Yes Lady

I can’t remember if I’ve written about this before, but a few years back, I was unhappy with the way my life was going.  I felt like I was caught in a rut and was making myself a victim of the things going on in my life.  Blah, blah, blah, I was being a whiney baby and then decided to take the bull by the balls and change things.  I had seen the movie Yes Man and while I hated the actual movie, the concept was great.  I decided to give it a go.  And it changed my life.  Since that point in time, I’ve experienced so many different things and met dynamic and interesting people.  It was definitely the best decision I’ve ever made.

Anyways, my yes behavior also carries through the work day.  I accept all meeting invites and like being a part of everything I’m invited to.  Sometimes I spread myself a little thin, but it’s part of the lifestyle.  So two weeks ago, I got a meeting request and in my typical routine, pressed accept.  Minutes later, my co-worker gchatted me about if I was excited to go to Montana.  Obviously assuming she had gone off her rocker or simply started chatting with the wrong person, I kindly let her know of the confusion.

Co-Worker Mad-Dawg:  ”Are you super excited to go to Montana?”

Me:  ”Haha.  This is Shannon.”

Co-Worker Mad-Dawg:  ”I know”

Me:  crickets…  ”Wait, that meeting is in Montana??”

And then I proceed to become the most excited human ever.  My office mate sat and chuckled at my behavior and said, “you know you’re not going to France, right”.  Uhhh, duh, I know where Montana is.  Totally not even close to France.

Believe it or not, I made the map above (from this post).  For those of you not so familiar with the big square states, Montana is above Wyoming.

Yay, so I’m going to Montana for a meeting tomorrow!  I get back on Sunday and after the meeting, I will be horseback riding, whitewater rafting, feeding baby cows, and frolicking in the fresh air.  My scheduled activities may be difficult with the rain/thunderstorm forecast, but whatevs.

And then on Monday, I’m driving up to Laguna Hills to do a half marathon, because once again, I’m a yes girl.  Have I been training?  Ha.  Come on, you’ve all been reading this blog long enough to know that I haven’t been legitimately prepared for a race in a LOOOOOONNNNNNGGGGGG time.  But, what I lack in athletic ability, I make up for in style.  Rather than spending my race week trying to strategize my running plan, I’ve been up for countless hours thinking of my running outfit.  More on this later.  Oh, and here’s a slight concern of mine…

I know, I know, that’s not even a big deal, but I’m sooooo much better at going downhill than up.  But I’m REALLY excited to race this weekend and am excited to see how it goes.  :)

And, I’ve been watching Breaking Bad until my eyes bleed.  Every day, I fall more and more in love with Aaron Paul.  Sigh…

Yes, Mr. Paul, yes.

In all honesty, I can’t remember why I started this blog post, but I think it’s over now.

The end.

Hess Brewing: The Official Review

Want to know the best brewery in all of San Diego county?  Well, here you go.

Enter Hess Brewing.  The most magical place in the county… er state… COUNTRY!  As we all know, San Diego is littered with breweries.  And I mean littered in the most magical, wonderful way possible.  Like when wild flowers “litter” a beautiful field.  Breweries litter my heart and their beer litters my soul.  Sigh, never has there been a sentence with such whimsy…

Anyways, Hess is a smaller operation (San Diego’s first licensed nano-brewery!)  and they only brew around 50 gallons in each batch.  50 gallons!!  Now my friends, that is not a lot of beer.  But man, oh man, is their beer delicious.  Their beers are full-bodied, high-octane, and incredibly flavorful.  I have NEVER had a bad beer there.  In addition, their tasting room is great.  Not big but not too small, dog friendly, and Michael has got it going on with running the operation.  Seriously, the guy is the dude; he’s super efficient, great at recommending/explaining their beers, is friendly, and all around awesome.  He won’t remember your name, but will remember your face.  And, he’ll let your dog (ahem, Butters) run amok.

Moving on.  The crowd is always super cool and on the weekends there are food trucks.  Hess is a place that I visit frequently and never, ever get tired of it.

I will say this.  Hess is in the Miramar area of San Diego, where there are other players like Alesmith and Rough Draft.  Hess basically ruined me and I won’t set foot in other breweries in the area, because I would simply rather spend my time and money at Hess.  They’re that good.  Speaking of money, they’re cheap too (do the tasting flight and remember to bring back your glass when you go there).

