I was tagged!

I was challenged by Kam of Campfire Chic to create my own personal style alphabet! I'm not going to lie, I usually dress for comfort and that includes jeans, tees, and cardigans. But, here we go:

A is for argyle. usually on my socks.
B is for Birkenstocks.
C is for cardigans!
D is for dresses.
E is for eclectic mixes.
F is for flats. yes please.
G is for grandma chic.
H is for hippy hair.
I is for iced coffee. I like to think of it as an accessory.
J is for jeans!
K is for kicking it up a notch every now and then. more flair, more pizazz.
L is for lines, lines, lines.
M is for moccasins.
N is for natural. put together but not trying too hard.
O is for anything but orange. I have very few orange things.
P is for polka-dots.
Q is for the Quarry, a place in mpls where I do lots of shopping.
R is for rings!
S is for stone grey.
T is for thrift clothes!
U is for utility bag.
V is for V-necks.
W is for white tanks.
X is for stumping Janae, because I don't eXactly know a word that works here.
Y is for yoga pants on lazy days.
Z is for Zoe P., a fashionista I know.

So, if you feel like playing along, leave a comment with yours or you are officially tagged by me! And thanks, Kam, for the fun challenge!

Current favorites

this photo. it's a thing we do. taken in St. Thomas, UVI and she has a swimming suit on, promise.See? It is a thing. This was in front of a dilapidated church in Antigua.

menu. it's a tough choice between bullfoot soup and goat water. (what?!) Taken in Antigua.

second favorite menu. also in Antigua. there are just too many choices...

quote: "Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." - Benjamin Franklin

thing to do: Skype! I miss seeing this little guy's face, though. His aunt/my friend lived with him and his parents for the summer and we would make all sorts of silly faces and mustaches and tell lots of stories and I would do an excellent reenactment of the "I'm a zit. Get it?" scene from Animal House. I ran across this photo last night and definitely knew it should be shared, even if it is a bit fuzzy because of the Skype-quality photo.

p.s. if you have Skype and want to add me, I'm under janaetime. :)

What are some of your favorites right now?

thanks for sticking with me.

from here.

Hello hello friends!

I'm sorry I've been such an absent blogger lately, but I promise I'm going to try to be better. I think that with all of the moving, and random trips, and now the fact that I'm in the midst of a 10-day stint of house sitting/16-year-old boy watching (but really just making sure he wakes up for school and eats at appropriate times) has bumped everything else on my normal to-do list down a few notches. Add in job searching, event planning, and volunteering for random things and you've got exactly what I've been up to lately.

I'm learning that I need to manage the time in my days by dictating certain amounts of time for specific events. Since I'm currently chilling with a 16-year-old boy most of the time, I'm learning that he also has a schedule to stick to, and I'm trying to make it as easy as possible by keeping dinner time constant, waking him up at the same time, and making sure he gets to school when he wants/needs to. It's a process that we are thankfully getting down!

Like most people in September/at the start of the new school year/new season I'm adjusting and readjusting and transitioning and still figuring things out.

But in lieu of all of that, I'm going to be a bit more present on here from now on! Thank you for reading this little place of mine on the internet. Your comments really do always make my day.

song/vid of the day.

Video is here. (embedding is disabled, sorry!)

first heard here.

Good advice.

I took an impromptu trip to see family and friends, so I've been reveling in delicious food and relaxation. I will be back to blogging more frequently in a few days.

If you started school this week, good luck and have fun!

Song Sunday!

So, I am a day late with my Saturday song post but I have a good excuse.

Really.

I went to the Minnesota State Fair for the first time ever!

It was wonderful. I ate some delicious food, watched a few of my friends perform and ran into all sorts of people I haven't seen in a really long time.

On to our song - it is Distortion by Mike Lipset. He performed at the State Fair, but I know him best as the really chill guy who went on a community service road trip with me. Head on over to lipsetmusic.com to listen to it. It's worth it and has a catchy hook that you'll be singing all day!I'll leave you with this silly picture of him, his 'stache and I.

What now, Rory?

I came to an important life conclusion today. And that is that Gilmore Girls should have gone on for at least another season.

Groundbreaking, I know. I should work for CNN.

Let me explain.

Rory Gilmore has been a crucial part of my life since I first discovered the show, admittedly through reruns on ABC Family a few years after it had started. I would come home from school on days that I wasn't supposed to be at a practice for some form of sport and watch that glorious, fast-talking hour of television from 4:00-5:00pm. Sometimes a friend or two would join. Sometimes homework would be splayed out in front of us, math books and calculators and notebooks with scribbles all over them primarily discarded because the silly people who were chatting away on the screen were just so much more enjoyable to focus on.

Well, this is where my revelation came in. As most of you know, I'm working on finding a full-time position in the field I actually graduated in. I majored in journalism. Rory Gilmore graduated with a degree in journalism. The similarities do not stop there.

We both grew up in a small town with a lot of characters. We both have grandparents who live close by. We've both tried out numerous variations of our hair, from long to short, and specifically with and without bangs. We both love Jess Mariano. We both listen to the Arcade Fire. We both read a lot. We both dabble in nonprofit work and event planning, while hers admittedly is a bit more well-known as being a part of the DAR. We're both big fans of cardigans. And while I don't technically have a friend as outrageously dynamic as Paris Gellar, I do have a couple of people in my life who are right up there, just a bit calmer. They do give out just as good, if not better advice, which Paris doles out in small, intermittent, but always perfect-timing ways.

(Oh, don't even get me started on Lane Kim. I, thankfully, have a few Lane Kim's in my life. I need a Luke Danes, though. And I'd take a Jess Mariano any day.)Anyways, the point is that Gilmore Girls ends at season 7, directly after Rory graduates from college and, at the very last minute, gets an internship. And then it's over.THAT DOESN'T HELP ME RORY.

We have been through so much, for so long. How could you just leave it all hanging like that? Aren't we supposed to be going through life together? It's as if my imaginary best friend just left - POOF! - into thin air and now I'm supposed to make all sorts of decisions on my own without having a way to talk them out and see the repercussions played out on screen.

Oh wait, like everyone else in the world.

Now before you all think I've taken this metaphor too far (it's okay that most people probably stopped reading this after the first paragraph,) I'm not obsessed or thinking that I truly AM Rory Gilmore. It's just something I can relate to. Kind of like how some people get really into a sports team or a series of books (Twilight devotees, perhaps?) It's something I can reference when I'm low. It's what I watch when I'm sick. It's a comfort thing. And it's hard for me to watch something so comforting that doesn't explore the world I'm just starting to get into. The world post-college. It's something that was never explored through the show. And at a time when I'm grasping on to anything, ANYTHING that isn't changing, I'm realizing that everything is and even trying to delay my life by an hour to watch an episode of my comfort show won't actually delay the fact that I've moved, am not starting college again with my friends, and need to branch off into the wide world on my own now.

I leave you with one of my favorite clips from the show. If you watch, I think you'll see why.


Moral of the post: It's time to jump.