The Thing I Learned This Morning

Well, my new leaf reached an obstacle in its turning over today. I gave in to my sleepiness and did not make my morning trip to the gym.

One might think (I certainly thought, hence remaining in bed) that the extra rest would make me feel good when I got up, but the opposite turned out to be true!

Since this is the first time ever in my life I've even tried to do something like get up early every morning and exercise, it was surprising to me to find that the real result of skipping the workout was a feeling of disappointment.

I was bummed that I didn't make the effort, and missed out on the burning of calories the morning exercise affords. But even more surprising (to me) was that I was really disappointed that I missed the feeling of achievement that accompanies doing something challenging, and that I missed the early start to my day that has allowed me to take a few hours to gear up to going to work. When I get up to go to the gym, it guarantees me the right amount of time to get ready, so I'm not rushed, and I manage to get to work a little early each day. This is certainly not something that has ever occurred to me as pleasant before, but it turns out it is!

This is probably not news to most of you, Krisan, you're probably running a 10K on the treadmill while you read this, but it was news to me. I'll make up for my skip this morning after work, but I don't plan on making this same mistake again!

Oh, you know, good morning

Just going to pick up with this posting thing like it hasn't been almost a year.

So, I've got a new job!! New job, new outlook, renewed vigor, and thus, new blog title/look. The look might change more, but this is my starting point.

It is very exciting to have a new job. As of this past Monday, I am a managing editor at a custom publishing company here in Chattanooga, which is super for lots of reasons.

1) I have a job. This is a good contrast to not having a job.

2) Since this is a new job and a new company, I have a new BOSS, one who is really nice and encouraging and not a completely demoralizing and horrible person who causes me to struggle daily with the moral implications of sabotage or violence.

3) This job has a lot more import and responsibility, which means I will be productive and useful at work every day, very nice. Not that I am important, just that my job has real purpose and a little bit of authority.

4) The company and people I now work for/with are cool and laid back, and part of the company's mission is for work to be fun, and that is always a good sign.

5)My office is now in a cool building right in the middle of downtown, and super convenient to every where, which means more walking to lunch and such (when it is not frigid outside - go away, already, winter!)

6)I will no longer be a pauper and can now afford luxuries like having the internet at my house.

There are probably more reasons why it is awesome, but those are the ones that spring to mind immediately. In effort to keep myself invigorated, I have also been getting up prior to the crack of dawn and going to the gym before work each day. Many of you will recognize the miraculous nature of this development. So far it has been really nice, once I manage to drag myself out of bed. Plus it has the added advantage of getting me up early and thus eliminating rushing from my morning equation, which has made mornings much more pleasant. It has also enabled me to get to work early! Woah.

Anyhow, that's what's going on with me, and I am hoping that I will continue writing more frequently. We'll see.

Leave of Absence

Sometimes it's more effective to announce a leave of absence after the fact, right? That way while you're gone everyone is all like "oh," you know, "where is she?" and then you come back and it's like a nice surprise.

OR, I just got lazy and kind of quit trying to write, and now have decided to take up the mantel again. Take your pick! Anyhow, I'm back. I know I know, I'm like the Brett Favre of blogging.

So I'm planning a trip to France in May. My stepbrother, Rick, lives there (in Paris, to be exact) and will be welcoming me into his fancy Parisian flat where I presume we will eat baguettes and croissants and look at the world through rose colored glasses. I'm very excited about it, having only ever been to Italy as far as European countries go. Not that Italy wasn't great, because it is completely wonderful, but I'm excited to expand my international horizons. I plan to watch this video a lot in preparation.

I think I will fit right in. I also plan to look at the Sartorialist a whole lot before going in effort to look more Parisian.

I must go to lunch now, but if any of you have been to France and would like to recommend things for me to do while I am there, I would love to see your suggestions! I will write them in my fancy moleskine Paris trip planning notebook.

The Friday Afternoon Post

Here I am, Erin!

Now that I am writing, I'm thinking perhaps the real problem behind my seeming lack of creative thought was a lack of caffeine. Because today I have had more than plenty and my fingers are eager to flit about the keyboard in a manner reminiscent of yesteryear (and by yesteryear I mean a couple months ago.) We'll see if we can keep this going.

Let's see...tales to tell...last night, having returned home from various wedding related errands (relating not to my own wedding- don't worry, I have no surprising news that I've chosen to reveal to everyone by burying the lede in a random blog post - but rather to the TWO friends' I am looking forward to participating in come January), I spent a leisurely hour or so just pottering around before going to Lacey's. You know, stacking up unopened mail, eating pasta, taking a shower - that sort of thing. Francis was darting around, being his usual weird self, but I noticed he was taking particular interest in a pair of heels that were laying on the floor beside the couch.

Not that I blamed him, these shoes being bright red and of the J. Crew persuasion, but up til now he hasn't really demonstrated that much interest in footwear so I decided to check it out. Then I thought to myself, what is that smallish fuzzy looking thing huddled in my shoe, where the ball of one's foot would usually rest? The cat quickly darted away as I exclaimed my surprise at realizing it was a relatively small rodent, of the mouse persuasion. After collecting myself, I realized that Francois had terrified the poor thing into a state some might call frozen, as it was not moving, except to wring its tiny hands/feet.

At this point I reached a conundrum. Initially, out of surprise, I could not think for the life of me what one would do with a small mouse. I stood in the living room, perplexed, as the tiny thing continued to wring his hands, crouched in my shoe. If I put him outside, he will surely freeze to death because even though I have yet to turn my heaters on this winter (please see this post for explanation on that), it has to be warmer inside than out and he is surely a domesticated mouse. However, one clearly (unless one is Phoebe) doesn't just let rodents run rampant in one's home, plus Francis would surely put a swift and grisly end to that anyhow.

