I used to be really great at finding fun, interesting, flattering outfits.

Then I got busy, and sortof forgot. I still manage to leave the house looking passable most days, but I’m definitely in a rut. So much so that about 90% of my current wardrobe is basic t-shirts and pants from Banana Republic, Gap or Old Navy.

Functional? Yes. Interesting? Definitely NOT.

So, gentle readers, as one who’s been out of touch with fashion for the last little while, I’m soliciting help from you!

Here’s what I’d love for you to share with me:

What are your favourite fashion trends right now?
What current trend do you wish would go far away and die?
Where’s your favourite place to shop these days?
What’s your favourite bargain and your favourite splurge?

And considering I’m looking for advice for me, here are a few other guiding points:

I have a fairly casual workplace, so I don’t need suits (I wear jeans most days), but I do need to look respectable.
I’m in my late 20’s – there are certain things I can no longer get away with.
I’m entirely pear-shaped – tiny on top, round on the bottom.

Other than that, go forth and fashionate! I’m counting on you!

Upgrading wordpress this morning. Please excuse the mess.

**And done – with much thanks to the husband, who made this go much faster than it would’ve, were I left to my own devices.

Please let me know if you encounter any strangeness over the next few days!

Things I meant to do last night:

-Laundry
-Change bedsheets
-Write strata council treasurer’s report
-Upload pictures of closet (so I can finally blog about it) and cool fire dancing photos
-backup blog so I can upgrade wordpress

Things I did instead:

-Watch TV
-Bake cookies
-Go to bed early

Perhaps today will be better.

From the Very Good Taste blog:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) *Asterisk and Italicize any items you’d be interested in trying but have not yet.*
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. *Nettle tea*
3. Huevos rancheros
4. *Steak tartare*
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. *Epoisses*
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. *Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper*
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. *Bagna cauda*
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. *Clotted cream tea*
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. *Phaal*
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. *Fugu*
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. *Umeboshi*
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. *Currywurst*
65. Durian
66. *Frogs’ legs*
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. *Chitterlings, or andouillette*
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. *Louche absinthe*
74. *Gjetost, or brunost*
75. Roadkill
76. *Baijiu*
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. *Lapsang souchong*
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. *Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.*
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. *Criollo chocolate*
91. Spam
92. *Soft shell crab*
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. *Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee*
100. *Snake*

I’m a bit disappointed in myself admitting that I’d never eat bugs, or durian, or roadkill (I’m that person who thinks everyone should try everything at least once) – but… ew. I hate bugs, I’ve smelled durian, and I’ve changed enough tires to be pretty wary of roadkill.

Anything you’d just never, ever try?

(**props to you who figure out where the title came from and why I chose it for this post**)

So if the weather here lately is any indication, summer is sadly already on its way out of Vancouver, which means the cycle-commuter season is also wrapping up. For most people anyhow.

So how did my first season biking to work go?

Well enough that I’d still rather ride in the rain than take the bus. I am a bit of a pretty princess, so that says a lot. It’s a lot faster than taking the bus, and I feel better doing it. I’m going to be seriously crabby once the show comes and/or it gets too icy to ride.

Observations:

Riding in the bike lanes and along bike routes is a lot less harrowing than one would initially think. They’re definitely wide enough to feel comfortable in, and are generally pretty well-respected by the rest of traffic. I wish there were more of them, since cyclists outside bike lanes are generally NOT well-respected by the rest of traffic, and it feels a lot more dangerous.

Bike maintenance is important! I’m not really used to using my bike as a regular mode of transportation, so I’ve been treating it like every other bike I’ve owned: annual tune-ups. My tires were feeling a bit squishy last week, so I finally went and inflated them. They were at 20 psi. They should be around 80 for optimal traffic riding. My brake cables are so loose the levers actually wobble. The bike’s going into the shop today for a bit of love. Commuter cyclists: weekly maintenance should be your mantra!

