You’re probably wondering where, oh where, have I been? I got a new job three months ago. Enough said, right? :)

Anyway, yesterday was Christmas, and I baked a primal pumpkin pie (nut meal crust and honey). It tasted great … and was a disaster in every other way, especially the crust, which was was so runny, I barely got it to work as a crumble crust.

But all is well that ends well. The filling set really well, the crust was rich and nutty and delicious, and the honey gave it a warm lingering sweetness that was WAY better, in my opinion, than the icky aftertaste sugar leaves in your mouth. The hubby declared the best pumpkin pie he had ever had.

Christmas 2010 Pumpkin Pie

I would give you a recipe, but it was kind of random. Here’s how it went:

Crust:

Grind up 6 dates in the food processor. Remove the gooey lump and set aside. Refill food processor with roughly 3/4 cup each of hazelnut and almond meal. Add large spoonfuls of coconut oil until you think you have about 2/3 cup; blend. Mix in gooey dates one small lump at a time. Pour out dough and think worriedly that it’s WAY too runny. Add a few more spoonfuls of hazelnut meal until its congealed enough to press into an 8 inch cast iron pan as a crumble crust. Put it into the refrigerator and hope for the best.

Filling:

Cut up a small pie pumpkin and steam or boil it. Scrape out meat and puree it with a stick blender. Notice that it seems like more than you need; ignore this for now. Add 3 eggs. Open a large can of coconut milk (about 13 ounces?) and pour in about half; drink some cause it’s so delicious. Pour in some raw honey, taste, and wonder why its not sweet. Pour in some more, stir well, and realize that its actually very sweet, you just didn’t stir well enough the first time; worry that it’s too sweet.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put in crust to bake for 15 minutes. Suddenly remember that you forgot the spices. Grind up half a dozen cloves and 1/4 tsp ginger root. Add that plus 1/2 tsp cinnamon to the filling. Grate some fresh nutmeg into the filling. Drop the nutmeg in by accident; panic; fish it out, dry it off, and grate some more. Taste filling and realize it’s a bit heavy on cloves. Wonder to yourself how to balance out the flavor; figure that no one has ever complained about too much cinnamon, so toss in another 1/2 tsp. Taste it, decide it’s okay right as the crust is done.

Notice that the crust has deformed; hastily redistribute it with a spoon. Pour in filling until it almost overflows. Worry that the filling is too runny and won’t set well; wonder to yourself what you’ll do with the rest of it. Get your husband to put the pie into the oven because the pan is so full, you’re afraid you’ll spill it. Wait anxiously for an hour.

Pull out pie to find (to your great relief) that the filling has set beautifully. Find the flavor to be perfect and the crust to be delicious, if not very pretty. Receive compliments, bask in glory and relief.

~*~

Anyway, as you can tell, baking is not my strong suit. It really doesn’t have a big role in Asian cooking. (When I was growing up, my mother used our oven for storage space.) But over this holiday season, I’ve developed a profound appreciation for the distinctive taste of oven-roasted foods — and an awareness of how bad I am at baking. So I ordered a convection oven so that I can get more practice:

Convection Oven

At under $100, it’s a pretty casual unit. But it’s gotten good reviews and I imagine it will be perfect for a small household like ours. It also comes with a rotisserie, which makes my mouth water just thinking about it.

I also ordered some miniature cast iron skillets. (Aren’t they adorable? I almost ordered the 3.5 inch too, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what I would do with it.) I got that idea from a local restuarant (El Centro) that serves their upside-down pineapple pies in small skillets.

Speaking of restuarants, the three I miss the most in Boulder are (drumroll please …):

1. Cracker Barrel
2. Fuddruckers
3. Some country buffet, any country buffet

Guess you can take the girl out of the Midwest, but you can’t take the Midwest out of the girl. :)

At least we have a Cheescake Factory. :)

I’m excited to introduce to you a few aspects of the redesign. First of all, I now have a homepage. From there, you can find my contact information or learn a little about me. I’ve also started a new techblog dedicated to my adventures in programming, web-design, and other technology-related things, seeing as that’s starting to become a major part of my life.

I hope you enjoy my new site! If you have any comments or suggestions, or if you just want to say hi, feel free to shoot me an email.

Yay! After much wrangling with html, css, and php, I’m ready to put up my new blog! I’m really excited to get started … but unfortunately, that means this site will be a bit wonky as I get things switched over.

