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What’s Making Me Happy 8.8.13

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cropped-happiness-quotes-facebook-cover-18.jpgIt is the 14th annual Happiness Happens day today, sponsored by the Secret Society of Happy People!  Thought I’d do a quick “what’s making me happy” list to commemorate.

  • The Timehop app makes me so happy.  I know I’ve mentioned it before (haven’t I?) but it’s an app that shows my social media posts from the last 1-5 years, as well as one thing in history from this day.  Today it showed me my blog posts from the past few August 8ths (about school libraries and domain names), my Facebook posts and pictures (regarding gardens), and my twitter feed.  Reminded me that Xanadu came out 33 years ago today and that it’s been one year since I purchased my own domain name.  All good stuff.
  • My new glasses are making me happy – even though I feel like everyone freaks out a little when they see them!  It’s pretty funny.  They are a statement and so comfortable.  It was such a good buying experience.  I also am so happy to have my rose-colored Coach sunglasses turned into prescription sunglasses!  Since I stopped wearing my contacts, I didn’t get to wear them as much, so now I’m happy to be able to wear them – and to stop squinting while driving!
Yay! I can wear my rose-colored glasses all the time now!

Yay! I can wear my rose-colored glasses all the time now!

  • It made me happy to dream a little about winning the lottery last night – I actually made a list of what I would do if I won some money.  It clarified the travels I would love to do and how “stuff” isn’t as important as adventures. 🙂
  • The music video of Mumford and Sons is quite a hoot – many smiles from that!  http://youtu.be/rId6PKlDXeU  Click to watch it yourself!  Find the surprise!
  • I was asked to participate in another Book Blogger Book Tour!  I will be receiving a book and review it during their book tour!  September 17 is the date I will be reviewing Freud’s Mistress by Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman.  This book tour is sponsored by TLC – the website where I won a box of books from!  Love books!
  • Still on a high from the Superbowl of Books held the last week of July… so much fun.  Maybe instead of twice yearly, we will have to do it quarterly!
  • Anticipating great fun at Ferragosto this year!  I truly think it will be the best ever – and I haven’t even heard from some of you!  🙂  My kitchen is a mess with bags of food packed and ready, my suitcase is out with the important stuff in it (swimsuits and towels!), and I have many Ferragosto-type beverages packed and ready to go!
  • Having every weekend in August off is so exciting!  Last weekend I had a great day long road-trip with this guy I’ve been hanging out with (woot!  maybe more about that later???).  Lots of fun stops, including the Marine Art Museum in Winona, Lakeview Drive-in, the Great River Road (?) in Wisconsin, a winery, River City Days in Red Wing, and dinner with Beth and Doug in Lake City.  The day ended at Whistle Binkies on the Lake, sitting around the firepit with whiskey and bread pudding.  Ah.  It was a good day.  And then to the lake on Sunday with Marissa and Jenny to see the Rochester Grimsrud’s.  A perfect summer weekend off and a preview of my upcoming Ferragosto time!
  • I heard through the grapevine (my mom’s Facebook page) that Marissa is going to be able to move in early, so that last weekend in August that I don’t work I will be able to help her move in and get settled!  Very excited that it can happen, as I work overnights that first weekend in September/Labor Day weekend, so I will be tired and zombie-ish.
  • Speaking of working overnights, that’s what I’m doing now.  Well, I mean last night and tonight and tomorrow night.  But I slept pretty good today – almost 7 hours – and I survived night one without much trouble.  That makes me happy. 🙂
  • Watching Jimmy Fallon daily on my computer makes me happy.  Last night I started looking at plane fares for NYC in October!  So much to plan, which is almost the best part of a vacation – and hopefully Jimmy Fallon will be part of that trip!  Woohoo!!!  Troy – we’ve gotta talk!  🙂

Well, that’s all for now.  Must get out of bed, get some food, and get ready for night 2!  But tell me — what’s been making you happy lately?  How are you celebrating Happiness Happens HappyThon today?

Secret Society of Happy People

Secret Society of Happy People

 

 

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What a Difference…

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Only a few weeks left in 2012.

Tonight I was looking back in my computer to see if I wrote any kind of “end of year wrap up” for 2011 and found nothing but revisions of resumes and cover letters dated 2011.  I guess that’s where my mind was last year at this time!  What a difference a year makes.

It was fun to go back and read my December 2011 and January 2012 blogs – the books and movies that I indulged in during unemployment and my blogs about what I will and won’t miss about unemployment.  Ah.

