Hello, friends! How has the week found you? Mine has been quite interesting, bringing with it a diagnosis of mercury poisoning, the discovery of black mold in our home, dinner with my aunt, and a generous gift from my grandparents to help with the overwhelming medical expenses. I finished reading Chloe Benjamin’s The Immortalists and began Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated. My boyfriend and I been reviewing pictures from our trip to the Pacific Northwest on repeat, reliving the joy and excitement. We saw the most beautiful flowers and finally figured out what they are–foxgloves!
What are you up to this weekend? We’ll be visiting Kartchner Caverns to tour the cave and view it’s stalactites and stalagmites. Hope you have a good one! Here are a few links from around the web:
- Quote I’m pondering: “Hack away at the inessentials.” — Bruce Lee
- Commitment costs nothing. It’s never made sense to me that couples begin their marriage with unnecessary burden of wedding debt. We would be perfectly content not getting married at all, but we know how much the ceremony would mean to our families, so we’ll likely compromise with a small, low-cost backyard get together.
- On a similar note, only borrow money to buy things that go up in value.
- Speaking advice: “Don’t memorize your talk. Memorize your stories. Ten stories make a talk. Write yourself a simple cue card to remember each story’s name. Then tell us ten stories.”
- I discovered two new grocery items on vacation, which I’ve now found in my hometown (yay!): Hu Salty Dark Chocolate and Humm Lemon Ginger Kombucha.
- Do what you love in front of the kids in your life. Says Mr. Rogers: “If you love to bicycle, if you love to repair things, do that in front of the children. Let them catch the attitude that that’s fun. Because you know, attitudes are caught, not taught.”
- I recently watched the latest, thought-provoking season of Black Mirror, which explores the themes and consequences of full sensory virtual reality, intentionally addictive social applications, and the manipulation of celebrities and their fans. It’s available for viewing on Netflix.
- From the archives: Synchronicity, Entrainment, and Finding “The One”
- What I’m listening to: Song for Zula by Phosphorescent
existential ergonomics 