One thing I must apologize most sincerely for is that I plan on changing my permalink structure. I’m not really sure what will happen once I do. Worst case scenario, all of my old links will be broken. In that case, I will simply have to beg your understanding that, as a young and enthusiastic web designer, I have much to learn and many mistakes to make.

So again, I apologize for the inconvenience, and I hope you enjoy the new site!

“China’s housing boom spells trouble for boyfriends: Many women won’t marry a man who doesn’t own a home. This recent shift, along with soaring real estate prices, has created a woefully frustrated class of bachelors.”

It proceeded to describe the rampant materialism that has become the norm lately in the Chinese dating market. Gone are the days that my parents described, when families were so poor, nobody bothered to lock their doors and everyone helped each other out. (Of course, it wasn’t all roses: My mother’s family of seven shared a 200 square-foot room without plumbing, and they were considered middle class.) Nowadays, with the freer economy sweeping in a new era of prosperity, but at a steep cost, everything has changed, and many young men find themselves ineligible simply because they cannot afford to buy into the horribly inflated housing market. A typical female online dating profile now reads

I’m 25 years old, looking for a boyfriend…. I want you to have an apartment and a car…. The apartment has to be built after 2000 and the car has to be better than a minivan.

So much for romance, eh? Here’s another great snippet:

Growing male frustrations have given rise to a new female archetype: the bai jin nu, or gold-digger.

On the wildly popular TV reality program “Don’t Bother Me Unless You’re Serious,” one woman tried to size up a suitor by asking matter-of-factly, “Do you have money?”

The man cut to the chase: “I have three flats in Shanghai.”

The hard-boiled bachelorette, Ma Nuo, has gone on to become one of China’s most recognizable bai jin nu. Marry for love? Fat chance, said the material girl: “I would rather cry in a BMW than smile on the back of my boyfriend’s bicycle.”

The article is riddled with the sad stories of young men who were dumped by their long-term girlfriends after not being able to afford a flat, which is a little crazy considering that homeownership runs 22 times the average yearly salary. Wow!

I think that China’s going through the equivalent of our materialistic 80s, except even more so because their memory of poverty is so crushing and so recent. I also think the material girl trend is a bit of a fad, because a big part of it is saving face:

“A man is not a man if he doesn’t own a house,” said Chen Xiaomin, director of the Women’s Studies Center at the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law. “Marriage is becoming more and more materialistic. This is a huge change in Chinese society. No matter how confident a woman is, she will lose face if her boyfriend or husband doesn’t have a house.”

So it’s another case of keeping up with the Joneses. That makes me skeptical that this is going to make anyone happy, least of all the women. My mother’s friends in China tells her that it’s an embarasssment for a woman to “marry down,” but there simply aren’t enough high-achieving men to go around. The result is a lot of aging women with no marriage prospects. There’s an urban legend that the parents of these despairing young singles will congregate in parks with signs boasting their child’s credentials and look for a suitable mate among the other signs. It’s kind of darkly funny, but also sadly desperate.

As for the bachelors, I feel bad for them, I really do. But part of me thinks they had it coming. After all, Chinese men are pretty materialistic themselves, especially when it comes to what they want in a wife. I married a white man¹; and as much as I would like to pretend that I turned away a sea of adoring Asian faces, the truth is that Asian men have never expressed much interest in me. This may be because I knew so few of them; the odds were simply not there. But the other thing is, I’m not exactly marriage material by Chinese-American standards. No Ivy League degree, no six figure salary, and overweight besides²; well it’s a bit hard to bring me home to Mom and Dad.

What can I say? No girl wants to be treated like a collection of cocktail party bragging rights. My current in-laws, who are conservative Christians, were a whole different story. My mother-in-law encouraged my (non-monetizable) interest in crafts and homemaking, and my decision to drop out of college was met with concern but understanding. Had they been Chinese, they would’ve blown a gasket. It’s nice to be treated like a human being. Really nice.

And my husband? I often joke to myself that Spencer couldn’t have married me for my looks because at the time, I was thirty pounds overweight and had terrible acne. Neither was it for my sparkling personality under extreme stress and poor health. Perhaps it was the money; after all, a few thousand dollars (saved from birthday money and scholarship kickbacks) is a lot for a college student. (I’m joking.) Nope, I’m pretty sure that he married me for me.

So to my Asian brothers out there, do treat your women well. You reap what you sow.