Secure bike parking and comfortable shower facilities at work are HUGE perks for cyclists. If I didn’t have both of these at my office, there’s no way I’d keep riding in. And now that I really enjoy biking to work it’s going to be a hard sell for me to take any job in the future that doesn’t have these things. It’s like going back to regimented hours once you’ve gotten used to flex time.

The pack you choose will make or break you. I have a backpack that’s got a mesh back and some stiff framing to keep the bulk of the pack away from my body. It works pretty darned well, but is still a thing on my back. Which is hot and sweaty-making – especially on the days I haul my computer back and forth. For my birthday I got a rack and set of panniers – I far prefer them to the backpack. I have to be careful, since I can cram a lot of heavy crap into them, but they make the ride a lot more pleasant. I highly recommend them to anyone who wants to bike to work on a regular basis (and doesn’t just keep an entire wardrobe at the office like my colleague Jeff).

When I drive now, I am much more aware of cyclists on the road. I think everyone who drives in Vancouver should have to bike through the city a few times (and drive in Europe, and on major US Highways) – if that were a licensing requirement, I think we’d have a lot fewer accidents.

HOWEVER, there are as many jackass cyclists as there are jackass drivers, and I fully understand why auto drivers get so antsy about the “psycholist” breed of cyclist. I can not stress enough the importance of riding defensively while asserting one’s space on the road. I notice I’ve gotten a lot more respect on the road by being respectful of all traffic (cars, pedestrians, hoverboarders, whatever) by just following the rules of traffic (signalling, staying in the correct place on the road, stopping at stop-signs, etc.). I think if more cyclists would ride the way they wish cars would drive, it would be much more effective than the generally disruptive and traffic-blocking Critical Mass rides, which seems unlikely to draw much, if any, sympathy to the cyclist cause.

Any questions from would-be bikers? Other feedback from cyclists out there? Tips I haven’t figured out yet?

So I wrote about Good Space not too long ago (which, for clarification, I was in no way compensated or received any sort of discount or special privilege for), and Neil and I have slowly been implementing parts of the plan.

We’ve had closet organizers installed (post and pictures to come at a later date), and have acquired a few of the recommended design elements.

One of those suggestions was to install an art ledge for photos on the wall in the hallway between the main bathroom and the second bedroom.

What you see in the picture is a photo of the wall with some framed prints on it, sans ledge.

The ledge is currently sitting in our closet, awaiting a better spot for install.

Why, you ask?

See if you can figure it out – there’s something in the picture that indicates installing a ledge at that location (complete with 3″ stud screws and toggle bolts) would be a colossally bad idea.

Give up?

THE POCKET DOOR!

The door to the bathroom opens into the vacant space behind the drywall on that wall. Installing anything other than the tiniest of picture-hanging nails there would be disastrous – either locking the door open, or closed. .

Unfortunately, sometimes these things aren’t obvious. Even professionals occasionally make mistakes, as do dunderheads like us who managed to punch three large holes into the wall for the toggle bolts, before realizing the catastrophe we were setting ourselves up for.

Just to prove how clueless we can be, two of those holes came after we carefully drew all over the wall again because the first toggle we tried to screw in stopped and got caught on the horizontal door-guide framing (we had no idea what it was – we just busted out the stud-finder and moved our measurements up a couple inches).

Thankfully the pictures we were going to put on the ledge are the perfect sizes to cover the holes and most of the scuff-marks. And it’s a very good thing we were already planning on painting (after most of the work is done, because damn but we’re rough on our walls)!

Have you ever made a home-improvement blunder? Measured once and cut twice? Painted the dog? Please share and make me feel better, because I strongly suspect this won’t be our last!

Meals eaten involving BBQ’d meat: 5

Times I had cheesecake for breakfast: 1

Hours spent cleaning our apartment top to bottom: 5

BBQs hosted: 1

BBQs attended: 2

People crammed into my apartment at once: 15

Degrees it reached in my living room while 15 people were crammed into it: 30 C (that’s 86 F)

Kilometers biked about town: 20

Pictures printed, framed and hung: 6

Holes needlessly punched in the wall: 3

Baseball games watched at the prettiest little ball park in North America: 1

Empties left in my apartment after the weekend: 4 champagne bottles, 6 wine bottles, 12 beer bottles.

