linds_e

I’m not much for res­o­lu­tions, which always seem to have have a funny way of turn­ing into let­downs when cir­cum­stances (or more often inter­ests) change your abil­ity (or desire) to meet them.

In 2009 I turned 30, and I for­mally set goals for the first time in many years. Right now they are taped up in a note­book for me to read some­day in the future. I will prob­a­bly have met some of them, be work­ing on oth­ers, and some of them won’t res­onate the same way they did when I wrote them down so I’ll leave those behind. I have started ver­bal­iz­ing some of my dreams and have left oth­ers unspo­ken. The impor­tant thing is to sim­ply have them.

Now, bring on 2010!!

The best adver­tis­ing of this year (or any year) is no advertising.

I’m on a boat, bitch!!

(This made Dustin break out in belly-laughs. I think you woulda hafta have been there… :D )

One of the best parts about play­ing and writ­ing music with other peo­ple is in those moments where everyone’s parts come together into a whole that is bet­ter than you imag­ined or could have planned for and when the song is done you aren’t quite sure how it hap­pened. I like to think of those as tele­pathic com­mu­ni­ca­tion moments.

This fall we started play­ing in a band with our friend Kev. We are still kind of organ­i­cally learn­ing how to play together (the logis­tics of musi­cal con­ver­sa­tion), but I think we’ve glimpsed a few of those tele­pathic moments, too. It all feels incred­i­bly promis­ing.

Recent real­ity check, paraphrased:

J: “I think I want to quit doing twit­ter and face­book because they are dumb and annoying”

L: “Nooooo, I like to send you love notes”

J: “Maybe you could send me real life love notes”

Kind of dumb, but ket­sup isn’t that gross:

(My part­ner­ship with this man)

Cut­ting off your hair does not mag­i­cally keep you from turn­ing 30. It does not throw open doors for the free-spirited, risk-taking side of your­self, either. (Just being a free-spirited, risk-taking per­son does in fact open those doors). It doesn’t help iden­tify you as a fem­i­nisty Novo-Collegian, not when you have to take 15 extra min­utes get­ting ready every morn­ing. Actu­ally, it throws you right back into that feel­ing of being an awk­ward teenager while at the same encour­ag­ing oth­ers to point at your head, squeal, and make comments.

I think 2010 will be the year of grow­ing out my hair…

pink hair, age 19.

brown hair, age 30

I am a web designer and I am pretty sad that I haven’t been amaz­ingly impressed by any new web tools this year. How­ever, this has def­i­nitely been the Year of the iPhone, and I *do* have a hand­ful of useful/fun/utilitarian apps that will make my “best of” list.

1. Twit­terific. I totally had a debate with my boss about this the other day, and I real­ize that Twit­terific doesn’t have the most ele­gant inter­face and isn’t the cool designer-y app any­more. How­ever, there are a few fea­tures that make Twit­terific my go-to app for the iPhone. It buzzes/makes a birdy sound to let you know that your tweets have finally loaded over AT&T’s slow-ass con­nec­tion. It shows the time­stamps of all unread tweets in orange, which is really help­ful for find­ing your place as you read. Refresh­ing doesn’t jump you around to a dif­fer­ent spot in your stream. My own tweets and @-mentions are in the same stream with the peo­ple I fol­low and are con­ve­niently color-coded (also help­ful for way-finding). I can change an @-reply to a reg­u­lar tweet if I want, mid­way through. And it has a dark back­ground, which is good because I am most likely using the app in the morn­ing from bed, and my eyes get watery when I look at a bright screen that early. If only I could set up image post­ing via Flickr like I can with Tweetie… Can I stop say­ing these ridicu­lous “T” words now? (more…)

1. “Social Media”/New Media/Twittered/Tweeted/Twat
2. FTW/FML/Epic Fail
3. Your Mom/That’s What She Said
4. New Normal/Exit Strategy/Meltdown/Credit Crunch/Credit Crisis/Bailout/From Wall­street to Mainstreet
5. Cougar
6. Totes/I Know, Right?
7. Dialogue/Low Hang­ing Fruit/Moving Forward/Speak To/Touch Base/Talk Offline/Leverage/Push Back
8. To Be Quite Honest
9. Threw Under the Bus/Jumped the Shark

My Mondo Beyondo list, a project in process.

I have a seri­ous prob­lem with the idea that any of my friends are more “bester” than the oth­ers, because it reminds me of 3rd grade when I got tem­porar­ily kicked out of the best friends club because I couldn’t make it across the mon­key bars. How­ever, the oper­a­tive word in this Best of 2009 prompt is “new”. This year I grew a new friend­ship with a really amaz­ing per­son who inspired me in ways that I am not sure she real­izes. This per­son is tak­ing risks and dar­ing to dream in her own life — start­ing a busi­ness, liv­ing cre­atively, seek­ing health­ful­ness, and find­ing her own path. If you are read­ing this, I hope you know who you are. Thank you for being you!

This year marked John’s start of grad school at CU and result­ing com­mute into Boul­der 5 times per week. He is really awe­some and rides his bike to the bus and then from the bus to cam­pus. I am not so tough/brave/willing to wear bike-appropriate clothes as that, but I did ride my bike from Erie to work on Bike To Work Day 2009, which is 14 miles each way.

(If there are any Boul­derites read­ing this and snick­er­ing, you can stop now. That is a major ride for me in traf­fic.) (more…)

1. H&M, Lon­don
2. The Design Museum Shop, Lon­don
3. Meg Broth­ers, Etsy Shop, Denver
4. Lul­ule­mon, Lone Tree
5. Fancy Tiger, Den­ver
6. DeMaj Salon, Erie

One of my favorite things to do when we used to visit Jenna in FoCo was to go to the Alley Cat and dis­cuss philo­soph­i­cal zom­bies over a pot of Lap­sang Sou­chong. It smells like camp­fires, mmmmm. She got me some for Christ­mas last year, and it lasted half the year. I think need me some more tea and some more Jenna, stat.

Any­one knows that the best pack­ag­ing is no packaging…

Or nature’s packaging…

Or these:

New couches, a pil­low, and a thriv­ing jade plant…

Before the sum­mer of 2008, my expe­ri­ences with kale were lim­ited to a stir­fry that my friend made in col­lege and see­ing the crazy kale peo­ple come thru the line when I worked at Vit­a­min Cot­tage. So when I started get­ting a bunch of kale in my farmshare box last sum­mer, I didn’t know what to do with it. I used it as a replace­ment for spinach in my favorite VWAV recipe, I tried it in Indian food, and ulti­mately I had so much of it that I took to hid­ing it in pasta sauce. By the end of the sum­mer I begged my farm to let me replace the kale in my weekly pick­ups with chard. I never wanted to eat kale again.

This year was some­what dif­fer­ent. John implored me to destem the kale and to cut it into smaller strips (!!), and he also put gar­lic in it. Sud­denly, I was in love. Now I get weird crav­ings for kale, and it has become a sta­ple on our menu.

(more…)