¹It turns out that, for once in my life, I’m actually in style: Almost three quarters of white-Asian interracial marriages are between a white man and an Asian woman. There is an opposite gender skew among black-white interracial marriages. A fascinating and bittersweet topic. Here’s an article to get you started.

²I sound like Bridget Jones, yes? One of my urban heroes. :)

Also, I think the title, “Pebbles & Sunshine,” is going to go. It was fun while it lasted, but I think I’m going to try something else … just as soon as I think of something!

By the way, one of my new goals is to share more of the cool links I find. (I spend a lot of time on the web, so I come across a lot!) For both your edification and as a thank you to the wonderful people who write these things, I’m going to make an effort to promote them.

To start with today, if you’re interested in learning to write WordPress themes, here are a few resources:

Eruanna: how to write your own wordpress theme — A good quick and dirty intro. Glosses over a lot.

wpdesigner: So you want to create WordPress themes huh? — A thorough tutorial that takes you through lesson by lesson. I’m only a few lessons in, but it looks wonderful.

And of course, don’t neglect the WordPress Codex, though personally I find it an intimidating place to start.

Well, hope that helps. So long, and thanks for all the fish!

I recently bought a fake book and believe it or not, after a lifetime of classical piano instruction, I found myself unable to read any but the most basic chords. It’s really a completely different beast. In classical piano, you’re taught to read music, as in individual notes, and I’m pretty darn good at that. But with fake book playing, it’s all about knowing chords and chord structure, not to mention learning a bunch of new notation.

So I hopped online to see what I could find in the way of help. At first, everything seemed to be hawking some expensive class pack that promised to make you the next big nightclub hit. But after finagling my search terms a little, I found this great little tutorial that explains everything you need to know about chord theory to get through a fake book. It’s a plain-text document — no fancy graphics, no flashy colors — but it explains everything, and hey, it’s FREE!

By the way, if you happen to be a complete newbie to music theory, feel free to ask questions. I’m no expert, but I know the basics of intervals and chords, and I’d be glad to help bootstrap you up. Just tossing that out there!

Anyway, one morning last week (I forget which), I sauntered into the kitchen and decided to give one of my half-baked brainchilds a try — what did I have to lose anyway, right? The result was so satisfactory that I can’t help but want to share it.

I was inspired by two recipes I found online. The first is this cake in a cup recipe; I never made it because it’s too high carb, but the idea of “baking” a cake in the microwave was incredibly intriguing (and a big score for convenience!). A little while later, I found a paleo chocolate cake recipe, which I did try and loved. I was shocked that a successful cake could be that simple. That gave me the confidence I needed to forge ahead and take baking by the horns.

Thus was born this humble little recipe. For me, it’s a love-at-first-sight on so many levels. I can mix it up in only a couple of minutes, and “bake” it in a couple more. I also love that it makes only one (fairly hearty) serving, which means I can experiment without fear of messing up a big batch. Plus, it really does taste great. Here’s the general recipe; scroll on down for specific examples.

The Recipe

Here’s the simplest version:

½ cup almond meal
2 eggs
¼ tsp baking soda

You can vary up the nut meal part of it quite a bit. I often use half flaxseed, half almond meal (see the recipe below). I’m sure hazelnut meal would work fine too.

Grease a microwavable bowl (I suggest coconut oil) and mix everything together in it. How big of a bowl? Well, I aim for the mixture filling it about a third of the way. I’m sure nothing catastrophic will happen if it’s a tad large or small.

Anyway, mix everything up in it and then “flavor” it however you’d like. I’m using the word “flavor” very broadly, because at this point, your loaf can be anything from chocolate cake to basil bread. Here’s some suggestions off the top of my head:

Sweet:
stevia
erythritol
honey
coconut flakes
cinnamon
cocoa

Savory:
marjoram
basil
pepper
lemongrass
cayenne

I haven’t the faintest how most of these would turn out. But that’s the spirit of this whole thing: Don’t be afraid to experiment! The worst that will happen is you’ll ruin a tiny cake and waste 10 minutes of your day. :)

When your cake is seasoned to your satisfaction, pop it into the microwave and heat it one minute at a time until you’re satisfied with it. Mine took me 2 minutes; it was fluffy and firm but still moist inside.

If you’re leery of the microwave, you can of course bake it. I would try 350 degrees F, checking it every five minutes; I would guess it’ll be done after 10 minutes, maybe 15. Let me know how it goes if any of you do try it.

