Quirky Fantastic

It's taken me longer than I thought to get back to this post series. First, I was feeling under the weather. When my new allergy med routine finally kicked in, it was Spring Break and I was off to Austin. When I got back, I had the best of intentions. I had planned to paint my living room...Well, that didn't happen. It turns out that I'm not a fast painter. I'd already painted the trim in my hallway, and it took me a day to finish painting the rest of the trim in my living room plus this closet. I'd been wanting to try something visually interesting to make my condo seem more at home to me. I'd managed to damage my closet door when I was experimenting with taking it down, and now it won't close properly. With the other repairs I'm doing, getting a new door is a low priority to me, so I decided to paint the bottom half of my closet blue. I mostly decided to make it two-toned like this because I don't have a step stool and I didn't feel lik...

Main Bag: Deuter Airlite 26L SL As I mentioned in my review post for this bag, I'm planning on walking along Hadrian's Wall Path this summer. I'm using this trip to Austin as a way to test how this backpack works for airplane travel. I don't think that we'll be walking long distances with it, but I'd like to see if I can fit my packing list in without it feeling too cramped.  Inside the main bag, I'll be packing: Tops Athleta magenta tech T-shirt Honolua Wahine cotton T-shirt x 3 (wear one in transit) Old Navy black long-sleeved shirt (wear in transit) Since this is a shorter trip, I'm fine with bringing along cotton shirts. I usually wear them more than once without washing them, but I can always give them a quick sink wash to freshen them up. Honolua Wahine is my favorite Hawaiian surfwear brand, and their shirts are super soft and thin without being too sheer. I may buy a new shirt as a souvenir as well. Bottoms/Dresses Tail polye...

As a teacher, my vacation schedule is set by the school. I have some personal and sick days available, but the bulk of my vacation time happens when the students are also on break. I have a lengthy (but not as lengthy as many people think) summer vacation as well as shorter breaks in December/January, February, and April. Since my breaks often fall when most families in the Pacific Northwest are also on vacation, flights can be more expensive. That means that I try to think outside the box when choosing vacation locations that aren't determined by family obligations. I usually consider four main things: budget, desired trip length, weather, and trip type (relaxation, learning, adventure, connection, or combo). For example, for my upcoming Spring Break trip, I put in my desired vacation days into Google Flights and saw which places had the least expensive round trip prices. Then, I started narrowing locations down based on other criteria. I love using Google Flights for this, b...

For the past couple of weeks, I've been battling what seems to be a combination of bad seasonal allergies and a possible cold. I had to go into the doctor since I was having trouble sleeping due to coughing and congestion at night. I did get prescribed an anti-cough medicine at bedtime, but otherwise I was left to my own devices to rest and recover. Things that help my allergies the most are: 1. Neti pot. I use non-iodized table salt and boiling water in my neti pot, purchased from a local co-op. It takes a while to learn how to use the neti pot effectively, but it does feel great to run warm water through my sinuses to clear them out.  2. Luden's cough drops. I buy the small boxes of both the cherry and honey lemon flavors, since they use less packaging. They're about $1 at most drugstores and are compact enough to easily fit in my purse. They taste good while actually helping with my cough.  3. Doubling up on pillows. This doesn't always make my back fee...

I've been trying to pack lightly for trips for the past several years, ever since I traveled in Europe for a month with just a Tom Bihn Aeronaut back when there was still just one size. It's a lot easier to not need to worry about dealing with the baggage claims. I usually travel with my Tom Bihn Aeronaut or Synapse 19, but I have a work trip this week that requires walking 8-10 miles a day while carrying a first aid kit, food, a bunch of papers, and other goods. My Synapse can definitely handle this amount of items, but I wasn't sure how my back would feel after a day of walking since the Synapse doesn't have the most robust waist belt. I love the Synapse as an EDC pack and travel bag, but I thought I might need something different for this trip. I've been thinking about trying out some longer hikes, so I decided that this would be a great time to purchase a new pack that had a suspension system. My goal was to find a pack that I could use when walking H...

Each month in 2017, I'm choosing at least one goal to focus on. That main goal is for another project that I'm working on, but I'm thinking about adding a secondary goal and maybe even some smaller goals to track here. Since this year is my year of Transformation, setting clear goals for myself seems like a good way to achieve that. I'm thinking about a few possible secondary goals for March: Making progress on a Couch25K program. I used to jog more frequently than I do now. My main form of exercise is kung fu, but I think that adding in more conditioning might be helpful in my training. I don't really enjoy jogging, although it's tolerable if I listen to podcasts. Still,   Ditching the snooze button. I always hit snooze multiple times, and I'm not sure that makes for the best mornings for me. Ideally, I'd wake up without an alarm. More realistically, I'd like to roll out of bed the first time my ocean waves alarm goes off.  Writing snail ...