2012, I Salute You

2012, The Year of 30 Days.  It’s such a cliché, but the older I get (I know, I know…  I’m only 28, but 30 is right around the corner, folks), the more quickly time seems to pass.   I swear I was *just* doing the ‘take a picture every day’ challenge.  Like, yesterday.  How did we go from that to 2013?  Boggles the mind I tell you.  Boggles.

In hindsight, I might have bit off more than I can chew (that's what she said) with this year-long challenge.  I was full steam ahead at the beginning of '12, but that slowly dissipated as we got into the colder months.  (Can I blame it on that?   Being cold?  Yeah, totally.  I was super cold.)

At first I was all, "whee" and then I was all "ugh."

With all of the regular life stuff going on (the life of a social butterfly is quite busy, I’ll have you know), I found it difficult to keep the challenges (and therefore, blog) in focus; eventually, they became more of an afterthought.  "Oh.  I have a blog.  I should write something.  About the challenges I'm doing.  Shit.  What is the challenge I'm supposed to be doing?  Dancing.  Right.  I should be dancing."

Making panties drop.

I was hoping this year would break me of this habit of not always seeing things through: "I'm going to lose 1,000 pounds!  "I'm going to become super-duper fit!"  "I'm going to learn a programming language!"  Etc.  It didn't.  But I did come to accept that that pattern is more of a Human Behavior than a Heather Behavior.  I am not a unique snowflake; I am not alone in the I AM GOING TO DO ALL THE THINGS (and then not do all the things) camp.  That doesn’t make it ok, but I feel better knowing that I am not a crap person simply because things didn't quite work out as planned.  Tomorrow's another day.  Or some shit.  I also realized that I would likely be more successful in achieving my goals if I break them into smaller, more manageable pieces.  Baby steps, people... baby steps.  One small step for man, one achievable goal for Heather.

It also reminded that I can find an excuse for absolutely anything, which I believe I have already written about on here.  I can reason away any old thing that seems hard or not fun.  Go ahead, try me.  Give me a problem and I bet I can find a way to justify your way around it.  ZOMG!  THAT IS MY SUPER POWER!!!  I have the Power of Justification. 

I will save you from the things you don't want to do!

Hm.  Reading over this, it sounds a bit negative.  I’m too lazy to erase it and start over, so let me touch on the highlights, the good stuff.  My favorite challenge of the year was hands-down ‘get rid of something every day’.  Holy moly, was that cathartic as fuck.  I have managed to continue that practice throughout the year – if I bring something new into the house, I get rid of something old, useless or unnecessary (wish I could include my cat in that category).  End the Cycle of Crap.  Rock on. 

My favorite picture of the year:

To infinity and beyond!

My favorite art project of the year:

An obvious choice, I know.

My favorite first day of a new month:

Meat!  I can eat meat again!
Yeah, get it in there.  Get that meat in there.

Party in my mouth.

Equal parts frustrating (as fuck) and funny, the ‘no swearing’ challenge surprised me with its obscene difficultly.  I truly believed I would sail through that month like a rockstar, with nary a swear word in site.  Silly Heather.  Silly, silly Heather.

Overall, I'm not sure how I feel about this experiment of mine.  Part of me feels like I could have done it “better”.  Whatever that means.  Some months I feel like I was going through the motions (no TV) and others I completely gave up on (meditation?  Bite me, introspection).   Maybe I could have been more creative with how I interpreted some of the challenges (did I need so many pictures of clouds?) and I certainly could have upped the frequency of my blog posts.  But I am often hard on myself and if I look at it more objectively, it was a great year, I had fantastic experiences, met fabulous new people, went on some amazing vacations, tried new stuff and things and learned a little about myself in the process (I love collared greens, rabbit, and swearing; do not love duck or meditation).

Did it change me in any grand, fundamental way?  Probably not.  I’d like to think I’m a little more self-aware and a bit more forgiving and accepting of my quirks and foibles.  I hope to be forever on the hunt to find ways to become a better version of myself.  I think this year I did that.  Good job, me.  I’m going to do something similar for 2013, so be on the lookout for a new blog name (same URL to make it easy) (you’re easy) and new posts for 2013.  WOO.

Guilt Trips

My sister says to me a couple of weeks ago (via email), "This is how I feel when I check your blog and you haven't updated it."

Your blog is bad and you should feel bad.

My sister is kind of a dick.  Sometimes.  Other times she's kind of awesome.  It's a mixed bag, really. 

