Sticky, Sweet, & A Little Overdressed

Weekend Vegan Baking Fun: Mixed-Up Berry Muffins

Originally uploaded by Kate O’

I’m thinking of this as my reward to myself for editing my skirt wardrobe. Haven’t tried one yet, but I just KNOW they’re going to be amazing. I licked the spatula, after all.

• VeganYumYum » Petits Fours
  If I find I have the time and patience to make these in the next few weeks, I’ll be sure to have a little party to celebrate and share the yumminess.
  (tags: vegan baking dessert)

• @ kellystewart Cabana. Hello from up the street! #
• @magazinescom welcome to twitter! twitter friends, be sure to check out @magazinescom for a special discount #

• @docgotham i think i’m familiar with those landmark hangovers. yowch. #

• entire office ducking and covering in conference room in franklin #

• Trying to unwind after two particularly trying days. I’d say I need a drink but I’ve already had several so… maybe just one more. #
• finally starting to get a handle on what life looks like in the wake of a big shake-up. it’s always hard to pick up pieces, but it’ll be ok. #

• Having a drink or four. It’s been a weird day. #

• feeling a mild buzz after only one hard cider. what gives? i may have to hand in my "i can drink you under the table" badge at this rate. #
• i just checked itunes history, and "classic girl" by jane’s addiction was the first song i listened to in ‘08. odd theme song for this year. #
• Just finished watching "Nanny Diaries." It was OK, nothing special. Book was way better. #
• Crazy day. Really crazy. #

• FreeRice
  Vocabulary quiz - for every word you get right, UN donates 10 grains of rice
  (tags: charity Games free vocabulary)
• Live From Daryl’s House
  Webcast of Daryl Hall from his home in Kittery, Maine
  (tags: darylhall, hall&oates, music, webcast)

• Trying out my new Kill A Watt #
• pondering: if you don’t have something nice/useful/meaningful to tweet, don’t tweet at all? #
• just catching up on the craziness at musiccitybloggers.com. bummed that i haven’t been as available to folks there as i could have been. #
• finally figured out how to exclude categories from feedburner feeds - now to hurry and return books to the library before it closes #
• never mind about the library. just found out i could renew all my books and procrastinate returning them for several more weeks. whee! #
• @thinktrain oh, yeah, i know - i was just surprised i could renew this particular batch of books, since they were significantly overdue. #

I’ve been completely out of the loop on the drama and goings-on over at MusicCityBloggers.com, which I say in part to apologize to those for whom I’ve not been able to be supportive and in part to claim that I take no part in the madness. The mess is expansive and the scars are starting to look like they run pretty deep.

While I wasn’t completely naive about the possibility it might blow up, I really had a very optimistic outlook for it in the beginning. But I and many other contributors have never been nearly active enough to spread the workload out evenly enough, and possibly as a consequence, the voices have become too much of a shrill monotone.

So much of the nay-saying about MCB seems to pertain to a lack of balance in political opinion, which I find unfortunate. I have found that blog, at times, to be a great source of reasoned debate between people of differing viewpoints. I don’t blog often about politics, per se, but like most people, the majority of my opinions can be taken at some level as an indicator of my political leanings. After all, you don’t meet all that many vegan (well, mostly vegan), child-free, atheist, bisexual… conservative Republicans. I’m not saying it’s a foregone conclusion from my writings that I’m a liberal/progressive/Green/what-have-you, but I think the overlap between my lifestyle/preferences and political viewpoint is easy to spot.

What’s my point? I guess it’s that I don’t think a community blog need necessarily be overtly about politics, and I don’t think politics need necessarily be a policy discussion every time in order to be meaningful. But it’s often the topics that do deal directly with policy that turn the most vicious — or maybe that’s because those discussions somehow attract the most vicious commenters.

I don’t have any answers; I just find it unfortunate and I hope that the next era of MCB corrects course and is stronger for the growing pains.

• checking out chris wage’s project 365 slide show — it’s wonderful! http://www.flickr.com/photos/cwage/sets/72157594455834211/show/ #
• Thinking I should probably get my overly knotted neck and shoulder looked at. #

• Just back from lunch, yum. #

• @katnap some people (Catholics, mainly, I suppose) don’t take decorations down until after Epiphany, so you’re probably not the last one … #
• Getting my next cup of coffee #

• getting caught up at work #
• doors are closed all up and down the halls of this place. wonder if that’s bad or just people being productive. #

• still not feeling great, but optimistic about 2008. that should carry me through the day. year. whichever. #

I thought about writing a year-end update yesterday, but the truth is, not all that much of note happened. And that’s a pretty good thing, as it turns out, because I was also thinking yesterday about how I’m feeling more balanced and centered than I have in — gosh, what? — maybe 8 or 9 years.

In the meantime, the highlights were clear:

• Karsten and I celebrated our 10th anniversary of being together and being crazy in love by going to Paris, world capital of romance. And it was romantic. The trip wasn’t 100% perfect all the time, but it was wonderful on balance. As for being together 10 years: wow. Our ties to each other just keep getting stronger, and having that is the best thing life can offer in any year.
• I started working at Magazines.com in January of 2007, and it’s been a really good move for me. I worked a lot (so much so that I seem to have lost my ability to update blogs), but I’m really OK with it. In fact, by far most of my efforts and energy in ‘07 were directed towards helping make something really special happen there. And it looks like that will be the case in 2008, too, and again, I’m OK with that. (Although if that’s still the case in 2009, I will have to re-evaluate my effectiveness. I want to be able to find better balance around then.)
• We got the front porch, doorway, and fence built, and the front of the house is transformed. I find so much pleasure in those last few yards of my drive home, coming up over the top of the hill in front of us, looking at such a charming house and being perfectly content to live there. I’ve never had that feeling about a place where I’ve lived before, and I don’t take it for granted that I’m this lucky. (And who knows — we might even be able to begin the major addition and renovation in 2008.)
• Karsten and I got close to another song placement, and although it didn’t ultimately come together, we ended up having much-needed clarifying conversations about our level of commitment to our songwriting (both still very committed) and how to refine our writing process under our current highly-unavailable circumstances (maybe more on that later). That clarity should help us over this next year, too, as we both continue to be heavily distracted by other areas of work (me with my job, him with renovation and visual art) — we should still be able to make progress, as long as we continue to want to. And so far, we still want to.

There were other events, of course: stressful conflicts at work, pests in and around the house, disappointments, disagreements, and so on. But they don’t stand out in hindsight, and that tells me exactly what my resolution for 2008 needs to be:

I resolve to find as much happiness in the current space of every moment as I possibly can, remembering that, in the end, it’s the happy moments I’ll want to carry with me.

May 2008 be the happiest of new years for all of you, as well.