I've been pretty good about not shopping for months now, but for my birthday I let myself go a little wild at a warehouse sale for Manduka, the pricey yoga equipment manufacturer. Their most popular yoga mat is $100 -- $128 for the extra-long. I've been using a cheap $12 mat from Marshall's for a couple years now, and putting yoga towels on top ( Read more... )

Haven't written in forever and a day...so much of my available energy has been going into working on my novel (which is still in progress). I'm about a quarter of the way through Draft 3. Thought I would be done by now. I thought I'd be done with the first draft of my other novel by now, actually, and that's so not even close to happening. I ( Read more... )

So it took me a few days, a lot of starts and stops, and the boxes are still all over the place and cords are not tucked away -- but no matter, my home office workstation is hooked up, and I did it ALL by myself. I feel so triumphant. Laser printer? Prints! Wireless keyboard? I'm using it! Wireless mouse? So much better than fingering a ( Read more... )

Is it July already? What the ( Read more... )

A Prayer ( Read more... )

It's weird not going into an office every day, or having a steady paycheck, but I have to say, I really don't miss dealing with the office politics and general BS that goes on in my (former) division. My manager and the creative director, with whom I worked closely, were both freaking out last week about the safety of their own jobs and also ( Read more... )

This weekend, with a combo of coupon codes, bonus credits and sales, I bought:

This cute kitty print shift dress in coral (for $20)

And this grey fleece hoodie jacket (at 20-percent-off for $40)

And these white designer denim shorts (for $40 at Marshall's)

And this striped t-shirt dress in white and yellow ($15)

And this cotton/silk cardi in ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

Sometimes great gems can be found in the comments section. Like the following poem, which I stumbled across while reading an incredible entry on loss and grief from Dear Sugar (thanks, inthebelljar ( Read more... )

"I discovered these common, self-imposed restrictions are rather insidious, though they start out simple enough. We begin by worrying we aren’t good enough, smart enough or talented enough to get what we want, then we voluntarily live in this paralyzing mental framework, rather than confront our own role in this paralysis. Just the possibility of ( Read more... )