Thinking Travel

I went out to Oregon this week for my yearly visit and got to visit the newly opened Voo Doo Doughnuts. I got there at 11 a.m. and most of the good doughnuts had been snatched up already, but I did get their signature voo doo doll, a maple bar, a chocolate bar, and a lemon chiffon cruller. And OMG: they were delicious. Next time I’ll get up early so I can try the grape and other intriguing selections.

Yup. This new thing totally sucks: Aaron’s Dad passed away earlier this week. We got Aaron on a plane ASAP so he could be with his Mom. In July we’ll go back for the memorial service. Bob was a wonderfully thoughtful, kind, and intelligent man. He will be dearly missed.

This update is short and sweet (’cause I”m reeeaaalllly busy): This week I researched and registered for Mad Mimi and MailChimp. I’m getting to know both so I can choose which one to use, at least for now.

In preparation for a project I’m collaborating on and will be launching in August, I got to know some new applications this week.

I’ve totally slacked off Twitter in the past few months so I’m going to try scheduling tweets through HootSuite. I tried TweetDeck a while back but wasn’t thrilled with it, so I thought I’d give HS a go.

I also made some upgrades to CulturallyTeaching.com in preparation for launching the project, set up PayPal, and got an account at FreeConferencePro.

Next up: learning CSS. But that’s for another week.

Aaron and I decided to stay with Verizon so we ordered two HTC “Incredibles” phones. We went out to a Verizon store to purchase the phones but the wait was over 45 minutes. So I stepped outside the store, called Verizon, and ordered the phone in less than 10 minutes. Unfortunately, it will take 3-4 weeks for the phones to arrive. Oh well. I’m glad we finally made a decision and ordered the phones.

Notice the word buy instead of eat in the title. Here’s what I did this week: while shopping at Whole Foods I tossed a small round piece of unfamiliar fruit in the cart. It seemed like a good week to eat something new. Unfortunately, I completely forgot about it until it was shriveled up and inedible. Looks like I’ll have to give this another go.

My not-so-little cousin graduated from college on May 15 so I flew to Denver to spend a few days with my family. Since I was in high school when she was born, and then in college and a long move-as-far-away-from-the-family-as-possible phase, I experienced her growing-up years largely from afar. Anyway, it was a fun weekend visiting a new city (LOVED the view of the Rockies), seeing my grandma (who flew out from Oregon), and visiting with my uncle. Even though I spent the weekend with family, the location and combination of family members is what made it my one new thing for the week.

By the way, I decided not to tweet about my things, at least not for now. I’m doing this project for me, not for anyone else, and it really doesn’t matter if anyone knows about my little project. I’m having fun with it, and that’s what matters.

Also, I’m totally sticking to my 10-minute max per post rule. Time to click “publish.”

I like to stay up late. No, I love to stay up late. I get my second wind at about 9pm and I can very easily stay up past 2am on a work night. But then I feel like a jet lagged zombie all day at work, which I hate.

So my thing this week is to consistently go to bed by 11pm every night. (I was going to write 10pm but it’s already 10:25 and I’m most definitely not already in bed. Maybe in a few weeks I’ll try 10pm.)

I’m curious if going to bed at the same time every night will help me get up at the same time every morning. I like to think I’m productive late at night but I think I’m actually more productive early in the morning.

The easy: Maybe it will get easier as the week progresses.

The hard: Closing the laptop when I get that second wind and a rush of ideas.

My commitment: I will not drink anything caffeinated after 2pm.

I’ll tweet about my progress throughout the week. I welcome accountability, supportive comments, and hearing about your own projects for 2010!

I’ve been focusing my energy on CulturallyTeaching.com, the blog I co-run about education and culture around the world. Check it out! Thanks.

photo by ashengrove

Aaron and I are playing Scrabble, which means I have time to blog. Aaron’s going to win because I suck at Scrabble. I’m too impatient to come up with high scoring words. Once in a while I get lucky with “quip” or “zoo” in a triple word score corner, but mostly it’s “cutie” and “mead” and “gig” (three words from the present game). Update: I just scored 53 points with “pox”, so maybe I’m not as bad as I thought? (Ehhh, no. I think the Scrabble gods just got tired watching me suffer.)

We’ve been busy during our days off. We’ve nearly cleaned the entire house, muffins and pumpkin bread are in the freezer in individual-sized portions, the turkey has been cut up and stuffed in freezer bags, and I have turkey stock simmering on the stove for tomorrow’s turkey veggie soup. Aaron blew all of the leaves off the roof, planted more bulbs, and started on our new mailbox. The days have flown by, we’ve been so busy.

I started uploading our Spain photos to Flickr, if you’d like to take a look.