This one goes out to you and yours.

Turn this up while you're siting outside in the sunshine with your toes in the grass and I dare you to not just feel a little bit of joy.

Michael Franti & Spearhead - Say Hey (I Love You)

(Double click the link to download)

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.

Everything looks different right before you're about to leave somewhere. A detail which would have been overlooked a month ago suddenly holds much more significance now that you know its days are numbered. When everything might be the last time you get to do it, it's hard not to eulogize the experience.

When I think back to my time in Columbia and the sleepy little one-bedroom apartment I've called home for the past two years, I will likely zero in on only one memory. Surprisingly enough, it won't be the fact that I was robbed or suffered through gas leaks or broken furnaces. It won't be the fact that I've learned to take navy showers because my drain is so slow or have gotten used to the way my toilet only sort of works when it wants to. Either I'm too forgiving towards my landlord or I'm too easily pleased... but either way, the memory I leave of this place will likely be my porch swing.

Who doesn't love swinging? Fact is, I have probably at one point or another gone swinging with all of my friends, whether it was a forced activity or a mutually adored one. There's just something freeing about sticking your legs in the air and gliding back and forth, dipping your head back and seeing the world from another angle. So having one to swing upon night or day has brought me a great deal of joy. It has greeted me early in the morning while I drink a cup of coffee, and provided the backdrop for many late night conversations with friends. I've caught up with old friends while I swung back and forth and made plans with new ones with it by my side.

I know it might seem strange to wax nostalgia over a swing, but as my time in Missouri draws closer to an end and I head towards a lot of adventurous question marks, it's hard not to be sentimental about things like that.

Austin-bound.

Today's joie de vivre is....
employment.

Hook 'em Horns.

We're progressing beautifully.

Recently I was in Washington DC visiting my sister during what will probably be the final spring break of my academic career. Let's just pause for a moment in reflection and admiration for this fine vacation, shall we? Because every year, spring break saves my sanity and gives me that final jolt of energy to send me sailing towards the finish line. Rest in peace, spring break. While I never got drunk with you in Panama or arrested with you in Cancun, you sure were good to me.

Anyhow, during the day while my sister worked, my friend Rebecca and I toured the capitol, running around to all the obligatory monuments and memorials that were free and crowded by eighth graders. Meanwhile, the cherry blossoms in the city were literally blooming right before us. In the morning, they were still just tight buds hanging from the trees but almost magically by afternoon they had opened up into beautiful flowers. Everywhere you looked, trees were blossoming.

As someone who is always in search of a good analogy (and bad ones too, I'll admit), I found it particularly fitting that all this rapid-fire change was going on the same time that me and the people I care about were experiencing our own metamorphoses. It seems like every time I answer my phone or check my email nowadays, I hear about friends who are getting engaged, finding jobs, moving to new cities, or starting school again. As someone in the middle of her own job search, I'm finally about to embark on my great adult adventure. It's three parts excitement plus one part nausea. Change is in the air.

Today's joie de vivre is that good ol' friend called progress. We're all just a bunch of cherry blossoms, after all, opening up and spreading out. It's frusturating while we're still waiting to blossom, and we question whether it will ever happen. But eventually, we all come into our own in some way, shape, or form. So let's just embrace the whole experience and pat ourselves on the back for being so gosh darn pretty in the process.