Archives for February 2017

February Favorites

February 28, 2017 filed under: monthly favorites

1. On my never-ending quest for the perfect pen, I came across the Bic Atlantis® Exact. I prefer fine point pens that don’t smear and this one writes really smoothly, plus it comes in fun colors. My other go-to pen is the R.S.V.P. from Pentel. What is your favorite pen? Do you prefer fine or medium point pens?

2. I am usually not a fan of store-bought yogurts. Most taste artificial to me and have way too much added sugar. I usually buy plain greek yogurt and add my own fruit. When Safeway had a free offer for this Dannon Whole Milk Yogurt (limit of 2), I thought that I could at least try them. It’s pretty tasty and creamy, and while 16g of sugar is still pretty high, it’s less than most other common yogurt brands. I won’t buy this regularly, but I can see myself picking up a couple of containers every once in a while for an easy snack.

3. Bowl of Soul. Oh my god, if you never had one, you are missing out. One of our local coffee shop serves this concoction of warm vanilla soymilk with milk froth infused with chamomile tea and sprinkled with cinnamon and chocolate. So freakin’ delicious.

4. I swear by these snag-free hair elastics from Sephora. I’ve bought similar ones from the drugstore before (a larger number for less money), but they just don’t compare. These hair elastics from Sephora are very sturdy (I have yet one to snap), come in different colors (in black, brown, and clear) and they come out really easily without damaging your hair (or ripping out a bunch in the process).

5. I started a new knitting project (another shawl) and I am in love with this spring color, Hortensie (hydrangea), from 100Farbspiele. I am usually not a girly-girl that likes pink, but this dusky pink-lilac gradient is a little more muted and just lovely.

6. While we’re at the topic of hair products, I bought Carols Daugther sacred tiare sulfate-free shampoo and conditioner at Target when it was on sale a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to try it out for a while and I must say that I love it. The smell is awesome and more importantly, the products are silicone-, paraben-, mineral oil-, artificial color-, and petroleum-free. My hair feels soft and tangle-free.

What I read in February

February 27, 2017 filed under: books

I am quite impressed with myself, I must say. I read another eight books in February. It feels like I just had to get my act together and voilà, reading is part of my everyday life again. If I had known that it would be that easy, I would have tried it months ago. Ha. Without further ado, here are my February books:

The Sun is also a Star by Nicola Yoon (★★★★☆) – I really really enjoyed this book. At first I thought I wouldn’t be a fan of the alternating chapters of multiple narrators but I ended up liking how Yoon weaved the different viewpoints together into this beautiful and hopeful story. I loved the different layers of the story – immigration, deportation, life choices, love – and the book ended on the perfect note.

I let you go by Clare Mackintosh (★★★★☆) – This was a gripping read. I am usually not much into mystery/crime stories, but this book definitely kept my attention. The story follows two parallel narratives – the hit and run accident of a young boy and the two cops trying to solve the case.
There were a few quite unexpected twist and turns in the story and the resolution left me a little speechless.

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen (★★★★☆) – The notion that someone was put into a mental hospital for 18 months because of (an initial diagnosis) of depression is unfathomable today. This is a fascinating read though. Susan describes her time at a mental hospital and the interaction with others in a straight-forward, no-sugar-coating manner. It’s hard to rate a book that is a memoir, because you can’t really rate somebody’s life story. These have been experiences that have shaped her life and she’s brave to share those unique experiences with us.

The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime by Mark Haddon (★★★☆☆) – This book was kinda meh for me. I know, maybe I was suppose to appreciate it more, because the story was told from the unique perspective of a kid on the autism spectrum and a glimpse into his intrinsic thought processes were supposed to be interesting and enlightening, but I found the narrator style exhausting and long-winded.

When breath becomes air by Paul Kalanithi (★★★★★) – What an amazing memoir. I think I first read about Paul Kalanithi’s fate in a news article written by his wife in the New York Times (this one) and it made me want to read this book. Paul, a neurosurgeon, was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer at the age of 36 and went from treating the dying to struggling with his own impending death. This books explores his early life and his path to becoming a neurosurgeon and his thoughts on the meaning of life and death from the time of his diagnosis to his death in March 2015. Raw, real, and heart-breaking.

Furiously happy: A funny book about terrible things by Jenny Lawson (★★★☆☆) – I really wanted to like this book. I know most people rave about Jenny and her blog (The bloggess). For me, there were only a couple of chapters in this book that really were meaningful and that were the intro and one or two chapters that really dealt with her mental illness. The other chapters were just random, sometimes bizarre stories strung together almost nonsensically. Were they funny in parts? Sure, but they were also distracting from a much more serious and important message IMHO.

