I’m out of school for the Summer and have been taking a lot of time off work to hang out with the kids. Alex and Ana have been growing lots of organic produce in their new raised planter. So far they’ve harvested romaine, basil, radishes, strawberries, and zucchini. Still growing are cantaloupe, carrots, corn, and tomatoes.

The kids have also been getting some exercise biking and swimming and are having fun with craft projects. Julie helped Ana make necklaces for herself and her little sister…

Angie has been enjoying trips to the park and playing with her older siblings. She’s changing every day and it’s amazing watching her learn and grow.

Hope everyone’s having a great summer!

Categories: angie, gardening, health, kids and parenting, work-life balance
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Got this lovely idea from Ernie who got it from Caterina who got it from a friend.

Also, Kevin told me if you Google for singletasking you get this Zen Habits blog entry that points you to a wonderful little tool called NowDoThis. If you are the type to get distracted by your web browser, you can load this tool in your Firefox sidebar.

Categories: productivity, work-life balance
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This weekend we saw several friends we hadn’t seen in a long time. It was so nice to catch up with them. The get-together was held at one couple’s new home, so this was a housewarming as well. When my friend gave me the tour, she showed me her writing corner, a cozy nook she set up in the corner of the living room to do her writing. She preferred it to the study because she felt more comfortable writing here.

The concept intrigued me and Kevin. Both of us have a lot of writing ahead of us in our academic and professional lives, so this topic is ripe for discussion. On the drive home, we immediately started talking about our optimal conditions for writing. So far here’s what we’ve talked about:

• Neither of us has an ideal place to write at home. We usually use our laptops at the dining table, which isn’t ergonomic at all. The last time I spent an entire weekend writing, I had a horrible backache for 2 days.
• Both of us get interrupted constantly at work, mostly by emails. If we cut down the number of times we checked email, we would find more solid chunks of time to write.

What is your ideal writing environment?

Categories: productivity, writing
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These past few months I’ve been talking to a lot of medical professionals. Each time they ask me, do you exercise? I have to answer with an embarrassed no.

As it turns out, there’s nothing terribly wrong with me. My primary care physician decided to be thorough, just in case, since I hadn’t had a checkup in AGES. I have fantastically low blood pressure, and my BMI looks just fine, as always. I did learn that I have a benign growth on my gallbladder, which I wasn’t even sure was a vital organ until I looked it up. I also needed a prescription for a terribly annoying but non-life-threatening problem, which is now no longer a problem. The rest is just lack of exercise, sleep deprivation, and — in my opinion — stress.

Surprisingly, I’ve been learning to resolve my problems with stress through my graduate coursework on organizational leadership, which itself adds a lot of stress. By default I guess the two cancel each other out, but I’ve also been given a lot of new tools to use to analyze the world around me, which has been very exciting.

I’ll go into further detail about that later. Meanwhile, here are a few ways I’m adding exercise into my life:

• Take the Stairs Tuesdays at work: there’s a big sign at the bottom of the escalator telling me I’m a loser if I don’t take the stairs. You think I’m going to ignore it?
• Pushing the jogging stroller around Disneyland: everytime I do this I start jogging. Seriously.
• Buying the big kids new bicycles at Toys R Us: self explanatory.
• Tuning to our local indie radio station and hearing polka music…

Categories: health
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The beauty of looking for reasons to feel happy is that you start to find them all over the place. After a month of looking for reasons to smile, I can say with complete honesty that even on my worst days, I have a really good life.

Today, for example, I plotted with Ana and came up with all kinds of schemes for our new girly bathroom. We went to Target and took tons of pictures in the bathroom accessories aisle. We’ll be working on it this summer. I’ll bet you can’t wait to see pictures.

She and I also baked a ton of cookies using her Easy Bake Oven. She’s a girl after my own heart.

Alex and Angie were completely mesmerized by a movie we saw tonight: The Spy Next Door. They related to the characters of Ian and Nora, respectively. Alex started doing karate and Angie started dancing around like a pretty pretty princess. If I had my wits about me I would have recorded it for all eternity.

I made dinner. My son likes Brussels sprouts. Enough said.

I read a lovely book called The Power of Slow: 101 Ways to Save Time in Our 24/7 World. I am a tortoise, and I’m just about ready to admit it to the world.

I’ll continue sharing moments that make me smile. I hope you will too

Categories: happiness-project
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