Quick Birthday Recap

Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy quarter century!  Facebook makes it kind of overwhelming because all of a sudden you have like 30 messages that you want to respond to, because they are all amazing people, but you can't because there are 30 of them.  In the words of Cathy, Ack! (Right now, I can hear my dad scoffing at me for only having enough Facebook friends to get 30 birthday posts.  I'm sure he'll have at least 500 come his birthday in May).
Despite my Chris-less-ness right now, I had a lovely, low-key birthday. My parents drove up for the weekend, and we packed their 48 hours here with all kinds of fun stuff, like hiking, shopping, eating, drinking, and more eating.  Here is my dad (in his high school varsity letterman's jacket) and me, ordering fancy cocktails from 515 on Cedar.

And the celebrations continued!  My classmate Kristen was super sweet, and brought muffins to class with frosting and a candle on Tuesday.  And then on Thursday I got to celebrate with delicious food and wine with some of my PhD cohort.  So it was really a week of birthday.  Now it's back to business, so off I go into my little work-hole.  Yay for being old enough to rent a car without having to purchase exorbitant insurance packages!

Better than Xanax: The view from my walk to school

I've been fairly overloaded these past few weeks, and despite the fact that Chris is out of town (place frowny emoticon here), it's hard to find a moment where I'm not stressing out about this grant or that paper or this committee or that theoretical framework (or lack thereof) or whatever.  Walking to school, I get a chance to listen to podcasts, admire the view and just think about nothing without feeling guilty about there being something more productive I could be doing.  Because, I mean, I have to get to school, right?  And driving is bad for the world.  Here's the view from halfway through my daily journey (about 3 miles total, and yes, I walk along the bike trail, but I yeild).  How can you look at this and be anxious?