Proportion of those empties consumed by me: quite a lot.

Naps I’m going to require to recover: many.

How was your weekend?

To the women in the office across the hall who use the bathroom on this floor.

In case you hadn’t noticed, this is a fairly respectable office space in downtown Vancouver. This is not the squatter in a lean-to behind some Thai Cat-House.

So please adhere to the following so we can all have a pleasant experience:

Toilet Paper, in North America, goes in the TOILET. It can be flushed here – it’s okay. You do not need to wrap it up in another seventeen yards of paper and throw it in the tiny and already overflowing sanitary napkin disposal can in the stall. Incidentally, the overflow wouldn’t be an issue at all if you’d just FLUSH IT.

Also, in regards to the “fairly respectable space” bit – this is an office, there are cleaners. They come in and wash the facilities nightly. Probably more often than your special throne at home even. So there’s no need to use most of a roll of paper wiping down the entire stall before you deign to park your dainty arse and do your thing. And there is especially no need to then throw all that paper on the floor. If you really feel you need protection from the cooties, use the seat covers.

(To that one woman who won’t touch the doorknob, and uses a piece of paper-towel to open it – quit throwing that paper towel in the plant in the elevator lobby! It’s gross. If you’re that paranoid about germs, carry it all the way back to your office – what makes you think that doorknob is any cleaner?)

I’m not sure what kind of sweatshop they’re running across the hall there, but it seems like you’re not actually allowed to speak or socialize anywhere but the bathroom. Or at least that’s what I suspect, the way you head to the bathroom in a herd and conduct some sort of symposium around the sink.

And far be it from me to take away that bit of clearly unbridled joy in your day – but I do have a small request around that particular activity: there are only two stalls, when you’re making use of them, shut the hell up, focus on the business at hand, then get the hell out. My bladder and I do not have 15 minutes to wait while you finish your conversation between grunts and wipes. Especially when there are 5 people ahead of us waiting.

In closing, please just be tidy and speedy, and I won’t have to give you death glares (or put a stink-bomb under your office door).

Love and Kisses,
-Jen (and the six other women who work in my office and must suffer your bathroom abuse)

I happen to be fortunate enough to know some truly super people doing truly super things lately.

SuperHero Drop Zone

First up on the roster is Riann. In about six weeks she’ll be rappelling down a 20-story building downtown, complete with cape, boots and underwear on the outside! All in the name of raising money for Easter Seals camps for kids with disabilities.

Even more remarkable, she’ll be doing it WITH ONLY ONE ARM since she lost the use of her right arm in a skiing accident in early 2007. For bonus points, up until the accident, Riann was right-handed.

Click Here to donate to Riann’s Superhero Campaign, and show up at 999 West Hastings on September 16 to cheer her on.

Running (Wo)Man

Also coming up is Tanya, who’s running a freakin’ MARATHON in January for Diabetes Research. She’ll be heading to Orlando with the 95 Crave team to run around Epcot at Disney World. And lest you think it’s all a pleasant jog through the park, may I remind you about how much I detest Orlando and what I hole I thought Epcot was. It’s certainly (at least in my opinion) a self-sacrificing trip. Not to mention all the damn running (says she who has yet to actually finish the Couch-to-5k program)!

Click here to donate to Tanya and the 95 Crave team.

Under There!

And combining the best of both worlds: underwear on the outside, and running, Donna and Gill participated once again in The Underwear Affair on team Thunder Panties in July. Any woman (who isn’t already an underwear model) who’ll parade herself around the city in nothing but her skivvies deserves some sort of superhero title. Check out their blogs for recaps and photos of the event.

Although I missed out on the merriment while I was away, and maybe you did too, it’s not too late to donate to cancer research! The donation page for this event stays live long after it’s over, so throw a few pennies their way as well.

Since Neil and I moved into our new place (seven months ago), we’ve basically been living in a glorified storage locker. Mishmash hodgepodge furniture arrangement, no art on the walls, still a few boxes kicking around, and many many things that still have no home.

