And I know what time it is now

Hey, welcome to my first post in approximately forever.  A combination of trying to stay caught up in Asana Junkies and various book clubs, plus working one billion hours a week has kept me off the interwebs.  I also gracefully tripped over a box next to my desk this morning, so, aces all around.

Anyway, two weeks ago I turned 30! When I was in my early/mid twenties, getting older was terrifying.  I remember feeling OLD when I turned 24.  Like, really old.  I was convinced that I was past my prime or something. Fast forward six years and I could not care any less that I'm turning 30.  I'm pretty sure yoga is responsible.  For one thing, yoga has gently forced me to become more accepting of myself in general, but in addition, it's introduced me to amazing, beautiful women of all ages. Being 30 does not have to mean I am suddenly old, married and boring. I can and will have just as much going for me when I am 35, 40, 50 and beyond. Age truly is just a number.

I was lucky enough to spend my birthday weekend in Chicago with my sister, my husband and a handful of my dearest friends.  Kristin and Katie live there already, and RT and Linz flew in from Boston and the bay area, respectively. 

Ben and I took Friday off from work, and drove down to Chicago on Friday. Julianna met us at a coffee shop after she'd finished up for the day, I changed out of my road-trip clothes (aka yoga pants) and we headed to Wicker Park to meet up with Kristin, Amanda, RT and Katie at Violet Hour.  After hearing stories of horrendous lines, we opted for pre-dinner cocktails and arrived at 6pm sharp, with plans to get pizza and beer at nearby Piece afterwards.  Fortunately, we avoided a wait at VH!  Unfortunately, we took our time with drinks and by the time we got to Piece, they had a two hour wait.  Fortunately, the time at VH was well spent catching up over cocktails, and there's nothing like a speedily made burrito to solve all hunger problems. 

After our south-of-the-border adventure, we traveled back to Kristin's place with two bottles of wine and several cupcakes from Molly's Cupcakes.  After a few ridiculous Youtube videos, in-depth conversations about the state of our education system ensued and I was reminded of some of the many reasons why I love, love, love my friends.  (You can take the nerds out of the liberal arts college, but...etc)

Saturday was a day of many adventures. Julianna had discovered brunch spot Bakin and Eggs a few weeks prior, so we decided to all meet there at 10:30 for some delicious meat products. We were all pretty hungry already when we arrived, and Ben and I started drooling over the flight of bacon, which is exactly what it sounds like.  Unfortunately, just as we were about to place our order, our server informed us that they were having a "plumbing emergency" and everyone would have to leave. At first I thought this was some sort of cruel joke. It wasn't, but we did get free muffins.

We immediately began strategizing around where to go next. Amanda and Katie had driven, but Ben, RT, Julianna and I had all taken the bus, so in order to get to our next destination as a group we all had to pile into Katie's Toyota Echo. I'm fairly certain this is not legal.

At first it seemed like we would probably never eat again.  If you think this is overly dramatic, try driving around Chicago at 11am on an empty stomach after a night of drinking, no coffee in your system, and repeatedly being told you will have to wait 2+ hours for food.

But finally - M. Henry to the rescue!  M. Henry is one of my favorite brunch spots in all of Chicago, and miraculously there was *no wait.*  I have no idea how this worked out, but it was clearly meant to be.

After brunch, RT and I took the bus downtown to meet Linz at her hotel. Of course we got lost for about 15 minutes. But, we found our way there eventually and had a dramatic and tearful reunion. Back at Julianna's place, we did what any sane people would do - enact dramatic readings from Julianna's psych textbooks, the bible, Cosmo, and Maya Angelou, with Kenny G playing in the background.

We all met up again for dinner at Wakamono, a great sushi place that's close to both my sister's place and Kristin's in Lakeview.  While we were on our first round of drinks, someone - I can't remember who anymore - decided that my friends would all go around the table and name one thing they love about me. It made me cry!! Somehow it was determined that there would be three rounds of love, and I forced them to give the last one to me, so I could throw some love back at my friends.

After dinner we cabbed it over to Old Town, with high hopes for pop rock martinis at Suite Lounge...only to find that Suite Lounge was completely booked with private parties.  This marked the third and final time we tried to eat or drink somewhere and were unable to. 

