little black journal

We took advantage of the lovely Fall weather today to get out and make the annual Schnell family trip to the pumpkin patch out in North Bend.  (This was visit #2 to this particular pumpkin patch, so I am now officially calling this an annual family tradition.)  This time, we invited several of our friends (our ‘Seattle family’), which made for an even better time.  We spent awhile wandering among the pumpkins, all in search of that one perfectly round, perfectly colored pumpkin – I told myself as we were heading to the patch that we really didn’t need more than that one perfect pumpkin.  But then again, what is a ‘perfect’ pumpkin?  Is it small or big?  Orange or white or green?  Tall and skinny or short and squat?  We couldn’t decide, and far be it from us to discriminate, so we walked away with a wagon full of ‘perfect’ pumpkins.  A nice little multi-ethnic pumpkin family.  It was such a beautiful day out there, with the sun shining and Mount Si rising up in it’s rocky glory right beside us.  Good times.

Post-pumpkin patch, we found ourselves hungry and ready to cozy up indoors, so we all headed to Brian and Nicole’s for a dumpling making party.  I had never made dumplings before, but I have never enjoyed food prep so much – it was fun to sit around the table with friends, folding yummy fillings of pork and vegetables into delicate little pot-sticker wrappers, then passing them to the men at duty by the stove.  And mmm mmm, they were delicious.  The perfect way to ‘wrap up’ a perfect fall day (pun intended).

The persistent rain, the changing color of the leaves, the darker mornings, and the fact that I’ve had to dig out the sweaters and shove the tank tops to back of my closet leave me with the feeling that summer is officially, officially OVER.  It was such a good summer, full of sunshine and margaritas and long runs along Lake Washington.  Sad to see it end, but I’m ready to see what this next season holds.  I look forward to fall as a time to enjoy the warmth of our home, to curl up on the couch with Shane on a rainy Sunday afternoon, to pull out my knitting needles and search for inspiration in my basket full of yarn.  The changing of seasons can have such an impact on my daily routine, on my interests and activities.  And so as I’m entering this period of transition, I’m trying to be intentional about change in asking myself, “What do I really want my day-to-day to look like?”  Shane and I have often talked about what kind of rhythms we want our lives to have – what are the things that we want to ingrain into our schedule and routine?  And we’ve often (always) fallen short of setting these rhythms into place.  But as I mentioned, I’m in the mood for change, and so now is as good a time as any to implement these hopes and goals.  I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say that in fall of 2009, I will:

*Share a home-cooked meal with Shane at the dinner table at least four nights a week (this one is a double-bonus – improve my cooking skills and get some much needed regular ‘how-you-doin’ time with my husband).  This one has proven to be incredibly difficult, with work and work-outs and weekly commitments, but if we really try, we can make this happen.  And yes, I have come to terms with the fact that pouring milk over a bowl of cereal does not count as a ‘home-cooked meal’.

*Get together with the amazing girlfriends I’ve been blessed with in Seattle much more regularly.  Schedules are busy, so get-togethers are tricky, but I’d love to connect with at least a couple ladies every week.

*Dedicate time every day (could be five minutes, could be an hour) to conversing with God.  Might be in the form of prayer, might be in the form of study, but whatever it is, it will be time that I spend specifically focused on growing in my relationship with Him.

The list could go on, but I’m going to limit myself to focusing on these three vitally important things.  Change is hard, but it can be so good.