Garnish with berries or parsley sprigs or whatever else you like and enjoy.

~*~

Here’s A Few Examples

Sorry the pictures are kind of blurry — I took them with my cell phone camera, which isn’t the best in artificial light.

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake for the dear hubby, garnished with frozen berries

½ cup almond meal
2 eggs
¼ tsp baking soda
1 Tbsp cocoa powder
1 Tbsp erythritol
frozen berries to garnish

Flaxseed Bread

Some bread I made up in preparation for tomorrow’s panade recipe

¼ cup almond meal
¼ cup flaxseed meal
2 eggs
¼ tsp baking soda

Believe it or not, I’ve been wanting to write something about keeping a nomadic household for about a year now. So why didn’t I write this sooner? Mainly because I didn’t feel qualified to at the time. A year ago, I’d only moved once and wasn’t really that minimalistic. Since then, I’ve put three more moves under my belt — one of them absolutely hellish — and I’m feeling much more ready to tackle this subject. So here goes.

Our Story

Apparently, moving on a dime is part of the job description for a “software contractor’s wife.” We’ve moved four times in the last 16 months. I’ve never met anyone with a similar track record, and I’ve only heard of a few.

Believe me, it wasn’t always this way for me. Growing up, I lived in the same college town for 15 years, and the same house for 9 of those years. The word “moving” conjured only distant memories of my parents shuttling a few carloads of stuff from our apartment to our new house across town.

All this changed when I got married. When I said “I do” at the tender age of 19, I thought I was marrying a Missourian farmboy with a computer hobby. It turned out I’d really married a Gen-Y techie who, to my great astonishment, whisked me off to Los Angeles right after college.

For that first move, I had a whole month’s notice (by far the longest I’ve had since then), and with a herculean effort, I managed to distill our apartment full of junk down to only what would fit in our Ford Taurus. 1500 miles later, we arrived in Los Angeles with no place to live, no city know-how, and no friends outside of an odd little startup that we knew almost nothing about. It was quite the introduction to the real world.

We made our second move six months later, this time to rural New Mexico. I had two weeks to prepare for this one and again, we did it in one fell swoop, throwing everything into our car and driving over. Our stay was temporary, and only two months later, we made our third move up to Los Alamos, NM. This one was much more gradual. Since it was only two hours away, we shuttled our stuff to our new apartment in three trips over the course of two weeks. For the first time, we hardly had to throw anything away, and that lured me into a complacency. Stuff started stacking up.

Then we moved to Boulder — the absolute killer move. Though I had only one week’s notice, it promised to be a peaceful transition at first — until our car died en route to Boulder, with half of our worldly possessions in it. What ensued was a hellish week during which we were homeless living in hotels, carless in an unfamiliar city, and creditless in a depressed economy, with our stuff scattered in four places across two states. At the end of it all, we ended up losing a third of our things. If I had only been half committed to minimalism until then, that experience threw me all the way in. It also cured my shopping habit really well. :)

So here we are four months later.

Extreme minimalism is not stylish — you won’t see our home featured on theNest.com anytime soon. It’s beauty comes from somewhere else, that place in the heart where wanderlust lives. It’s a different world and you have to adopt a different mindset before you enter it.

We’re not the bare bones of minimalism — not even close! There are many things about established living that I’m just not willing to give up. On the other hand, there are little habits that, once I adjusted to them, made my moving life much much easier. Those things I’ll share with you here. Everyone finds their balance in a different place. Here is a little taste of our way.

General Strategies

As is probably obvious by now, our favorite way to move is to simply pile all of our lasting possessions into our car. (Originally, that was a Ford Taurus; since then we’ve “upgraded” to a smallish SUV.) This little detail changes a lot. Moving in a passenger vehicle is a very different beast than moving in say a U-haul. Space is both limited and very non-rectangular. Forget traditional cardboard boxes and newspaper; you can’t afford to lose any space. The best way I’ve found is to pack your things into sturdy containers, like sterilite boxes. (They need to be sturdy because you’ll be stuffing them solid.) If you need padding, use clothing, towels, or something soft that you were going to bring along anyway. Pack the car as full of those rigid boxes as possible, and then start stuffing your other possessions into the cracks. It takes a little practice to find the right grouping techniques. Once, I bagged everything in identical opaque grocery bags — unpacking was a nightmare, let me tell you!

