23 Things I Learned When I Was 23

I learned that...

1. Having a tan looks and feels good. I thought I'd embraced my whiteness. Then this summer I got a real tan. And it looked good. And I miss it.

2. Minnesota is a beautiful state.

3. Driving solo for eighteen hours is not a good idea.

4. Pleurisy is the inflammation of the lining surrounding the lungs. Pleurisy burns and hurts a lot.

5. New Orleans jazz is groovy. 

6. Mardi Gras is gross and awful, especially when I'm desperately searching for a taxi at 4am.

7. Alabama has all sorts of funky homegrown festivals that I haven't discovered. 

8. I love bike rides in Grand Teton National Park. Okay, so I love most things in Grand Teton National Park, but I didn't go on a bike ride until my last week. It was one of my favorite afternoons of the summer. We discovered a hidden country store with free gingersnap cookies hot out of the wood-burning oven!

9. If I don't ask, I probably won't receive.

10. Being brutally honest to the right person relieves guilt and makes problems more manageable.

11. Blackberry produces mediocre phones. I'm sorry I cheated on you, Apple.

12. Extra exercise gives me more energy than extra sleep.

13. Six-foot live Christmas trees smell nice, but they're a pain in the ass to get rid of.

14. The City of London is its own separate city; it even has its own police force and tax code. 

15. I may prefer the countryside to city life. But I reserve the right to change my mind always.

16. I'm high maintenance, just like my dad said I was. I thought he was very wrong, but then in the middle of a serious relationship, I discovered he was very right.

17. It's almost always a good idea to meet up with friends I haven't seen in years, even if I think it might be awkward.

I learned how...

18. To skip a rock (sort of).

19. To ski (sort of).

20. To use London's bus system.

21. To crush garlic cloves so that they're easier to peel.

And why…

22. Grown ups don't do extracurriculars... 9-5s make you tired.

And what…

23. P&L, ETD, OTC, and CDS stand for… profit & loss, exchange traded derivatives, over the counter trading, and… I can't remember CDS, actually. I'll get back to you on that one.

Oh!  And the first thing I learned when I was twenty four:  how to make amazing lentil burgers.

Happy Lent(il)...
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A holly jolly Christmas

I'm back in London and very happy.  This year I had two wonderful Christmases, one in Alabama, the other in England. Here are Dave's photos from the past few days...

From top to bottom: wearing a Christmas hat at Christmas lunch; pretty lights and nativity scene in Southwold; me and Dave's brother Richard walking along the coast in Southwold; friends and I outside London's Natural History Museum after ice skating.

Valentine's Day & pie shops

I'm slowly going through the photos on my cell phone and saving the better ones.  Here's a pretty Antigua shot.  (I WANT WARM WEATHER!)

Last week I saw the movie "Norma Rae" for the first time and loved it.  It was filmed right down the road from Auburn in Opelika.  Sometime soon I want to take a mini road trip and visit some of the old textile factories and neighborhoods.  


Shelley was talking to our friend about the movie and about Southern towns that've lost lots of people and charm since factories shut down, and our friend told her about Pie Lab in Greensboro, Alabama.

  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/magazine/10pielab-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1

Pie Lab is a creative restaurant, an artsy community development experiment started by recent college grads.  The graduates were part of a social change/design group called Project M.  I love one of the girl's comment about the brainstorming phase:  "We realized we couldn't solve global warming.  And we couldn't fix the plummeting economy.  Before pie came to us, we were kind of paralyzed."  (Quoted in NY Times article "Pie + Design = Change."  Another good piece from al.com:  "The Pies That Bind."


I want to take a mini road trip to the Pie Lab, too.  It sounds like a fun and tasty (and meaningful) place.  I like the idea of pie bringing people together.  


This weekend I have lots of reading to do - I'm trying to finish all my schoolwork by Sunday so I can cook and consume an epic Valentine's Day feast, guilt-free.  


Speaking of Valentine's Day, excuse me while I spend a brief moment on my soapbox:  nothing irks me more than moaning about "Single Awareness Day" being S.A.D and depressing.  I've celebrated twenty-one Valentine's Days in my short little life - all of them without a significant other - and I love the holiday!  Cards, rom coms, an excuse to eat chocolate, an excuse to go out for a nice meal (it probably helped that my parents gave Melissa and I gifts every year, too)... 


One time a boy gave me jewelry on February 14.  


It was pretty traumatic.  


We were in the fourth grade, I didn't know him well, my ears weren't pierced, my mom made me invite him to my birthday party at the skating rink (ah, the 90s) and I couldn't forget about the incident because family members asked me about this boy for weeks.  (Weeks!)

Flashback to 2007: the first group Valentine's Day dinner I organized.

To conclude, I hope everyone has a lovely, trauma-free Valentine's Day.  Rent a movie and cook yourself a steak or something.

365 photos

Hello!  I've been working on turning my lofty 2011 goals into habits.  Resolutions are hard to keep!  But I'm slowly getting used to intentionally taking photos with my phone.  Here are my four favorite photo days from the past two weeks.

sunday, january 2: before church workout in the park.

monday, january 3: 

reading and swinging at another park. (we like parks.)

tuesday, january 11:  COLD.

wednesday, january 12: 
mmm, warm.  guatemala rug & christmas socks.

monday, january 10: a day that will live in infamy.

This little boy braved the screaming mob of college kids so he could proudly wave his victory sign in the very center of Toomer's Corner.  It's a miracle he wasn't trampled.  War damn eagle. More championship celebration photos to come.