November ended with more of a fizzle than a bang.  There was a lot of snot involved.  I single-handedly kept Kleenex in business.  (That is an exaggeration.)  I tried and cooked yummy foods and then, BAM!  Sinus infection.  Did not enjoy.  December rolled around and... where the frak did it go?!

(I want you to know, people, I am resisting the urge to insert a gif of something running here -- as in December flew by.

...

0.o

Oh.  Perhaps I should have been looking for a flying gif.  Anyway.  Gifs are a amazing, but I don't want to over-gif.  Of course, I only update this blog about once a month these days, so there is clearly no fear of "over"doing much of anything.

Instead here is a picture I drew of someone (representing December) running by.  I spent a lot of time on it.)

I laughed so hard while drawing this, his/her/its right hand ended up a little swoopy.
Yeah, that's right.  I laugh at my own jokes.  Alone in my apartment.
Deal with it.

There's really not much to recap for December.  I was meant to be dancing and while I did dance, it wasn't an every day thing.  I took a salsa class (so fun!) and played a few rounds of Dance Central on the old XBox and I even went out in the world dancing (with boys!).  It was fun, but life has a tendency to muck up the works and I didn't dance as much as I had planned.

I fucking love dancing though.  Seriously.  I am not a great dancer.  I'm very, very white and I don't have rhythm and dancing with boys is fun but it always takes me a minute to get down with what they're doing, but ... fuck.  I love it.  I smile like a goon the entire time and like the honey badger, I don't give a shit.  It makes me happy and that's good enough for me.

Carlton just gets me.

He really does get me.

Smashed Assholes

So I'm sick, right?  Got some sort of plague (again).  I get it.  I'm probably not looking my best right now, but I swear to, like, something really powerful -- like a really big chainsaw -- that if one more person at work says something along the lines of, "Wow.  You don't look so good."  Or, "You look like you're going down for the count."  I'm going punch them in the vagina.  Even if they don't have one.

I GET IT!

When I first got to work this morning I was greeted with, "You sound awful, but you look nice."  DID YOU HEAR THAT, OTHER CO-WORKERS?  Either you say something nice or you say nothing at all!  (...no vagina punching for that guy.)

Since I haven't been able to taste anything since Sunday night-ish, my challenge to TASTE ALL THINGS is going by the wayside.  It happens.  I tried.  I don't have the energy to shop or cook or eat anything but carbs.  I don't really move much more than necessary or try make myself look presentable (apparently).  I'll have to eat more things in December.  I don't see that being much of a problem.  Food, good.

It's 8:00.  The very minute the clock strikes 8:30, I am taking two NyQuil and going to bed.

NyQuil. ♥

P.S.  I promise I won't turn this into a Blog of GIFS.  It's a passing attraction.  It will, uhh, pass.

Balls

I am thankful for wine.  Mostly because I am drinking it right now.  I am also thankful for balls.  I had bunch in my mouth yesterday.  Been a while since I had balls in my mouth.  Stuffed in my mouth.  My balls also had sausage.

I can fit so many balls in here!

Tsk.  Not *those* kind of balls.  Get your dirty minds out of the gutter.  Stuffing balls.  Sausage stuffing balls.  For Thanksgiving.  I started with this:

Tube o' meat.  Appetizing.

And then I added a bunch of other stuffing-related ingredients (I should start a cooking blog).  The end result is supposed to be something along these lines:

Balls all up in my mouth.

Mine were shoved in the back corner of the oven because nobody cared about my Heather-friendly, sausage-laden balls, so they turned out more like hockey pucks than scrumptious, springy, chewy balls, but that didn't keep me from eating about 17 of them.  (I was able to eat so many because nobody else would touch my balls.  Sigh.)  I even had one with breakfast.  And another for lunch.  What can I say?  I love balls.  They're fun and delicious.

And now I want to go for a 5-mile run.

I don't run.

It's about 3ish in the afternoon and I've been trying to work since about 10 this morning.  No, true story.  I had a plan and everything.  It morphed into I WANT TO GET DRUNK, but even before that, my attempts at work-related activities were going something like this:

I am bad at working on the "weekends".

Good intentions, man.  Good intentions.  I was going to map the shit out of some maps.  And now my afternoon is pretty much this:

Just swap the limo for the couch in mom's basement and the pizza with balls
and add a TV playing "Fringe" re-runs.

