FutureSarah

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Site: http://futuresarah.com

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I did it! The latest group of coasters provided me with four sets of six – two of these are going to Angelfish & Co., the other two are on my ETSY PAGE!!! I have no idea how to drive traffic there, except that maybe the 5 people who read this blog will tell others about it:

“Boy, I was thinking the other day, I really wish I had some new coasters to brighten up the room. These old ones are just so…store-bought.”

“You know, I know a girl who makes coasters, among other things, and happens to sell them online. You should check it out. What was that URL again?”

http://futuresarah.etsy.com

In following with Jen‘s GSD initiative for the month of March, I got busy last night. With TAXES!! Sexy

I’m sad it took up the entire evening and I didn’t get to work on any crafting, but now that it’s out of the way, I feel like I have more freedom to work on hobbies, without the shadow of procrastination hanging over me. We’ll see how the rest of the week goes; I may or may not actually have time to make things for St. Patrick’s Day. On the downside, I seriously need to get in some gym time. On the upside, next week my company moves to a new facility, half the distance from home, and with a gym included! I should be able to go at lunch, freeing up evening time for cooking, sewing, and taking/updating photos.

Excited!!

I watched the Democratic debate tonight after I got home from work/gym, and while I'm still supporting Obama, I feel much better about the possibility of Clinton getting the nomination.  I had pretty much been ignoring all the previous debates and commercials and other propaganda, reading only what came up on my CNN news feed.  I had no sense of what Hillary was like as a public speaker.  Overall, I was impressed with her performance.

I started wondering, during the course of the debate, whether I had chosen the right candidate.  I really tried to focus on the differences in their policies, and not on who looked and acted more “presidential.”

Do you remember when Clinton wrote her book, It Takes a Village?  Yeah, I didn't read it, either.  Last night, though, I think I started to understand her philosophy on the purpose of government.  All through the different topics – the current mortgage crisis, health care, entertainment content for children – her policy centered around taking care of America.  It seems she and I agree on what the current problems are, but I don't really agree with the ways she wants to solve them.

In contrast to her ideas, Obama wants to empower Americans to take care of themselves.  While Clinton wants to give us food, Obama wants to teach us to fish.  I am half bleeding-heart liberal, half libertarian.  I see that the government has been making things unnecessarily easy for the wealthy and leaving others behind, but I don't think the rest of the country's citizens need to lift everyone up, mandating what is “good” for everyone.  I think we should enable people to make their own choices and stand up for themselves.  Clinton makes healthcare mandatory for everyone; Obama just wants to make sure it's affordable so anyone who wants coverage can get it.  Clinton wants to freeze ARM rates for existing mortgages to help people who were dumb enough to take those loans; Obama sees that this will make it harder for future homebuyers and cost reasonable citizens money.

Anyway, there is my slightly rambling opinion on the two remaining Democratic candidates.  I like that both of them are advocating great changes from the current administration, and I like that whichever candidate gets nominated, we will be making history.  The greatest feeling I have, though, is that in contrast to the 2004 election, this year I was excited by all of the (Democratic) candidates.  Four years ago, the overriding theme seemed to be to pick the most electable candidate to go up against Bush; it didn't matter which because anything was better than what we had.  We ended up with a nominee that we didn't really care about.  This year, these people are trying to make the change I want to see in the world.  I can't wait to see what happens come November

Yesterday was supposed to be a Good Day.  It started out well – running with momentum from the weekend and Monday, I woke up in the morning and went immediately downstairs to make pizza dough with my spankin' new Kitchenaid stand mixer.  It went fantastically, and was in the fridge before I went to work, to be ready to bake at dinnertime.

A few minutes after I arrived at work, loud things started happening around me.  This is normal – I sit with design, art, and marketing, in addition to being about 10 feet from the kitchen and bathrooms.  Today, however, people were running through the area, in addition to the regular chatter.  The water valve on the urinal in the men's bathroom was broken, and wouldn't stop running.  The men's bathroom has no drain.  The water was leaking out to the carpeted hallway.  Sigh….it was gonna be one of those days.

Someone grabbed a screwdriver and shut off the water to the broken valve.  I'm not sure whether or not it got fixed; I was trying to ignore all the noise and get my work done.  The rest of the afternoon was pretty uneventful until I heard about this:

Northbound 101 closed at Redwood City

I decided to take 880 North to the San Mateo Bridge to get home instead of my usual route, knowing in advance that all possible detours would be overrun with commuters trying to do exactly the same thing.  It ended up taking me almost an hour just to get *to* the peninsula, and when I got there, I realized that they had closed Southbound 101 as well.  No gym for me.  I went home to get a jump on delicious homemade pizza dinner.

I threw some herbs and tomato sauce together to simmer on the stove while I prepared the crust.  It wasn't quite round, but it was mine.  I dusted my NEW pizza spade peel (whatever it's called, the wooden thing that you use to get pizza into the oven) with cornmeal, just as directed, and put the dough on top.  I topped it with the sauce, cheese, and even some thin-sliced tomatoes and chopped basil.  Beautiful!  The oven finished preheating, and I slipped the pie into the oven.

At least, I tried to.

