Life with the Beatles

I grew up on the Beatles. When your parents were both educated in England during the 1960s mod era, those would be the records they brought home. (Well, dad did.) There were also Elvis Presley and the Carpenters, but the mainstay was usually John, Paul, George, and Ringo. My parents were so Anglophile-posh with their musical choices that I didn’t know the hippie period of the Beatles until much later on in life. That also means that I also had no idea who the Rolling Stones or David Bowie was. Elton John was introduced into the pool just enough to get us...
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Unconditional Love of YOU

OakMonster.com - Love Yourself

I was hanging out with my friends in Sacramento this weekend. After a few glasses of wine, and the conversation turned Sex and the City-esque.  My love history–or lack thereof–surprised the hell out of everyone. And I heard myself said this. “It wasn’t like I had a self image issue. I was perfectly happy with who I was and I knew who I was. I was content that guys aren’t attracted to any of this [pointing around myself]…” At which point, as good girl friends do, my friends chimed in, “”Aww! Stop it. You’re totally hot!” “Oh, I know I’m...
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10 Goals for 2014

OakMonster.com - Brandon and Oakley with the Endeavor

Let’s do a quick recap of 2013 first. 2013 Goals: kind of 7 out of 10 Find a job I love? Check! Oh my god, check! Don’t finish last at Race on the Base? Totally check. What I didn’t expect is that I would stick with running and continue to run 5K races around the neighborhood. This year’s Race on the Base is my one year anniversary race, and also my last race in a series of 3 to receive my first ever series medal! Be able to do 20 burpees in a row? I wouldn’t say in a CONTINUOUS...
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Enjoy the Little Things

At 4 a.m. this morning, I was jolted out of sleep by a bout of vertigo. Oh yeah. It’s back. Just a little over a week of having been on my feet again. #FML. Seriously. Fortunately, this one doesn’t seem to have the strength of the original version, but it was enough to nauseate me already.  I woke Brandon up, poor thing, to fetch me an anti-nausea pill. He asked if I want to do the Epley maneuver right away. I chose to sleep comfortably for a few more hours then do it when I’m actually ready to get up....
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Cowboy Take Me Away

Next Friday, Brandon and I will have been married for 10 years. Instead of celebrating on our actual anniversary weekend, we had to do it this past weekend instead.  Brandon’s certification course begins next Saturday. A while back, I bought a Groupon for a horseback riding and wine tasting package with Wine Country Trails by Horseback at Wilson Creek Winery. Now that Brandon is learning to enjoy wine, we thought we’d make a weekend in Temecula out of it. Besides, with my current employment situation, we can’t quite get ourselves to Hawaii like we wanted to do originally. We spent...
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10 Goals for 2011

Before we move forward, let’s see how I did with 2010 goals, shall we? Goals for 2010: 6 out of 10 1. SUCCESS: Lacto-vegetarian Tuesdays. I totally rocked that. Sure, there were some accidental lapses and a few intentional ones, curiously some of those cases involved bacon.  But more or less, I did REALLY good. And I even threw in no alcohol to that mix. So yay me! 2. FAIL: One hour of piano/guitar/singing, twice a month. Another victim of my television habit. 3. SUCCESS: Keep up with Italian. Still going strong despite feeling like the village idiot in class....
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