I settled on placing the little fella, whom I named Stuart, in the stairwell of our small apartment building, thinking that it would be warmer than outside but less health-hazardish than letting him live in my apartment/putting him in a shoe box. I decided over night that I would put something in the stairwell for him to live with, like a sock or something, and share some of Francis' food with him. Unfortunately...let's just say this plan was unsuccessful. I'm comforting myself by thinking that he was an elderly mouse, and lived out his final days (barring a harrowing adventure with le chat) in the peace and comfort of my apartment building.

Just so we don't end on kind of a downer note (sorry about that), speaking of mice, please look at this amazing picture of Claire's child, dressed as Minnie Mouse for Halloween:


Pretty much my favorite child.

An Eternal Flame

Firefighting. Just one more facet to the myriad of skills I am picking up in my sojourn through the world of publishing. Unlike some skills (for instance my apparently incredible quickly-stapling-things skills, which my boss suggested I could utilize as a full-time career), firefighting is one that I really wouldn't have thought would come in handy here, but you learn something new every day.

It was a happy day for the folks in the creative services department - a catered lunch, how pleasant. The conference room beside my desk filled with the happy sounds of people eating quesadillas and black beans.

After lunch, however, when the delighted munching was merely a memory, I went in to turn off the light and what to my wondering eyes should appear but the light of not one, not two, but four flickering sterno lanterns. Cheerily burning away in the empty room, dutifully warming two large aluminum pans full of water.

I consulted the folks in creative services about this, and they had decided that it was difficult to put them out, so they would just let them burn until there was no more fire left in them. On another, colder day in the office, I might have accepted this, and huddled like a Hooverville hobo over the warmth of the little gas flame, rubbing my hands together as I propped my bandana tied to a stick against the wall. Today however, it was more temperate in the office, and I chose instead to alert my boss. His first attempt at squelching the flames with a plastic serving spoon only seemed to make them angrier. After removing the hot aluminum pans filled with water, however, he was able to extinguish them with bursts of breath, leaving the office safe for one more day.

Other than that, not a lot going on this afternoon. Happy Wednesday!

Silence is golden?

It's awfully nice of you people (my aunt, Walker & Tap, Chase) to notice that I have become the worst blogger ever in terms of actually writing in my blog - for you I will try! I honestly don't know what's up with my brain lately. Maybe I haven't been reading enough? Whatever it is I have just not been in the literary mindset. I think it's a possibility that the problem is the sub-arctic temperatures we've been enduring in the office lately. Supposedly, the computers in the IT room have to be kept at a certain temperature, to the detriment of everyone's extremities, but I'm pretty sure that's a sham. It's not like we just got the computers, and it hasn't always been this cold in here...

Writing is one of those things (like most things, I suppose) where if you try too hard to come up with something great, you just end up coming up with nothing at all. You wonder so much why it is that your brain used to be fine at coming up with nonsense to ramble about and now can only think of the fact that it can't come up with nonsense to ramble about. I feel like Kathleen Kelly in You've Got Mail when she's recalling how when someone says something awful to her, she wants so badly to say something in return but her mind is a complete blank. "Even now, days later...nothing."

I'm starting to get ready for the holiday season. I'm not to Amy Grant Christmas mode yet (you at least have to wait til after halloween) but now that it's fall I'm getting more and more ready to watch Home Alone.

Every year at Thanksgiving, I have the honor of attending the feast on the night before Thanksgiving at Catherine's house, with her family and also Scott, another honorary guest. We all gather around the table with the candles glinting off the silver and the glasses and share a delightful meal, though my favorite part is after dinner. We've established a tradition over the years of going around the table to say what we've been particularly thankful for, and then some of our favorite things over the course of the year, like movies or books or albums. I've already started considering my options for these important questions, though obviously it is too early to reveal the contenders.

And now I'm going home. I'll give it another shot tomorrow and hope it turns out more clever than this.

Friday Afternoon Post

Hullo everyone, it's the Friday Afternoon Post.

I do hope you haven't given up on me. I am hoping that fall will provide me with ample inspiration and the font of words will once again begin to flow. For now I am mostly inspired by my inability to sit still. I am experiencing "fall fever," the autumnal equivalent of the spring affliction of similar nomenclature. Every 30 seconds I turn and look out of my patio here at work (read: the windowed storage closet behind my desk) and bounce a bit in anticipation of being outside. I am having visions of myself, and others, walking down leaf-strewn sidewalks in sweaters and boots, perhaps carrying books and listening to Chris Thile on ipods.

College football starts this weekend, and though I am certainly not the most avid football fan, it does fill my little Auburn heart with cheer to think of College Gameday - even attending the UTC Mocs game last night (record setting attendance of more than 14,000 people in Finley Stadium...yeah, big time) made me happy.

Oh how I pine for a hint of cool in the evenings that I might wear my new cape (yep, it's a cape. And it's navy, with gold buttons. And it has a sash. Oh fine, it is this, from Modcloth:

As I think this post is almost completely ridiculous by this point, I might as well close with some poetry:

To Autumn - William Blake

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stain'd
With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,
And all the daughters of the year shall dance!
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

'The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust'ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feather'd clouds strew flowers round her head.

'The spirits of the air live in the smells
Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.'
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat,
Then rose, girded himself, and o'er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.

It's a five o'clock world. Happy Labor Day, all!