It's hot as fuck in this basement, FYI, so I wish I was in a limo right now with the windows down, wind blowing through my very, very long short-ish hair (that I just cut again on Tuesday - I'm giving up on that whole "growing it out" thing.  Fuck hair.  Who needs a ponytail when one owns 14 baseball caps?)  I feel like a hot, disgusting, stuffed turkey, so I just downloaded a workout video and as soon as I am full of less wine, I'm going to workout like WHOA.  (... probably not too much 'whoa' because I am a little drunk and full of balls.  I'll take a little 'whoa' over no 'whoa' at all.)

P.S.  I <3 GIFS.

Milla Jovovich, I Love You

This is how I decide what to stream on Netflix:

Scroll ... scroll ... scroll ... "This looks terrible."  *clicks play*

Right now I'm watching Faces in the Crowd:  "Milla Jovovich stars..."

I read no further; they had me at Milla Jovovich.

This is not going to be a good movie.

In other news, my brother had a birthday this year!  (<-- You know what?  I'm not even going to correct that.  What is wrong with you, Brain?  He had a birthday this year, but not last year when he got stuck in that quantum time trap and did not age?  Stupid brain).  Moving on... he had a birthday last week, turning the ripe old age of 36.  (Oh, wait... that's the age I'll be turning this year.  How sad for me.)  27.  He turned 27.  I think.  It might have been 26.  I am old; I don't remember things as well as I used to.

I got all artsy with his berfday card.

Talent.  So much talent contained in one individual.
I'm a good speller too:  HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

It looks like Billy is taking that little ox on a walk up the hill, but it's actually supposed to be a little inset picture, magnifying the ox tattoo he's getting on his arm. 

...

Ok, so he's not getting an ox tattoo on the arm and frankly, I think his arm will be the lesser for it.  He is, however, getting a new tattoo courtesy of Heather's Checking Account.  (Tattoo TBD.)  I like to support my siblings' growing tattoo collections.  My sister's most recent, for example:

So, that's not her actual tattoo.  I can't find a picture of her actual tattoo, but that's what it looks like.  Phylogenetic tree.  Fancy.

Things I have eaten recently:  collared greens (delicious), vegan "steak & cheese" (surprisingly delicious), vegan "mac & cheese" (amazingly delicious), made some bean soup (everything I make is delicious), persimmon (squishy), olive (DO NOT LIKE), jicama (weird), fried jalapeno thingie (I love jalapeno thingies), bread with basil and prosciutto (DO LIKE), quinoa and black bean recipe (did I mention that everything I make is delicious?), some odd vegetable from the Whole Foods salad bar -- the name eludes me at the moment (see above about age).

And that's what's going on with me.

Also, I want a new tattoo.

Also also, that movie was horrendous.  1-star.

People are Weird

Amirite?  People are weird?  For example, have you ever heard of "Cat Breading" or "Breading a Cat"?  Probably not, because it's fucking weird.

Fine, I'll admit it... the first time I saw this I almost peed myself with laughter.

Still, I don't like my cat much and I jump on any chance I get to torture her (vacuum cleaner, broom, getting her groomed to look like a wee, little lion, etc.).

I am not enjoying my haircut, human.

Naturally, when I was introduced to the bizarre world of bread + cats, I took a flying leap onto that yeasty cat-breading wagon.

Kristy prepares the bread for the attack.

I figured the best time to attempt this was when Snickers was engaged in her favorite activity:
eating.

"Human, what are you doing?  Stahp!  Do not want bread."
She may be rather zaftig, but she's spry.

And we're done.
And I am left with many scratches, which I probably deserved.
Totally worth it.

I had yummy fancy fig newtons today and a weird chicken potsticker thing that was less tasty than the fig newton.  I am being a bit lame with this whole "try new foods" thing, but there's time yet!  I will do better!

Sloppy Swish

This is how I feel about life today:

Everything is stupid.

On a happier note, I tried mussels for the first time last night and they are DELICIOUS.  If it wasn't for that pesky swimming pool of butter they were floating in, I might have stolen the pot from my friends, ran screaming from the restaurant, "GET OUT OF THE WAY!  I HAVE STOLEN A POT OF MUSSELS AND I WANT TO EAT THEM ALL UNINTERRUPTED AND ALONE!", and slurped them down in a dark alley, giggling maniacally.

(Look, it's a weird day.  Play along.)

The evening is looking up as I am on  my second glass of wine, I'm on my way to trivia AND I get to hang out with my brother Thursday night.  Woo.  Also, SNL finally came through with The Funny.  If you haven't seen this bit yet, stop what you are doing and watch it immediately.  You will thank me later.

Mokiki does the sloppy swish.

You're welcome.

