Long time, no see!
Wow, I really needed a vacation. We did some crazy flying back and forth between Seattle, Anchorage and LA (accumulating airline miles that we will use on future trips to Europe), and took a nice two-day drive between LA and San Jose. I’d traveled the northern California coast many times in my childhood/adolescence, but never the southern/central coast. Beautiful. And now I sort of want to move to San Luis Obispo. But I won’t…I’m still smitten with Seattle.
As I expected, I’m having a hard time making the post-classes/internship transition. Downshifting my brain enough, but not too much (still have a thesis to write) is easier said than done. I’ve decided not to spend evenings in front of the computer, so instead my brain bounces between the various long-shelved “fun activities” available to me. Should I read? Should I watch a movie? Should I organize my closets? I feel like I have an overexcited labrador between my ears. Sigh.
Here are the highlights of what I’m welcoming back into my life now that I have a life once more:
- Reading for fun, Part 1. My fiction to-read list has been getting mighty long.
- Reading for fun, Part 2. My stack of nutrition-related books has been getting mighty high.
- Reading the September fashion magazines…before the end of September!
- Exercising more. I’ve been tortured for months by having to choose between walking, weightlifting or yoga on a given day. Now, I don’t have to choose…I can do all three if I want to, and many days I do. I’ve especially been reveling in my morning walks along the lake.
- Cooking more. Didn’t do a lot of that this week, since I have the house to myself and am cooking for one, but I had great fun stocking the fridge with produce, roasting a big pan of veggies, cooking up some quinoa, making tomato sauce out of our bumper crop of backyard tomatoes, and so on.
- Taking meditation classes at my neighborhood Zen Buddhist monastery. (Yes, my neighborhood really has one.) I need to tame that labrador!
- Studying Middle Eastern dance (or bellydance, if you will). I studied it for years, but shelved it when I started taking my grad school science prerequisites.
- Conferences. I’m super excited about the upcoming Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo (FNCE) next month, as well as the Renfrew Conference in November.
- Being a local tourist. Seattle has changed so much in the years that I’ve been wearing a path between my house and campus…I really need to check things out!
I always intended for this blog to be about both nutrition and cooking, because the two are deeply intertwined. The cooking part kind of fell by the wayside, especially since starting my internship last January. I have never done the daily “this is what I ate” thing, and don’t plan to start, but I do want to return to this blog’s roots, which included a lot more food! I’m excited that when I see an appealing recipe, I can say, “Hey, I should make that this weekend” instead of “Hey, I’ll tuck that away in the black hole that is my ‘to make someday…hopefully’ file.”
Along with readjusting to life, I’ve been preparing for a talk I’m giving this evening. So I’ll have a nice links post tomorrow, then be off and running Monday.