In case it’s not abundantly clear, I love, love, love this joint.  Visit their website, tasting room, and follow them on Twitter!  And then let me know how much you loved them :) .

I’m Freaking Tired

Yep.

**I promise this isn’t just a whiney post about how sleepy I am :) **

Ordinarily, I am the queen of sleeping.  I can sleep anywhere and waking me is like stirring a slumbering baby bear.  I tend to wake up in a fog, but once I’m up, I’m the girl who was built for mornings.  Man, I LOVE mornings.  I want to spin in circles, Sound of Music style, sing to birds and field mice, and give people high fives and motivational words of wisdom (ahem, my version of wisdom…).  Great, right?

Well, about once every quarter, I go through a spell of sleepless nights.  I’ll sleep 3-5 hours a night, but those hours are full of dreams and nightmares and I’ll wake up about once every 20 minutes or so.  For a person that doesn’t require a lot of sleep, I’m sure that would be a welcome amount of dozing.  Not for me.  I need my 7-8 of solid snoozing in order to re-awake and want sing to birds.  When I’m not getting enough sleep, I have physical reactions to the exhaustion.  I’ll lose my voice, feel nauseated, have sinus pressure, and total body pain.  What’s funny is that when I’m actually sick, I’m a trooper.  When I’m tired, it is the end of the world.  I become convinced that I’ll never sleep again and that I must adapt to my new lifestyle and way of feeling.  That, it’s okay, some people just don’t need sleep and that I’ll find some way to adapt.  And then thinking about my new way of living makes me sad and I’ll tear up.  It’s friggin ridiculous.

And take a guess as to how long I’ve been feeling this way.  Do it.  Okay, I’ll tell you.  Four days.  Four days and I’m an overreacting drama queen.

**Ugh, insert exaggerated eyeroll at myself right here.**

Anyways, now that I’ve given some background information to this worthless tale, I’ll get to the heart of the matter.  On Monday night, I was feeling dramatic, tired, and on the verge of death.  I decided to go for a run since I couldn’t talk myself into going to yoga.  I ran 2 miles at an 8:27 pace and felt like I was going to die, but was very proud of my pace.  The reason I ran 2 miles (I typically never run less than 5) was that I decided after the first mile that I was going to make myself go to yoga.  So yay, I ran and managed to talk myself into yoga.  My positive mental attitude was going to take over the sleep deprivation and show it who was boss.

**Sidenote:  You girls that run ridiculously fast are a modern human marvel.  I thought my legs were going to pop off my body**

So I make it to yoga (hot power fusion).  From the very beginning of Sun Salutation A, I could feel that my body just wasn’t right.  My knees wouldn’t stop popping, my spine was as stiff as a board (anything spine related is typically where I excel), and it felt like every sports related injury was coming back to haunt me.  In general, I felt bad.  And not like, “oh, I don’t want to do this, so I’m just saying it hurts”, but more like, “oh my gosh, I’m actually in pain right now.  This really hurts”.  Now, I’ve heard time and time again that each day we practice our bodies will feel differently, but in general, my practice is relatively consistent.  On Monday, after a few minutes of frustration with my body, I decided to use the time for meditation.  I sat my happy ass down and traveled into savasana, where I laid for the remainder of the practice.  I remembered a post that this girl wrote, where she left a Bikram class early for the first time and was surprised by the shame she didn’t feel.  After Monday’s class, I know what she was saying.  Our bodies are amazing, amazing vessels and for the most part, they’re incredibly consistent.  But even consistency needs a break at times.

So, there I was.  The lazy girl laying on her mat in a 105 degree room loudly inhaling and exhaling and to be quite frank, I could have cared less.  I actually listened to what my body was saying, what my mind was saying, and focused on another area of my practice which is equally, if not more important, than the motion of the poses.  I was really, really proud of myself.

So Tuesday afternoon rolled around and I was hmm-ing and haa-ing about whether or not to go to power 2.  After another restless night, I was again laying on death’s door.  But, I remembered the previous night and told myself the hour would be whatever my body needed it to be.

And my body needed to be one of the best hours of yoga I’ve ever had.  I felt incredibly in tune with my body and very much in control of my breathing.  It. Was. Awesome.

