Making Me Happy This Week–2/25/2018

Oh my this week had its moments.  There were some tough things at work, and some good things.  Every night we came home, had dinner, and basically fell asleep on the couch from exhaustion.  But the week ended well and we bounced back. 

Here’s what’s making me happy this week:

• One of the VPs that I support at work (managing his $30M budget) wrote me a thank you card.  And enclosed an AMEX gift card.  I never take people appreciating me for granted.  Finance people are usually not valued at my work, so to have a good relationship with my VPs and them knowing the value that I bring to the table makes me happy.
• Surviving a tough week at work.
• Cold weather and wearing winter(ish) outfits.  On Tuesday I woke up to 37 degree weather and wondered where I was!  I think I wore boots all week.
• Trying out Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot.  I’ve had Taiwanese hot pot plenty of times, but this was Mongolian hot pot.  The flavors are quite different and new to me.  You choose a soup base and ingredients that you want to cook in the soup base.  We liked it well enough but it’s probably not something we would go often.
• This pink bike.  I can see myself riding along the beach boardwalk on it.
• My new Franco Sarto leopard mule slides.  It was too cold to wear this week, but I will be wearing it soon!
• Finding out that my company’s results for 2017 means a 111% target bonus payout for us.
• Day off on Wednesday.  I take one day off per month for my mental health.  I need to reset from the work stress, relax, and just have a general “Me Day”.  It’s always my favorite day of the month.
• My new pink hair all over.  All my women friends love it.  The men at work don’t know what to think of it, ha!  Todd likes it though, and he’s the only man that counts.  I’ll do a hair post soon and talk about what was done to get this look, and what my stylist taught me about it.  I did have pink hair back in the summer during my leave too, but it wasn’t all over my head like this.  #pinkhairdontcare 
• Impromptu dinner out at Phil’s BBQ on Wednesday night.  Blurry photo but good memories!
• This.  I’m a super-spreadsheet nerd and this makes me happy!
• 2.5 mile “walk & talk” at Miramar Lake.
• Laundry/utility room organizing project.  I’ll do a post with before and after photos.
• Reorganized my closet so that my fall/winter shirts are in color order again.  As you can see my favorite colors to wear looks to be red, blue, black, and gray.  Will do a closet post soon again.  I also put all my cardigans into the left side of Todd’s closet (he doesn’t use that side), with my boots underneath.  Also, these awesome things keep your tall boots upright and together.  Love them!
• 
• A clean(er) oven!  There was some good build-up in our oven such that every time we turned it on, the entire house smelled like burned oil.  It was gross.  We cleaned it out this weekend.
• My organized shoe rack.  It was in disarray but now it’s organized.  Todd gets the last two tiers and I get the rest, ha ha.  It really stores a ton of shoes, especially if you put the left shoe upside down against the right shoe.  I also turn my flip flops and sandals sideways so I could store more that way.  I seriously love this thing.  We keep it in our laundry room so that when we come in from the garage we can immediately take our shoes off and not wear shoes to the rest of the house.  I tried to purge some shoes but only got rid of three pairs this time.

Making Me Happy This Week–2/18/2018

Although lots of things happened this week that were obviously not happy, or rather sad and frustrating, I choose to still make this list.  Because even amongst sad things in the news and frustrating things in our lives, it’s still worth remembering all the little things that give us joy.  I’ve been making this weekly list for a couple of years now, in my paper notebook.  This year I’ve decided to share my list on the blog.  I hope that it inspires you to make your own happy lists.

Here’s what’s making me happy this week:

• My “tower of pens” on the shelf on my desk (photo above).  I cleaned up my home office and my desk, and rearranged some stuff on my desk for workflow and process improvement, and now I can see my pens on the shelf.  The clear organizers are these from Amazon.  They come with clamps so you can clamp them together and they don’t fall over. 
• Kristin Ess hair products from Target.  They smell great and work really well.  I have the shampoo, conditioner, dry texture spray, and the rose gold spray color.
• Queer Eye reboot on Netflix.  I watched the original Fab 5, and I love the new Fab 5.  The episodes make me cry, because they don’t just makeover the man’s outsides.  They really care about the person and make the men feel worthy and worthy to be loved.  It’s actually quite emotional.  And apparently I am not the only one who cries while watching.
• Matty M blazers from Costco for $19.99!  I found these blazers online at Costco.com and they are exact dupes of the Caslon knit blazers that I got from Nordstrom for 3x the price!  I loooooove wearing them to work, because they look sharp like blazers, but they actually feel like sweatshirts, they are so comfy!  I usually wear M on top, but got a size S in both the Nordstrom and the Costco blazers.  They run big.  The black and gray ones are Matty M, while the olive and the navy ones are Caslon.
• Finishing Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire book (#4).  Wow, Harry & his friends are maturing into young adults!  This book had a ton of character development and dealt with a little more mature themes than in the previous books.  I enjoyed it a lot!  We watched the movie last night and I really enjoyed all the boys’ moppy long hair.  I can’t remember if that’s how teenage boys had their hair back in 2005?? 
• Noodle snuggling on Todd.
• Todd going to Taqueria Revolucion in San Ysidro.  Todd applied for Global Entry and had his interview scheduled this past Wednesday.  He had to drive all the way to their office at the last US exit before the Mexico border.  I told him he should Yelp and find a good Mexican place down there to eat lunch, so he decided on Taqueria Revolucion.  He also got some churros from Churros El Tigre!
• Jazz concert the library.  Todd was very excited to see this band that we saw at the San Diego Jazz Festival a few years ago.  We got there a couple of minutes late and it was completely PACKED!  We had to stand in the back, there were no seats left.  And as you can also see, we were the youngest people there, even though we are NOT young!  Todd’s musical taste has us being the youngest at concerts still, ha ha.
• Todd finally meeting up with his friend Ryan, after not seeing him for years.  They kept making plans but it just hadn’t worked out.
• Noodle lying in the sun, sunning his belly.
• Chinese New Year lunch with work and ex-work friends at the Chinese buffet.  I haven’t seen some of these people in a couple of years.  So good to catch up!  Some of them have retired and I got to hear their retired life and be inspired.  Not that I need any more inspiration!  I got a taste of it during my 10 week leave of absence last year and I cannot wait to retire!
• Valentines gifts from my girl friends at work.  They made me feel special.  I am so fortunate to have friends at work!
• Todd finishing his birthday puzzle, with some “help” from Noodle.  I got Todd two puzzles for his birthday, but it turns out he already has one of them.  So he played the other one this week.  He LOVES puzzles.
• Taco salad at Mendocino Farms.  We had this yesterday and we BOTH thought it was SO good!  The funny thing is, we didn’t even know it was vegan until I found the link to it this morning for the blog post.  I thought it was real meat.  Even the dressing was vegan, and it was delicious.
• This guy draws new heads to put on people he sees on his commute.  It’s hilarious! 

Making Me Happy This Week–2/11/2018

Thanks for your comments on last week’s post!  I will share my thoughts on weight loss and what’s working for me… but in a few weeks.  I’ve only been at it for about 5-6 weeks.  I want to give it some time to see how it’s working.

Here is what’s making me happy this week:

• Todd putting 80’s music Pandora station on our big stereo in the family room.  And me singing along to songs.
• Hot chocolate date + Victoria on PBS Masterpiece.
• Self checkout at Target using the Target app + Cartwheel + Wallet all in one.  One scan and I’ve gotten my discounts AND paid!
• Early morning shopping to avoid the crowds.
• Sharing my Cadbury chocolate from India with my Pakistani friend at work.
• Celebrating Todd’s birthday at URBN Pizza and Extraordinary Desserts.  Same as last year, but he likes what he likes!
• Noodle using the new catbed that my sister Joyce gave him for Christmas.  It takes him a while to accept new things, LOL.
• Cleveland Cavaliers beating the Boston Celtics.  And Ohio State Buckeyes beating Purdue.
• Day date on Saturday.  Lunch at Mastiff at Liberty Public Market, Moo Time ice cream, and then Dirty Dancing at the Civic Theater.
• Noodle snuggling on Todd.  Always.
• Our annual electricity true-up bill with SDG&E.  We don’t owe them any money.  Because we went solar a year ago!
• Walking outside at Lake Miramar.  We love our “walk and talks” outside!  It’s time that we get to spend outside getting fresh air and unplugging and really talk to each other.
• Putting Me Together (Audrey Tom)’s new series “Spring Style Profiles” on her blog.  So good!
• Bringing lunch to our dear friends AJ & Meera’s house and catching up.
• Our CEO showing up to our Q4 earnings announcement wearing jeans and pink sneakers.  AND announcing that we are receiving 111% of our annual bonus!
• Work.  This is such a shock.  Before I went on my leave of absence last year, I would have never said that work is making me happy.
• FLOW – this is my word for 2018.  Instead of always fighting against something, I’m going with the flow.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t fight against wrong or injustice.  It just means when things are not that important, I just don’t worry about it.  My default personality is pre-worry, then actually worry, then analyze the worriness post-worry.  Some things just aren’t worth worrying about.