At this point we were outside, and it was freezing cold so we snuck into a bank/ATM situation and hit up the Google to figure out where we could drink that was reasonably close by.  We found a place about a mile away that looked promising, and walked there (the longest mile EVER.  it was really, really cold) only to find that it was boring and full of douchebags.  Womp womp.

But it seemed like a total waste not to have a drink at the douchebag bar since we had walked across all of Siberia to get there, so we had a cocktail and discussed where to go next.

Luckily, Julianna remembered a dive bar near her place called Friar Tuck, which she described it as "the kind of place where you make your own fun." If you know me at all, you will know that this is my kind of place.  Off we went. What followed was a succession of jukebox magic, singing, and general shenanigans so wonderful that I will remember (most of) it for the rest of time. 

After Friar Tuck, we went next door for nachos because what else are you going to do at that point.  We finally had round 3 of the "I love you" game, which at that point was pretty much me yelling "I LOVE YOU YOU ARE AMAZING" at all of my friends, in a super tiny and sketchy mexican restaurant occuped by us and maybe two other people. It was...special. I had grand visions of yoga at 8:30 but by the time we got back to Julianna's place on Saturday night it was clear that was not going to happen.

The next morning we had brunch at Ann Sathers, and drove back to Minneapolis.    It was a total whirlwind weekend, but we all had a great time.  I am so blessed to have such amazing friends - especially friends who are willing to congregate for a random weekend in Chicago in the middle of winter.



Reunion at Violet Hour



Ordering fancy drinks

chandelier = classy

I always wanted to go snorkeling with a cupcake...now I know I should not do this

When given the option, sprinkles in your coffee is always a good idea

At Bakin and Eggs, hungry and hopeful

The flight of bacon, which sadly never arrived :(

Unaware of impending sewage doom at Bakin and Eggs

Katie's car = clown car



M. Henry to the rescue!





Linz arrives!




J and I, ready to hit the town




J and Amanda at Wakamono




Sushi!




Side-eye from RT



Bottles of wine as big as your leg at Wallgreens!

yep.

Found a friend for Trixie!

Peacing out from the douchebag bar

Bringing the classiness to Friar Tuck's

More classiness

Not quite as classy

This is probably when things started to go downhill

The whole bar sang happy birthday to me...which was embarassing...

Friar Tuck has a birthday tradition involving an inflatable sheep

posing with my sheep friend

nope...that's not how it works....



WHAT UP, BROS



Amanda and Katie

Adorable

Again with the classy

The end!!

Hope you are all doing well!  I really am trying to get back to more regular posting but work and other commitments are making it difficult...so we'll see what happens :)  It's my goal anyway.

Work is ridiculous

So, I've started re-watching the X-Files with Ben.  Just to give you some context, I was mildly obsessed with the X-Files in middle and high school.  And by 'mildly obsessed' I mean I put X's on all of the file cabinets in my parents' home office, and made my parents take us to Roswell New Mexico as part of a family vacation.  So, that was a thing that happened.

Anyway, this has led me to the amazing and slightly insane world of X-Files Tumblrs, which has in turn led me to this:


source

And also this:



source

I'd forgotten how much I love that show.  Moving on...

So work.  Occasionally when you work for a company that is literally the size of a small country, you realize that nobody really knows what anyone else is doing, or even what they themselves are doing.  When you encounter this in the normal course of doing your job, it sometimes makes you want to sink into a hole of infinite despair from which you will never emerge.

The following story is based on true events - and by based on, I mean they actually are true events.  To avoid discussing the exact nature of the project, I have changed the names of people involved to the names of my pets, and made the entire thing an analogy about pie.  It will still make sense, I promise.  Maybe.

For reasons of...a story that is too long and boring to be repeated in this blog, I recently offered my assistance to another team's project.  Basically they needed some extra manpower, their project is related to my area of expertise and I decided to be helpful.  Let's call this project "Pies."  Essentially, I am documenting how all of the pies are made -ingredients, baking temperature, process, etc, so we can prioritize them for baking.  If I realize a pie is terrible and/or expensive to make, or no one likes it, then we de-prioritize the pie.  If the pie is pretty good, then I will thoroughly document the 'recipe' for said pie(shockingly, this documentation does not already exist...I know...).

