Pizza stone

This pizza stone that I carried home today felt like a monkey on my back. Like when will I learn that you can't ride your bike, carry your stuff home from school, and balance a Sur la Table shopping bag on your handlebars.

Or that baking bread, in theory, sounds like a great idea- until you have to figure out how to get the oven to 550 degrees and have a five-hour free block of time on a Monday to figure out how to actually bake it.

I don't know what to do next year and I couldn't fall asleep last night with my head swimming in details of what could be. I feel more at peace today than I have in a while, having to do with being by myself on Saturday and taking the day for my own creative adventures. And, watching two French movies after being inspired by going out for drinks with colleagues on Friday- feeling like I can do this, speak French, act French, work at a French school.

Walking up Fulton with the pizza stone made me realize that I love that I could walk home, even after I had gotten myself into all of this trouble, and that the bread would eventually bake and probably turn out okay. It might not look great, but it will still taste amazing.

I want... that

I’m not much of an outline guy when it comes to writing. And I don’t ask who my readership is going to be. I write what I think is interesting and hope there are other people out there wired the same way I’m wired. It’s a lesson I learned from William Zinnser, and I wonder if we can apply it to more than just writing. We can apply it to business, if you will, and even leadership. When we are ourselves, we tend to find the people who understand us and there is a natural chemistry and so productivity.... (Donald Miller, blog)

The weekend spent in Tahoe with people that know me well was one of wrestling with who I am becoming and who I already have become. Things that I learned from the weekend:

Friendships ebb and flow, they don't always stay the same.

You might not feel loved in a moment but that doesn't mean that people don't love you.

Friends who weren't married a few years ago will get married and it doesn't mean that they will change overnight. Whoever they bring to the table will be an extension of them, so much so that you want to have them around because you know that the other person is their best self when with their significant other.

Cooking takes a lot of time and energy, if you want to do it right- using the best ingredients like sheep's milk ricotta cheese.

Dancing like a real Animal (and wearing a fur vest) to Miike Snow's song only perpetuates your reputation that you are one.

You are not a burden to the world in any way.

There are hipster coffee shops even in the middle of suburbia, central valley California.

Snow-garitas taste better than margaritas.

Martin Luther King is meaningful to my friends and students alike:

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

I love York City

2010 seems overwhelming for me to encapsulate, like I did with 2009 last year. Right now, I'm thinking in terms of the last two weeks and how the respite of York city was just what I needed.

*I voraciously devoured books, I mean stayed up all night reading Little Bee, Three Cups of Tea, and Stones into Schools. Today, I almost finished The Object of Beauty on the way home. All I highly recommend.

*I spent time with friends doing things that with my fast-paced city life, I normally can't afford to do with my time- going on runs, salvaging at Gabriel Brothers, dancing to Wii dance all night long, watching full-on Entourage episodes, driving around to find the Amish buggies and one-room schoolhouses, playing flash scrabble

*I got to spend time with my family- eating meals together, helping set the table, wrap presents, clean up after dinner- the chores that I used to have

*I went crazy with a sewing machine and Lotta Jansdotter's patterns from Simple Sewing

*I watched three TV series- Big Bang, Entourage, and 16 and Pregnant

*I saw friends that I've known since I was in high school and felt as though we are still the same people

*I went to an Irish bar, drank strawberry beer, and danced while eating kettle corn with three of my favorite people in the square of first night York on New Year's Eve

*I learned to play Animal Herders and now have a copy for my third graders

*I merged the SF world with York world and my friends were amazingly gracious while along for the ride