life lately

Let’s see, we’ll try to keep this short and sweet, but seven months is a lot of ground to cover….

My breakfast potato addiction has been replaced with an addiction to homemade poptarts from Ted's Bulletin. Seriously I eat at least two a week. It's bad, people. I also still subsist (small-child style) mostly on Cheerios, Teddy Grahams, and Quaker granola bars. So there you go, you're up to date! 

Wait, that's not enough of a description of seven months? Ok, maybe you're right. I'll keep going. 

Apparently that old adage that how you start a year is how you’ll end it is somewhat true, at least for me. After ringing in NYE 2012 with the stomach flu, and discovering over the summer that I have a heart murmur, 2012 continued to be a vexing health year for reasons that are both complicated and boring, and thus not really worth discussing here, but played a huge part in why I wasn’t feeling at all like myself in September, and ultimately decided to take a writing hiatus. 

I’m beyond thrilled to report that I rang in 2013 in a much happier way, and that one of my resolutions is to pay closer attention to my health so that things (hopefully) don’t get quite so out of hand again.

Other post-September adventures include the completion of grad school class #2 (Islamic Legal Theory, if you’re interested) while taking on a quasi-new role at work (same team, new responsibilities) and starting grad school class #3 (Northeast Asia and the Islamic World). Non work/study time mostly involved apartment tinkering, cooking, eating out, and generally being social. So essentially nothing has changed! 

EXCEPT, I flew (home to North Carolina for my mom's birthday) completely sans drugs. If you know me at all, you know what a huge role my increasing fear of flying has played in my life over the past five years, much to my chagrin. Getting on a plane period, not to mention without any relaxing prescription drugs, is something I consider a huge accomplishment. I'll be flying to Seattle in May for a good friend's wedding, so that will be the next test. I'm itching to get back to Europe some time soon, but not until I successfully complete, at a minimum, a transcontinental flight.  

That's pretty broad and brief, but I’ll end the Christmas-card sounding spiel, especially since we’re probably facebook friends, meaning you have access to the something like 1000 photos out there on the interwebs of me, and know pretty much exactly what has transpired since last September.