A Heart of Stone by Renate Dorrestein (★★★★☆) – This was one of the books that I randomly picked up at a thrift store a long while ago and which was sitting on my bookshelf. I didn’t even realize it was a translated book from an originally Dutch author until I started reading it. The book tells the heart-wrenching story of Ellen and what happened to her and her family. Ellen buys back the home where her parents operated a news-clipping service when she was a child. Only gradually do the secrets unfold about what happened there, only gradually do we understand what she is struggling with. The seamless weaving together of the past and present, of 12-year old Ellen telling the story and 37-year old Ellen struggling with the tragic fate of her family, is very well done and made me not want to put the book down until I knew all that had happened.

Let’s pretend this never happened: a mostly true memoir by Jenny Lawson (★★★☆☆) – I realize I read Jenny’s second book first. I was hoping to understand her writing a bit more by reading her first book, but it left me with the same impression: a few meaningful paragraphs in between a lot of rambling. Maybe this works for a blog, but for a 300 page book it was just ‘too much’.

Which book did you really like this month?

Currently | February

February 23, 2017 filed under: currently

hoping for the rain to stop. No, seriously now. We had quite enough and we need a break, and with ‘we’, I mean the dams, levees, and hillsides mostly. Did you hear that part of Highway 50 collapsed?

excited about picking out some new running shoes. I only own two pairs (gasp! I know!) and one needs be thrown out and the second phased out. I have to start investing into new shoes more often. I know other runners have at least a handful of pairs in rotation (yeah, yeah, I am learning!) and I have to get on it. What’s your favorite (neutral) running shoe?

enjoying the early morning sunrises on my way from the gym to my office. Isn’t it pretty?

looking forward to March, my birthday month. My birthday falls on a Friday this year (which means, I’ll have a long birthday weekend ahead of me!).

feeling stressed out by the current news cycle. Is this going to get any better anytime soon? I swear, I am not an easily stressed out person, but I feel like I am constantly on the edge and my stress levels seem permanently elevated right now. It’s nothing that some meditation or a hot bath can fix either. One of these days, I’ll be tempted to mean-tweet a @-reply to the incredibly condescending and off-putting tweets that are put out by our ‘so-called’ president (and I don’t even follow his Twitter account.)

reading Let’s pretend this never happened by Jenny Lawson (this is the second book of hers that I am reading this month. I have mixed feelings.)

drinking tea. It’s still one of the drinks that makes it the easiest to get more liquids in me (especially during the winter months).

eating herring filets in tomato sauce from Appel (imported from Germany). This reminds me of home. I found a can at World Market last weekend. It’s so delicious with freshly baked bread.

thinking about Carnival and how it is not a thing here, but oh-so-much-a-thing back home in the Rhineland area. Today is “Weiberfastnacht” (Fat Thursday) in Germany which is traditionally the carnival’s day that is dominated by women and while I was never a huge “(Karnevals)jeck”*, I do miss it a little bit every year. My sister loves the carnival season and my niece and nephew definitely also willingly participate in all the shenanigans (see above).

*“The word [jeck] is used almost exclusively in the Rhineland, especially in the city of Cologne […].
Jeck can be a noun (ein Jeck), as well as an adjective (you can be jeck). Originally, it refers to a person who actively participates in a carnival celebration. […] But the more important meaning of the word is used year round. In this sense, it is an adjective that reflects the tolerant Cologne way of life and the general attitude of the Rhinelanders, […] a humorous person who does not take things – or himself – too seriously.”

All the rain

February 20, 2017 filed under: California

I’ve been a little bit at a loss of words this month…. for so many reasons I guess (do you watch the news?), but I’ve been also suffering a bit from writer’s block. Not much has been happening around here. Well, except for ALL THE RAIN.

I can’t remember the last time we had so much rain.

BUT… don’t you need the rain in California, is what you might want to ask. Yes. Yes, we do. But not all at once, not as this series of storms that have been hitting over and over. It’s too much. The rivers, the dams, the soil can’t handle it.

We here in the Central Valley don’t really think about natural disasters all that much, mostly because the fires (and mudslides) happen in the foothills, the earthquakes are more likely on the coast. Flooding is really our main concern, but only if there is a significant amount of rain. And scientists have been talking about atmospheric rivers (which is what they call the series of severe storms) as a very real threat for a while now.