We’ve been holding off a long, LONG time on buying new furniture since we knew we’d want to make sure it was just right for the condo we had under construction (deposit put down a little over two years ago). Both of us still have much of the furniture we acquired in university (or shortly thereafter), purchased based on price and utility, rather than aesthetics and function. Furniture purchasing default, thy name is IKEA. When we moved in together, our furniture strategy was “let’s look at the duplicates, and keep whichever piece sucks least.”

And despite being HGTV junkies, we really had no idea how to purchase furniture for aesthetics and function, other than having a camera crew and hunky carpenter show up with a truck-full of MDF for three days of mayhem.

Outside, that, all we were comfortable doing without serious help was heading to a furniture showroom, purchasing every piece in a mock set-up, and have a living room that looked like a furniture showroom. Also not really the aesthetic we were looking for.

So you can imagine that I was super excited to stumble upon the fine folks at Good Space.

A full-service interior design firm in Gastown, they’ve also developed the Good Space Plan, to make great design accessible to the rest of us.

Instead of having a design company in to put together a plan, and immediately spend a bucketload of money on the recommended paint, renos, furniture and accessories in one, fell, budget-busting swoop, the Good Space plan hands over their expertise in one tidy binder, and lets you do the rest at your own pace.

After a thorough consultation process we were given a floor plan, furniture suggestions, fabric swatches and source info for all of the furnishings and accessories, along with a list of recommended stores and contractors. It’s now up to us to obtain all the pieces and put them together.

But I think my favourite part of the plan is the fact that along with the suggestions, we have just enough information to be dangerous, and can really go wild and make this plan ours.

For example, they didn’t just say “go get couch X,” they said “go get couch X or Y, or look for these manufacturing traits in any other couch, and make sure it’s built within these dimensions, in a similar fabric texture/colour, and place it thusly in the room relation to the rest of your furniture.”

In fact, knowing how much of this plan we really wanted to work on ourselves, and being very good judges of the amount and type of guidance we’d need, Good Space gave us instructions for many things to just go out and find (vintage pieces, artwork, funky lighting, accessories) that will work with some of the core pieces they recommended.

Nothing comes from the same place, everything is designed to compliment everything else, rather than coordinate and be all furniture showroom matchy-matchy. With the added bonus of all FITTING in our small space, working with our budget, being functional for our needs and pet friendly!

We’ve just started executing on the first few steps of the plan as they work for us, so I’ll try to post pictures of how the process goes. First up is having organizers installed in our storage voids so we actually have places to put things, other than in a stack in the spare room.

I really can not say enough good things about Good Space. I know the Good Space Plan has really taken off lately, and with that in addition to their full-service design work, they’re wicked busy lately – but if you’re interested in getting beyond the IKEA catalogue or the La-Z-Boy showroom for decor, they’re worth checking out, and DEFINITELY worth the wait.

It was about a month ago when I bought the Getting Things Done book and began trying to implement it as an overall productivity system.

And I’ve gotta say – it’s working out pretty damned well. I’m certainly not any sort of crazy program evangelist, or going to start a productivity blog, but for my personal needs (getting stuff out of my head that’s driving me crazy, getting things done, keeping track of the bajillion balls I generally have in the air all at once), it’s working out pretty well.

Plusses so far:

I achieve inbox zero at least weekly. If not at zero, it’s at around 30 messages. A lot of this is because I’m already a neurotic email archiver, and I also purchased the GTD Outlook plugin to manage emails and tasks.

I’ve stopped worrying about forgetting things. I do still think of things at moments when I’m ill equipped to do anything about them (mostly in the shower), but those thoughts are usually followed up by “oh, right, it’s already on the list.”

With a portable file system to separate and hold items that are In, for Home, for Office, to Read/Review or are Action Support (all GTD file name suggestions) for the project I’m traveling for, dealing with things on the road and once I’m back now take a fraction of the time (and crazy-making brain real-estate) that they used to.

