Happiness List - 08.02.2012

Every month I try to reboot the process to overhaul my life for the better.  August didn't start out that well, with a late night at work, lots of time entries that I started way too late, and just sheer exhaustion.  I really need a mental health day.  And to appreciate the little things that make me happy.  Today's list:

1.  Seeing former coworkers at a goodbye party.  Reminded me of what I think of as the "golden age" of my time at the firm.  It was before the economy crashed, when things were good, before the dismal reality of the industry set in to my mind.  It was the largest our group had ever been but there was lots of work, and everyone clicked both on professional and personal levels.  Seeing everyone reminded me of how much time has passed and how people have moved on and how things used to be, but it was also nice to have that memory.

2.  I went on an unsubscribe binge after claiming my Outlook email address this morning.  I'm trying to separate the emails I get by priority and by mailbox to try to keep life in order.  To do this, I ended up unsubscribing from a number of different email lists that I don't even know why I was still on.  For example, a political party in a state far away from here that I don't live in and have never even visited.  I don't need to be on the list.  I deleted the emails constantly.  Why didn't I just unsubscribe?  In some other cases, I didn't mind the emails but there was no way for me to change the address on file so I just unsubscribed.  Felt good to preemptively mentally declutter my inbox.

3.  Followed the women's gymnastics all-around on twitter and news site liveblogs to find out that Gabby Douglas won.  Yay!  Wish I could have watched it live but I was at work and NBC online viewing isn't so great.

4.  Outlook.com.  I abandoned some of my hotmail addresses a long time ago (usually after I didn't log in for awhile, lost all my saved emails, and got frustrated).  I had multiple since in the days before gmail I would always hit my quota size.  The new Outlook looks great.  It's clean.  Gmail has gotten a little cluttered, especially with my gigantic multiple thousand email *inbox* and the integration of plus and other features.

5.  Bar snacks.  Rice balls, fried calamari, fries, meatballs at the party and a chicken sandwich slider at home.

6.  Third day in a row I took my vitamins! I can't remember the last time that happened.  Months ago, for sure.

TGIF!

Olympics

It's been an... interesting (and kind of rough) time here.  Over the past week and a half, I probably could have used a happiness list but writing one didn't even make it on my radar.  I'm not sure I could have done it if I tried.  Sometimes you need to let yourself feel the emotions you feel without forcing yourself to be happy.  Happiness lists are good when you're having an annoying or frustrating day and need to appreciate the little things in life.  But when there are big things that aren't good, sometimes you just need to let it out, feel what you feel, cry if you need to cry, and just take it one day at a time.

But I'm not going to talk about that.  Instead, the Olympics opening ceremony was today and I'm going to talk about that.

I love the opening ceremony of the Olympics (generally).  It's full of hope.  Everyone still has an opportunity to win and take home a medal for their country.  Everyone is together, in the same place, watching the same ceremony, soaking in the same spirit of the Olympics.  A spirit of togetherness, of sports transcending the everyday barriers that exist between nations, a tournament that unites the world.  As a geography nerd, it's probably no surprise that the Parade of Nations is one of my favorite parts.  I love watching all the countries parade around.

Since I like lists, here's what I liked about the opening ceremony:

1.  The video with James Bond, the Queen and the royal corgis.  I think this is my favorite segment of the entire ceremony.  It mixed pop culture, British culture and royalty, and adorable corgis.  It had humor and lightness.  And who wouldn't smile seeing those little dogs waddle around?

2.  Parade of Nations.  I love looking at the outfits but there were too many business suits.

3.  The Hey Jude singalong.

4.  Mr. Bean!  That was funny.

5.  The Frankie and June segment (mostly).  I liked the look back at pop culture of the 20th and 21st centuries.  The music, the TV, the film, the dancing.  That was all good, but the segment was a little long.

6.  The fact that they paid tribute to their national public health care system.  I didn't love the actual segment but I like the idea of it.