Shirlington Ho s

In today's blog post, I am going to share my Saturday adventures with you.  My seester came to visit for the weekend and much fun was had by all.  Shenanigans galore (I'm going to skip the telling of the "shenanigans" that involved laying on the couch in baggy sweatpants and stick to the fun bits).  This tale will largely be told in picture form, because we took a lot of damn pictures.

We began the day's adventures with a late breakfast at Busboys & Poets.  I had chili, Kristy had mimosas.

Ok, I had mimosas too.

Happy, in a mild mimosa fugue state, we camped out in a local Starbucks (the mild, mimosa fugue state only lasts so long before the extreme post-mimosa sleepy state settles in), where Kristy did some homework (about five minutes worth, as a matter of fact) and I did a hours and hours wee bit of work-work.   I'm sure you're not surprised to hear that we didn't get much actual work done, but our grand intentions should count for something.  We did enjoy each other's company, as well as the many silly things we found on Reddit.

As our breakfast was more of a brunch we didn't have an actual lunch, and after exhausting ourselves with all the hard work and whatnot, we were starving by 5ish.  We headed off to Jaleo -- a spectacular Spanish tapas place in Crystal City -- at 5:30 to have dinner.  With the rest of the geriatrics.

Our first course was sparkling white sangria.

According to Kristy:  "This tastes like heaven."
Also, "It looks like we're drinking vegetables.  There's a lot of green."

Next came the tiny cheese with tiny breads with tiny spreads.  And more sangria.

Heather says, "This cheese is the most disgusting thing I have ever put in my mouth."

(says Kristy)

Needing meat (*wink*) in addition to the sangria (and mostly just to expel the horror that was the taste of goat cheese out of my mouth forever), I ordered spicy chorizo wrapped in potatoes and my oh-so-very-favorite, fried dates wrapped in bacon (why yes, they are as amazing as they sound).

I look the same in every single picture ever, so here, the important things:
booze and fried bacony goodness.

In honor of my I WILL TRY LOTS OF NEW THINGS month, I threw caution to the wind and ordered Conejo En Salmorego Con Pure De Albaricoques, or Canary Island-style (tiny, fluffly, adorable) rabbit confit with apricot puree.

Skeptical Heather is skeptical.

But Heather, the charming and graceful eater that she is, dug in with gusto.  (Why do I keep referring to myself in the third person?)

Does my mouth need to be open that wide?

And you know what?  Cute, sweet, fluffy little bunnies ARE DELICIOUS!

On the outside I looked like this...

... but on the inside, my mouth and tummy were doing this.

Dessert seemed like the next course of action (see what I did there?), but looking at the dessert menu, we were flummoxed.

Kristy:  I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANY OF THE WORDS HERE.

Truth be told, we were in such a happy, blissful sangria state, it didn't matter much what we ordered.  We had something with apples in some kind of sauce in some kind of magical bread pouch-thing and it was scrum-diddly-umptious.

And finally we were done and full and happy and in need of HOOKAH.  Off to Andalusia we went.  A tea and hookah joint, to be precise.  Hookah.  Tea.  Hm, I see hookah, and tea, but... but... where's the WINE?!  Alas, wine was not to be had at Andalusia, but I will say the hookah was top-notch, as were the random friends we made while sitting outside, enjoying the night and our shisha.  (Or however you spell that.)

Still, we were sad to lose our sangria-induced happiness and being the classy ladies we are, we (we being "I") popped over to the 7-11 and bought a few small bottles of wine, which we sipped surreptitiously throughout the evening.   All class, my friends, all class.

We rounded out the evening with yet more wine at Capital City Brewery in Shirlington and had grand plans to head back to the homestead after finishing our drinks and end our evening with a rousing bout of Dance Central on the XBox, but instead, we went immediately to sleep.  Immediately.  I don't think we could have managed to turn on the XBox, much less rustle up enough coordination to play any sort of game.  Unless it was a sleeping game; that we would have rocked at.

Shit, we couldn't even manage a decent self-portrait.

"Kristy, why can't you get your head in there?"

....alllllmost.

"Kriiisty, I don't want a solo picture."

"Here, I'll take the picture."
See, perfect.

As good as it's going to get.  At least that night.

(OHFORTHELOVEOFGODANDALLTHATISHOLY!  It should not be this difficult to format multiple pictures at once.  Make this better, Google!)

And that was our very fun Saturday.  Our Sunday involved the couch, the television and not much else.  Totally worth it.

