LIG Fest

I am exhausted to have been, but elated to have gone, to the Life is Good Festival today.









Here's to life!

Coming Home

I'm back from training! Last year I was living out of my sleeping bag, back and forth to the Marriott with no clue, and this year I was running back and forth from a lodge in the woods, taking every chance just to walk around barefoot late at night and look up at the stars.

Luckily this year we were in NC, and so I was "at home" so to speak with the surroundings. Black Mountain's beautiful and reminds me of my uncle's on the marina enough to calm me and make me feel big, deep things from time to time. It made me think that there is never again a time in a person's life quite like the time when they are 5, 6, and 7, when one's faculties are essentially there but the social implications of living a life are not.

I remember being at J's and kicking around the gravel, sitting on the docks, surrounded by the pines and the water. Whenever I get back there, I listen to the masts clinking in the wind and all that water sloshing around, and everything inside of me just settles. This place was a little like that place. There's a peace in knowing I'll find my space again throughout life, but I'm disturbed that it's so rooted in geography and dislocation. Shouldn't that place be in my mind, set in my soul?

We got out to the Blue Hills today, which was a nice homecoming. The air back in New England is perfect right now, sunny and clean and getting cooler. I'm praying for a gorgeous foliage season despite the lack of summer rain, and I'm looking forward to the hikes ahead under a rainbow canopy of leaves.

I guess when you work with schools, this time of year really does feel like a new beginning. I am so excited for the work this year, and if anything, training helped me re-energize and refocus on what I want to devote my work to in the coming months. As long as my coordination efforts go smoothly, the innovation that is supposed to be coming from my department will be paramount in a way it couldn't be last year, the year of three jobs in one. I want parent involvement to really take off, and I want to look back and think about how this is where I want to be in my career come May 2011.

It is not about me in the least though. My feelings get concerned with this idea that I should be doing something more, but time must help mold us all. Maybe one day I will look back at this "place" and feel the vibe was I generating in these moments, and I'll be in yet another home, another stage, another opportunity.

Chuck Bass is Alive! And other reasons to be happy.

Imagine my joy when Perez Hilton posted new Gossip Girl stills from the upcoming season, and I saw Chuck there, and not on a stretcher. I called across the apartment to S, "Chuck Bass is alive! And he's wearing jeans!!"

We're about to enter the month of September, which means many things, like leaves changes, fall falling, and kids back to school. For S it means his work, which peaks in summer, becomes a little less hectic, and for me, the exact opposite.

I'm a little overwhelmed already, but not mortified, because there are the small pleasures in life like Chuck Bass in jeans, Mondo on Project Runway, our trip yesterday to the reservation, and this insanely beautiful weather we've been having, to keep a smile on my face. I'm sure all of this won't be enough sometimes, but life is good, God is good, and we'll all get through the fall just fine.

I may be blogging less or more these days, since I'll be away from home for at least half the of month traveling for work - I could be totally stressed out every minute or bored in a hotel room somewhere needing to blog, I have no clue.

I hope everyone out there enjoys whatever this month and this fall is bringing to them!

Life is good

On the 9th at 4:35am, one of my very best friends the in the whole world welcomed her second beautiful son into the world!

Welcome to the world, little LKG! In August, 2010.

Congratulations to her, her husband, the little big brother of the family, and of course their pug puppy, who K always refers to as "her first child."With her first (human) son in October 2008.

I am so proud of her as a mom, a volunteer in the community, and of course, as an amazing friend.

Enjoy your boys, and lots of love, KT!

Random Find

So I had already gone to a delicious Italian Ladies' Lunch Out with dah ladies from work, and S had already picked up a turkey bacon flat from Dunkin' for breakfast, but that doesn't mean it isn't Friday, and worth another food-related celebration!

S and I went to our favorite sports bar, a really chill place with the best, largest Greek salad ever served (and of course a bacon cheeseburger for S), and had a fun time catching up on what exactly it is that he does for a living, and what exactly I attempt to do (the long and short of it is that there are lots of acronyms involved).

At any rate, after lovely dinner conversation and full bellies, we were headed out the restaurant door when we spotted, for the first of the many times we'd visited this place, the oddest, coolest (in my opinion) thing. It was a bench, on a hill, overlooking the restaurant.Now this is or was, and you would agree if you could see it for yourself, a totally random looking set up for a bench. The restaurant is on a turnpike, so it's not too scenic, and the bench was just "there," kind of on a bolder, with no conceivable easy way to get up to it.So of course I begged S to climb up with me, and when he finally conceded, I convinced him to get a random pic taken with me in that random place.The reward for all of this was that the bench faced west, and we got to enjoy the first sunset we've watched together in ages. :)

Life requires cream and sugar

I often forget how much I love summer and the sunshine until it is gone and I am frozen, hoping my winter boots won't let in the snowy sleet and the windchill doesn't end me. So we've been trying, even on work days when it seems impossible, to go on tiny little outings while it's still daylight, just to get out of the proverbial cubicle for a little while and catch some rays/time to relax while it's warm and oh so nice out.Our mid-week adventure was to the Dairy Barn - not to be confused with the proliferated Dair Queen or even the S-D favorite ice cream shop in our town, Daddy's Dairy. The Dairy Barn specializes in soft serve yogurts and gelati, as well as a variety of cookies and fruits all dunked in chocolate and dazzled in sprinkles.S opted for the ever class hot fudge sundae while I indulged in a coffee/raspberry twist that both S and I agreed was "very fruity."After our mini-date out for ice cream, we headed to the library, where we rented Quarantine, a ridiculous but entertaining horror movie about a rabies-like virus threatening the lives of a D-list film crew, and I checked out The Productivity Handbook, which I admit I have only gotten through 4 pages of. Perhaps high-stress weeks at work aren't exactly the time for that kind of reading? But they are exactly the time for ice cream!

Summa time stroll

This weekend we took a hike up through the blue trail of the Blue Hills.

The weather was a perfect eighty-degrees with sunshine, breeze, and low humidity.

It was a great way to spend a Saturday when it's just too nice to sit inside!