all good things: make love, stuff, food, and friends... not war

All Good Things started as a one-hour Sunday night radio show on KSTO St. Olaf radio, featuring feel-good music and 10 highlights from the past week. The show, and its current written form, is brought to you by Clara, Second Set of Baby Steps creator, and my radio co-host Cassie. We both contribute things to the list, so I'll tell you who said what to avoid confusion.

So get cozy and get ready for this week's batch of good things!

1. Song of the week: Let It Go/Let Her Go (Frozen/Passenger Mashup) by Sam Tsui. Is it cheating if these two songs have been the song of the week within the past 2 months? Well, if so, I'm sorry, because I'm still obsessed with them. And this is an exceptional mashup.

2. Last Vegas. J wouldn't watch this with me, but I knew my mom would when I told her who's in it (Robert DeNiro, Michael Douglas, Kevin Kline, and Morgan Freeman). We laughed SO hard. - Clara

3. Iron Hill's two-pizzas-and-a-growler takeout deal. On Friday night I really had a craving to try this out (it's been on my radar for months but we've never done it). It's a great deal, great pizza, great beer, and we didn't have to wait for a table like everyone else. - Clara

4. My office-mate came back from vacation on Friday after being gone for a week. I know she is less happy about leaving Florida's 80-degree weather, but I am a lot less lonely at work now. - Clara

5. At dinner on Monday my family talked about the Super Bowl while eating spaghetti and meatballs. This is funny because it is so atypical: we normally have curry or stew or rice and beans while telling stories about strange experiences and quoting bad movies. - Clara

6. Plans that turn into other plans. I went to church with my friend Abby this morning, and afterward she came over for lunch and we spent awhile looking through my baby names from around the world book (which I probably haven't looked at since high school), and then she took me up to Charming Charlie's in PA to go shopping. It's nice being flexible, and great things usually come of it when you are with good friends! - Clara

7. Getting in touch with your creativity. A couple friends, our moms, and I went to a painting studio a week ago. We had the best time letting our creativity flow! It was also fun to see how much our paintings matched our personalities. - Cassie

8. Settlers of Catan. I got this board game for Christmas and recently started playing it. The game reminds me of a combo of Risk/Oregon Trail/Monopoly. I'm a bit behind the times (it came out a while ago) but I'm really into it! - Cassie

9. Learning something new. Luke and I started learning French via Rosetta Stone. I can say simple things like "The girl reads" or "the man cooks." My accent needs some work, but I'm enjoying the challenge! - Cassie

10. Looking back through old photos. I found one of us (Clara and me) in the KSTO studio and a few from our AGT fall photo shoot. The memories came flooding back and definitely made me wish we were still on the radio! - Cassie


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Thank you, readers, for being with us tonight, and for giving me reasons to write, and things to write about.

And thanks for joining us every Sunday night! Join the Baby Steps on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/TheBabyStepsSaga for good things every day, and updates on new posts. Come back next week for another reminder of 10 more things to be thankful for!

Until then, be kind to each other, and find a reason to smile!

posted from Bloggeroid

all good things: i wanna dance with somebody who loves me

All Good Things is a weekly feature on the blog. It started as a one-hour Sunday night radio show on KSTO St. Olaf radio, featuring feel-good music and 10 highlights from the past week. The show, and its current written form, is brought to you by Clara, Second Set of Baby Steps creator, and my radio co-host Cassie. Sit back and enjoy!

1. Song of the week: I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Whitney Houston. Last night we went to a Korean karaoke place in Alexandria, and had an all-out a cappella jam session to this song in the way there to ramp ourselves up for karaoke. Unfortunately, we had pretty well lost our voices by the time we got there. Plus the video is awesome.

2. Cleaning the closet! Luke and I cleaned our closet today and gave tons of stuff to Goodwill. Not only is it great to have less material things that I don't use, it's great to know someone else will now get to use them!

3. Mom/Daughter dates. My mom came over to have dinner with me, and we hung out for a few hours just talking. A good gab sesh with my mom is really nice sometimes!

4. I picked up Luke from the airport this week and was reminded of the movie Love Actually. People are so genuinely happy to see their loved ones again, and I was no exception :)

5. Woodwick candles are my favorite new household item. I got one for my wedding and am in love with the awesome sound they make!

6. Amy Grant Christmas music!! I never do anything Christmas-y until December. BUT, I always start listening to AG Christmas albums after the first snowfall. Lucky for me that happened this week. Yes!!

7. Conversation starters. I took my Bluetooth keyboard to the Y on Thursday to crank out a few hundred words before class, and two separate people asked me about it. Apparently my typing issues are not unique, and provide plenty of fodder for conversation.

8. Quiddler. My parents had houseguests this week, friends and former coworkers from Woodstock. After our customary rounds of Bananagrams, they brought out a new game we hadn't played before, called Quiddler, which involves spelling but a little less focus. We all enjoyed doing something new, and it was a great new thing to do too!

9. Wilmington Beer Week. Beer week is great, because all these great craft breweries get featured at all these great local restaurants, with featured menus, and I happen to love food, beer, and local restaurants. The only problem with beer week is it's not cheap. So we chose one for the week and went with it. On Wednesday J. and I went to Dead Presidents and got their featured five course meal with 4-ounce beer pairings from Goose Island. De-li-cious.

10. Tea parties. This weekend was Mary's bridal shower in Alexandria, so I drove down on Saturday and picked up Lisa in Baltimore on my way. I always forget how great it is being around people you've been friends with for a long time, even though I know I miss it constantly. The shower was great, with elegant tea cups and saucers from Salvation Army and a great spread of cookies and tarts, put together by Ellen. And then the tea party evolved into dinner, with lots of good people and lots of wine, and a makeshift version of Loaded Questions, and karaoke in a private room at a Korean bar, which is actually not that different from our normal lives together, which involves a lot of constant singing. One of the great things about Oles. And in general, SO good to be with good friends.



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Thanks for joining us this Sunday night! Stick with the Baby Steps on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/TheBabyStepsSaga for updates on new posts and other stuff about new adulthood. Come back next Sunday night for a reminder of 10 good things that haven't happened yet, and on Wednesday night for a more in-depth reflection on post-grad life. Until then, be kind to each other, and find a reason to smile.

posted from Bloggeroid