purekatherine

You know how these go. purekatherine[at]gmail will get you the password if I’m comfortable with that.

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If you’ve been reading or following me on twitter for a little while, you know that I was able to go to Bloggers in Sin City last year. Miracle of miracles, I’m able to attend this year as well!

I’m beyond ecstatic for this chance! So beyond excited that it’s taken me weeks to actually write this because I can’t focus my thoughts enough to make any sense.

Last year’s experience at Bloggers in Sin City changed me, but it’s taken me several months to really learn from what I did and saw with that amazing group of people. My first response to the awesomeness that was BiSC was a post that wasn’t actually talking about how awesome it was. Instead I talked about my experience breaking down one night there and the things that I had issue with inside my own head.

The connections that I made with people who went though lasted the much longer than that breakdown did though. A couple months after BiSC I went to VidCon with two of the 2011 BiSCuits, and then about a month after that I went to the 20something Bloggers Summit with even more of those wonderful people.

Walking up at the end of the welcome happy hour at the 20SB summit and hearing Terra yelling my name before she even saw me, something clicked in me. Talking to several people about things that we are on opposing sides of has been amazing. The amount of respect that I see between the people who went to BiSC is just so cool to me.

Those ripples from my time in Vegas last May are what changed me. This year I’ll be approaching BiSC in a different fashion. Rather than waiting for something to happen to me, I’m finding things to do. Last year I was a little shy about jumping in and talking to the groups of people who already knew each other. Even for the people who I talked to on twitter a bunch before that.

If you’re reading this and you’re going to Bloggers in Sin City 2012, be prepared for a huge hug when I see you.

Like seriously, start doing some lunges and squats now so you can appropriately brace yourself. We don’t want anyone falling down just because I’m so excited to see everyone.

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You deserve happiness.

I just wrote an email to a friend and in it I wrote that phrase. As I typed it, I realized that I was telling myself as much as I was telling that friend.

Then I thought that I might have some other friends who needed the reminder.

You deserve happiness.

Are you doing something for someone else out of an obligation that you are actually kind of imagining?

Do you work somewhere that you don’t actually like, but have some reason that you wouldn’t take another job, or flat out aren’t looking for another?

Are you still being a fantastic friend to someone who isn’t being the same for you? Should you be either dropping that friend or reevaluating the amount of effort you put into the relationship?

Are you stalling on starting something that you know you want to do because you’re afraid of it not being what you’re expecting, or you not being as amazing at it as you are in your head?

Stop all of that right now.

You deserve happiness.

Please go get it. Even if you have to take it in small little increments, please take that step every time you get the chance.

To the friend who got that email, thanks for the inspiration.

You deserve happiness.

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Tonight I got to meet a new blogging friend. Someone I’ve known on Twitter for a few months, who I really respect and admire. The topic of blogging of course came up, and it reminded me that I have something specific that I’ve wanted to share here for a while.

I don’t remember the last time that I was really able to read other people’s blogs. I really hate it, but it’s true.

San and I got to talking about how awesome it is to get comments from people on your blog, and how commenting really is a two way street.

The blogging community is a community after all, so how can any blogger really expect to be getting a lot of comments without responding to them, or commenting on other blogs? Yet here I am, not only not commenting on other blogs, but not even finding the time to READ them!

I really hope that this is something that can and will change soon. The thing that will bring that change the best would be a new job. I currently have no routine, I get scheduled around 20 hours a week for relatively random 4 hour shifts. This means that I don’t have a set schedule for when I’m waking up because I don’t have a set schedule for when I’m going to bed.

I know I just wrote about getting into a great sleep routine, but with my current job, there are some days that I will be scheduled until 11PM, so it’s hard to find a way to get to bed by 10:30 on those nights.

So let’s get me a new job. If there’s anywhere in the Sacramento area that any of you know of who needs a cute and competent receptionist*, send ‘em my way. Or better yet, let me know where I can go to wow them without them having to do anything.

Really, I’m doing this all for you, because like I said before, I can’t read blogs or comment until this kind of thing happens. So get me a job and YOU get more views and comments. Really, this isn’t for me at all.

*I’m also a great file clerk, general office technician, paper clip collector, or overall office badass!

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Just a heads up that a pair of my shoes are in a pretty awesome raffle over at a happy girl!

Tahnie is raising money for the Cystinosis Research Network. I’ll admit that I don’t know a whole lot about Cystinosis, but Tahnie is one of actually relatively few people who are living with the disease. It’s really rare and because of the specifics of it, her daughter is actually only 1 of 10 children born to people with cystinosis.

There’s a lot more information to be found on her blog, but go right on over to her post today and you’ll get to see all the goodies that are up for grabs for only a $10 raffle ticket!

I mean, you could win a pair of my shoes, which I personally think is definitely worth the ticket on its own!

I think I’m going to cheat the system a little at work for my next few shifts to get an extra $10 to be able to enter myself!

What are you waiting for? Go now!