The Minuses:

It’s still difficult, and occasionally frustrating, to think of things in terms of the “Next Action.” I will often procrastinate processing my inbox because of this.

Overall though, I think it worked so well for me because I’m already a list and calendar person.

I kept lists of ongoing projects and tend to live and die by my calendar (outlook on my computer and my smartphone). Implementing GTD just expanded that particular tendency and helped me with a mechanism to put all the tasks associated with projects in appropriate places so I wasn’t thinking of and trying to remember them at inopportune times.

Next Steps:

Finding a good mobile solution to integrate with everything else. I tried Jott, but am not really keen on phoning in my random to-do list while I’m on the bus, etc. Next try is Remember the Milk which (if you get the paid version) syncs with Outlook tasks.

I also definitely need to work harder on my home solution. Part of the delay is the lack of storage in the office (which will be remedied by the end of August) for files, etc. And also just the time to be home and really get into it. I’m sure it’ll all come together soon.

In the meantime, I’m pretty happy with GTD as a system. Has anyone else’s experience been similar? Drastically different?

(photo courtesy of Mel)

All in all, a not-too-shabby way to ring in my 28th year.

**Note** I’ve been working on this post for a few days, still not happy with it, but having just signed up to volunteer at BarCamp in September, figure I should probably do the social media thing and blog already.

I went to my 10-year High School reunion this past weekend.

It was, in a word, surreal.

I’m not sure what I’d expected of my graduating class – maybe that everyone had moved up and out and changed as much as I think I have since High School. Maybe that I’d be surprised and everyone was wildly happy and successful.

But really, everyone was exactly the same.

The people who seemed most likely to succeed have certainly done that (and it was nice to reconnect with some of them), and those who seemed to have no particular path they were following are still meandering along without any indication of much purpose.

I went to High School in a pretty small town 2 hours outside Vancouver. Population about 8,000. My graduating class was one of the bigger groups in recent history at 97 students. After I left, I kept in touch with exactly no one.

And I’m trying to write this without coming off as a complete asshole, but I think I’m going to fail – so I may as well just go for it.

A great number of people back there are seriously fucked up.

Normal there is to not bat an eye when people have multiple babies with multiple partners.

Normal there is to hold no curiosity of the world at large, and to aim only as high as next weekend, where levels of drunkenness will be compared to those of weeks before.

Normal there is to go to the local bar, and have the unease of feeling like a brawl could start up any second, because that’s just how disagreements are dealt with.

Normal there is to have truly peaked at 18, and still live life as if that’s how old one still is.

And sure, everyone laughs at Blue Collar Comedy thinking “heh, amusing, but this is made up. People aren’t actually that backwards or ignorant.” Newsflash: they are.

I moved there one week shy of my 13th birthday, having just started to figure out what I want out of life. I was stunned and disappointed at the lack of possibility and potential I was suddenly surrounded with. I also wasn’t particularly shy about my disappointment with where I’d landed at the time, which made me a social pariah for most of my time there.

I guess over the years I lived there I got a bit used to it – but damn, the confusion and alarm and just wrongness of it all smacked me in the face all over again when I returned.

So yes, it’s completely judgemental of me – but, to put it mildly, even though I spent 5 of the most formative years of my life in that town with that crowd: they are not my people, I do not belong, I’d rather never go back.

Has anyone else had as traumatic an experience with their High School reunion?

In all the travel I’ve done, I’ve noticed one near constant (at least in North America):

Cars that take you to the airport (especially when they’re pre-arranged) are generally very nice. In Vancouver I always end up with a nice, new, clean cab. In other cities I’ve had everything from nice taxis and shuttle vans to Town Cars and Escalades.

In contrast, the cars that pick passengers up from the airport are generally god-awful and potentially dangerous.

We had one van-cab in Orlando where, when the side door was slid open, it FELL OFF.

Without fail, whenever I end up queueing for a taxi at an airport, the taxis are crap and the drivers are surly. And it still completely affects my impression of the city (even though I always discover that these dirty deathtraps are usually the exception rather than the rule).