Guiding me in my efforts is a spreadsheet made about one year ago, by someone who is no longer with the organization.  It lists the name of the pie, a couple of generic facts about the pie, and the approximate number of people who eat that pie on a yearly basis.

Most of the time, this is not an issue.  I can usually track down at least one person involved in the makiing of the pie in question, that person helps me track down everyone else, and after a few hours of conversation we are good to go.  Sometimes the pie is very complex and we run into difficulties, but basically everyone is on the same page and knows what everyone else is talking about.

Well.

Last week I began working on...let's call it the Pumpkin Pie...and this is what happened.

I wrote to a colleague, let's call her 'Maggie', whose name had been given to me in conjunction with the Pumpkin Pie.  At first she was confused and thought I was talking about a different pumpkin pie.  I tried to describe the pie using the vague descriptors I had been given, and finally she said "Oh, sure the Pumpkin Pie!  Now I know what you're talking about.  You'll want to talk to Sidney and Mini."

So I set up a call with Sidney and Mini, feeling like I was on the right track. 

Nope.

Here's how that conversation went:
Me: So, I need to learn how the Pumpkin Pie is made, and Maggie gave me your names in connection with the pie.
Sidney: ...what is the pumpkin pie?
Me:  Um...well...it is a pie...made of pumpkin.  It's um, roundish, and it has a crust...
Mini: What kind of crust?  Whole wheat or white?
Sidney: Do you know what the ingredients are?  Is there cinnamon, or nutmeg?
Me: I have no idea.  That's why I set up this call, I was hoping you could tell me.
Mini: Is this the pecan pumpkin pie, or the pumpkin cream cheese pie?
Me:...there's more than one kind?

We went on like this for almost 30 minutes before I realized I was going to have to go back to Maggie for more information.  So, I emailed her again.

"Hey Maggie," I said.  "I met with Sidney and Mini regarding the Pumpkin Pie, and they need more context.  Do you know what kind of crust is used?  Does the name 'Pumpkin Pie' encompass all pies made from pumpkin, or does it refer to a specific type?"

I was very careful to repeat Sidney and Mini's questions verbatim, because sometimes if I try to paraphrase without really understanding what I'm talking about, I end up asking a question that makes no sense. 

Two days go by, no response from Maggie.  So I email her again, just to follow up on my previous note.

Another day goes by.  Finally, I get an IM from my colleague Sierra, who sits near Maggie.

"Maggie does not understand your question."

I actually facepalmed.

I did follow back up with Maggie, only to find out that when she said "Now I know what you're talking about," she did not, in fact, have any idea what I was talking about.  Basically, we are all working on the Pumpkin Pie because it ended up on a spreadsheet 12 months ago, and was somehow prioritized despite the fact that nobody knows what it actually is.  We soon realized that the Pumpkin Pie does not actually exist.

What even....I can't.  I just cannot.

Anywhoo - in my continuing efforts to bite off way more than I can chew, I decided to join both Christina Sell's Asana Junkies Practice club, and also a book club on Goodreads that's reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time in its entirety.  Obviously I am not going to give up my other books, or my other yoga classes, so 2013 should prove to be an interesting year.

Autumnal Things

I've been admonished by several individuals for not blogging lately.  It is apparently how people "stalk" me "from afar" so I truly and deeply apologize for letting all the creepy stalkers down.

I feel like lately every entry is me apologizing for not blogging...it's a vicious cycle.  I apologize for sucking, promise to write more often, then inevetably I do not write more often and have to apologize all over again.  Bleh. 

After thinking long and hard about this while brushing my teeth at work today, I have identified the following reasons why I am not writing as often:

1. Stress.  I know this is such a lame answer but there has been a LOT going on lately.  I hope to write more about the stress at some point, because there are pertinent points to be made about life and yoga and whatnot, but it might be a couple/few weeks before that happens.
2. I hate computers.  Now that I spend the vast majority of my day staring at a computer screen, the last thing I want to do after work is stare at a computer screen even more.  It was all fine in grad school, when I was staring at my professor while also having side convos with my classmates, but now...by the end of the day I am computer-screened out.
3. I'm a little unsure as to the direction of this blog.  Not that I really feel like it needs a direction, but I started this as mainly a food/recipe blog and have since become too lazy to write down and post my recipes.  I'll still try to post when the inspiration strikes, but honestly I think the real recipe creation is better left to the experts.  As a result, this will probably never happen again.  You're welcome.
4. ...life.  I work 45+ hours a week, and when you add in yoga (5ish hours) running (2-3 hours), cooking, cleaning, spending quality time with friends and husband, there is just much time left for writing.

