Things I like

I've been feeling super positive about life the last few days. I LOVE my job, I like the scale acting like it should, I like that it's not 85 degrees outside right now cause we don't have AC and that's miserable and I like that gas prices are going down cause even though I only drive once a week, it peeves me to pay $50 dollars to fill up my 12 gallon tank.

1. Quinoa + avocado + adobo sauce. Seriously, I've had this every day for at least 3 weeks now. The chipotle makes it spicy but then the avocado cools it down in your mouth cause its so creamy... it's amazing and only takes me 6 minutes to make! Plus 37 grams of quinoa and 80 grams of avocado is only 6 points on WW (in case you were wondering).

2. Yale's gym. It's UNREAL gorgeous and ridiculously huge. And the pool it on the 4th floor, which is awesome but also kind of freaks me out. AC got me a membership for my birthday because I asked him to (before someone gets all "that's the worst present ever- he's calling you fat." No, I begged him to get it cause he wasn't really into it) and I just started going last Tuesday. I was scared to go by myself (since AC doesn't work out) but it's definitely something I missed over the last 10 months.

3. Local restaurants. I truly believe it makes a stronger community to support locally owned places as opposed to corporation own entities. One of my favorite aspects about New Haven is that despite its small size and relative lower-class status (9.5% of New Haven lives below the poverty line according to wikipedia), it's able to support good local places... everything from French "bistros" to local sandwich places to amazing breakfast places. Even in the more dangerous neighborhoods, the markets are locally owned. I love that there's only 1 Starbucks downtown but 6 locally owned places (that I can count off the top of my head). That there's a Brueggars Bagels but at least 4 local bakeries, not to mention the numerous sandwich shops/ markets that are far and away better than Subway. I recognize the need for larger grocery chains like Stop and Shop for people who are broke and honestly can't shop at the farmers market at the moment (uh, me, though we do try to get at least some things at the farmers market) but can appreciate that on the rare (once a month?) occasion we go out to eat, my money isn't going towards Subways corporate structure but the pig farmer in the Berkshires who sold the restaurant my pork chop at Caseus. Do we ALWAYS go local? No, and I'd be lying to try and pass off our once-every-few-months Domino habit as local, but in the meantime we love Modern Apizza something fierce, way over Pepe's and Sally's (Pepe's is totally a sell out, FYI).

4. Walking. Apart from the grocery store, I've walked everywhere I needed to go this week. Work, the dentist, the gym...you get the idea. And I kind of love it, because not only am I getting in exercise that I'm not counting APs for (if I'm not wearing a sports bra or swimsuit, it doesn't count), I'm not using gas or the car.

5. My neighbor's dog. That dog... I love that dog, even though he is small and looks almost exactly like the dog in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (a Chinese Crested, of course), the joy and energy he exudes when he sees me is just absolutely awesome. I've never had a dog so maybe I'm late to the game, but it's so cute. My neighbor probably things I'm nuts for talking to her dog when I leave and hear him barking, but it cracks me up. The only dog that I've even known well is completely neurotic and while Daphne the German Shepherd likes me, she'll still get crazy sick from anxiety if bff RG isn't around.

6. Pandora. I'm never quite sure who is going to be in the office at any given moment (sometimes it's just me! Like Wednesday), so it can be a little lonely. And I'm completely redoing the filing system, which is tedious but not hard, so music is nice. I used to hate background noise so I'm not sure what happened there. I've been listening to a lot of David Crowder and The Normals.

7. Have I mentioned adobo sauce? Cause I would seriously eat it three times a day, seven days a week, so on and so forth. Even when it goes down the wrong way and I feel like my chest is ON FIRE and AC is alarmed cause I'm choking and my face it bright red. Totally worth it.

8. My Nana on email. I haven't lived in the same state as either set of grandparents since I was 4, so I'm not as close with either grandmother as I'd like to be (both g-pas passed away within 3 years of eachother). However, my Nana is awesome and emails with the best of them- it has been such a blessing to be able to get to know her better, especially as an adult.

9. Friends. I mean, duh. But this month has been/will be especially nice on the (real life) friend front.
- Talked to one of my favorite people, Kim, a couple Fridays ago
- People are coming to visit! Nic, bff S, MH and his gf Kim are all coming to either New Haven or NYC this month (separately) and I get to see ALL OF THEM! And I'm thrilled.
- I got to talk to Kaitlyn on gchat, which made my day because I love her dearly and it makes me sad that we aren't as good of friends as we used to be. AND she might come visit in August, which would be great!
- Friend TM called the other day, which was awesome and absolutely made my afternoon. Made me feel like I was in college again, in a good way.

10. Gmail's storage capacity. I've had my gmail account since 2005. That's a lot of time to accumulate a lot of emails and last night I decided to clear some of them out. It served as a nice time capsule, really. I could type in the name of a person and the entire email history with them would come up. It brought back a lot of memories- some great, some terrible, but all mine and it was awesome to read. I didn't delete the personal ones because they're important to me. I deleted a bunch of wedding ones, though, because I am so, so over that. Seriously, though, if you've had the same email address FOREVER like I have (I still have my AOL account somewhere!), I highly recommend doing this. Don't delete, just remember. But if you have IM conversations printed out, shred that nonsense cause it was probably 3 AM the night before a paper was due and you were probably pretty emotional. Just saying.