointments lately - prettiest interface and a low-key distraction.

Listening: to the sound of actual real-life rain on our roof - it sounds uncannily like a snare drum, to the point where I woke up (super early) ready to chew out neighbors for thinking it was okay to play snare drum at the crack of dawn. 

Wishing: my roommates would wake up/get home from the gym so we can go out to breakfast (Stacks is calling my name...) 

Enjoying: the way my bed is at its coziest when I'm lingering in it after I've been awake for a bit...so decadent. 

Waiting: to figure out what we're doing today, hooray hooray!

Liking: so many of my recent book selections - it's been a superlative month of reading so far. 

Wondering: where on earth we're going to put all the wine in our apartment...we're seriously running out of space. 

Hoping: for all sorts of things, isn't everybody?

Marveling: that it actually RAINS in CALIFORNIA! My first California rain!

Needing: olive oil, triple-A batteries, dish detergent, and flour.

Smelling: lingering traces of last night's Jo Malone's Red Roses perfume, which I wear and get multiple compliments on legit daily.

Wearing: currently, my nightshirt...but later, Notre Dame gear to cheer on the Irish...beat Deacons!

Following: the news, of late, duh, who isn't?

Noticing: how nice freshly-washed and changed sheets feel. 

Knowing: way too much about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's engagement speculation...and totally rooting for another royal wedding soon!

Thinking: about new ski gear before our post-Christmas Tahoe trip...

Bookmarking: chicken marinades, trench coats, and training resources on segregation of duties for work.

Giggling: at the screenshotted Snapchats from our recent roomie nights watching Disney movies.  

Feeling: insanely sore from yesterday's yoga/Pilates class...hi, triceps!

101 in 1001: a catch-up

Guys, holy crap, I'm a lame delinquent loser who apparently never writes anymore and definitely never has any fun. (One of those statements is true.) I've been slowly but steadily checking off my 101 in 1001 list over the course of the last several months, and it's been a grab bag of incredibly fun, amusing, and just plain productive experiences to have! 

Up first: #84, See a comedy or improv show! 

Dave, Laura and I are all obsessed with Iliza Shlesinger, who won "Last Comic Standing" in 2008 and has produced several Netflix specials since then. We marathoned through all three of them within the first couple months we lived together, and some of her jokes have become so integrated into our day-to-day interactions with each other that I find myself checking in with outsiders, asking "Wait - have you seen Iliza?" Inevitably, the answer is no, which makes me think I must have really un-funny friends (or, more likely, friends who DON'T just watch Netflix comedy specials for fun on a random Tuesday...). 

Dave found out she was coming to San Francisco in December, and once we discovered that those tickets were sold out, I immediately jumped on her shows in San Jose at the end of September. We grabbed dinner in downtown San Jose before the show, took a quick tequila shot, and headed over. 

Friends, it was such a win of an evening. I honest-to-goodness laughed so hard I actually cried at a few of the sketches, which are incredibly relatable and universal. Her skewering of Millennial female stereotypes, the all-encompassing physicality of her performances, and her voices and - best of all - random noises ...it all set the stage for an evening of complete giddiness. I can't wait for her book to come out (next week, already pre-ordered, nbd) and for her next Netflix special.

Also on the list: #42, Subscribe to a podcast. I've written in the past about my love for Minnesota girl Nora McInerny Purmort, who lost her husband to a brain tumor and has turned tragedy into empowering triumph with her Still Kickin' foundation, Hot Young Widows Club outreach group, and gorgeous memoir, "It's Okay To Laugh (Crying Is Cool Too)." She's taken her empire-building one step further in her American Public Media podcast "Terrible, Thanks For Asking," which delves into how the human spirit experiences, works through and survives tragedy. I, for one, am totally riveted. 

The honesty behind the podcasts,and the way they don't gloss over and shy away from the negatives, is really refreshing in this world where everyone is always "so busy!" "so happy!" "so grateful!" "so #blessed!" - I derive a lot of value from the gorgeous storytelling and the reminder that there are people in the world who are fighting terrible battles with grit and humor and frustration and anger every day. Check it out if you need a reality check - and let me know if you do!

An item I've had on my housekeeping list for way too long: #47, Join the bone marrow registry. This one couldn't have been easier to check off - I did a quick survey and provided some information on Bethematch.org, and a kit was mailed to my apartment. After a simple, painless cheek swab, I popped the kit in the mail and called it a day. 

This is legitimately one of the easiest ways to do some good in the world that I have ever found. It takes all of twenty seconds to do the actual swabbing, it's free, and there's no guarantee that you'll be called upon to be an actual donor. Even so, though, putting the possibility out there is a great thing to do - get your kit today!!