In conclusion, even though I’m sure that my sleep deprivation will be the end of me ;) , there are always positives that are wrapped in the day-to-day actions of life.  It’s just a matter of opening our eyes (or, in my case, closing them!) and welcoming the positivity.

Oh, and hoping that we freaking fall asleep long enough not to remember dreams about serial killers, spiders the size of crabs that have taken over our homes, or being Justin Beiber’s ex-girlfriend (yeah, that happened…).

Color Run Photos (freaking finally, right?)

If you remember this post from 500 million years ago, I did The Color Run a couple of weeks ago, but I’m a lazy bum and didn’t post any pictures.  Apparently it only takes me several weeks to get my act together :) .  Enjoy!

In case it’s not abundantly clear, we took this race extremely seriously and didn’t mess around at all.  We were there for a reason and it was to run fast and not waste any time playing with colored cornstarch or taking pictures.  I’m pretty sure we won the race actually.

Oh, and here’s a picture I took of Skittles making a smiley face.  Yay for smiles!  It only seemed necessary that I include this picture.  You know, make the rainbow, taste the rainbow, be the rainbow… (my new catchphrase :) ).

Have a great day!  Make it wonderful!

In other news, iPiccy is the crap.  I may even like it better than Picasa!

A Tribute to Butters – Post from the Crazy Dog Lady

I know everyone comes to this site to read up on really hardcore, academically accurate information that rivets them to the bone.  Unfortunately, today is not that day.

I’m going to write an entire blog post about how much I love my dog.  Enjoy (or totally run away from the crazy).

My dog is named Buttercup.  I never actually call her that though and in all honesty, never would have named her that.  When I rescued her, she had been going by Butterscotch and I had heard as long as the first two syllables were the same, changing her name would be easy.  Little did I know that I could seriously change her name today and she’d be totally cool with it (let’s just say she’s not a genius).  Anyways, she prefers to go by Butters, Sweeter, Peter, or Petey.  She is a 4-year-old American Staffordshire terrier/lab mix and is truly the apple of my eye.  Never in a million years could I have imagined loving an animal as much as I love her.

I grew up with animals and was that little girl who was trying to take in strays rather than play with dolls or imagining having kids.  All I wanted to do was dress up my cat and talk to my dog as if he were a person.  You see, I came from one of those crazy animal families.  My dad treated our family dogs as family members; they slept inside, would have the tv left on if they were alone, and even had 8×10 portraits on the picture wall next to our senior pictures.  To this day, I can call home and ask how my brother is doing and my dad will start talking about my brother Mowgli (a yellow lab).  Uhhh, dad, I meant my other brother.  You know, the one that is human.

Anyways, when I moved out to California with Big D, he  had the Meika (a Siberian Husky) who he had gotten with an ex-girlfriend.  The Meika is the devil dog and totally sees me as her step-mother.  I wanted a dog that would be mine and who would see me as her parent.  Enter baby Butters.

Butters is sweet… so sweet it kills me.  She’s innocent and genuinely loves everyone.  She’s a bull that a china shop would hate and her clumsiness seems to grow on a daily basis.  She grooms her stuffed animals and takes them to bed with her and her best friend is a cat.  Playing with her tennis ball is something she could do for hours and she loves a post work-out snuggle more than anything.  Basically, she’s me in dog form.

What’s funny is that she looks like a pitbull, which is appropriate, being that she’s part staffie.  Growing up, I was conditioned to think that pitbulls were horrible, aggressive dogs.  Being that I own a bully, I see just how inaccurate that generalization is.  Bully breeds can be aggressive and without proper socialization, I do feel that they can be a threat.  But with love and a lot of time with other dogs, they’re just incredible animals.  This dog is ridiculously sensitive and her need to please me and have positive attention is comical.

In a nutshell, I worship my dog and couldn’t imagine my life without her.  If you’re a pet owner, go give your best friend a little bit of love.  And if you’re not, thanks for making through this entire ridiculous post :) .

Final statement… Does anyone else feel like they have a similar personality to their pet?  Thoughts on this?  Science behind it?

Best. Dog. Ever.  Butters, thank you for making me smile every day and loving me as much as I love you.