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Back in December I told you guys about this great project that I’d be starting in the new year. I was super stoked for it then and had lots of support from twitter. I’m happy to say that, that support has stayed pretty constant and 12 Changes 12 Months is doing pretty well!

January was awesome for me.

I wanted to increase the amount of water that I drink and I did just that. I basically did it with positive reinforcement. I wasn’t allowed to have any Dr Pepper until I had a glass of water. So every time that I had a glass of water, I pretty much got stoked to be able to have my favorite drink after that. By the end of the month, even on the sleepiest of days, I started wanting water in the morning instead of my caffeine fix.

See, awesome!

At just under a week into February and my second change, things aren’t quite so good. I mean, my change was to get into a better routine/sleep schedule and here I am at 2:24 in the morning, typing up a blog because I can’t sleep.

To be fair to myself, I’ve been sick, so I’ve been sleeping a lot in the mornings and during the day, which is probably what got me onto a crazy schedule to begin with. That doesn’t mean though that I don’t wish I was doing better with this.

The other day I came up with a hopeful solution. I grabbed my awesome Life Planner and wrote 10:30 at the bottom of February 29. That is my goal bedtime by the end of the month. I then worked backwards and changed the time every 3-4 days by 15 minutes. That turned out to give me until midnight to get to bed for tonight (or last night) and the next few nights.

Tonight it didn’t happen. Obviously. I did get to catch up with a friend I’ve been missing though, so I’m ok with it. Also, there’s that whole sick and my pattern is super off from that, so I’ll just go ahead and really be 100% comfortable with missing today.

I have two more days to get this midnight thing down, and my alarm is set for 8:30 in the morning, so maybe I’ll get to make this happen. I have hope, plans tend to do that for me.

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I’ve never been one for the whole “Word for the Year” thing. I think it can be great for people who want to focus on something and have a goal, but it’s always felt to me that if I did it, it would be a little hokey.

Maybe I just don’t know how to label things before they happen, which doesn’t really make sense because I rarely start writing a blog post until I have a title to go with it. But then again, now that I’ve started to rewrite and edit my posts, I have tended to rename them afterward anyway, so I guess I was right in the first place and I don’t know how to label things before they’ve happened.

Take last year for example. At the beginning of the year I would have had no way of knowing the kind of emotional growth and learning that I would have done. I ended 2010 in a lot of pain, but without ways to process that. 2011 I held onto that pain much longer than I probably should have. (Hell, there are still some remnants of that pain here with me in 2012!) I did some processing though.

I did a lot of learning about myself and about the ways that I interact with people. Some of those things I don’t actually like. But really, I’m actually super happy that I went through that process. In the last month or so, I have done a lot of reflecting, and while 2011 held some things that I’m not so proud of, I’m really ok with leaving them there and continuing on to where I’d like to be in 2012.

I made a lot of new friends in the last 12 months. Friends who saw a lot of the pain that I was going through and have been there to lend an ear, or offer some advice, or even just distract me with silly talk about anything else. One of the things that I’m not so proud of is that I kind of took advantage of some of those friends.

This year I plan on utilizing them.

With this network of support behind me, I plan on becoming unstoppable. Seriously, I have big plans this year. Some of them I will be sharing (because someone pretty awesome explained that sharing makes me accountable for more). Some of them I’ll only be unveiling once I’ve got something to show.

I don’t know what word to put on the upcoming year, so I don’t think I’m going to. Instead I think I’m just going to say that I’ve got a new spirit for the year. A spirit of adventure, a spirit of going for things. A spirit of gratitude and thanks.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a part of what gave me this spirit. I want to thank you for that now and I hope that you will continue with me through this year and live through the spirit as it continues to fuel me.

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Ever try to cook someone dinner in their house, without their help? How about when you realize that they are a law student who doesn’t really cook?

A few weeks ago I made a lasagna spinoff and twice baked potatoes in someone else’s kitchen.

The previously mentioned law student lives with his adult aunt, so I didn’t think there would be a problem when I planned to make something pretty basic. All I really needed would be something to grate the cheese and a vegetable brush of some sort to wash the potatoes.

Neither of these things were anywhere to be found.

This is when it clicked for me that the law student lives in his aunt’s weekday home. She works in the city, but her home is 2 hours away in the same town I live in. She goes back home every weekend, so why would she have serious cooking stuff in both places?

Had I realized this in the grocery store, it wouldn’t have been much of an issue. Vegetable brushes aren’t so expensive, and cheese comes pregrated if you want that (though it’s not as good and it’s more expensive). It wasn’t until I was starting to cook though that I started to really think about the tools I needed.

That’s when the confusion to a level just this side of panic started to set in. I’ve got all this food, but no way to clean half of it, and I really don’t want to just slice up the cheese because it doesn’t melt the same way as it does when it’s grated. (Apparently I actually kind of care about stuff in the kitchen, I didn’t know this before.)