Making Me Happy This Week–2/4/2018

One thing that I’ve been doing for a couple of years in my paper notebook is making a sort-of-weekly list of things that are “Making Me Happy This Week”.  I thought I would start sharing them here on the blog, because we could all use some reminder of what makes us happy.  Maybe it will inspire you to make your own list regularly. 

Here’s what’s been making me happy this week.

• Packing up more stuff and donating them to charity.
• Super warm weather and lots of sunshine and blue skies.  (See first photo – my view walking in to work.)  I’ve been wearing spring and summer clothes!
• Trying out a new Thai restaurant nearby.  It’s spicy but flavorful and good!
• My new 90’s retro stretchy platform sandals.  Remember these???  The 90’s called, and it wants its stretchy platform slides back! Got these on clearance at Target.
• Dressing slightly up for work.  I felt great and confident!
• Inadvertent good hair days.
• Losing weight without calorie-counting.  Since 2014 I’ve tried to lose weight by doing Weight Watchers or tracking food/calories in My Fitness Pal.  None of it really worked.  If I had to guess why it didn’t work for me is that tracking food felt like a diet and unsustainable for me.  If this is a topic that you would like me to elaborate/discuss further in a separate blog post, let me know in the comments.  (No, I am most definitely not selling anything to you.  Just if you would like to hear my thoughts on this.)
• Todd volunteering at Ronald McDonald House.  He cooked and served breakfast there, along with his Toastmasters teammates.  (He was on egg duty and he HATES the smell of eggs!)
• Todd making his famous brown sugar cookies for the Scala programming class that he taught at work.  I didn’t get a photo of the cookies, but they are delicious, and everyone loved them.  If you know Todd well, then you know that one of the things that gives him the biggest satisfaction is to coin him an "expert" in an area. In January he launched a Scala programming class at his work, doing it for free at lunch time. It was at the request of the other programmers at work. He had "tutoring sessions" at lunch, where people could ask for help. I'm not there, but I imagine him as a professor doing "office hours" to help students. It's SO him. And I'm so proud of him, and I know he loves it too.
• Training Noodle to walk outside on a leash.  He only lasted a minute and wanted to dart back inside, but it was a first step, ha ha.
• Me kicking a$$ at work this week.  On Thursday morning I was asked to present/review the 2018 budget ($66M) in detail on Friday morning to the Senior Vice President (officer of the company) of our division and his leadership team.  Not only that, but my finance VP wanted to meet with me Thursday in short notice to go over everything before I presented it on Friday morning.  I nailed it in both meetings.  The “old me” prior to my leave of absence last year would have been so nervous and stressed out to do this on such short notice.  The “new me” didn’t even get stressed.  I knew that I know the numbers like the back of my hand, and that I was the expert in the room despite being the only woman and being the least senior person.  I was not scared and I simply kicked a$$.  It was a defining moment in my career. 
• Relatedly… my new work mindset is making me so happy and satisfied.  My 10 week leave of absence from work was the BEST thing I’ve ever done for my career.  I got so much clarity from it.  I also formed a new mindset and framework about the role of work in my life.  It really prepared me for the changes to come at work that I didn’t even know about at the time.  I’m so grateful that I was able to take the time off.
• Still not buying things (unless replacing broken things) until we’ve purged and organized and can get a good handle on all that we already have.
• Following organization accounts on Instagram for inspiration.
• This article:  Defining Yourself by What You Love, not what you dislike.  Absolutely resonated with me.