And everything will work out fine.

First of all, happy new year! May it be filled with that which your heart desires (maybe happiness and health isn’t really your thing, and who am I to shove those wishes down your throat?)

Before I amaze you all with my incredibly deep and earth-shattering resolutions for 2011, let’s check in on how I did with last year’s:

- get more sleep (8 hours-ish a night) – I think I did a little bit better, but there is definitely still room for improvement here
- never sleep in past 10 am (so, to respect previous resolution, never go to bed past 2 am) – slight improvement, but overall kinda FAIL
- take more photos – I did pretty good on this one
- watch every single Dr Who episode before 2011 – complete and utter FAIL. I’m deferring this one to 2011.
- try and waste less time online – definite improvement, but I could still a bit better at it
- craft more (this will probably be a resolution every year for the rest of my life) – counting all the shit I did for the wedding, I definitely crafted more. I’m still keeping it on the 2011 list though.
- take more weekend trips – success. A lot of those trips were to weddings, but that still counts, right?
- build better/stronger relationships with new Fredericton friends (making friends is so awkward, guys) – still a work in progress, but we definitely succeeded on this one in 2010.

And that I’ve shown you all that I generally fail miserably at resolutions, here are 2011′s:

- wear more lipstick
- support local business as much as I can (I’ve given up my iRewards membership at Chapters in favour of shopping at Westminster Books already – this is a big one for me!)
- stop using a paper agenda and use my smart phone as an agenda (for a gadget nerd, I really like my paper agenda for some stupid reason)
- watch every single Dr Who episode before 2012
- learn at least 5 songs on my ukulele before the end of the year
- craft more
- start a YouTube cover band with my husband. Make at least 3 videos.
- be more regular with my exercise routine

I’m feeling optimistic, dudes!

Picture from frangipani photograph on Flickr.

I enjoy a lot of really simple things in life. Russian nesting dolls are one of them. There is just something about uncovering a super tiny doll only to find out that it just keeps on going – there’s and even tinier one inside of it! – that brings incredible joy to my heart. I hope to one day have a very extensive Matryoshka collection. *hint hint to my husband*

Ok, so I know that age is relative. I’m not that old; but I’m also not getting any younger.

The basis for this post came to me on Sunday night, at my friend Kim‘s beautiful wedding reception. I was hanging around with my friends Émilie and Mathieu, taking a little break from the dance floor, when Mathieu proceeded to tell us that he just can’t dance like he used to. He used to groove and move and he claims that now he’s pulling all sorts of “old people dance moves”. All three of us were on the dance floor for one of the first songs of the evening (“Old Time Rock and Roll”?), and Mathieu just gave up after that one and sat out the rest of the evening. He claims that he was dancing and looking around at the old folks next to us and realized that his smooth moves were eerily similar to those of our dance floor companions. “I just don’t have it anymore”, he said.

So for Mathieu, getting old is dancing around to Bob Seger swaying from left to right and clapping your hands to the beat of the music.

That got me thinking about the things that make me feel old. I confided in Émilie and Mathieu that with every year that has passed and passes, my dislike of/general apathy towards Fleetwood Mac has turned and continues to turn into appreciation and love. Fleetwood Mac, dudes, I love them.

There are many, many other things that make me feel old in my day-to-day life. They will surely be the topics of many a future blog post.

So what makes you feel old?

Oh hi, and thanks for not having given up on me. Well I’m attempting to make a triumphant return to my blog/general online existence and it’s kind of slow going. The last 3 months have been, to say the least, fucking hectic. There’s really no sugarcoating it.

In the last 3 months, I had a bachelorette party, helped plan and traveled to Ottawa for my friend Val’s bachelorette party, went to my cousin’s wedding in Campbellton, went to Val’s wedding in Ottawa, drove to Toronto for Chris’ cousin’s wedding (a week before our wedding), hosted lots of our friends over (including Sinéad and Peter from Ireland!) the week before our wedding, got married and went on my honeymoon (California!), all this while working, traveling to Miramichi about 8 times and pretty much planning my whole wedding. It was exhausting, fun, frustrating, stressful and annoying.

I knew I had a super packed summer. I knew I should have been doing more for our wedding earlier on in the year. But I didn’t. I had no excuse – it’s just not in my nature to be prepared. I’m a procrastinator and I can only work under tight deadlines and lots of pressure. I suck.

The thing that was the hardest in the last minute super busy wedding planning process was balancing my perfectionist nature with my procrastination. I wanted everything to be perfect, but had no time to make it happen. Well in the end everything ended up being perfect and the only thing that took a bit of a beating was my sanity and sleep schedule. No biggie!

Our wedding day was perfect, fun and simply memorable. Everything went off without a hitch, the weather cooperated and everybody had a great time. We’ve since received our photos from James, our photographer, and we love them. Since I’m about 3 years behind on uploading picture to Flickr, here is a slideshow of our pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Our honeymoon in California was really great as well. We pretty much just ate like pigs and did nothing for 2 weeks. *thumbs up* Photos to be uploaded on Flickr in the next 3-5 years.

Now we’ve been back home for a few weeks, settling back into the rhythm of “normal life”. Work, cooking, grocery shopping, knitting. It’s nice!

Married life is no different than living-together-for-the-last-six-years life. Still, it’s nice to be married and for things to be “more official” now. Having a husband is so much more credible than a boyfriend. Oh, and I’m Mrs. Taylor now!

For those of you that didn’t know, Chris and I has our sights set on a Mediterranean Europe honeymoon in August. We were looking at flying in and out of Rome, taking a short cruise around the Mediterranean Sea to Greece, Turkey, Croatia, etc. and then spending the rest of our time along the Italian coastline and in the south of France. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it?