This is one of the times that I’m really glad to have my Pinterest obsession. I once repinned a blog post about cleaning tips. One of them was to use the foil that you had just cooked with, balled up to clean the pans that you’re washing.

soucre

First off, I don’t know why you’re needing to scrub that hard on a pan you used foil on unless it was covering the top of the dish while baking, not lining the pan. Second, I feel like this would scratch the shit out of whatever kind of baking dish or tray you just used. Is it really that difficult to soak something for a little while and then get back to it?

Back to my issues though, I realized that there was foil in the house and if it was effective enough to supposedly clean pans, why couldn’t I just ball up some of that shit and use it on these two potatoes?

As it turns out, you totally can do that! It actually worked pretty well, though I probably wouldn’t do it again if I had a brush handy because I’m a hippie and it seems wasteful. It’s really good to know for future cases like this though. Who knows where I might be cooking next?

Do you know of any other MacGyver kitchen menuvers? There’s a chance I’m going back there to cook again relatively soon, I might need them!

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I was tagged by Cait to do this a little while ago, and it’s kind of cute. Plus, I’ve got a bunch of posts that I can’t seem to finish and I need to have my fingers on the keyboard right now, so here’s a chance for me to type!

Here’s the rules.
1. You must post these rules.
2. Each person must post 11 things about themselves on their blog.
3. Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post and create 11 new questions for the people you tag to answer.
4. You have to choose 11 people to tag and link them on the post. Go to their page and tell them you have linked him or her.
5. No tag backs and you legitimately have to tag 11 people.

11 Facts
1. I call myself a swing dancer even though I rarely actually go out dancing. I miss it terribly, but it’s just one expense that I can’t justify right now.
2. I connect random things to people based on the most inane conversations that we’ve had at some point.
3. I am far more insecure than most people will ever believe.
4. I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. If I like something, I will probably own up to it. Even if I know that you’ll judge me for it.
5. I’m an idea person. I’m not so great at implementing those ideas.
6. I’m trying, rather unsuccessfully, to become more of a minimalist. (Pun intended.) Some of my hoarding tendencies make this difficult.
7. The feeling of typing is often as soothing to me as getting the words and thoughts out of my head.
8. For the first time in my life, even while acknowledging things I don’t like about my appearance, I am truly starting to believe and feel that I am beautiful.
9. I would love to start practicing yoga, but there are two reasons I don’t. 1, Same reason I don’t get out to swing dance so often, 2, I’m scared I won’t be any good at it!
10. Potatoes are really, like, the best things ever. Ever.
11. I will cook every meal for you if you just do the dishes for me.

11 Questions for Me
1. What do you wash first when you’re in the shower?
My hair. Mostly because I leave the shampoo and conditioner on for a few minutes each, so I do other stuff while those “set.”
2. Favorite birthday celebration?
Last year’s trip to Chicago and seeing all the people who I didn’t even really know come together to help me celebrate was awesome!
3. What’s your favorite movie? (Or top 3, because I know I couldn’t pick a favorite.)
Shit, I don’t know. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and the Harry Potter series are my go-tos for having something on while I need to get something done.
4. Who changed your life the most?
I have! But Lexi and Ashley have had more of an impact than I think I can ever really express to them.
5. What’s your shoe size?
8-9 ½ depending on the brand. 8 ½ is the safest bet.
6. If you won the lottery, what is the first thing you’d buy?
I’d pay down my debt first, and then buy a loft in Chicago so I could go to school there and have the best apartment ever. Hopefully with Nico, Bob and Erini living with me. (Totes rent-free guys, just y’all do the dishes, ok?)
7. What trait/skill do you have that you’re most proud of?
My creativity. I really think that my mind works differently than a lot of people’s. Sometimes this is an asset, sometimes it’s actually not so helpful.
8. Do you have a favorite scent of lotion/perfume/cologne/body wash? If so, what is it?
I really love Bath & Body Works’ Twisted Peppermint, so of course they are discontinuing it. They’ve done that with 3 scents on me now!
9. Which celebrity would you love to meet?
Josh Groban. He seems like a lot of fun and he’s got to fall in love with me at some point!
10. When was the last time you cried? What was it about (if you’re comfortable sharing)?
Last Friday evening. A friend offered me something I could have never imagined. That friend knows who she is and I hope she knows how much I appreciate what she did. It means a lot to me.
11. What position do you normally sleep in? (On your stomach, on your back, etc.)
I always start out on my side, but I roll over before I fall asleep and I stretch my back out. It just feels so good!

11 Questions for You
1. What is it that you most want to do? Are you doing it?
2. If you have a favorite holiday, what is it and what makes it that?
3. What’s your favorite TV show? (Doesn’t have to be currently on the air.)
4. If you could live in the fictional world of any book, which world/book would that be?
5. What’s your favorite way to eat ice cream?
6. If you could cast the movie about your life, who would you have play you?
7. Do you own slippers? Do they look like an animal?
8. What are you most looking forward to in the next year?
9. What’s your favorite Disney movie?
10. If you do karaoke, do you have a go-to song?
11. What is your cocktail of choice?

Tag! You’re It!
This is for anyone who wants to do it. Really, you interested? You’re tagged!

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