7.  The attention to literature (although that prompted a terrible Matt Lauer comment that Harry Potter made reading cool (or fun or whatever he said)) and JK Rowling reading to us.

8.  The corgis!  There were 2 of them, so they get 2 slots.

And stuff I didn't like:

1.  The NBC commentators.  People on Twitter had it right.  It's like watching the Thanksgiving Day parade.  It's fine if you're giving useful information, but there was so much useless chatter (and bad jokes) when we would have rather just watched (and listened to) what they were showing on screen.

2.  The NBC commentators pretending the Queen was really jumping from the helicopter.  Do you think we're that dumb?

3.  The opening video to the ceremony.  I don't know if it was supposed to be a bird's eye view or a bug's eye view or what, but it was kind of frantic and it gave me motion sickness.  I kept closing my eyes as it jerked back and forth like a bad ride.  Not a good start.

4.  The Industrial Revolution segment was depressing.  I realize it's a walk through history but it was just so bleak.  It reminded me that work sucks.  Industry destroying the previous pastoral way of life made people miserable.  Whenever they did the top view of the stadium it just looked like a wasteland.  A reminder that we destroyed the earth.

5.  NBC gave Mitt Romney camera time during the Parade of Nations that was equivalent to the world leaders from other countries.  He is not our leader.  He is a candidate to be our leader, but he is not our leader.  I didn't think that was appropriate.

6.  NBC allegedly chose not to show the memorial, and then complained that there was no moment of silence for other tragedies.  If you're taking that stance, you should show whatever moment of silence there was instead of ignoring it for an interview that you could have played on any other day and was completely irrelevant to the opening ceremony.

7.  NBC ignored most of the countries around the U.S., showing just seconds of them to keep going back to the U.S. athletes (coughUruguaycough).  Why not split the screen?  Or just show the US for awhile and then show the other countries?  It's not like we're watching live.

8.  We're not watching it live.

9.  The outfits didn't have that much variety this year.  Business suits and warm-up suits.  A smaller percentage of countries who went for something not in those 2 categories.  I appreciated those.  Still not a fan of the U.S. team looking like Team France in berets.

10.  Poor David Beckham.  I realize he got to play a part in the torch thing but otherwise the video makes it seem like he's not even allowed in the stadium.  Stuck outside on the boat.  Poor guy.  Does all this work to help London get the Olympics, doesn't get on the soccer team, and stuck outside on the boat.

11.  The NBC commentary.  I know it's the common theme here but it was just that terrible.  We yelled shut up at the TV so many times.

I guess there were more annoying things than good things but I still like the Olympics and opening ceremonies.  And there were corgis, which makes everything better.  I just wish I could watch a clip of that segment again because it was so, so awesome.

July 8

One year ago today, our backs hurt from old Poang chairs, I had Korean fried chicken for lunch with summer associates at work, and I was annoyed by Google+ trying to take over every part of our internet lives. (Today, backs still hurt, even though now on sofa, we had Korean fried chicken last week, and I'm still annoyed by Google+.)

Two years ago today, I had a Japanese food crawl lunch and then a midsummer reception after work (for work), while A went with his coworkers for a BBQ feast in Brooklyn. (We had BBQ last night.)

Three years ago today, I had a summer associate lunch at a Mediterranean restaurant (seems to be a popular day for summer lunches?), sushi for dinner while working late, and somehow had enough energy to exercise at home after leaving work at 11 pm.  (Need wedding energy and motivation again.)

Four years ago today, we worked a lot, our air conditioning was broken, and we were in the middle of planning a birthday party for my dad. (Thank goodness we have A/C today.)

Five years ago today, we got engaged. :)

No matter what happens, July 8 will always be a special day.

Happiness List 07.05.12

Been awhile since I did one of these but the need to appreciate the little things in life that make us happy doesn't ever end.