But it’s always the worst when I come home. I know how the taxis here work. I know that out of the dozen or so cab companies that service the area (and thus the airport) there are only four that are licensed for pickups in Vancouver proper. And none of them are ever waiting at the airport taxi stand.

Instead there are taxis from the surrounding suburbs: Burnaby, Surrey, Delta, Richmond. And when I get in one of those cabs (because as an arriving passenger at the taxi stand, I must simply hop in the car that’s next in line), I inevitably get an incredibly cranky driver. He now has to drive my ass all the way out to the West side of the city and then back either to the airport or his licensed pick-up area, fare-free.

And yes, driver, I understand that part of things certainly sucks. But it’s not my problem that you’re doing to have to do at least $60 worth of driving for the $30 I’m going to give you. So quick being a cranky dick and just get me home.

Anyone out there able to explain the crappy arrivals cab phenomenon?

There have been a few times when people have asked me “how’s married life” and I’ve answered “Uh… I’m not really sure.” I’m sortof joking because for the most part I think married life is grand and really not that different from living in sin (with a delightful lack of disapproving “tut tuts” from those who, well, disapproved of living in sin).

We also joke that there’s no way we could know, considering that since we’ve been married, we’ve spent more time apart than together. While we’ve both been travelling far more than usual, we didn’t actually think that was true. But this latest round of voyages have been getting me down, so I started doing the math (because I have nothing better to do while sitting in yet another hotel room).

Neil and I were married on March 29th. We left for our Honeymoon the next day and returned to Vancouver on April 19th. I left for my first business trip on April 20th, and it’s been pretty nonstop for both of us since then.

I’ve taken five trips for a total of 34 days away from home since the honeymoon.

Neil’s taken two for a total of 13 days, plus a 9-day trip starting Saturday for a grand total of 22 days away from home by the end of July.

That means the two of us have been home together for all of twenty-nine days in the 3 months we’ve been married. The longest stretch during that time was 16 days.

Sure, you can add the four days in Orlando when Neil flew out to visit over a weekend while I was on an extended trip there, which brings our total “together time” to 33 days.

And you can even count the 22 days we spent on our honeymoon. But as of the 27th of July, the first day we’re both home again for at least a week, that would still bring us to 55 days. One day short of the 56 days we’ll have spent apart.

And frankly, that kindof sucks.

I’m now more used to sleeping alone than in bed with my husband. Which means I sleep like garbage when we’re together, making me grouchy and not particularly pleasant.

We’ve been trying to go out for a nice dinner (I’ve pegged the tasting menu at West, and an evening at Raincity Grill as my top two goals) ever since we got home from the honeymoon – but for the time we’ve been home together, we’ve been exhausted and sick of eating in restaurants anyhow.

The dog is turning completely neurotic (goldies are notoriously sensitive, and don’t like it when their entire pack isn’t around), and now goes away to pout and whine every time a suitcase comes out.

Between moving and unpacking in January, chaos through preparing for the wedding, and the chaos of just never being home since the wedding, our house is in complete shambles. We’ve been in eating/sleeping/laundry survival mode, and feels less homey than most of the hotel rooms I end up staying in. Case in Point: we’ve lived there for six months, and just hung some art last weekend because we couldn’t stand it anymore.

And the reality is, it doesn’t look like the situation is going to change any time soon.

We thought August and September would finally give us a break, but Neil’s got at least two weeks of trips during that time. I don’t have anything scheduled yet, but with a new project on the horizon, that could all change. And I’m definitely out of town again for at least two weeks, maybe three, in October/November.

But don’t let that fool you into thinking I’m complaining!

I love the work I do. I love the travel component. I love seeing new cities and managing events around the continent.

I do not love that I have not quite figured out how to stay sane during the in-between times. I do not love that I feel so disconnected from my partner these days.

So anyone who travels a lot and wants to weigh in on how you stay grounded and functional with your partner and family – I’d certainly appreciate it!

And for those who’ve seen me, and noticed I’ve been a bit on the cranky side, it’s only because I felt like my life was being turned a bit inside out.

Because it is. And I’m still figuring out how to right it.