File Pile Riddance

Hey Bloggerverse, I'm back! Reeeeeally got off track with this stuff, but Tory reminded me that there are only a few weeks left until the 1001 days are complete! Time to catch up!...

Here's a boring one to get out of the way. Number 79, stay on top of filing. This was something I was genuinely terrible at. Such a simple task of taking a bill, statement, or whatever, and placing it right away in it's appropriate folder was something I just couldn't handle apparently. I would always just create a pile of papers on top of my filing boxes. Eventually, the papers would pile up to the point of falling off then I would begrudgingly file the pile for about an hour. Ridiculous. But file piles are no more! Turns out it's so much easier to just file right away! This goal was a real toughy because it was a habit breaker, but I'm proud to say I'm a changed woman! :)

Current status of file tower...pile free!

South Mountain Hike with Mom

On my last trip home I got to cross #81 off of the list- hike South Mountain with Mom. We'd been talking about doing it for quite awhile so I was excited that that it was finally happening! Despite having lived in Phoenix for 18 years, I had never been!

(Mom, hates when I take secret pictures of her :)

It was a bright one! You can see Camelback behind us on the right.

Playing with the Panorama

Camelback money shot

Mom the Adventurer money shot :)

As the grand finale to our outing, we stopped for lunch at The Farm on the way home. 

Fresh, locally grown sandwiches and salads. It was delish!

Chain Painting

Gosh, I'm terrible at staying on top of blogging. Good news is that in the long gaps in between posts, I get a lot of goals done! :)  This particular project went (embarrassingly) unfinished for YEARS. I wish that was an exaggeration, but I literally started it in May of 2008 and just finished it on January 24, 2013. And to be honest, I really could/should work on it more, but I'm peace with it for now. The thing that finally got me to pick up a brush was because my mother hung it on the wall! You can't hang a painting that's only 87% done! (Yep, I did precise calculations on that. ;) I just hated that people were seeing it unfinished, so on my last trip home I packed my paints!

The ironic thing about the painting, is that I was trying to finish it fast. I even set up a camera to take time lapse shots of it as I progressed. Here are the shots in a little movie format:

A little bit about the painting: When I was at school in Savannah, GA, I took a picture of this chain which is on a swing on Tybee beach. At the time I was in this little book club that was reading "The Artists's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity" by Julia Cameron. It's was a pretty inspiring book, and one of the exercises that I enjoyed was the challenge of doing something to get out of your routine. One morning I woke up to use the restroom at like 4AM. Instead of falling back into bed like any sane college student would do, I grabbed my camera, jumped in my car, and headed to the beach to catch the sunrise! It was an exhilarating experience, so I painting this image to remind me of that.

698 days down, so 303 to go!

I was randomly feeling a sense of time running out on this project this past week, and realized that I didn't even know what my 1001st day was! So today I crunched the numbers and figured out that November 14th will be my last day. That's more time than I thought I had, so I'm encouraged to keep on trucking through these ol' goals o' mine!

MARATHON!!!!!

selfie right after the finish line

I did it! I really did it!! Surprisingly, I'm not sure how glad I am that I did it though. That "race" takes such a toll on your body! My hips will probably never be the same, haha. Before the race, I always would think, how hard could it really be? The answer is HARD! What I was surprised by was that it wasn't my lungs or muscles that were really struggling or even a lack of energy (mainly, because I was popping a lot of energy chews and beans :), but it was the fatigue of the joints which is what slowed me down the most. Maybe I didn't train enough? Here is the training chart I used. You'll see in the middle I had to cut back some because I had injured my IT Band.

Now, let me tell you the good parts about the experience...

The race started at 5AM so it was still dark enough for fireworks!

and I got to catch a beautiful sunrise

there was a lot of good people watching and a lot of neon!

and Brian, bless his big heart, went the last 4 miles with me! He took this pic:

What a guy!

a couple of the pro pics: struggling and pretending not to struggle, ha!

and finally a finish shot...

I think my official finish time was 5:52.51. Not great, but hey, I got my medal. :]

thai cooking

I have to say, I'm enjoying the cooking aspect of domestic life more than I thought I would. I've been surprising myself with the types of dishes I am able to make that I previously only thought I could get at restaurants, for instance, beef pho or chicken tikka masala. The latest ethnic concoctions I have tried to prepare are Thai dishes. As you may remember, I started out by making red chicken curry, which I posted about a couple months ago. Since then, I have made two more Thai meals, pad thai and hot and sour soup, to round out goal #66 which was to cook three dishes in total.

Here's the pad thai. (I got a little crazy with the cilantro!)

Pad thai turned out to be my favorite to prepare of the three. It's a fantastic recipe! Here's where I started from: http://browniesfordinner.com/2010/05/11/easy-pad-thai/  Rice noodles, the main ingredient, were fun and easy, because I found out that they just cook in hot tap water. No need to boil! Nice! I made it vegetarian style the first time and Brian, the carnivore, didn't even really seem to mind.

Lastly, I gave thai hot and sour soup a try. It's funny, I used to not even really like soups up until about 3 years ago. So weird. Anyway, I've done a 180 and now I seem to crave soup all of the time! Here's the recipe I roughly used: http://thaifood.about.com/od/thaisnacks/r/hotandsoursoup.htm. This one was fun because I got to use bok choy for the first time. Look at it just draping itself so beautifully over the edge of the ladle. :]

If you come to visit, there's a good chance you might get served (at least!) one of these three.

steve jobs book

Jenny, my rad sister in law (remember, the one who introduced me to this awesome goals challenge!), gave me the Steve Jobs biography for Christmas (technically, Thanksgiving ;) last year. I was excited because I'd heard good reviews about it and I've always admired Apple design. 

What a fascinating guy! I felt like I already knew so much about him, but the book is so thorough that I found out so much more. Obviously, as a product designer, I enjoyed reading about the details of Apple's product development process. What surprised me, however, was how interested I was in his interpersonal relationships. You probably already know that he could be a ruthless jerk, but he could also be incredibly sensitive. The author, Walter Isaacson, doesn't sugarcoat any of it, so that honesty made the stories so compelling. To quote Jobs, I think it's "insanely great" that he didn't have Isaacson edit out some of the stuff that makes him look bad. As a result, the book is such a complete picture (at least it seems) of the crazy life of such a passionate genius who truly did put a "dent in the universe." I definitely recommend reading it.

The marks one of the books off of my list for goal #46