Notice that above I made a distinction between lasting and non-lasting possessions above. That’s because there are permanent possessions that I hold on to and transient things that I throw away and repurchase after every move. (I know, I’m probably horrifying the environmentalists — sorry guys!) My strategy is to gauge the space an item takes up against the price to repurchase. That means that if it’s cheap but big, it gets tossed — trash cans, hangers, bathmats, and consumables like toilet paper and paper towels, for example. This may seem expensive until you compare it to the price of renting a larger vehicle. I’d estimate that my restocking cost at a place like Wal-Mart or Target is about $100. That’s a huge savings over a U-haul.

In general, I try to do with as few possessions as “possible” (where “possible” means a satisfying modern life, not necessarily wilderness survival mode). When I do buy, I try to invest in things that nest or are collapsible. I hope that one is self-explanatory.

Believe it or not, that’s pretty much all there is to it in the general sense. In the end, everyone will approach the specifics differently. Here are a few tips that I’ve found particularly valuable.

Furniture and Organization

Honestly, the best way to deal with furniture is to not have any. We used to have a ton of conventional furniture, and I’ve been a lot happier since we ditched it all.

Of course, living without anything to sit on is pretty weird, and though I did just that for six months and was perfectly happy, we’ve since bought two folding tables and two folding chairs. Since they collapse, they move pretty easily and they make our life a lot nicer in between moves. So moral of the story, if you go for furniture, see that it folds.

My work table

What about dressers and such? Actually, an excellent furniture solution I’ve found is Sterilite bins. Yep, I know, not stylish at all. But believe it or not, they’re just as good at organizing things and only a little less convenient. Their gigantic upside is that come time to move, you’re already half packed.

I lumped organization in with furniture because after you switch to using sterilite bins, the line between the two blur quite a bit. The last tip I have for you in this category are to use, use, use ziplock bags. Trust me, they’re not just for sandwiches! I have every size, from the 2″ x 2″ you get at craft stores to the 10 gallon, which can hold anything from a large blanket to an entire set of pots (which it did, during our last move). I used to use tins, boxes, and other “official” containers, but the ziplock bags do just as well (and sometimes better) in 97% of cases. Other benefits? They’re a fraction of the cost of corresponding containers and they’re clear, allowing you to see the contents at a glance. I use them to organize everything, from food to clothing to office and craft supplies.

I find Sterilite bins both neat and accessible. Ziplock bags are handy for detailed organization.

Kitchen

Unless you eat out all the time or you’re a very minimalistic raw foodist, you’re going to need something to cook with. The one biggest tip I can give you for pots and pans and bakeware is make sure they nest!!! This is easier said than done actually. Stroll through any department store and you’ll quickly see that, aside from mixing bowls, nesting things are not the norm. I unfortunately don’t know of any nesting bakeware sets. I cobbled together my corningware from several other sets. (I gave the remaining pieces to my parents.)

For the stove however, I’m the proud owner of a crazy expensive set of nesting pots and pans from Magma, sold by companies that supply boaters. They come in either nonstick or stainless and are oven-safe, making them an all-in-one solution for the super-minimalistic. The only downside in my book is price. I got my set for $140, which is twice as much as I could’ve spent on a comparable non-nesting set. But I’d say they were worth it.

Magmaâs 10-piece nesting cookware comes in either stainless steel or nonstick.

Besides boating, the other promising area I found for nesting cookware is camping. It didn’t work for us because I like to cook in bulk and it’s difficult to find any pots larger than say 2 quarts for campers. (I guess when you’re carrying everything on your back, it’s not so practical to haul around gigantic stockpots, lol.) But if you eat small portions, there’s a treasury of nesting pots with folding handles and pop-out bowls at your local REI.

Silicone kitchenwares are something that I started using quite recently and have been very happy with. I swapped my stainless steel colander for a collapsible silicone one and truth be told, I get a bit delirious every time I see it. :) There are a ton of other silicone options, from pinch bowls to bakeware. The key here is to make sure they’re heatproof (at least 500 degrees; higher is even better). Other than that, go forth and experiment!

Knives are horrible to pack, which why I only have one. Let me introduce you to the most versatile tool you will ever meet in the kitchen: A Chinese cleaver. It can chop through bones; slice, dice, mince; and you can use the flat of the blade to crush garlic or move ingredients. I used to own a beautiful block of Chicago Cutlery knives, but I eventually gave it away because I hardly ever needed it. Now, besides my cleaver, all I have is a cheap set ($4 at Target!) consisting of a chef’s knife, a bread knife, and a paring knife that I’ll probably toss and repurchase when we move again.

