A Blog with Substance

The beautiful Meghan at JaMonkey gave me this fantastic award.

Rules:

•Thank the blogger who awarded it to you: Thank you so much dear! I love your blog and am so honored that you think of mine as one with substance.

•Sum up your blogging philosophy, motivation, and experience using five (5) words:

1. Real
2. Adventurous
3. Optimistic
4. Interactive
5. Random

•Pass it on to 10 other blogs which you feel have real substance.

Pretty All True – for her words that never fail to make me feel real emotion.

The Bottle Chronicles – for her honest take on life, motherhood and her new marriage.

Chill Mama Chill – because she’s still (mostly) sane after 5 months of a sleepless newborn.

Jack and Mandy – because Mandy can make even a story about buying a steam mop hilarious and interesting.

Mommy Wants Vodka – because not only is her blog hilarious but she’s actually awesome in real life.

My Beautiful 604 – she doesn’t blog nearly enough but when she does I love getting a glimpse into her life through her pictures.

Twenty Something and Blogging – the sweetest, most animal loving blogger I know. <3 her!

JewliaGoulia – honest, real and beautiful. This blogger is on a life changing journey that amazes me. She so inspiring.

No Points for Style – because she is the bravest, most open and honest blogger I know.

In These Small Moments – because she reminds me to stop and enjoy every tiny, wonderful moment of life.

Bonus (because I’m not so good with the rule following apparently)

Chronicles of a Monster-in-law – because oh. my. god. you will not believe what her MIL has tried to pull.

Running Between Tweets

You all know I’ve talked about doing C25K several times. I started right before I got my wisdom teeth out which was duuumb because I had to stop a week into it. I’ve meant to start several times since then but since I’m the queen of procrastination I haven’t gotten around to it.

The procrastination is officially over. Why? Because I have a group of fabulous Twitter friends to kick my butt into gear. For real this time. In order to keep each other accountable we’ve started Running Between Tweets. It’s a compilation blog so we can all chart our journeys together.

The site is very much a work in progress. As are most things I do, it was done on an impulse. I will constantly be updating and changing it. The point right now is we’re motivated and ready to go. No putting it off any longer.

I’ll be blogging along side some really amazing bloggers (which, I’m not going to lie, intimidates me a little) so this journey should be interesting. I hope you’re excited as I am. Running starts tomorrow

Prettiness!

Did you notice? My blog got a mini makeover. I’m considering this theme a temporary one since eventually I’d like to make a super fancy custom one. My old theme didn’t support a lot of the features I wanted though so here it is, my shiny new blog look. What do you think?

Let me give you a little tour so you don’t miss any of the new features:

1. I got a brand new favicon. Don’t know what that means? Look up in your browser window right next to my url. See the little picture of me? You may need to clear your cache or reopen your browser to get the full effect.

2. Drop down menus. Check under my 30 by 30 page at the top. There are now links to the Time best 100 movies and books lists that I’m working my way through.

3. Look to your right. See that button? That’s to our HelpSend.Us website. We are currently raising money for a trip to India where we hope to work with a children’s home and do other humanitarian aid work. Any help, whether it’s financial or help spreading the word makes a difference.

4. Comments. I installed Intense Debate so now you’ll be able to reply to specific comments, subscribe to comments and a whole bunch of other useful features. Check out Intense Debate’s website so you can take full advantage.

Feel free to let me know how much you love it. Or if there’s something broken you can tell me that too, either way.

New Year

I hope everyone had a fabulous time bringing in the new year. I had a really fun night with people that mean the world to me. Everyone should be as lucky and loved as I am.

Since it’s the new year and all I’ve decided to change how I blog a little. I’m a perfectionist. It’s a blessing and a curse, but mostly a curse. Now, it may not be obvious to those who read my blog, but when I put together a post it has to be something major or interesting (to me anyway). I generally spend ages getting the content together, resizing and editing pictures, finding links or videos, rewording things so they’re just right etc. A lot of my posts take me hours to put together and I have a whole list of posts in draft mode that are waiting to be finished. This is why I don’t blog more often, especially when there has been an event in my life that I want to blog about. I get stuck working on a “major” post and it takes me so long I lose interest. However, I don’t want to post anything else because my “big” post isn’t done yet and there would be continuity issues.

Ridiculous, I know. Well, I’m done with that. Not that I won’t be putting together “major” posts anymore, because seriously I’m still me but I’m going to try to get on here and talk about the every day a little more. I figure, I enjoy reading blogs like that and my life and thoughts can be fairly interesting (at least I think so), so why not? This blog is ultimately for me anyway. Sure, I’d love it if someday I’m one of those bloggers with lots of friends that I don’t know irl and who gets interesting discussions going in the comments section.  Until then I’m going to use this as what it is, an online journal. I’m going to be who I am regardless of who is reading. I’m going to document my life, if for no other reason, than to be able to someday look back and see how much I’ve grown and changed.

I’m always excited for a new year. While I’m not one to make a list of resolutions on January 1st, I am excited about what this new year will bring. It’s going to be a year of getting used to being a grounded flight attendant, finding a new job while I wait for the economy to improve so I can start flying again, but most of all I hope this year is a year of learning, changing and growing. I hope you’ll enjoy reading about my life journey in 2010.

Obama Rally

Joel and I live on the north side of Chicago. That’s about four hours from Indianapolis but when we found out Barack Obama was holding a rally there we decided it was well worth the drive. It didn’t matter that the night before Joel and I had tickets to a show downtown Chicago and were out until around 11:30pm the night before. We jumped into bed as quickly as we could and set our alarms for 12:50am. Seriously.

By about 2am we were on the road. After a quick stop to pick up my sister Liz and her son Hunter we were on our way. Poor Joel was the driver and I’m a bit embarrased to say I wasn’t much help keeping him awake and slept like a baby almost the entire way there. He is pretty amazing though and got us there safely. By the time we parked and were in line it was about 7:30am. *yawn*

It was freeeezing. According to my iPhone it was only 38 degrees but that probably helped keep us awake.

The gate opened at 9am and we filed in through the metal detectors. Some of the volunteers were instructing us to fill in the sides… but I’m not very good at listening sometimes and got us a spot directly in front of the podium with only about five rows of people in front of us. Now we just had to wait for two more hours until 11am when he was supposed to speak…

Which turned into nearly three hours since he was late….

Hunter managed to keep himself entertained and helped with the landscaping in the process.

When he finally arrived it was a good speech although nothing I hadn’t already heard from his other speeches.

This is how close we were (thanks to me *wink*)

Not fully satisfied, at the end I again used my pushiness to my advantage and was thisclose to him.

Out of 35,000 people I managed to get within arms length.

With our mission accomplished, we turned right around and drove home. It was a lot of fun and goes on my list of crazy adventures I’ve had simply for the sake of having them. And if he is elected President next week I certainly got some amazing pictures to show my grandkids.

Go vote, November 4th 2008!