This was one of those nothing-special but oh-so-good kind of  weekends.  No big happenings at the Schnell household, but I enjoyed the chance to hang out with friends yesterday and have a ‘me’-day today.  Shane had a late night/early morning at the office last night, so I decided to spend the morning being out-and-about, soaking in the beautiful day and letting him rest.  After church, I stopped by the Fremont Sunday market to do some wandering.  It had been awhile since I’d been to Fremont, and their Sunday street market is one of my favorites in Seattle.  I was tempted by all the home-baked and hand-stitched goodies, but I practiced restraint and walked out of there with nothing but a beautiful bouquet of fresh sunflowers.  Then I practiced indulgence when I came home and baked a batch of chocolate-dipped almond-cherry biscotti.  The rest of the day was pretty mundane, but productive – went for a run, cooked dinner, did laundry, savored a piece of the afore-mentioned biscotti…  Settling into the couch now for a little tea-time, and am going to keep my spirits high by pretending that tomorrow is NOT Monday.  How fleeting a good weekend can be…

Yes, it has been noted that this blog has suffered from neglect over the past couple of weeks.  My quietness on the blog front has occurred for a couple of justafiable reasons – 1) work has been super-busy lately, consuming much of my weekend and evening time, and 2) for the aforementioned reason, life just hasn’t been that interesting…

But still, blog-worthy or not, an update is in order, so here’s the happenin’ highlights:

Like I said, work is busy.  But it’s good.  The hours are longer than I’d prefer, but the work is challenging, I’m learning a lot, and I’m being trusted with a lot.  Yes, I certainly have those ‘work sucks’ kind of days, but I also have those ‘Man, I was ON today!’ kind of days, and they seem to make it all worth it.

After over a year of scheming and planning and budgeting with our neighbors for our big backyard renovation, construction is finally underway, as of today.  Photos and plans to come, but for now, I will just say that I can’t wait to set up a few chairs in our new yard and share some burgers and beer with friends.  We’ve been dealing with a pretty inhospitable outdoor space for the last couple of years, but all of that is about to change!

I am getting a major vacation itch.  Some of our friends are trying to pull together a winter trip to Hawaii, which sounds amazing.  Shane keeps talking about his desire to visit New Zealand, which also sounds amazing.  But the un-amazing fact is that vacations require both time and money, so nothing is on the books just yet.   For now, I will have to content myself with our little weekend stay-cations (mornings spent in cafes and afternoons spent napping on the couch).  This is not so bad, come to think of it…

Shane will run his marathon in Portland in T minus 15 days.  He has been training like a mad-man, running for hours at a time on Saturday mornings, then hobbling around the house for the following two days.  I am amazed by his driven-ness.  Seriously.

And with that, I’m fresh out of new content.  Tired, too, so I’m signing off for now, hoping I’ll have some kind of adventure or new experience or something to report about in the next few days.

Today was a good great day – a totally open bonus day to spend however I chose.  Being that cafe-sitting is one of my most favorite pastimes, I started my day with a latte at a new cafe I’ve been wanting to check out – Citizen in Lower Queen Anne.  Good coffee, cool space, but a little too restaurant-y for someone like me, who likes to feel free to linger over a latte for an hour+ without any pressure to buy something else.  I cut my stay a little short to give my table up to the breakfast-ers who were filing in.  They did have a pretty amazing-looking crepe menu, though, so I’ll head back next time I’m in the mood for a solid brunch.

Post-coffee, I headed home and picked up Shane for an 11:10 showing of 500 Days of Summer.  Did you know that movie tickets are 6 bucks before noon?  Score!  Plus, I showed up to the theater with snacks in my purse, so I was an exceptionally cheap date this morning.  The movie was really good – smartly written and well-acted with a quirky/artsy vibe to it.  Loved it.  A post-movie lunch at Panera, a round of shoe shopping to find a much-needed new pair of running shoes, and I was somehow tuckered out from this wonderfully mellow morning.  And Lord knows that my ‘perfect’ day absolutely includes a nap, and so I spent an hour on the couch dozing while Shane watched the Giants game, waking briefly for each of Uribe’s home runs (Shane just couldn’t silence his excitement).  Refreshed, I took advantage of a momentary break in the rain to get out for short run to break in my new running shoes.  An impressively good dinner of miscellaneous items we needed to use up from the fridge, a home pedicure (on the off chance that I get to bare my feet in sandals at least one more time before the chill of Fall sets in), and I’m now settling into the couch for the evening with my cup of ginger peach tea and my book.  Perfection.

