California, je t’aime.
Two years ago today I got on a plane in the early-morning hours with a one way ticket on Jet Blue headed for Oakland. I had two bags, crammed with all the things I hadn’t already shipped, a boyfriend, and a lot of excitement — the kind that comes when you’ve [...]

[Guinness chocolate cake, with Guinness, March 2008.]
Otherwise known as “amateur night” by certain parties, St. Patrick’s Day to me is soda bread, Altan, Joyce’s Ulysses, which I attempt to battle through every few years or so (it never quite works; I think I need an explanatory text alongside), and — of course — Guinness.
Ages ago [...]

[View from Squaw Valley, March 2008.]
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. - John Muir
Sunday afternoon I perched atop a [...]

I am stuffed to the brim with cheese, swimming on two delicious glasses of red wine, and satiated by hours of girl time. Earlier tonight I ran a short and sweet three-miler (am breaking in new shoes. ouch.), battling gusts of occasionally fierce wind as I crossed Masonic and hoping I made the [...]

My parents used to live in Colorado — Boulder, to be exact — and I like to think if some trick of fate had gone differently, I would have been born there, instead of along the Pacific. How different life could have been! I might be snowboarding down the Rockies this very second; [...]