All of that being said, I really, really love writing.  My job basically requires me to communicate in bullet points, and having a blog motivates me to occasionally throw down a few complete sentences.  THROW IT DOWN.

OK I am clearly delirious.

I've learned some things lately, about life:

Thing 1 that I have learned:  Sometimes when you accidentally stick your neck out where it doesn't belong, good things happen.  I'm not really a self-promoter.  At all.  My single, recurring piece of 'constructive' feedback on my last performance review was that I need to be more assertive. Duh - this is not news to me. In the rare case when I do overstep my boundaries it is usually by accident.  This happened recently, and good things came out of it.  So I'm thinking I need to accidentally show up where I don't belong more often.

Thing 2 that I have learned: I need to get a damn handle on my existential crises.  The speed with which I go from "I don't understand this data" to "WHY IS LIFE??!??" is sort of alarming.  The thought process goes like so:

• Can't understand the data in this damn spreadsheet after 10 seconds
• Obviously this means that I fail at everything
• My contributions are meaningless
• How does this spreadsheet matter, in the grand scheme of all the things?
• This spreadsheet is meaningless
• What am I doing
• WHAT IS LIFE WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF ANYTHING EVER WHYYYYY

This all takes place in the span of about 2.5 seconds, and then poor Ben has to deal with it when I come home from work and start rambling about my purpose in the universe while simultaneously trying to cut up a butternut squash. I  imagine that my holding a huge, sharp knife is not too comforting in this situation.  Anyways, this is meant to be funny, not to make you feel bad for me.  Spreadsheets ---> existential crisis.  This is the way of the world.

WOW.  We have gone down a path here.  This is not what I intended to write about at all.

Whatever.

Here are some pretty photos of autumn in St Paul.  A couple of weekends ago we had one of those perfect, mistly fall weekends so obviously I took pictures.  Oh, also I finally bought a new battery charger for the DSLR (the old one vanished on one of my many travels this spring/summer) so expect photo quality to improve drastically in the near future.

Also this browser is the worst and will not let me change the size of my photos.  I'll fix them later but for now, all of these pictures are going to appear annoyingly huge.  Deal with it.


This is when they tore the street up and we couldn't park in front of our house for several days.  It was lovely



Either ghosts or Sherlock Holmes should probably appear at this point



Pretty Colors

 Also, this little gem just opened up down the block from us.  Macaroons are basically impossible for me to resist and now that they are 2 seconds from my home, I'm not really sure what will happen.






...and here is a random shot of my family having dinner at Everest on Grand - probably my favorite neighborhood dinner spot.




I am also proud to announce that I have gotten my parents hopelessly addicted to BBC Sherlock.  It's kind of adorable yet also somewhat terrifying.  The most terrifying thing is probably that Series 3 won't air for another year, so I have to endure 12 months of listening to my dad 'predicting' how the cliffhanger will resolve.  Awesome.

That is all for now.  See you again soon I promise!!

Ugh - and my favorite car story

Well...it looks like I am probably getting a new car.  I had grand dreams of driving my VW literally into the ground, but now I am thinking that might not be such a great idea.  I stopped myself one step short of drawing up a cost-benefit spreadsheet, but here is the basic situation:

• My car is getting old and has quite a few miles on it
• Over the last few years, this car has been a consistent drain on my bank account.  I feel like every time I think "surely this is all I'll need to do for a while"....nope.  Not so much.
• Ben's car is also 12 years old, and we've been thinking on and off about replacing one of our cars in the next couple of years.  We like taking road trips and it would be nice to have one car that was a little newer and more reliable.
• Of the two cars, mine is MUCH more expensive in terms of maintenance and repairs.  