This was a fabulous weekend.  Nothing super-special took place, but a lot of little things came together to make this a really good, really productive couple of days.  I kicked off Saturday with a 5-mile run along Lake Washington – it was a gray morning, but I always feel like I’m energized by being near the water, so I was able to pull through at a pretty steady jog.  And I’m finally getting into a groove where these runs don’t take everything out of me, so I was left with enough energy to check off a couple of errands, pick up some groceries, and shampoo our carpets.  It’s embarrassing to admit just how much I really enjoyed giving our carpets a thorough cleaning, but man, it was satisfying to dump bucket after bucket of dirty water down the drain.  Well worth the $25 rental fee we paid to split the ‘Rug Doctor’ machine rental with our neighbors.  And I have to credit Shane with having the better carpet cleaning technique between the two of us – he was able to turn those corners with impressive tightness.  What a man…  We spent Saturday night with some of our most favorite Seattle peeps, celebrating a friend’s birthday and recent return from a 10-week stint in India.  It had been awhile since we’d sat around a table with these people, and we reveled in the joy of sipping our cocktails, stuffing our faces with pineapple cake, and laughing uncontrollably as we all tried on the fake mustaches that were a birthday gift for J.  Weird, yes, but there is in fact a story behind the mustache joke that I won’t go into here…  I think my eyes are closed in this photo, as I was trying not to sneeze – I spent the rest of the evening trying to blow gray fur out of my nose.

Today was a much more mellow day – we went to church this morning, and then I spent a few hours at the office, which is not how I prefer to spend a Sunday afternoon, but it did relieve some of my anxiety about the mid-week deadlines I have coming up.  Another short jog, a dinner of pork loin and corn on the cob straight off the grill, and I was ready to settle in for the night with my fleece blanket and cup of ginger peach tea.  I definitely earned my “veggin’-out” time tonight, so we are cozy-ing up to watch the latest Mad Men episode before we call this weekend a wrap.

Sunday nights are definitely not my favorite time of the week – sometime between 6 and 8 pm, I usually start moping around the house, mourning the passing of another weekend, dreading the incessant ringing of my alarm clock that will begin without fail come Monday morning at 6:30.  But tonight, as the Sunday night funk began to set in, I stopped, and instead tried to focus on what a great week this has been.  It was a bumpy start, with a couple of long, stressful days at work, but those long hours resulted in a client meeting going extremely well on Wednesday morning, and things were looking up.  The rest of the day was full of highlights:  I enjoyed a nice lunch and dinner with Shane’s parents on their last full day in Seattle; I took my first ever Harley ride with Shane’s dad along Lake Washington; and I spent Wednesday night enjoying VIP treatment at the Seattle Sounders v. Barcelona game, courtesy of a new friend.  The rest of the week was enjoyably low-key, with a couple of deadline-free days at work, a nice stroll through Pioneer Square on Thursday evening to check out a few art galleries, and some quality chill-time spent at home enjoying Shane’s company.  The weekend was also relaxing, though productive, as we stocked our fridge with blueberries, tidied up the yard a bit, and logged some miles on the old runnin’ shoes.  I caught up with friends and family that I hadn’t talked to in awhile, spent some time in my sketchbook, found a cute new pair of sandals on double-clearance at DSW, and finished up a couple of knitting projects that had been nagging me for awhile.  Nice.  And so I won’t mope about the fact that tomorrow is Monday, but instead enjoy the feeling of a week well-spent.

Random little things that are making me happy these days:

Fresh berries.  My parents brought us a couple of pounds of fresh-picked Oregon blueberries when they were here last week, and Shane and I have been eating them by the handful.

The Lupines that are blooming in our little front yard garden.

This handmade white ceramic vase that we bought on one of our last days in Paris.  It’s nice to have little reminders of our trip such as this one scattered about the house.

My cute new jeans that I got on super-sale at Nordstrom Rack.

Evening and weekend runs with Shane.  We’ve put quite a few miles on these shoes over the past few weeks.  Feels good to be getting in shape together.

