09/20/2015 DianaK

Appreciations 4.31 – Friendly walks, fruitful work, family wonderfulness

What a stunning day! Perfect for a walk up to the Kingfield Farmer’s Market (all those colors!) … and then a walk over to the coffee shop with Sarah & Ida. I love our walking visits! ❤

Surprisingly productive middle of the day – including getting 2 plants re-potted (a task that’s been on my list for months) and a nice chunk of work.

Super fun visit catching up with and trading house-repair/painting/cleaning stories with Jeff & Laura this evening! At least I only have ONE house to do that for… not the one being sold, the temporary one, AND the new one. What a lot of work they’ve been doing! I’m excited that we’ll all be living in MN soon. 😀

09/19/2015 DianaK

Appreciations 4.30 – Infographic

Beautiful day for a walk up to the coffee shop with Katie and Cina! What a fabulous way to start the weekend! ❤

Coffee.Coffee.Coffee!

The way my brain works — or doesn’t — when I sleep fewer than 6 hours. The whole day is an interesting, hazy cloud of half-thoughts, starts and stops, and lots of wondering: “I wonder what I was starting to say/think/do?” 😀 What an interesting state of being!

Canva. I can see that I’m going to be playing with this for lots and lots of hours as I start making my own infographics. Fun!

09/18/201509/18/2015 DianaK

Appreciations 4.29

The sound of the rain on the roof. Makes everything feel so cozy inside, just right for drinking a nice cup of coffee and working, and later, a drinking a nice cup of tea and working, and even later, drinking another cup of tea and snuggling up with a purring feline. 😉

Alison’s “let’s get a photo” mantra. I never think to do that — and thanks to Alison, we always get some great shots of our outings. Thank you, my sweet friend! ❤

Standing in the freshly cleaned kitchen, turning out the lights, and looking out at the stained glass windows of the church through the dark branches of the trees. Beautiful.

09/17/2015 DianaK

Appreciations 4.28

Last year on this day, I appreciated a goofy dream…and now I am RE-appreciating it. Hahahaha! (Here’s a bit of the post from last year: Waking up giggling from a screwball comedy dream about returning defective sofas! We were standing out in the rain with our burgundy leather sofa, and the Katharine Hepburn-like character said, “Defective!??! But it rains HARD on sofas!” The Cary Grant-like character (me) said, “Yes, but they are not expected to give up little pieces of themselves in surrender to that rain,” which settled the matter! I love the image of the characters standing under the street light with the rain pouring down on them… and their sofa. Hahahahaha!)

Headaches that very kindly wait until the “must do today” work is done, respond to tylenol enough to allow me to go out with my friends, and send me to bed for a night of catch-up sleep before 10 pm. 😉

Spending time with people I adore at our little happy hour tonight. Oh, just so so good! ❤

09/16/201509/16/2015 DianaK

Appreciations 4.27

Another productive, satisfying, and fun DPP Study Group meeting with Amy & Alison. I always learn sooooooo much. 😉
Interesting weather today – cool, warm, rainy, steamy, cooler, thundery, dry. Oh Autumn, you are such a funny time. 🙂
Colored pens. I write a lot and they make the writing of things even more fun. 😀

09/15/201509/15/2015 DianaK

Appreciations 4.26

Wodehouse. The way he phrases things and the interactions between his characters make me giggle. I especially love Wooster’s relationship with Aunt Dahlia. Oh, how this delights me!

More fun words like propinquity.

Nice little chat with Jeff tonight. Soon we’ll be able to chat in person – whenever we want. What?!? How lucky I am to like my family so very much. ❤

09/14/201509/15/2015 DianaK

Appreciations 4.25

The strangeness of insomnia. So rare a thing for me, so interesting to be wide awake at 3 am. Gave me the opportunity to notice fun shadow shapes on my ceiling, like the one that looked like a puppy with its head tilted to the side. Took me a while to figure out where it was coming from. (It was cast by my water bottle in front of my clock). Funny!

Watching the cats investigate and play with the kitty playground of empty boxes as I put away the new t-shirt inventory. Oh, how they love big new boxes!

Doing little projects that result in less clutter, far less paper, and the doing of which produces lost things. Neat!

09/13/201509/13/2015 DianaK

Appreciations 4.24

Fabulous morning with Debb! How great to get to see my cuz 2 days in a row! Delicious breakfast (yes, I got to have gluten free pancakes. In a restaurant!) and thrill-filled shopping trip to Goodwill. Who knew Roseville could be so fun?! 😛

This most flattering photo of me and my pal, Kermie, the giant pez dispenser. 😀

Excellent afternoon full of productive time – including FINALLY getting my office back in order. Phew!

I was planning to work all evening, but fortunately, my good friend Danny was looking out for me and said we should go to IAGG tonight. So great to see him again — and then what an awesome show! MJ and Andy cross-wove their butts off in a brilliantly intertwined narrative with beautiful choices, stunning metaphors, and mind-boggling call-backs, Butch’s tech work rocked my socks in every set, and Michael and Jeff’s angel-ghosts, machete work, and just plain great improv rounded out a truly terrific show. So good!

09/12/201509/13/2015 DianaK

Appreciations 4.23

Nice morning of working, going outside, working, going outside, working. I love this weather!

Really fun dinner with Debb and her colleague Deb. 🙂 I love meeting new and interesting people — especially those with whom you feel that instant connection and comfort.

Hanging out with Debb at the hotel. With friends as interesting, funny, and smart as her, there’s no need for outside entertainment to make for a great evening. ❤

09/11/201509/11/2015 DianaK

Appreciations 4.22 – Fun and interesting things & a very long list

Writing stories. I get to do a lot of writing for work, but writing a newsletter or a FB post just isn’t the same as writing a story. 😛 I’d forgotten how much fun stories are. It’s got me contemplating doing NaNoWriMo again this year. Or maybe finishing up that novel I started 7 or 8 years ago. I liked that one. Or maybe just sometimes writing stories because it’s fun to write stories. 😀

Watching interesting things — like the process of taking down our huge elm tree. The workers did it so fast! And what a humongous boom when the main trunk came down. Wow! That shook the whole house!

How strange and light it feels without our elm tree out front. Goodbye, shady friend. ❤

So many things are fun to do. Here are the things I love to do:
writing
singing
drawing and coloring
painting (oooooh, I haven’t done that in a while!)
walking outside
canoeing
talking with friends
playing word games
being silly
petting the kitties
reading
stretching
moving
laughing, giggling, chortling
humming
smiling at people who maybe aren’t expecting it
sitting by a body of water and watching it
working on the house
cleaning (well, sometimes it’s fun…)
learning new stuff
making lists
crossing things off of lists
spreadsheets
math
working with wood
smelling good smells
making puns
flirting
playing left-hand-sitting-down catch
doing improv
playing the piano
taking photos
editing and being fussy about grammar
not being fussy about grammar
playing with photoshop
designing websites
the hokey pokey
making snow men (and snow daleks)
being a geek
surprising someone with a sweet word or act of service
picking apples
carving pumpkins
witnessing people being kind or silly or intensely good at what they love to do
Wow. There are a lot of reasons to get up every day, aren’t there?! ❤

Going to bed early sometimes. 😉