I was pretty torn over whether I should put $3,000 into my car, which led me to make the mistake of soliciting advice on Facebook.  Opinions ranged everywhere from "never buy a new car ever" to "definitely buy a new car you will save so much in mpg!!" and was instructed to buy a Subaru, a Chevy Volt, a Honda, and a Hyundai.  Instead of helping, the quantity and variety of options presented caused my brain to implode on itself.

So, then I called my car guy who has been nothing but honest with me for the last six years and asked him honestly, if I go through with all the repairs, how many more miles he thinks I can expect before something like this comes up again.

He pretty much straight up told me that as much as he would love to have my $3,000, Volkswagens are weird. He can't promise something crazy won't happen next month, and $3,000 is a lot of money.  In his experience, VWs have more and more problems as they get older, and it's always something quirky and usually expensive.  

Case in point - what follows is a Livejournal entry from 2008 written by yours truly, detailing my personal *favorite* story of fixing my car (note extreme sarcasm).  This story is especially amusing because it was written during a time when Ben and I were not yet dating, but were crushing on each other hard and I was completely in denial about the whole thing.  Check it out.

I spent all of Saturday working on grad school essays. Saturday was actually a lovely day. I could have been outside doing any number of things, but instead I was inside writing.

On Saturday night as I was leaving Baker's Square after a great night of Concert and Pie with Ben and the Clark, I noticed something strange about my car - namely, the power locks had stopped working. I continued on my way home thinking, no big deal the battery in my keychain is probably dead. I made the executive decision to just deal with it until I could get to the dealership for a new battery. At this point, I noticed another strange thing - my power windows had also stopped working. Not sure why but I wasn't terribly concerned by this...I guess I thought maybe the same mechanism that was killing the power locks was also killing the power windows.

I still think that's probably the case, but apparently whatever killed my power locks and windows also eventually killed my car's ability to start, as I discovered when I got in my car on Sunday and suddenly had no mobility. This was not ideal since I had to be in downtown Minneapolis to see a play with Ben in 25 minutes. Luckily my roommate is awesome and drove me there.

This morning I got up bright and early to call AAA so they could come give me a jump start. Then I would be able to at least drive my car to the repair shop to figure out what's wrong with it. From my experience, AAA usually takes at LEAST 45 minutes to get there, so I called them at 6:50 thinking they'd get there just about in time to get me to work.

Wrong.

AAA apparently woke up this morning and suddenly decided to be punctual. They were there in 10 minutes. Needless to say I was not prepared for this....today I'm rocking the "I got dressed in the dark and didn't put on makeup" look, which is essentially exactly what happened.

Additionally, they were unable to jump my car, so I had to pay $20 for a tow up to the shop by work, where they are now looking at my car and probably at the end of the day they'll tell me that half of my next paycheck is going to be spent fixing my car. Again. Stupid car.

Even better is what happened next.  It turned out one of the wires connected to the starter had shorted, so they put in a new spark plug and gave me a spare just in case, but assured me that the current plug should last for a while.

Well.

The very next day, I had to run a bunch of errands for work.  We had a trade show coming up and our booth needed some touch-ups....being the entry-level marketing bitch (I say that with love in my heart - I LOVED my job and was by no means anybody's bitch) I had the honor of going to the paint store and the hardware store to pick up all of the necessary materials.

I can't remember exactly why, but I needed to get some supplies from my mom...I think maybe she had some extra paint or paint brushes, and I decided to borrow hers rather than buy new ones?  In any case, I called her as I was leaving the office. She said she was going for a walk around the lake with a neighbor and could I pick up the items from her car if she left it unlocked by the lake?

My office was only about 15 minutes from the lake near my parents' place so this wasn't a problem at all.  I zipped over to the lake, hopped out of my car, grabbed the materials from my mom's trunk, went back to my car and hit the power locks...and nothing happened.  Right away I knew this was trouble, and sure enough when I tried to start my car nothing happened.  No worries though because I had an extra plug!  Lucky I had that thing.  I pulled the spare plug from its hiding spot in my glove compartment, plugged it in, and tried to start my car.

The plug shorted immediately.

So, now I was stuck by myself at a lake in the middle of the woods, with no way to get anywhere, in the middle of my workday.  The lake is about six miles around and I had no clue how far my mom was on her walk.  She might be 20 minutes away, or she might be an hour and a half away, I just had no idea.  I decided to call AAA and immediately realized I had left my phone on my desk at work.  Brilliant.

