I’m in the wrong time-zone so it’s already the 2nd down under, but funnily enough today I made a conscious decision to cut down on meat and animal products (I know in my heart I won’t ever be vegetarian or vegan, but small steps, right?). Coming from a family of butchers, that’s a big step for me!

Love list:

1) The little creative cafe I found on my walk this evening. I’m going to paint a mug for my coffee tomorrow
2) Spring days by the lake
3) The mint I bought a couple of weeks ago growing rapidly and generally kicking ass

1. My small, mid-western university is getting more and more veg*n friendly and I am beyond excited about it. I even found Primal Strips vegan jerky in one of the small, campus run markets :)
2. Very soon (in about an hour, actually) I will get to spend some time with some of my best friends, drinks some mimosas, and go to our school’s football game.
3. I’m becoming very inspired lately and I just feel like I’m bursting with creative energy. I can’t wait to see what comes out of it.

1. Trying to invent my very own veggie burger. I decided to go Vegan a little while ago, and the first thing I noticed is that my favorite burger has egg in it…. So now I am inventing my own!
2. Just hanging out with my husband :-)
3. Things (Like my perfume and deo) that smell like lavender. I just love that smell…

We’re going to family night at Fog Willow Farm tonight. :-) Yay for twilight hay rides and watching Charlotte’s Web while being mugged by a goat for popcorn.

@Dana – Flax goop is what I use in all my veggie burgers (the sprouted chickpea one in Heidi Swanson’s cookbook is sooo good). Just simmer 2 tsp flax seeds in 1/4 cup water (to equal 1 egg) until desired consistency. It gets thick pretty fast. Bonus is that you can just add the seeds into a burger along with the goop.

not much to love comes to my mind immediately, since I am super sick and having “issues” at work, and also my dog wrecked my garden recently… so excuse me if my list sounds cliche-ey or too bland. My love list comes from things that will cheer me up when I’m down…

1. My Girlfriend whom I LOVE.
2. My baby, to be born by Jan 1st (maybe late December)
3. Food/cooking late at night, which always cheers me up.

Hope everyone else is doing great.

(I mean, I’m not glad ’cause like… I want someone else to SUFFER but… well… you know what I mean. maybe.)

This is really 3 separate posts but I’ll condense into one…

First, something that really got my goat: While in Whole Foods the other day there was a rep from a company sampling their product. They said it was vegan and then began listing off ingredients including honey (!). When I pointed out that honey is not vegan the lady argued with me saying that honey was a “product”. I proceeded to write the company to inform them of their rep giving out misinformation. Geesh! Although it makes no difference to me personally, as I do not abstain from honey, it really got under my skin knowing how many vegans/vegetarians and those with food allergies have to go through this kind of stuff on a daily basis!

Next, trying to instill at least a like for the area I moved to (I have become quite the hermit) I took a fairly lengthy drive up to Colorado’s Elk Fest. Basically for a week or two in October the elk make an annual rutting trek THROUGH the town. Setting up camp on streets, golf courses, football fields and the like. Crazy! Not sure how much the elk enjoy throngs of people gawking at them but, hey, they keep coming back year after year. Very interesting indeed.

Lastly, I thought I’d throw this out to all you enlightened and oh-so-helpful lil’ bonzais. I am having a really difficult time finding balance and peace in my life. Although it is just me (no significant other, kids, and friends have basically gone by the wayside as they are all getting married and going AWOL one-by-one) I just never feel relaxed and as if there are enough hours in the day. Even if it is the weekend I still feel as if I have too much to do. Granted, some of this is that I juggle 3 different jobs, 2 of which are freelance so the hours are not conventional–both a blessing and a curse. But I just feel stressed out 24-7. I’m sure a lot of it has to do with me living in a semi-new place and having ‘friends’ on the other side of the country who never even bother to call me back. I am probably just trying to “busy” myself from thinking about that stuff too much (which I do). But still, can anyone relate? suggestions?

As for 3 things I am looking forward to:
1. crisp, but not too cold weather
2. trying out my brand-new Health Master blender that I scored for $50 instead of $200—woot!
3. sleep…always sleep! oh yes..and finally doing a dog yoga cd I ordered with my number one pupster!

@Rebecca: Well, if you feel like you don’t have enough time to do stuff, I think there are only 2 ways out…

Be more productive/efficient to do more things, or get more time.

Organizing yourself better could help… I swear by David Allen’s ‘Getting things done’(GTD). Exceptional method and not very hard to learn by surfing the web (although you could give the book a try). With his method, the first thing you do is dump all your projects and tasks into a list. Having it on writing will clean your mind. Believe me. Knowing that somewhere there is a list of the things you need to do gives you ease of mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTD

Or, if you want to have more time, you could do biphasic sleep. Basically instead of sleeping in one block at night, you do 2 smaller blocks of sleep throughout the day. You sleep 1.5 hours in the afternoon, and 3 or 4.5 hours at night (1.5 hours is the average duration of a sleep cycle, so you are trying to maximize the amount of rest you get). It may sound weird to sleep like that little at night, but it is AWESOME. I’m a biphasic sleeper and if your work schedule lets you get away with it, it’ll give you extra time and a boost to your energy levels (at least it did for me).
Steve Pavlina is probably the most famous english speaking blogger to do it:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/health-fitness/1638-switching-biphasic-sleeping-start-here.html
You could read my experience with biphasic sleeping here, but its in spanish:
http://sites.google.com/site/dormirbifasico/
and the blog:
http://dormirbifasico.blogspot.com/

If you are feeling radical, you could also try my utopia (i’d love to do this, but I just can’t see it happening soon :D):
http://dbeat.com/28/
The 6 days week (28 hour day)!

1. my amazing little girl; 3 months.
2. Tempt hemp ice cream!!!!
3. cuddling with my husband this rainy October day.
4. feeling thankful that I’m not sick.

I’d like to see more fashion inspiration please and more pics of Waits.

@Bonzai: I’ve been an on and off biphasic sleeper for a couple of years now. First time (the experiment) lasted for around 8 months, then I had to go on an extended work trip where my schedule changed and after that I was not sleeping the nap… so I was sleeping a total of 4.5 hours a day (I don’t really recommend this. Although you can manage, you do feel a bit unenthusiastic throughout the day). That lasted 4 months and I was back to biphasic: nap in the afternoon (1.5 hours) and my main block of sleep at night (4.5 hours).

Whenever I’ve stopped has been for work-schedule related reasons and I always find myself craving those naps that seem to go on forever (you feel like you rest a whole night’s rest in 1.5 hours) and the boost in my energy levels that comes with it.

All things considered, I’ve been a biphasic sleeper for somewhere around 2 years now…

Now, I decided on the non-extreme schedule (total of 6 hours sleep a day) but I tested the schedule a lot as part of my first experiment, and once you get used to it, I’m happy to report that you can skip a nap, go to bed late or take the nap at a different time once in a while without real consequence.

And I’ll let you in a secret: its an integral part of my ‘survive the first days of parenthood’ plan. Mommy will take care of the kid while I take the nap and then I can take care of the baby until I go to bed at 3am. I think that’ll save us some of the ‘headaches’ of having to wake up through the night to see why the baby is crying.