To go back to the challenge a bit, here are some other things I have tried this month:  a new chili recipe, duck (at a Peking Duck place -- I'm glad I had the experience, but I find it perfectly acceptable to never eat duck again.  Bring on the wabbit!), chocolate covered edamame (do not want again).  Um, shit.  Wait, no, I didn't eat shit.  I meant "Shit!" in an exclamatory fashion because I can't remember any of the other things I've tried this month.  Next post... (which will be a less boozey post).

This is where I live and would now, and forever more, like to be known as a "Shirlington Ho" (..s).

I Am Drunk (With My Sister)

Yay.  Wheee.

:)

Shannon

She's waiting for you, Shannon.  She misses you.

Apparently I only take pictures of myself after I go to the gym.
Also, I don't know what's scarier - my face or the doll's.

Beasts of Burden

Three miles down today, two more to go.  I like the walking.  I don't have nearly enough time (or easy access, for that matter) to hike more often that I do; I think walking on the treadmill or around my 'hood might be a good alternative.  Minus the blisters.  Those I still need to manage.  I did get me some awfully purdy new shoes today though.  My others were being held together by tape, so it was time for an upgrade. 

Like walking on air.

With buckets of time to spare, I have decided on next month's challenge:  try a new food/recipe every day. Also, pick a long-term goal and spend 30-60 minutes on it per day.

I'm going to be realistic with the food challenge though.  For one thing, I'm not going to have time to create a culinary masterpiece every night -- particularly during the week -- so going to Whole Foods and picking out a random, terrifying looking fruit or vegetable is going to count.  It is new, after all.  Also, I know it's going to be nigh impossible to cook or shop every single day.  I will do my very best, but I will settle for 5 out of 7 days, especially since this is going to be a dual-beast.

Which brings me to the other beast... My long-term goal is to learn Python, a scripting/programming language.  It'd be incredibly beneficial for work -- lots of our customers use it.  I've tried to learn it a couple of times now and I find it fucking impossible.  It's like learning ... another language.  (Bah dum tss.)  I'm hoping having it a challenge will spur me on.  I'll be forced to spend more time with it.

So there you have it.  Come on, November!  Show me whatcha got.

Keening and Wailing

My dear-friend-who-moved-far-away-and-I-miss-greatly, otherwise known as Shannon, said I should have been blogging more this month since I had all this free time on my hands.  But here's the thing, what does one write about in a blog about challenges when the challenge is to *not* do something?  A passage challenge does not lend it self to blogging material.  Active challenges!  I need more activity!  (That's what she said.)

Oct 1:  Today I didn't watch TV.
Oct 5:  Today I didn't watch TV.
Oct 10:  Still haven't watched TV.

That's a very boring blog.  Though I suppose it would be less boring than no blog at all.  Well, my remaining five readers, I'm nestled in my apartment, listening to Hurricane Sandy (least intimidating hurricane name I've heard yet.  Oh, Sandy... "Summer loving, had me a blast!  Summer loving, happened so fa-a-a-a-a-st.") and her keening, wailing wind as I sip my appropriately sized glass of wine and jam to Anberlin.  Perfect atmosphere for bloggin'.  At least until the power goes out.

I can think of no other appropriate post-workout beverage.
And look!  I still have power.  Cheers.

The challenge this month has been surprisingly easy.  Not very challengey.  I think part of the difficulty in blogging is that I don't feel like I'm doing much this month -- as if I'm going through the motions of the monthly challenge, but not actively doing anything.  Lesson learned, I suppose:  not watching TV isn't that difficult for me.

Walking my remaining 15 miles on the other hand...  I probably shouldn't have waited until the last week of the month to knock that shit out.

(Reddit meme)

But, I've got 10 under my belt -- only five left to go (see how well I do math, everyone??).  Two and a half miles over the next couple of days, no problem.

So, we've got November and December to go through and I want those two remaining months to be more along the lines of "take a picture every day" or "do something creative every day."  For one, it gives me more to write about and I genuinely, truly enjoy writing this blog; and two, I like having a project or -- and I'm tired of writing this word -- a challenge. Other than trivia, that is.  That's only one night a week, after all.

(Looked up "challenge" in Word's thesaurus:  test, trial, task, contest, encounter, experiment, throw down the gauntlet (not making that up).  Ok.  "Challenge" it is then.)

I have a few remaining (sigh) challenges on my list:

- try a  new food/recipe every day
- learn something new every day
- make one long-term goal and spend an hour on it every day

I haven't decided what I'm doing yet.  I've got two days left to pick something.  Plenty of time.