The river water levels are high, I keep getting frequent weather alert emails with wind and flood advisories. The rain is thwarting my plans for my outdoor running. We don’t live directly near a river, but Sacramento is prone to flooding and has experienced severe floods in the past. Some areas are particularly vulnerable. Of course the levees that have been built are supposed to protect us. So far, the levees have held up, but there have been several downed trees in the city due to the saturated soil and high winds.

My office is close to the American River and right behind a levee. My co-workers and I have been taking “field trips” (I use this word loosely, because it’s literally a 3 minute walk) to the levee to see how high the water is. Let’s just say that intermittently, the hiking/biking path that I frequent for my lunch time walks has been completely flooded.

Fortunately, the water hasn’t been dangerously high to the levee top yet, but it is strange to see the difference between the water level from a year ago versus now.

You probably have heard about it, because it was all over the news: Oroville Dam, which is actually the highest dam in the United States and water supplier for many, many Californians, was bursting at the seams. The dam is 80 miles north of Sacramento and the water from the dam flows into the Feather River, which is the largest tributary to the Sacramento River. Water couldn’t be released through the actual dam because of debris build-up and the major emergency spillway, which hadn’t been used in 50 years, has been badly damaged by erosion. The water level was so high that water was spilling over an auxiliary spillway down the hillside.

A week ago, some 160,000 people were evacuated for a few days because there was a threat of imminent failure of the emergency spillway. Luckily, that didn’t happen and they’ve since been working on patching up the spillway to reinforce it, but the rainy season is not over and the situation is turning the spotlight on the crumbling infrastructure not just here, but around the country. Do you believe Trump will fix it?

Also larger concerns lie ahead. Did you know that reservoirs have to be kept well below capacity for flood control reasons? Because during a storm, water can’t be released as quickly as new rain/runoff is coming in, the reservoirs have to be kept intentionally low during the rainy season. This means, they have to release water, even though in times like right now, they would like to store it after all the dry months that we had. But there simply isn’t enough space to store all the precipitation in water form. What we need is a solid snowpack in the Sierra that will release water gradually and which will hold us over for the rest of the year. This will be a serious concern in the future when the snowpack is expected to be smaller, but water demands will be high.

For a few years, California was in a serious drought and this winter, we’ve been hit with so much rain that the dams and levees can hardly handle it. Meanwhile, groundwater levels keep falling. It’s always one extreme or the other, isn’t it?

February Link Love

February 15, 2017 filed under: link love

“We are less likely to sell something for $10 than to buy it for $10.” A Two-Word Psychological Concept Can Explain The Anger Over Obamacare’s Potential Repeal This is so spot on. It’s called loss aversion.

What to tell people who say you have to accept Donald Trump’s presidency now : “I accept the fact that he has completed the legal process necessary to serve as president of the United States. It is factually correct to say that, as of Jan. 20, he is America’s 45th president. But that’s all I accept. The rest I reject.“

Can cities find a way to stop using disposable coffee cups? This is an interesting question. Do you bring your own reusable cup when you buy coffee at the coffeeshop? I try to do that as much as possible, but having the option to drop off a reusable cup at another coffee shop sounds like a great idea.

Instagram hacks: 44 tricks and features you probably didn’t know about. There is always more to learn.

I never thought I would agree with this, but here’s exactly How (and why) to be a morning workout person.

Words to ban from your vocabulary. I am guilty of using some of those. Are you?

What dinner time looks like in 36 different homes. A photography project. Fascinating.

The Simplest and Most Perfect Explanation of Privilege I’ve Ever Seen

I am usually not a big fan of breakfast wraps/burritos, but these Maple Bacon Breakfast Wraps look really good.

Mushrooms and arugula are two of my favorite things. This sounds delicious.

Roast Chicken Hacks. I knew there was a good reason I should buy a rotisserie chicken sometime.

Five things I love about the gym

February 10, 2017 filed under: fitness, linkup, running

I’ve had my gym membership for years. I had phases where I went regularly, then other times, not so much. Whenever I fell off the bandwagon, I felt that I was wasting money. I contemplated quitting my membership many, many times. For some reason, a little nagging voice in my head kept me from doing that, though. I was sure that as soon as I quit, I would want to go to the gym again. In a way, I was trying to trick my motivation into kicking back in by guilt-tripping myself for paying for something I wasn’t using. It mostly worked. When I started running outdoors 3 years ago, I again contemplated if it was time to quit the gym membership. I wasn’t going to classes, I surely could do weight exercises at home. But, I never did. I decided that I should probably keep the membership and incorporate it back into my workout routine. I was locked into a pretty affordable price, and there were just too many advantages to having access to the gym.