Actually, the cleaver I own is not technically Chinese. It’s an ordinary 6 inch cleaver that I bought from Wal-Mart years ago. (I have small hands. Most of you will want a bigger one.) If I had it to do again, I’d probably buy a Chinese cleaver, but mine works so well, I’ve never bothered to replace it.

My sparse knife collection

Another one of the many goofs I made in the kitchen at first was to buy a whole bunch of appliances. Since then, I’ve given away everything but a stick blender, a food processor, and a spice grinder. If I were to allow one more thing, it might be a slow cooker. But pot roasts are so easily made on the stove that even that seems excessive.

Bedroom

Another place where I have very unconventional recommendations. First and foremost: Learn to sleep on the floor. If you can’t bear it, try an air mattress. That’s actually how we started out. When it sprung a leak, we spread out a quilt on the floor and liked it so much we never bothered to fix our air mattress.

Our bed on the floor, in its usual state of disarray. :)

For those of you who haven’t walked away from me yet, let me justify this one. First of all, a bed frame is huge. It is one of the nastier pieces of furniture to disassemble and move, so getting rid of it takes a huge burden off of your hands immediately. Secondly, sleeping on the floor has surprising benefits. The floor, being perfectly stable, eliminates any bothersome bouncing from your spouse rolling over, etc. It also allows you an arbitrarily large bed — as big as the room you’re in. In fact, anymore, king sized beds feel small, simply because they have boundaries. I’ve also heard that sleeping on hard surfaces is good for your bones, but I don’t think there’s any scientific evidence for that.

There are a few downsides and it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t mention them. The floor conducts vibrations much better than a mattress, so noises (i.e. snoring) are louder. Also, you will be a bag of sore bones for the first week or two. About three days into sleeping on the floor, I couldn’t find a single side of me to lay on that didn’t hurt. However, hard as it is to believe right then, it does go away.

This does mean that renting a place with nice-ish carpet is essential, but I’ve not had a lot of problem with that. In a pinch, an area rug isn’t nearly as expensive as a bed and will do the trick.

Recall that we don’t do furniture anymore. At first, I really had to rack my brains for a solution to the humble bedroom dresser. Where to put the undies, socks, and towels? It turned out none of that was very hard, and I was surprised at how little I was thinking outside the box. Nowadays, we keep all of our foldable clothing in two duffel bags; the different pockets make it easy to sort things out, and a drawstring bag or two helps separate things inside the main compartment. (Naturally, if more structure is desired, a sterilite box will do the trick beautifully. But I like my duffel bag.) As for our towels, I hang them up. In fact, hangers are another one those nifty little secrets that astonished me with its versatility. I found that everything made of fabric can be hung up — skirts, shorts, swimsuits, towels — everything can be slung over that hanger and stuck in the closet. That’s really easy because hangers are dirt cheap and every place we’ve ever lived came with a decent sized closet.

Towels are easily hung up in the closet.

Blankets are another big chunk of space when moving. I’ve found that investing in an electric blanket really pays off space-wise. They’re small, but coupled with a quilt, they’ll keep you warm through the chilliest of weather. Also, blankets are terribly fluffy and can suck up a lot of valuable car space. Enter vaccuum seal compressor bags. I bought a packge of these nifty cube bags from Target, and I’m looking forward to trying them out.

Library

One word: Kindle!

Kindle

I used to own three giant duffel bags worth of books — probably about 500 pounds. They were always a major problem in every move. This last move, I lost all but a handful of them. Let me tell you, I was absolutely devastated.

Since then, I’ve vowed to stick to ebooks. For me, it’s difficult because craft books are pictoral and do not translate well to the Kindle. Only a few of them are available as pdfs, and those are usually DRM-ed so that you can only read them on proprietary software. (I’m on Linux, so that’s not an option.) Of course, since I lost all my books, I’ve gotten really good at utilizing this neat little subscription service you can get called …

The Internet! Lol. I was pretty chagrined to find that most of what was in my $1000 worth of books, I could find with a simple google search. It’s not exactly the same, but seeing as I used my craft books mostly for inspiration, it’s 90% of the way there.

Benefits

What are the benefits of all these little optimizations? Well, I would estimate that I could have our entire household packed and ready to go on 48 hours notice … maybe even 24. That might seem crazy, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility.