On the admittedly shallow end of the scale, I derived SO MUCH SATISFACTION from calling "#63: Figure out how to fold fitted sheets" complete. Fitted sheets have long been the bane of my anal-retentive, perfectionist existence - I can't stand floppy, imprecise piles of sheets in my closet, and with space at an all-time premium in my non-walk-in here in Cali, I prioritized this. How'd I do it? I watched this video no less than ten times, cursing and sweating a little bit as I battled with my own sheets, and then - suddenly, miraculously - it clicked. Look at that sweet folded pile, below! Proud of me, and you should be too. 

And wrapping up this round-up, #56: Try to grow an herb garden. When my mom was in town helping me move, we blacked out a little bit in the Palo Alto Anthropologie and Co's gorgeous Terrain outdoor department, and before I knew it, I had dropped like $75 on plants and herbs and gardening kits. OOPS #basicfail. 

We potted cilantro, basil and mint, and parked them on my sunny little windowsill to see what happened. Call me a bad blogger, but below are the only two photos I took after the (messy) potting process: 

So how'd it go? Well, my cilantro flourished, and I used it twice on Taco Nights with the roomies! My basil came in profusely, but was kind of undersized and a little bit bitter...I threw it in pesto to use it all up. As for the mint? Total fail. I never saw even one seed sprout. What a disappointment - I guess all my fantasies of mojitos and juleps were meant to come to naught. Oh well! 

With the holidays approaching, I'm planning on checking off a few more fun items and seeing what I can get done...check out the rest of my 101 in 1001 here! 

Student life: a summer class recap

Hi friends! How was Labor Day? Mine was utterly decadent in its total lack of major activity. I stuck close to home - power-cleaning and organizing, watching football (pleased to see a solid win by the Irish to start the season!), cooking up a storm, and trying to beat the Bay Area's absurd 110-degree heat in our complex's stunning pool. All in all, an excellent three days of relaxing before a manic autumn!

One of the best perks of my job with Stanford is that, as a staff member, I get to take classes at a heavily-reduced rate. I started just a week before summer session kicked off, and my bosses encouraged me to dive right in and use my allotted education funds. So I did! While there are a plethora of for-credit classes offered that will advance my career, improve my professional knowledge, and even move me along a slow but steady road to a graduate degree, I decided to be kind to myself in a season of major transition and chose my summer classes utterly for pleasure. While they won't get me anywhere near a degree in anything but being a professional dilettante, I had an utterly pleasurable experience learning for the mere fact that I love to learn. 

I started my week with "Great Opera Performances" on Mondays. Taught by Speight Jenkins, former host of Live at the Met and the director emeritus of the Seattle Opera, the class explored in depth what makes an opera performance "great," from both a technical and emotive standpoint. Jenkins, at the age of 80, has been an opera lover and expert for decades, and brought the most incredible personal anecdotes and insights to every class. His personal friendships with titans of the opera world often left me with my jaw actually dropped, and learning about what performances/artists/stagings have succeeded or failed - and why - has completely re-framed how I look at the opera world. 

On Tuesdays, I took "The Innovations of World-Class Museums," which was far and away my favorite class. Taught by a Harvard-educated curator of Stanford's expansive museum collections, the three-hour class started each week with a thematic discussion of a development or cultural shift that affected the world of museums, and shifted in the second half to discussing a specific museum adapting or responding to that change. Some favorite combos: the rise and influence of technology, coupled with the British Museum's collaboration with Google to make their collection available digitally; the "corporatization" of museums versus government support, framed against the Louvre's controversial partnership with the United Arab Emirates; and the ethics of cultural sensitivity, appropriation, and education, demonstrated through the shifting approach to Holocaust museums, as well as debates and legal tangles over artifact ownership the world over. 

I could not get enough of this class, guys. Our professor was incredibly articulate and incisive in getting to the heart of controversial topics, and presented fact without allowing her opinion to pollute the discussion we had weekly. The accompanying course text, "Riches, Rivals and Radicals" by Marjorie Schwarzer, illuminated our focus areas even further and stretched my admittedly conventional view of what a museum should be to consider, instead, what a museum could be. 

And finally, Wednesdays found me taking a virtual class for the first time in my life with History of Wine! As we've covered extensively here, I've turned into a hardcore wino since moving within day-trip distance of Napa/Sonoma Valleys, and this class added so much to my appreciation of wine. Focused on the origins of wine, through the present day "cult" and "corporation" of wine production and distribution, I gained a totally new vocabulary around wine. While I'm nowhere near "Somm" level knowledgeable, I have a much better context for wines across the world, and can use that context to appreciate wine so much more. Plus, the flexible online format was a total kick - one of my favorite places to "take class" was at the Stanford gym on the ellipticals for a couple hours! 

I'm taking the fall semester off from classes due to our 8/31 year end, as well as a hectic stretch of travel and visitors that would make tests and papers hard to fit into an already busy schedule - but it's safe to say I've fallen entirely back in love with life as a student. I tweeted something in that vein in the thick of midterms:

Still mean that, every word, and am so grateful that Stanford is enabling me to foster a lifelong love of learning.