Just as I was about to give up and have a complete meltdown, the water pump maintenance truck drove up!  I can't imagine what this guy thought when a random 25 year-old in business attire knocked politely on his truck window and asked if she could use his cell phone to call AAA.  The random 25 year old was me, obviously.  Luckily the guy was extremely helpful and sympathetic.  Yay random strangers.

This time, AAA was not as punctual.  I waited for them for at least an hour, by which point my mom had finished her walk and offered to drive me to the paint store while AAA towed my car.  I made it safely back to work with all booth supplies in hand by...4pm.

And finally, they figured out what was wrong with  my car.  A wire in the dome light was shorting out, and this same wire was also connected to my power locks and starter.  Bart, the guy who works on my car, literally took the interior apart trying to find where the bad wire was coming from.

I can't say it didn't make sense.  My dome light had been acting up for several months, and would randomly flicker on and off without me even touching the switch.  When this happened I would usually either a) smack my fist into the light with a considerable amount of force, or b) wedge a credit card or paper clip, or other such item, into the dome light which for some reason seemed to temporarily fix the problem.  While extremely effective, these methods probably did not help the wire-shorting situation.

HOWEVER, why on EARTH would you design a car such that a malfunctioning dome light can kill your ENTIRE CAR.  This I still do not understand.

Anyways.  That's my favorite car repair to date.  That one also cost me $3,000 but at least it made my car a legend at the repair shop.  Bart apparently still tells that story.

Here are some favorite (non-repair) memories of my little car:

Tahoe Road Trip

Cali Road Trip with my dad

After my friend Emily decorated the interior with poofy bows at my wedding :)

So, that's all I've got for now!  I also asked my car guy for recommendations in terms of models that run for a long time with minimal maintenance.  I want my next car to last another 12-15 years, so I need to invest wisely.  He said I should look at Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Ford.  I'm leaning towards a Honda Accord or Civic...I'll keep you posted :)

Cars...so fun.

The best laid plans of mice and men...

...are no match for your pets.

Yesterday, most of my team ended up in the same all-day culture training that I went through on the 12th.  As a result, I had only three meetings, all in the morning, and after lunch I was wide open. I thought I would take advantage of not having to actually be present in the office, and work from home.  "It will be perfect," I thought to myself.  "I can cuddle the pets, work on some presentations in my sweatpants...brilliant."

Well.  I got home, set up my computer and was all set to get down to business when I smelled a foul odor.  The odor seemed to be coming specifically from the cat.  It didn't take me long to figure out that Mini had somehow manged to poop herself and then step in it.  Lovely

Natrually, I immediately tried to clean it up with numerous paper towels and soap.  After about five minutes of epic cat-bathing faliure I gave up and decided to lock Mini in the back hallway until Ben got home, because honestly, you try to wash dried poop off of your cat's leg while simultaneously holding them still and also trying to avoid multiple puncture wounds.

Once Mini was safely in solitary confinement away from all furniture, rugs and humans, I took Sid for a nice long walk around the neighborhood.  About five minutes into our stroll, I heard his tummy make a distinct gurgling sound.  This is never a good sign.  Usually it happens after he decides to have a little snack from Mini's litter box, which can happen if I'm not paying attention...which I definitely was not while wrestling with Mini and her soiled foot/leg.

Sometimes he has a horrible reaction afterwards...and sometimes nothing happens at all.  I decided to just wait it out, get some work done, and try to keep him off the furniture.  Of course, while I was answering emails he managed to scoot past me and puke all over the living room carpet. 

Instead of getting more work done at home, I ended up getting less done...and spending most of my time cleaning.  If those two weren't so damn adorable...we would have problems.



"We will poop everywhere and you will still love us"

And on that appetizing note...happy Friday!

The Farm of Pizza, and other shenanigans

Updates on a few of the important things in life:

Moving
I would normally post tons of photos of our new place, but sadly we currently appear to be living in a bad episode of Hoarders, and who wants to see that? No one, really.  In our exhaustion after moving everything we own from Minneapolis to St. Paul, we just haven't had the energy to unpack so everything is piled in random boxes.  To keep my sanity, I have to have at least one room that doesn't look like a war zone, and that room has become the office.  I refuse to let any unpacked boxes enter this room and will guard the entrance with my life if need be.

