I feel like I’ve been frozen in place over the last week or two. April has flown by so fast, and deadlines are looming. Tyler’s new CD is all done dome – we have gotten the songs back and they are good to go, but then we starting to finalize paperwork for this grant and it’s been an all-consuming project, paying all the invoices and managing our money, while we put in for the rest of the grant, along with of course everything else: the CD cover artwork, liner notes and layout (which I am tackling), planning a CD release, thinking about promotion and social media, and doing our taxes. Phew! Also, I haven’t booked a single hotel for our trip to Italy and that is starting to freak me out a bit. I’ve browsed a few tripadvisor reviews and watched prices climb, but I need to find a window of time with my Visa card, to focus and just do it.

It’s tough – I can see my yoga mat sitting lonely in the corner, Herman grumbles at me and eyes his leash longingly, and all I’ve had for dinner this last week is takeout after takeout meal. The laundry is mounting up, and even my lunch hours are filled with errands like making photocopies, buying paperclips, and tallying figures. It’s hard to sleep even when I know I’m tired – I lay with my eyes closed and my mind zooms around trying to plot out what I will do the next day and how much time it’ll take. Tyler’s busy with gigs (last night, he got home at 3am, then had to be up and out the door around 9am to play a wedding) but he’s plugging away at everything as best he can too.

I’m glad my job is awesome – working at home means I can roll out of bed after a late night and not have to get pretty or drive anywhere, and it is actually easy to put my ‘other’ stuff aside and focus from 9 to 5, then take a dinner break, and head back to my workstation and start in for the evening. All of this other work is rewarding as well – the new CD turned out above and beyond my expectations, and I’m so excited to share it with everyone soon!

The end is in sight, though – Wednesday is the deadline for a lot of this, so til then we’ll push on. The CD artwork is developing nicely. And in a couple of short weeks, we’ll be Europe bound and this long stretch of sleepless nights and full days will be a memory. Til then – more coffee!

Today was a chillier day here in Ottawa, less than 10 degrees Celsius, but not that uncommon for springtime. It’s nippy out and you can’t decide if a coat is really necessary, but it also makes the milder days feel extra warm. In the middle of the afternoon today, I was working upstairs when Tyler called up to come outside and bring my camera. The weeds are starting to flourish out in our yard, and there are a ton of bright yellow dandelions rearing their heads already. I saw right away what he was talking about, and I sat there for a few minutes until the pretty, delicate creatures ventured back, perching all around me.

Butterflies!

I did a quick walk at lunchtime today, and still had time leftover so I decided to mash up some avocado for guacamole. If you haven’t made your own before – try it! The only hard part is snagging avocados that are ripe enough to use. I usually get a few and let them sit at home for a few days before giving them a quick (gentle) squeeze. If the skin is dark and slightly soft, they should be good.

My former co-worked Lina showed me the proper technique to cut up an avocado a few years ago, at work, when I was making a salad, and it has stuck in my head. Here goes: first, slice off the top, then run the knife lengthways down the sides, stopping when you hit the pit. Gently twist the halves to pull them apart, and if you are lucky, you can then take a spoon and scoop out the pit. If you want the pieces to look pretty, you can pull the peel off and then slice, but for guacamole, just scraping out the green part will work.

Then mash up the avocado with a fork, add a sprinkle of salt, pepper, and garlic powder, and a squeeze of lemon, working it all into the dip. That’s it! You can add more stuff like sour cream, cilantro, chopped tomatoes, etc, but it is pretty good as is. Tyler used a scoop on a bagel with some chicken and cheese, and I ate it with chips. Both good! It doesn’t keep well though, so you’ll want to eat it pretty soon after making it. Yum!

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about a couple of things. I love my job and find it very fulfilling, but I focus on it a lot and ever since I finished school, working on the web in general tends to blur over into my evenings (including blogging!) So I want to set some personal goals that will get me away from the computer a bit more over the next month.

First is planning a vacation unlike any one I have been on before. To start, I thought: If I could go one place in this world, where would it be? Ever since I read Eat, Pray, Love, imagined the gooey, cheesy, doughy pizza and crisp, delectable wines, and actually read the Naples passage out loud to Tyler, Italy has been in the back of my head. After started to research and ask around, checking out pictures of glorious architecture, olive tree groves, and of course, the food, we’ve booked it: Italy for 2 weeks, with a quick stop in Paris on the way home.

Second, I’m hoping to focus on health a bit this month. I’ve started taking hot yoga classes and I can’t stop talking about how much I love it. I’ve always liked yoga, had a few classes, did videos on and off, but this little place off Woodroffe has fantastic teachers and the extra element of heat makes me feel even more flexible, and energized after each class. So I’m going to try to keep this up twice a week, maybe add a video once a week, and make sure to take long walks in the evenings too.

While I’m not trying to lose weight exactly, I do want to tone up and feel good. So I also bought a boat load of veggies and plain, fresh food, and I hope to keep cooking each night instead of resorting to quick bites of processed food or take out. Tonight I made a simple, really really good dinner of steak (slathered with garlic powder and steak spice), shallots (caramelized in butter, vinegar and sugar) and roasted asparagus (drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper). Simple, and so good!

What new goals or adjustments are you trying to undertake? Anyone out there been to Italy or Paris, with suggestions on where to go and what to see?