This has been a fabulous weekend, full of so much eating, playing, laughing, and lounging with friends and family.  Thursday we celebrated one friend’s 30th birthday with pizza, wine, and gelato; Friday we celebrated another 30th birthday with Korean barbeque, beer, and wiffle ball.  Good times.

Friday evening we headed down toward Enumclaw to hang out with Shane’s aunt, uncle, and cousins, who recently returned to Washington after a three-year stint in the Midwest.  I am thrilled to have family near us once again.  They are living in a beautiful house out in the country, on several acres of land.  Shane’s aunt and I were enjoying a drink out on the back porch when Shane came barreling around the corner in this:

Looks pretty good, don’t you think?  I’m trying to talk him into a pair of Wranglers and a sexy Stetson hat, but he’s pretty attached to his flip-flops and Giants cap.  The view of Rainier from down there was beautiful.  Shane and I have several friends who are climbing this mountain this weekend and I was struck with what a feat this is as I looked at the steep, snowy peak from a distance.  Impressive!

Yesterday we rang in the Fourth of July in our backyard with friends and neighbors.  Shane stepped up as grill-master and we all feasted on burgers and hot dogs.  And Jack’s super-fantastic special Sangria.

It was a perfect afternoon – I felt blessed to be spending the day with so many close neighbors and friends.  We really have developed and grown our own little community here in Seattle.

And apparently, the Fourth isn’t really the Fourth with out a watergun fight.  Shane was quick to grab a super-soaker to take part in the craziness.  This man shows no mercy.  Shane was definitely wet by the time the fight was over, but the neighborhood kids were soaked to the bone.

I’m thinking three-day weekends should become the new standard, no?

Despite the fact that I am married to Mr. Techy-Gadgety-Man, I am woefully uninformed when it comes to the latest trends in technology.  I would rather follow my favorite art blogs and keep up to date on the Jon and Kate plus 8 saga than read about the newest thing in computers or software or cell phones.  But when the release of the iPhone 3GS coincided with my contract renewal period with AT&T, I started to get a little tech-giddy.  I have been jealously eyeing Shane’s sleek iPhone for the last year, as I’ve lugged around my clunky, user-unfriendly Nokia.  And so, here was my chance to have the latest and greatest in cell phone technology – and I seized it.  We pre-ordered the phone and I had it delivered to my happy little hands the day it was released.  Woo-hoo!  So now that I’ve enjoyed two weeks of iPhone-dom, here’s my list of top 5 reasons why I love this phone:

1.  I’m so connected.  I love being able to check email with a little flick of the finger, to upload a photo to Facebook from the top of mountain in Oregon, or to hop on the www.onebusaway.org to check how late my bus may be running.

2.  I don’t get lost anymore.  I used to often call Shane when I was out on my errand runs, wanting to know if there was a Crate and Barrell nearby, or needing directions to the nearest Chipotle.  Now, with Google Maps and GPS, I am able to look up directions myself to anywhere from anywhere, and Shane is relieved that he no longer has to be my on-call yellow pages.

3.  I can travel lighter now.  All of my music can be stored on my phone, so I no longer need to carry my iPod around as well.  And anything that lightens the load in my Mary Poppins purse is a good thing.

4.  I can use it without having to read a manual.  As I mentioned earlier, I am far from tech-savvy, but even a tech-klutz like myself can navigate this phone with ease.  So smartly designed.

5.  It’s pretty.  Apple has done it again.

Now, to be fair, the iPhone certainly has its disadvantages, too.  Ironically, the primary downfall of owning an iPhone is also the primary bonus of owning an iPhone:  I’m so connected.  It used to be the case that as soon as I hopped on the bus in the morning, I would pull out my book to get a few pages of reading done on my way to work.  Now, books have taken a backseat as I hop on the bus and pull out my iPhone to check my email and the latest on Facebook.  Connectedness is addictive.  And so I’ll have to learn restraint.  But all in all, this is a very cool little piece of technology.  Worth every penny.