I am not great at moving.  I can promise at least one mental breakdown, usually around the point when you feel like you've packed and hauled everything on the planet, only to realize you're maybe about halfway there.  This is when I get ruthless and start purging recklessly.  I think that at some point on Saturday afternoon, at the end of my rope, I started yelling that EVERYTHING THAT IS NOT IN THE CAR IN ONE HOUR IS GOING IN THE GARBAGE.  Because that is completely logical, and also earth friendly.  Luckily, Ben is there as my sanity foil and his utterly calm demeanor makes me realize that I am in fact acting like a crazy person.

Grading
Unfortunately, our move coincided not-so-conveniently with Ben's end of quarter grades being due, so he has been up until the wee hours of the morning grading like a mofo.  Lest you feel too bad for him, he also has spring break next week, which means that when I leave for work at 6:45, he will be cuddling the pets in his sweatpants on the couch.  It all evens out I guess?

Work
Work is just... crazy.  There's no other way to describe it.  First, we have several major projects launching in the next two months, and that in and of itself is a big deal.  Second, my main contact in marketing started her maternity leave last Thursday....and her colleague who is filling in for her out on PTO this week.  And a bunch of marketing-related issues completely blew up at the beginning of last week, before everyone took off leaving me basically holding the bag. I have no idea who has communicated what to whom, who has which files and what the damn process is for getting this shit figured out.  I'm not complaining - just, I have a lot of work right now, which on top the move is a bit crazy-making.

Pizza
Luckily, in the midst of chaos...there is Pizza Farm.  Pizza Farm is just what it sounds like: a farm that makes Pizza.  The only downside to Pizza Farm is that a) it is in Stockholm, WI about an hour and twenty minutes from the Twin Cities, and b) it is hella crowded most of the time.  Normally, parked cars extend at least a quarter of a mile down the road, and the wait for pizza is about an hour.  Still, totally worth it.

HOWEVER... and I'm almost hesitant to say this because I feel like I'm giving away my new most favorite secret.... I think the best discovery since Pizza Farm is the fact that Pizza Farm is open in March.  Nobody thinks to go there in the spring...which is understandable, because usually we still have snow on the ground.

But, since the weather here has been summery and lovely of late, we thought March Pizza Farm sounded like a brilliant idea (I still brought a warmish jacket and scarf though, because it is Minnesota and I am not a total idiot).  We expected there to be a modest crowd, given the weather...but there were literally probaly 10 people there, total.  We got our pizza in like 10 minutes, and had the entire space in front of the pizza barn to ourselves.  We ate pizza, drank wine and beer, played frisbee, and basically had an awesome time.

Plus, the drive out to the farm is GORGEOUS.  If you take 10 to 35, you drive right along lake Pepin, and the view is spectacular.  I would go out there regularly just for the drive. 

There are definitely pros to summer Pizza Farm though - longer daylight hours, less cold, more pizza options, delicious summer veggies, lamb sausage... etc.  But, spring Pizza Farm definitely has its perks, and we're hoping to take advantage of it at least once more.

Full disclosure - these photos are from a previous Summer Pizza Farm excursion...

mmmm garlic....

Waiting for pizza

Yes folks... it really is that exciting....

Inconsistency
One thing that completely sucks about being this busy, moving etc, is that while moving and work are driving me bananas, I have less time to do the things that keep me sane.  I haven't cooked or baked anything in weeks, and my yoga practice is down to 1-2 times a week which is not ideal.  I'm pretty sure there is an inverse relationship between frequency of yoga and frequency of moving-related meltdowns.  Someone should graph this.  I would, but I hate all graphs right now.

So - I have made a promise to myself that I am going to yoga TOMORROW.  Whether this happens in Minneapolis or St Paul has yet to be determined, but it is definitely happening.  Also, these little dudes have me inspired to get baking immediately.  I have no idea where my springform pan is, or my whisk, or really any kitchen supplies....but that's nothing a little rummaging and creativity can't fix.  Rye Crumble Bars by Saturday.  Keep me honest, people.

Amen.

'night :)