Pretty good stuff.  I think I was the most creative during that time!  Blogs in early 2012 were pretty ‘meh.”  I guess brain power was going elsewhere for a while… rightly so!

Anyway, found this list again:

US passport

US passport (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

12 Things to Get Done in 2012

  1. See Garrison Keillor at the Fitzgerald Theatre
  2. Visit the Four Daughters Vineyard in Spring Valley (maybe more than once!). Doesn’t it look lovely?
  3. Get my passport – so I’m ready!  This was on my list of 40 Things and it didn’t happen.  It will happen – soon.
  4. Write – at least weekly blogs
  5. Write – more letters. It’s so fun to get mail.
  6. Eat healthy and REAL food
  7. Watch for and attend more Table Trivia Nights
  8. Seek out author and book events, especially for authors and books I love!
  9. Go to New York City to see “Once – the Musical” – you see that, Troy
  10. While in NYC maybe go on a Greenwich Village walking tour with Adriana Trigiani (love her!)
  11. Read at least one GOOD book per month.  Easily achievable.
  12. Try new recipes and cook for myself (or invite others!)
Garrison Keillor

Garrison Keillor (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Still no passport (eeek!) and no Garrison yet, but NYC twice in a year?  A dream come true.

Seeing “Once” twice?  Amazing.

Even on Facebook in January 2011 I was posting links for the musical and dreaming of getting there.

Fun to start my dream list for 2013!  What do I want to come true this coming year???

I have to review my birthday list of 11 Things to do in the Fall, as the Winter Solstice is coming up soon and it’ll be time for a new list!  Yikes!

More later on that!

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It’s almost over…

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facebook and politics

Facebook posts

Tomorrow morning we will know the outcome.   (Hopefully. Remember that one time when it dragged on and on?)

I’m not a big news watcher but I try hard to find impartial news sources to read my news, and if I can’t find impartial I read from all sides.  I’m going to be glad when it’s over so that I can unhide those facebook friends who constantly barrage their statuses with political news (all sides) and I hope for a return to civility.

Other things I hope will go away when the election is over:

There’s more I’m sure.

What about you? What are you looking forward to putting behind you?

voted vote

Yes I did.

Things that Made Me Smile…

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I don’t know what it is about April, but I love it.  Maybe it’s because April 1st is six months from my October 1st birthday, so I feel a yin and yang or something. It’s a transition month, moving from winter into full-on spring. It’s poetry month, and I once wrote a poem about April (which I’ve probably shared here before, but I’m sure I’ll share it again before I’m through tonight!). April 1st is about pranks and jokes, and I love to laugh. I know some good people who were born in April.  It’s just all good.

Last year I posted about Things that Make Me Smile, so I thought I’d do round 2.  I’ll stick to the recent past…

Smile Español: Sonrisa

Smile Español: Sonrisa (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Things That Made Me Smile Recently:

  • Hearing Rees read. Wow. So fun to have kindergartners around!  Can’t wait to be around two of them next weekend!
  • Intentionally letting my plant die. It’s not really funny, except that I’m not a plant person and I’ve had it for 3 1/2 years (today!) and I’m done taking care of it. It’s growing all wonky and needs more care than I’m willing to give it at this point. Maybe I’ll look for some potted African violets and a pretty little stand for my bedroom.
  • Reading the April Fool’s jokes on Facebook… many of them started by pregnant women!
  • Knowing I have a few days off work and then GET to work overnights three nights in a row!  The night owl in me is excited for the first time!  Talk to me next year to see how much I like three nights a month of staying up all night!
  • Feeling so mentally stimulated and exhausted by a great new job!
  • Book club last week with former colleagues and upcoming plans for get-togethers!

I know there’s more… I’ll reprise it another time.

I’ll leave you with my original poem about April, written circa 1984:

Umbrella

Umbrella (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

April
The April skies
are much to despise
as they’re full of many surprises.

They look awful grey
as they start out the day,
and leave us to making surmises.

Some days it may shower,
some days with more power
its buckets of wet do explode,

and once in a while,
God looks with a smile,
and shovels of snow He unloads..

Sense of Self: What I know for sure…

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Jack-o-latern

Image via Wikipedia

I don’t like to be scared.