I know, I know, I am opening a can of worms here. I know a lot of people are not big fans of the gym. I have to admit that I have come to LOVE my outdoor runs more than I ever thought I would, but there is something awesome about the gym, too. (I know, there are also a lot of negative things, but let’s focus on the good today, yes?)

I am linking up with Running on Happy and Fairytales and Fitness for the Friday Five 2.0 Linkup today to tell you about five things that I really appreciate about the gym.

1. I love that I have all kinds of different workout machines at my fingertips. As much as I would love to have a treadmill at home (to run on those days, when the weather doesn’t permit to run outside, or during the winter month when I just don’t feel comfortable running alone in the dark in the early mornings or at night), I do love the fact that at the gym, I can choose from different workout machines. Besides the treadmill, I can occasionally jump on the stationary bike or the lateral elliptical (which helps build muscular endurance and hip strength ← my week spot).

2. I love saving water at home by taking showers at the gym. Yes, my shower is nicer than the shower at the gym, but really, I am paying a monthly fee for the access, I might as well use it.

3. I love having access to weights, medicine balls, ropes, and other exercise equipment. I know that even if I had weights at home, I’d be pretty bad with at-home workouts. I mean, I haven’t seriously tried working out at home, but I have a feeling that I would find more excuses than not. Once I am at the gym, there are no excuses.

4. I love having access to different gym classes. I took my first yoga class at our local gym. While the gym might not offer all the specialized classes that a proper yoga studio would, I’ve come to like my instructor and I am getting a lot out of this class. Since it’s a cross-training activity for me, not my main focus, I am very happy with it. I also tried other cardio classes before and want to try a spin class or a body flow class next.

5. I actually love going to the gym in the morning and seeing so many people active at an ungodly hour. For someone like me, who always claimed to be not-a-morning-runner, it’s super-motivating to see other people working out early in the morning as well.

Do you have a gym membership? Do you like the gym?

What I read: January

February 6, 2017 filed under: books

So, looks like I just have to put an actual reading goal on Goodreads and – surprise, surprise – I read. Who knew?

I read (and listened to one) a total of NINE books in January, which means, I already read more than half the number of books I read in 2016. I am also already more than 35% done with my annual reading goal. Fascinating. We’ll see if I can keep this up, but… but… this means I can totally do a monthly book review now, right? Because I really don’t want to wait until the end of the year to recommend some of the books to you (although, if you follow me on Goodreads, you’re pretty much in the loop anyway!).

Your pace or mine? by Lisa Jackson (★★★★★) – This was a great read. If you are a runner, you want to check out this book, especially if you’re not an elite runner and sometimes struggle with the comparison game. Lisa calls herself a “back-of-the-pack”-runner and even though she never finished a race first, she has one of the most refreshing and uplifting perspectives on the sport of running that I’ve seen so far. It puts a whole new spin on what it means to be a runner!

Atmospheric Disturbances: Scenes from a Marriage by Maggie May Etheridge (★★★★☆) – This is a short essay about marriage and mental illness. Worth your time.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver (★★★★★) – I LOVED this book! It made me feel good about having a “higher” food budget by buying local and organic whenever I can. Of course, it also opened my eyes to the fact that there are gazillion things I can do better and this book has inspired me to try hard. I don’t have a farm where I can raise chickens and plant every vegetable, but even a few potted plants are a good investment! This was not just well researched and a great argument for thinking about food, where it comes from and also what it takes to farm sustainably, but also a well written and funny memoir of one family’s attempt to eat exclusively local for one year as an experiment… which turned out to be the new way of life!

Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass (★★★★★) – This is technically a book for children/young adults, but I really loved the story and how it was built around the event of a solar eclipse, this rare event that makes everybody stop in awe in light of the extraordinariness that is nature and the universe. There is a lot of geeky stuff in here that I enjoyed, but it’s also a story of unlikely friendship and how experiences can shape people. The story is told through the eyes of the three main teenage characters – Ally, Bree, and Jack. Although the characters are quite stereotypical, you couldn’t help but like them instantly and it was delightful ‘watching’ them change and grow over the course of the story.
Oh, and have you ever witnessed a solar eclipse? I was lucky to witness the one in Germany in 1999 and it was a once in a lifetime experience. This was a lovely story built around the unique experience of a solar eclipse.