1.  Celeste zesty 4 cheese frozen pizza.

2.  A new episode of Awkward.

3.  The Cabo episode of Trip Flip, with the surprise visit from the sea lion on a fishing trip, proving that even extensively planned travel days can be full of amazing surprises.

4.  The reasonable prices at Earl of Sandwich.

5.  Not being a contestant on Love in the Wild where they had to pick up and carry tarantulas.

6.  A mini marathon of the early episodes of New Girl.  I stopped watching early in the season because it wasn't clicking but started to love it at the end.  Watching the early eps again but knowing the characters better from the later episodes makes the early eps seem better now.

7.  Finally got to watch Teen Wolf.  One of the best summer shows.  When did MTV get good TV (between this and Awkward)?  Of course there's no more music, but I'll take good TV.

8.  My knee didn't hurt the way it did yesterday when it felt like it would snap.

Foursquare Update

Dear Foursquare,

I like most of the new features of the web upgrade and the new iPhone app but, in the event you find this post, here are a few things that need improvement.

1.  Bring back the old trending places list!  One of my favorite things about the old Foursquare was that I could see where everyone was.  The hundreds of people checked into a show or a sporting event or the airport on a Sunday.  It was a good way to see what was going on around town that we might want to check out.  The new "trending" option on explore is not the same and doesn't bring up most of the popular places.  Maybe this is your way of stopping the [insert holiday]-apocalypse places but there has to be another way of doing that.

2.  The grouping of checkins needs improvement.  I understand the motivation - trying not to clutter people's news feed if someone is, for example, on vacation and checking in at a lot of different places.  The problem is that, with the groupings, it groups together too much.  Two checkins 20 hours apart probably shouldn't get grouped together.  Maybe there is a way to group together checkins that are consecutive on the feed and not broken up by someone else's checkin?  That seems to make more sense.  As the days have gone on since the update, it seems like more and more is grouped together.

3.  Specials.  Not really any good way to see what specials are nearby and people do go to places because they have a special.  (I have.)

4.  Mayorships on the app feed.  I don't know if someone is a mayor at the place unless I click into that particular checkin for more details.

That's all I've got for now.  I'm not one of the people who cares about the nearby v. worldwide filter, the fact that it's harder to find the scoreboard, or the change in the check-in button.  But I do think those things need some work.

Hope that helps!

Recovering

It's been a long week.  We returned from vacation a little over 10 days ago, but it feels like we've been back for much, much longer.

I got sick shortly after we got back (this happens every time).  I had started feeling congested the day before we flew back to New York and the flight, of course, didn't help at all.  Although I did my best to fight it, taking decongestants and gently forcing myself into an earlier morning routine and trying to feel normal, I wasn't strong enough to beat it on my own.  By Wednesday night, I was at the doctor's office with a deep chest cough and sinus pressure that was so bad that I thought my face was going to explode.  I worked from home on Thursday due to my sinus infection, hoping the antibiotics would work quickly.  But recovery progressed very slowly and I still wasn't feeling 100% after the medicine was done.  On top of all that, last weekend was my 10th college reunion, which I agonized for awhile over cancelling but ultimately did (and now it remains to be seen whether we will see a penny of what we paid refunded).

Work has been insane.  I started working on a deal last Wednesday which really kicked into gear last Friday... because it needed to close by this morning.  A deal is doable in one week but on a lean team, it's not easy.  It explains why I was up until 3 or 4 in the morning this week, wrecking my sleep schedule and officially losing all the benefits Europe had left on my internal clock.  It probably didn't help that our client and everyone we worked with were in California, pushing the schedule later and more toward my natural timing.