I never have.  I have vivid memories of older cousins creating haunted houses in the basement before Thanksgiving dinner (what’s up with that? couldn’t let go of Halloween?) and participating in hay rides with ghost stories and watching scary movies… none of them enjoyable to me.  I would participate (because I’m social that way) but it was never anything I looked forward to or enjoyed.  I remember going through the Haunted House at the MN State Fair one year and being rooted to one spot, refusing to move, as arms were reaching out to grab me.  How terrifying.

I’m so rational and grown up now (ha!) that I don’t have as many fears as I did when I was younger and irrational thinking could get the best of me.  But I still won’t enjoy scary movies or attending scary or risky events.

Halloween is coming up now, so talk about costumes and events is at the forefront.  I’m also not a big costume person, preferring to wear my own clothes and be comfortable rather than pretending to be someone else, so I haven’t dressed up dressed up for Halloween in a long time.  Last year I went as Facebook and simply carried around some tagboard with a hole cut into it for my profile picture.  It was fun to have people write on my wall all through the night.

Halloween 2010

Other years I put on black clothes and cat ears and call it good. Probably the last “costume” I wore was an old bridesmaid dress with a crown and sash proclaiming “Queen of Everything.”

This year I have choir on Halloween night, so I won’t even be home to dish out the goodies.  Who knows what the weekend will bring, but what I know for sure is that I will not be wearing a costume and walking through spooky forests looking for a fright!

Off to read…

Did ya miss me?

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P question

??? Image via Wikipedia

Wow.  I was blogging pretty regularly for a while and then I stopped!  I’ll tell you what happened.  A few things, actually.

Reason #1- I got an iPad 2 from work.  Less need to sit at the laptop or desk top and less convenient to blog on the iPad.  I now read all my blogs, read tweets, search the library website, check email and facebook, and play Words with Friends all on the iPad!  Tonight I downloaded my first library book to the iPad!  Who has time to blog!  🙂

Reason #2 is that I received some news that kinda rocked my world a few weeks ago – they are looking at cutting my position at work for next year.  It’s been an emotional roller coaster.  Tons of sadness, a little anger, and growing excitement at what may be.  Every day at work is emotional because it is hard to talk about it with coworkers.  Hard to think about not working with them and the district families anymore – after 18 years of being there.  But I’m thankful for the support I am feeling from coworkers and parents so my new coping strategy is an attitude of gratitude.  I hope it helps me sleep at night. 🙂

Reason #3 is that Easter happened!  Monday night (5/2) when I crawled into bed, I realized that it was the third night I’d slept there since April 20.  I went to Mom and Dad’s for quite a few days during my break from work and then we left last Thursday for a trip to Denver for a wedding!  It’s a lot easier to blog when I’m home and alone.

So with all of this going on, my house is suffering.  Tonight I dealt with the piling up of clothes and tomorrow I’ll have to tackle the mail and dust.  As I said, I also tackled downloading an e-book from the library tonight.  That was quite a task.

So about the iPad.  It’ll have to go back if/when I leave my job but I really think that I will need to get my own.   I have the nook, kindle, and iBooks apps on there.  Overkill or what?  And then to download library e-books, I had to download Overdrive and Adobe.  They don’t work together?  I’ve been wondering about just getting a nook or other e-reader, but I might just need the whole iPad she-bang.

Thoughts?

And now about books (and maybe a movie) – My Spring Thing reading list is below – and there is progress!  How fun is that?  I just finished “Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand” and it was good.  Not super good, but good.  I liked the characters, was confused about the inclusion of some of the characters, but would like to meet Major Pettigrew.  Or just travel to England. 🙂  Before that I read “The Hundred Foot Journey.”  Can’t remember if I blogged about that, but I liked that book, too.  Again, not life-changing, but good. I really need to get some good Indian recipes in my repertoire.

On Easter Sunday Marissa and I went to see “Water for Elephants.”  It was good, but not nearly as good as the book (of course).  You just don’t get the emotions and tensions that you get in the book.  The characters were pretty well cast, although I didn’t picture the main guy to be as cute as Pattinson.  🙂  But it was true to the story.

Spring Thing Reading List:

  • Mockingbird
  • The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
  • Saving CeeCee Honeycutt
  • Heart and Soul
  • The Hundred-Foot Journey
  • Fly Away Home
  • Winter’s Garden
  • Harry Potter (2)
  • Harry Potter (3)
  • Harry Potter (4)
  • Harry Potter (5)
  • Harry Potter (6)
  • Harry Potter (7)
  • Jane Eyre
  • Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

Well, off to read!  On the iPad!