Everything I never told you by Celeste Ng (★★★★★) – This book was amazing. The way Celeste Ng wove the storyline of this family together was beautiful and although the summary reads like a mystery novel (after all, we’re trying to understand the death of a teenager), this is so much more. This book was comprised of everything that makes up a life: love, family, family dynamics, grief, birth, racism, interracial relations, struggles, secrets and truths, sacrifices and the difficulty to find one’s place in the world. It’s a heavy story because we learn how Lydia holds the thread of this family together while simultaneously falling apart under its pressure, but it’s also a story of hope.
I also especially enjoyed the juxtaposition of what it means to be different: as a foreigner (Lydia’s Dad) and as a woman in a society that has not yet accepted women as equals (Lydia’s Mom).

The Ramblers by Aidan Donnelley Rowley (★★★★☆) – I’ve had mixed feelings about this book. I love Aidan’s writing style, I have been reading her (personal) blog for a long time and I really wanted to like her book. I have only read this one (she has written another one before this one) and while I did enjoy it overall, there were a few things that bugged me. The three main characters – Clio, Smith, and Tate – were likable enough and I wanted to engage in their stories. They all come with some baggage, sure, but also with a huge amount of privilege that ran like a common thread through the whole book. Hotel-building wealthy boyfriends, Yale degrees, rich parents that finance apartments in Manhattan. The struggles (divorce, breakups) almost seemed silly in the grand scheme of things (although I don’t want to downplay the emotional turmoil such a thing can have), and then the topic of mental illness seemed to be thrown in just for good measure. I am a little bit sensitive in this regard because I feel if you bring up such an important topic, the story needs to be an advocate against the stigma (which I didn’t feel was the case). What bothered me most is that all of the “issues” are resolved over the span of the book, which covers about a week in the lives of the characters.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (★★★★☆) – I had no idea about the history of the HeLa-cells which tells you that this book needed to be written. I was a little frustrated here and there with details of the Lacks family (did we really need to know about all the illnesses and lack of education, or was it essential to the story?) and the “jumping around on the timeline” and would have preferred a more chronological approach to the story of Henrietta Lacks, but overall I thought the book was well- researched and gave me a lot of food for thought.

Me before you by Jojo Moyes (★★★★★) – I loved everything about this book. It was a tragedy, with a romantic-comedic twist and it was bittersweet to read. I loved the relationship between Lou and Will and laughed out loud and cried quiet tears at the end. I’ve read that some people thought this booked made the case that the life of a disabled person isn’t worth anything, but I couldn’t disagree more. I felt the topic of assisted suicide just emphasized that in the end, only the person him/herself can make this decision and that nobody can know what it’s like unless they’ve experienced it themselves. For me, the story was hopeful and uplifting in a weird way and I am looking forward to reading the sequel.

And here’s my one audiobook:

What I talk about when I talk about running by Haruki Murakami ( ★★★☆☆) – I was (and still am) really hesitant about audiobooks. I have a hard enough time with podcasts as it is, but I thought I should give audiobooks at least a proper chance. I listened to this book on my (long) runs and since this was a book about running written by a long-distance runner, I found it quite interesting (content-wise), although I am still not quite sure if I like the idea of ‘being read to’. Maybe it also comes down to who is narrating and/or the topic of the book?
I am not sure this book would be interesting to anyone who doesn’t have some sort of connection to running, but I enjoyed some of the thought processes that Murakami described surrounding training, races and running in general.

What are you reading right now? Recommend one book to me in the comments!

Hello February

February 3, 2017 filed under: about me, lists!

February is here with more rain and wind. We’re getting a lot of it this time around and it mostly means, I will try to stay warm and dry this month. January was a little crazy with lots of things going on at work and some last-minute field work thrown in this week. I don’t really have much on the agenda for February and hope it stays that way. It’s a short month anyway (and we’re already three days in).

+ There is a 4-day weekend coming up and I am hoping that I might be able to get away for a day to play in the snow. We’ll see how the weather situation works out.

+ I am super-excited about the LulaRoe Dress that I ordered this week. I have never owned any LulaRoe clothing and I have gotten the impression that people either love them or hate them, so I guess I’ll give you my verdict once the item arrives. It’s a dress with pockets, so I couldn’t resist.

+ I’ll be trying to get our taxes done this month. I think I have all paperwork that I need, but I’ll probably find out once I start going through it. Have you done your taxes yet? Or are you procrastinate until the deadline? Do you do them yourself or do you use a tax accountant?

+ I have a few new recipes that I want to try this month in an effort to shake up our meal plan a bit.

+ I’ll be trying to keep up my running, cross-training and reading this month. So far the goals that I’ve set for myself last month have proven themselves ‘achievable’. Hopefully that stays this way.

What is on your agenda this month?