Well we’re still going – just not right away. Chris doesn’t get much paid vacation at his job and he wasn’t able to get any leave without pay in August, which really blows. So instead we’ve set our sights on sunny California. Neither of us have ever been and we’re getting pretty excited to go!

So far we’re flying into L.A. and bumming around there for a few days, then we’re heading to a $3 million beach house that we’ve rented for a week in Solana Beach for some California-style beach bumming and not thinking about weddings…. ever again! And then, well who knows… we’re thinking of sort of winging the rest of it. I most definitely want to catch some shows while I’m there, so we’ll see what comes up closer to the date. We’re there from August 3rd to the 16th and then it’s back to non-wedding-planning reality in Fredericton, which should be nice!

As for the Mediterranean Europe vacation, it’s still a go, we’re just thinking of going in sometime in the off-season next year. That way it’ll be easier for Chris to get leave without pay from his job and there’ll be less tourists in our way.

And now I leave you with what is possibly my favourite California-related song, California on my Mind by Wild Light. Lyrics not necessarily safe for work.

If you were to ask me what my favourite band is at different points in time in my life, I might have answered Sloan, The Beatles, or in more recent years Cold War Kids. But one band that’s stuck around for the last few years and that I think is definitely here to stay is The New Pornographers.

I could write on about their intricately catchy melodies and clever and fun lyrics, but I probably wouldn’t be doing them justice. They just rock. And roll. And everything in between.

And they have a new single out! Whee! Do yourself a favour and check them out. You won’t regret it, I swear.

Check out The New Pornographers’ new single Your Hands (Together) and look out for their new album Together in stores in May 2010.

Love love love!

Ottawa. I love it – it’s a wonderful city.

I’m in Ottawa for the week for work. I don’t miss the city that much on a day-to-day basis when I’m in Fredericton, but when I’m here, I miss all the little silly things that I loved so much about living here. Hartman’s, Bridgehead, sketchos on the bus, UOttawa campus, awesome restaurants, Centretown doggies…

I especially miss all the amazing friends I made while living here. I’m on a wonderfully strict schedule of lunch with this person, supper with so-and-so, and late night coffee with this other person. It’s amazing. I’m exhausted but loving every minute of it.

And then this weekend I’m spending 100% of my time with my main lady Val. We haven’t seen each other ever since I moved away in December of 2008. I’m incredibly excited and fully anticipating not wanting to leave come Sunday.

So yeah… things I love? Ottawa.

So I’m a super indecisive person. I like to think that I’ve gotten better at making decisions over the years, but I’m still pretty indecisive.

I love tattoos, and I’ve wanted to get one since I was about 19. Well I always wanted to get one before then, but I knew better. Who knew what type of person I might become as an adult? What if I regretted the butterfly on my hip? (I would have.) I was always really good about tattoos as a teen. Piercings are another story, but I was good about tattoos.

So when I “became an adult” (whatever that means), I decided that I wanted tattoo of a tree on my arm. That was about four years ago. Chris is the one that suggested that I wait. Since I’m so indecisive, he told me to wait and see if I still wanted the same thing one, two, even three years down the road. And I did.

So a little over a month ago, after a wait of about four years, I got my very first tattoo! I’m feeling quite rebellious in a very stable-job-knitter-home-owner type of way. You know… Anyway! Here it is – my new tattoo. It’s inside my right arm underneath the crease of my elbow.

It was done by Shaun Martinson at White Lotus in Fredericton. I love it so much and am so glad that I waited to get this done.

When we were kids, my mom would tell my sister and I to think about what we would look like in a wedding dress before getting a tattoo. Well I’m now glad that next summer I’ll have a beautiful tattoo to complement my wedding dress on our wedding day.

Instead of recapping 2009 or being super elitist and letting you all know how morally superior I am because [these super obscure and indie bands] put out my favourite 10 albums of 2009, I’ll let you know what my 2010 resolutions are!

Behold, in no particular order:

- get more sleep (8 hours-ish a night)

- never sleep in past 10 am (so, to respect previous resolution, never go to bed past 2 am)

- take more photos (getting my brand new DSLR today! What what!)

- watch every single Dr Who episode before 2011

- try and waste less time online

- craft more (this will probably be a resolution every year for the rest of my life)

- take more weekend trips

- build better/stronger relationships with new Fredericton friends (making friends is so awkward, guys)

Well I think that’s a tall enough order for one year. What are some of your resolutions?

Happy twenty ten to all! xox

A year today I was sitting in Rachel’s apartment’s kitchen in Fredericton (eating a donair, might I add) with Chris and his dad, reeling in from a long day of driving a car and a U-Haul packed to the brim with all of our earthly belongings from Ottawa to Fredericton. A year ago tomorrow morning we were meeting my parents downtown Fredericton to get the keys to our new apartment and move in all of our stuff in a few hours (there is no messing around if my dad is involved – beware!) A year ago this week Chris and I were waking up every morning and saying how weird it was to be back in New Brunswick. A week from today it’ll be a year that I’ve been at my new job at NRCan.

It’s probably been one of the most emotional and eventful years of my life to date. A good year, but also tough in some spots.

Good in that we bought a house, both have found meaningful employment that we enjoy, got to spend lots of time with our families, are really enjoying living in Fredericton, have met lots of lovely nice people and have made some new friends. The year’s mostly just been tough because we missed our friends from Ottawa a lot, and still do today.

Whenever I sit back and think of all the changes I experienced in the last year, I kind of just want to have a stiff drink. Here’s to hopefully never having such a crazy year again! Cheers!