As for the physical and spiritual benefits of minimalism, there are more than enough blogs and webpages discussing that, and I encourage you to read them! As for me, I’ve been much happier since we’ve whittled down our stuff. (Not to mention the tidying is a LOT easier, lol!)

So I hope this has been helpful, entertaining, or both. And as a connoisseur of minimalism, I’d be more than thrilled to hear about any clever innovations you’ve come up with!

Ah, April, am I glad to see you! If I had gotten around to writing a few weeks earlier, the post would’ve been titled “When, oh when is it EVER going to stop snowing?” Yes, even though we’ve been enjoying gorgeous balmy days since early February, we’ve also had an unending stream of blizzards. Guess that’s Colorado weather for you. The cycle goes something like this: It’ll be sunny and 70 degrees; then it’ll snow 12 inches; which will all melt the next day. Repeat.

Anyway, it seems like the weather has finally broken free of its vicious pattern — it hasn’t snowed seriously in two weeks! (Of course, by saying that, I’m going to jinx the whole thing.) The temperature has been up in the sixties — not too bad!

Yesterday, Spencer and I took a walk in the park next to our house. The sun was warm, the breeze was cool, and the sky a glorious blue — I decided then and there that I would go for a run the next day. So today I headed out for the first time in almost five months. It felt wonderful.

Quick history: I had originally intended to run through the winter, but when the weather dipped below 50 degrees or so, my body started reacting to the exercise in weird ways. Namely, insomnia. It didn’t matter whether I ran first thing in the morning or later in the day, I’d invariably be awake until the wee hours, staring at the ceiling and watching my husband’s blissful sleeping. Needless to say, it didn’t take long before I decided that sleep = good and no sleep = bad, therefore running = bad (for the time anyway).

I put it down to the cold weather — I’ve always hated winter. So hopefully, now that things are warming up again, I can pick up my running without ill side effects.

Alas, the lack of exercise hasn’t done my weight many favors. (That’s why there’s been no diet update for some time, lol.) I’ve slowly crept back up to the low 130′s. On the positive side, the weight seems to be distributed differently — I’m curvier than I was the last time I was around this weight.

I’ve also been experimenting with the diet. I went from Paleo back to low-carb for a time, but found myself missing the veggies. So now I’m back. Also, I’m trying out carb-cycling, which in practice means I take two high-carb meals a week. This was a concession for the sake of living a little — it was getting to the point where neither of us enjoyed going out to eat because it was so stressful finding suitable food for me. I figured that if my husband (who very much enjoys my slimmer figure) is urging me to break my diet now and then, well, I can give a little.

As for the culinary delights, no skin off my nose! It’s great getting to enjoy bread and pizza now and then. Not to mention pastries! :D

Anyway, that’s the general overview! Hope life’s been treating you not too shabbily either. Cheers and happy April!

What can I say? It slipped my mind … all year … ummm …

Anyway, you might be wondering what Olympian force has motivated me to finally put it together. Well, today I was in a phone interview for a job (Yeah, I applied for a job! Anyway …) when my interviewer casually mentioned that he was looking at my website. That’s about when I smacked my head into the wall thinking, Here is a REAL LIVE PERSON looking at my blog, and I STILL don’t have an About Me page. At least he didn’t know it’d been like that for a YEAR! I’m sure there’s a special place in purgatory for bloggers like me.

But better late than never, right? (*embarrassed grin*)

Speaking of improvements to my blog, the (very) perceptive among you will perhaps have noticed that I’ve added a little word to my self-description on the sidebar. … That’s right! Musician. Betcha didn’t know that about me, eh?

Actually, I was musical long before I was crafty. I started piano lessons at age four, joined the band in seventh grade, the choir in eighth grade, and the marching band in ninth grade. You could say I was a bit of a music nut growing up.

Anyway, by the end of high school, I was pretty exhausted from the endless rounds of performances and decided to take a break to focus on other parts of my life. And I’m glad I did. (Hey, getting an MRS degree takes effort! :D) But lately, my love for music has been pulling at my heartstrings again, and I’ve decided to add that back into the mix, little by little.

So I got the keyboard set up near the kitchen and I’m playing again. My major work in progress is still Liszt’s Liebestraum (as it has been for the last few years, and is likely to be for the next few as well), but I’m also branching out and reading a few new things. Hopefully I’ll get back into some of my favorite Beethoven sonatas and maybe learn to improvise! It’ll be great fun!