After all of that, I was really looking forward to today.  End of the week, deal closing, over a week after I started antibiotics so hopefully I would be feeling better, etc.  It was a long day but at work, it wasn't so bad.  The deal closed.  Another emergency project took up the afternoon but ultimately was resolved to everyone's satisfaction.  I was exhausted and kept passing out, but decided to feel better by napping through the end of Team USA's crappy performance (despite the win) against Antigua and Barbuda in the World Cup qualifier.  I was able to see A for both lunch (kofta!) and dinner (salad box full of healthy vegetables from Maoz).  Finally, the week was ending.  Finally, I could try to relax and get some sleep.  Finally, things were looking up.

But Azure had other plans.

Azure is our car (yes, I named my car when I got her).  About a month ago, we accidentally left the light on in the car and it killed our battery.  We had to get a jump, drove the car for awhile (at least 20 minutes, which everyone told us was all the battery needed to get back to normal), and everything was fine.  The battery didn't seem to go completely back to normal, giving us little fits every so often, but we really didn't think it would be dead when we got to the garage today.

Nope.  Car wouldn't start.  Had to call our garage's person again for the jump (which costs $30 each time but we're in a garage and don't have another option) and then we were ready to go.  A released the parking brake and - boom - I felt my body drop straight toward the ground.  Not a good feeling.  Not a pretty flat tire either.  Not low.  Completely flat.

Off to the gas station and the free air pump (thank you Hess!).

Eventually we were on our way and then we hit traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike (shocker!).  It was for construction where they were narrowing all the lanes to one lane.  But the "construction" was less than the equivalent of one city block and the one lane traffic went for miles.  Seeing all that empty space was frustrating.

Also frustrating was that, with one thing after another piling itself on, the week just refused to end!

Almost two hours after leaving our apartment, we finally reached our destination.  It is finally the weekend (although I'm now sleeping 2 hours after I planned).  It is finally time to recover from a really long week.

Frosting

Do you use bath scents that smell like baked goods?

Our current body wash is this bath gel I got free from Sephora as part of my birthday gift one year which smells like vanilla cupcakes.  I don't usually go for super-sweet scents so the first time I opened it, it was overwhelming and powerful (and not in a good way but kind of like that overly sweet frosting on Magnolia cupcakes).  I couldn't imagine using it on my skin because all I could think of was cupcake frosting.  Why would I rub cupcake frosting on my skin if I were trying to get clean?  I think I actually cringed the first time I had to use it.  I don't know that I could use it as a bubble bath (its other use) without feeling like I was stepping into a vat of frosting.

Over time it's gotten to be less of a powerful response but it still smells really sweet and I don't really like using it.  Also, the scent fades a lot once you're out of the shower so you don't walk around smelling the inside of a cupcake shop.

Is this just a matter of personal preference and I'm never going to like this body wash?  If you like these scents (but didn't in the past), how did your tastes change? I only ask because I'm not sure if there is another one of these in the closet and I would really prefer not to waste it...

Goodbye to The Finder

The Finder is gone.  No one watched it and that's a real shame.

If you've never heard of it, it's about a guy (Walter) who finds things.  That sounds simple, like a detective, but it's not.  It's an overwhelming compulsion to find things where he can't rest until he does.  And he's good at it.  All season, they alluded to the fact that bad things happen when Walter can't find something.  In the season (series) finale, they showed it.

I only got around to watching the finale this week, but with how they left things, I'm really sad it's over.

The Finder started during Bones last season as a backdoor pilot.  I hated that episode.  I was convinced I was going to hate The Finder as its own show since I hated that episode of Bones (I actually think I fell asleep, it was so terrible), and maybe I wasn't alone since it definitely didn't have the audience that Bones does.

But I tried it out, since I like to give new shows a chance, and I liked it.  It was lighthearted.  It had spirit.  It had humor.  It had potential.  It was about finding things (or people) but it was also a show about characters.  All along I felt like the people who said it belonged on USA had a point.  Characters welcome?  This show is all about characters.  The quirky main character with his odd system of finding things.  His best friend/sidekick with a sad backstory who will always be there.  The girlfriend/marshal who really grew on me.  The "problem child" who is placed with them but comes to find a place in the "family" threatened by her other "family."  It started off a little rocky, trying to find its chemistry and its place, but by the middle of the season, there were some truly enjoyable episodes which led up to a final few that were really great.