The pizza was too heavy, or something, to slide off of the wood.  I tried shaking the spade peel, like they do at CPK – all that achieved was getting the tomatoes and cheese to start sliding off.  I grabbed a wide spatula to help slide the pizza.  The dough actually started to wrap itself around the spatula.  I went to dislodge that, and tomatoes and cheese started falling off – onto the stone, onto the floor of the oven, everywhere.  DAMMIT.  I wrestled to get it out of the oven, and yelled to Jon, “I broke the pizza.”  He came into the kitchen to look; I think he was holding back chuckles.  I was almost in tears.  I haven't actually ruined dinner (to the point where you can't finish) in a very long time.

I felt silly being so upset over this.  I think it was so hard for me because these were all my new toys – the mixer, the spade peel, the stone – and I was really excited to play with them.  We munched on raw pizza for a few minutes (not too much; I don't know what uncooked dough does in your body), then Jon made some hot dogs for himself.  I was too worn out from the day to eat, though I eventually had a bowl of Cheerios.

I worked on my quilt a little and watched American Gladiators, then played some Boom Boom Rocket (new song pack, yay!) before going to bed.  These things cheered me up , thank god

p.s.  No, I didn't take any pictures of the broken pizza.  It was too sad.

I don't know how much I weigh today – I know where I was last week, then I went to Phoenix to visit one of my very good friends from high school (we are very good friends now – senior year in high school, we were *best!* friends.)  I ate a lot, but most of it was very healthy vegan food.  I skipped the gym yesterday so I could run some errands and clean up the house a bit, so I wasn't able to see what the trip had done to my diet.  This morning, though, I thought I might try on my “skinny” jeans – and they fit!  No muffin top sticking out above the waistband!  WOOOOOO*!!

*I insist that I am not, by nature, a “Girl That Goes Wooo.”  In general, GTGW annoy the crap out of me.  This, however, is exciting enough for me that I couldn't resist

I went to ballet class today, after not practicing for, say, two years?  It was awesome – my legs were shaking by the end, but I feel great.  Turns are rusty and flexibility is down, as expected.  Those will come back with practice.  I hope to be able to go to the classes once or twice a week – it just means not being able to sleep in on the weekends anymore….

Yay!

I don't like New Years' Resolutions.  I do, however, love the feeling of renewal that comes on January 1st.  It is naturally a time to reflect on the last year and your life in general, and to evaluate where you are with where you really want to be.

I've made some changes, some experimental, some as quasi-resolutions – we'll see what sticks after a month.

• Shower at night – helps with the morning routine if I don't have to worry about drying my hair.
• Hit the gym (almost) daily – with my new commute, it is very hard to find time to go to the gym for my traditional 60-90 minute total-body workouts.  Instead, I am promising myself to exercise for 20-30 minutes, 5-6 days a week.  I just stop at the EA gym on the way home from work, then shower when I get home (it all works together, see?)
• Go to work earlier – so I can leave earlier, so I can go to the gym before dinner, etc. etc.
• Get better at time management – if something needs to be done, just do it.  I have historically been a *huge* procrastinator, and things like home maintenance typically fall by the wayside as a result.
• “Improve” eating habits – work on portion sizes and snacking habits, mostly.  This is really difficult at work, although of all the things on the list, it's the one that will bring the most benefits if I can keep it up.

On that note, today I signed up with SparkPeople (username “saralah”) to help me stay on track.  The web site really allows you to customize how you use it achieve your goals – you can use the tools just to track your own progress, or you can follow diet and exercise plans they've laid out according to your goals.  I'll probably fall somewhere in the middle, tailoring my program to fit my busy lifestyle, and using the site for advice and inspiration.

The time management goal has had some weird consequences….  I get home from work after the gym, have a bite to eat, feed the cats, take a shower, clean up the kitchen and other common areas, and then Poof! the evening is gone.  I have been only watching The Daily Show and then going to bed.  I do miss having evenings to work on my crafts, and I *definitely* miss having time to make and sit down to a proper dinner.  The weird bit, though, is that I seem to have more energy when I'm running around like this than I do when I ignore the chores and take “me time.”  I suspect it's something about not stressing about all the things I should be doing.  Hopefully my hobby time will still exist on the weekends.  Although I feel better right now, after having done this for a week or so, my time is being soaked up by just doing the things that need to be done every day – work, gym, chores, sleep.  I don't know if I can keep this up in the long term if there's no time for the extras that make life special.

I feel pretty good about these new habits.  I don't want to change a tremendous amount, I just want to be more energetic, productive, and get rid of that damned muffin-top that sometimes sticks out of my jeans

Just a quick update -

Hawaii was fun…
…pictures here….

…No resolutions…

…and NO MORE DEBT!

Back to work tomorrow

So, earlier I was complaining about how not having a routine was killing my efforts at, um, having a routine.  Problem solved!  I found a job, and today was day 1.  I have spent the better part of today in design meetings, filling out health insurance applications, and installing software on my new machine.  My cubicle is about half the size of the one I had at EA, and I'm not sure yet how much will fly in the way of cube flair.  Also, I am once again crossing a bridge every day to get to work.

On the plus side, I'M GETTING PAID!!  I know a couple of cool people here already from my long years at EA.  This position is considerably more responsibility than I had at my last gig also.  We'll see in the coming months whether I succeed beyond my wildest software engineering dreams, or whether I fall flat on my face and relegate myself to management jobs