One

Greetings friends. Today I am broadcasting live from my couch where I sit sipping on Echinecea Complete Care tea (it’s gross). I got up this morning with a sore throat and thought, “Sore throat! No big deal. I can still go to work, I’m tougher than that.” I made it until about 11:30 and then developed a fever and started seeing black spots around the corner of my vision so I decided I should probably head back to bed. So here I am. First sick day of 2012.

Two

The good thing about having an epic three hour nap in the middle of the afternoon? Totally crazy dreams. For example in a two hour period this afternoon I dreamed the following:

• That I was on a tropical vacation with some friends and we thought it would be a great idea to go snorkeling and try to find some sea turtles, fish and polar bears (?). Our captain took us out to the a great snorkeling spot where we did indeed spot a polar bear (hooray). A British family who bore a striking resemblance to the Dursleys was also on a snorkeling trip in the same spot. Unfortunately their captain brought them out in one of those inflatable boats with a motor. A great white shark came and ate Mrs. Dursley.
• On my way home from the snorkeling expedition, I wanted to stop off at Safeway and get some ginger ale for my upset stomach. Just then a flash mob of about 50 women dressed in bridal gowns converged on Safeway, doing a full fledged song and dance number to A Whole New World. I tried to get a good video of it on my phone to send to my friend, because we had had to sing A Whole New World together at a wedding a few months ago (that part is actually real, believe it or not). But I couldn’t get a great shot and walked away all sad and “What’s the point, anyway?” I left without any ginger ale.

Three

In an effort to be more organized and better at scheduling myself, I have started religiously using this new app, teux deux to keep track of my to do lists. It is very simple and oh so pretty and design-y. You can also access it via the web if you don’t have an iPhone. This is a huge improvement from my previous system of scribbling lists on whatever piece of paper I had readily available. One of the things I like most about it is that if you don’t cross something off the list it pushes it to the next day. That way I never forget anything. This post also has some pretty helpful tips on how to make effective to-do lists if you’re a freelancer.

Four

The home button on my iPhone had been sticking pretty badly so I took it in to the Apple store on Saturday and they gave me a new phone. I’m super glad I bought Apple care because my warranty had actually expired two days before my appointment so if I didn’t have it I would have been out of luck. Overall I’ve been really, really happy with the customer care I’ve gotten on all my Apple products. It does make you wonder though, if it’s that easy for them to just give you a new phone…why do they cost so much?

Five

So it’s January and it’s cold and snowy. Pretty good time to daydream about summer, right? If you’re missing: camping, roadtrips, cliff jumping, going on major hikes with your friends (ew, why?), wearing shorts. Take a look at this tribute to summer.

Six

On Thursday night last week, Michelle tricked Tami and I into coming over to do a workout video with her. She even had sweat pants ready for Tami to change into. It was torture, and it’s a really good thing that I like Michelle so much because I would have walked out on most other people. When we were protesting too much(during the more challenging parts of the video), Michelle kept telling us, “Just keep in mind Ben does this with me!” As soon as it was over me and Tami wanted brownies.

Seven

Also on Thursday, Tami was thrifting and found this awesome leather biker jacket for me at the Salvation Army. I have wanted a leather jacket for awhile but have never been able to afford a nice one. I feel way more bad ass than I actually am when I wear it. Looking at this picture though, I don’t know if bad ass is something that I can really convincingly pull off, is it? Hm.

Eight

Dustin Penner took a lot of flack from a lot of people when he played in Edmonton, but he was always one of my favorite Oilers. I still have a huge picture of him on my fridge even though he’s moved on to greener pastures (debatable). Anyway, last week he missed a couple of games due to back spasms. He explained to the media that they overtook him when he was sitting down to a pancake breakfast made by his wife. Pennercakes became a big thing on twitter and he was the laughing stock of the hockey world for about 10 minutes. He wrote a response to one of the LA Kings hockey blogs and it really made me laugh (also…who knew there were LA Kings hockey blogs?). Goodness knows Oilers fans need to laugh these days so they don’t cry. Anyway, he should start a hockey blog when he retires. I’d totally read it. It should probably be called Pennercakes.

ps— this is the water bottle incident he references

Nine

I’ve had a lot of freelance work the past few weeks. Which is really, really, great. The more I do it, the more I love it. Unfortunately though it did mean being holed up in my house all by myself all weekend. Things to add to the future dreams and goals list: my own cute office space. Separate from my house if possible.

Ten

On Saturday I was forced to do another redesign for sarahmiller.ca when wordrpess automatically updated on me and erased a bunch of CSS work that I’d done. It was super annoying but ended up being a blessing in disguise because I’d been meaning to do an update here anyway. You like?