Which makes me really sad that it's gone.  The show was different.  It was a procedural but it wasn't about solving crimes.  And now that we finally know more about who these people are, what they care about, and what they are willing to sacrifice for each other, we will never know if they find their way back to each other.  (Spoiler alert, even though it's been over for a few weeks now!)  We'll never know how Walter gets out of jail (although I'm sure he will).  We'll never know how he solves the problem of the painting he's been looking for for 4 years, and what will happen to him if he doesn't (now that we've seen just how "talented" he is).  We'll never know if Willa made it into the sunset to escape her family.  We'll never know how the characters made it through the tough times and back into each other's lives to find things and help people along the way.

It's sad when shows end on a high note, with so much promise for the future, and you know they will never get it.  Very sad.

We're Back!

Been awhile since the last post, but things should go back to "normal" soon.  We're back from Barcelona!

It was amazing being gone for 10 days (I love tacking weekends on to the trip!) which really let us get to know Barcelona at a more relaxed pace and let us feel more like locals traveling (although there's only so much of that feeling you can get in a foreign place).  Although we had planned for a number of possible day trips, we really only took one (to Girona), instead deciding to enjoy Barcelona itself.  And with all of that time, there are still things we wanted to see that we never got around to doing.  Next time!

Recaps to come!

Fall 2012 TV Schedule

Haven't posted in awhile.  It's been so hectic here with work, getting ready for our trip and just everyday life.  This week has been exciting because of the announcements of the fall TV schedule at the upfronts.  I look forward to this every year so I can see what the offerings are (and figure out what the problem time slots will be...).  So, one last break before I get to packing, to set the DVR and look at the fall schedule!

Monday
8 pm - Bones (FOX - on demand) and maybe Partners (CBS) but I can't remember what it's about
9 pm - Gossip Girl (CW), Mob Doctor (Fox)
10 pm - TROUBLE - Castle (ABC), Hawaii Five-0 (CBS), Revolution (NBC) ... I guess Castle will end up being on demand

Tuesday
8 pm - Maybe Ben & Kate (Fox)?
9 pm - TROUBLE - Happy Endings & Apt 23 (ABC), New Girl (Fox), maybe Go On and/or New Normal (Fox), maybe Emily Owens, MD (CW)
10 pm - Vegas (CBS) since I gave up on Parenthood last year and Private Practice this week

Wednesday
8 pm - TROUBLE - Suburgatory (ABC), Survivor (CBS), Arrow (CW)
9 pm - Modern Family (ABC)
10 pm - Nashville (ABC), Chicago Fire (NBC)

Thursday
8 pm - Last Resort (ABC), Vampire Diaries (CW)
9 pm - TROUBLE - Person of Interest (CBS), Glee (Fox), Beauty and the Beast (CW), Grey's Anatomy (ABC - on demand)
10 pm - Scandal (ABC), Elementary (CBS)

Friday
8 pm - Community (NBC)
9 pm - TROUBLE - Grimm (NBC), Fringe (Fox), Nikita (CW)
10 pm - Blue Bloods (CBS)

Sunday
8 pm - Once Upon a Time (ABC), Amazing Race (CBS)
9 pm - Revenge (ABC), Good Wife (CBS)
10 pm - 666 Park Avenue (ABC), Mentalist (CBS)

Why does every day other than Sunday have a trouble spot?  Bah. And this is just with what I know so far about the shows, and I haven't seen trailers for most of them. Problem is that a lot of the trouble spots contain (1) shows I already watch and like and (2) the pilots I knew about and was really looking forward to.  I don't want the new shows to suck to make scheduling easier!  I guess we'll figure it out.  Midseason should be another mess but that's a long way off.

Now to finish setting the DVR so I can pack...