Sweet September

Oh September, where did you go? You are my favorite month and you went by so quickly. Quick recap:

I spent more money than planned on an awesome, skirt functional bike.

I enjoyed delicious Korean BBQ that included Pork Belly. 

I took a Water Taxi to Georgetown for birthday massages and drinks. 

Where the drinks led to this. 

More birthday celebration with a ridiculous set of desserts and a wonderful boyfriend at Vermillion in Old Town. Highly recommend. 

And then headed south for lake time and smoked pork shoulder, my dad's specialty after BBQ chicken.

Solid.

3 years, 5 moves.

 I'm not exactly the gold standard of commitment, but I can say that I'm certainly trying. I have been dating my boyfriend for 2.5 years. I have been at my current job for one year, eight months. And just to throw it in there, I've been working out with Jillian Micheal's 30 Day Shred since January.  This comes after a string of annual boyfriends, semester internships and a first job that didn't last (because I moved!!!) and a habit of growing bored from cleats, saddles, pianos, bells, basketballs and other equipment required hobbies I explored while growing up. One thing I can't seem to figure out though is this whole staying in one place thing. This past weekend I moved for the 5th time in my three years since college. I can official say I'm an expert at furniture arranging, shopping at Bed Bath and Beyond and enlisting people to use the hand truck so I don't have to. Feel free to marvel below at my new use of space.

 

Oh and our bedroom has basically no lighting right now, so I'll show you what it would look like if I had boatloads of money.  I have the bed and the poster. Anyone want to donate an Eames lounge chair to me or $300 for Anthropologie curtains?

Well I'm sure that I could be a movie star if I could just get out of this place

Summer Fridays around the office are deathly quiet. I am probably one of five sitting at my desk right now. And I'm listening to Billy Joel.

And I can't really look forward to the weekend because I take the GRE tomorrow. More like GRRRRRRR. They should require this test after you graduate from high school, since that was the last time I saw this equation: y=mx+b. Or what about this one: c2=a2 +b2. Those 2=squares. Also, who remembers that opposite the hypotenuse of a triangle, the side equals 2x? Give me a break slash wish me luck.

Wild and Wonderful

Last weekend we ventured into the wild West Virginia for hiking, white water rafting and camping. When we got there Saturday, we made the 800 stair descent to the old Kaymoor Mine.  An abandoned mining town, there are still structures on the mountainside from the days of excavation. The most ironic thing is that these men worked in such terrible conditions, but were surrounded by beautiful scenery I'm sure there was no way they could appreciate. At the bottom of the mountain, past the railroad tracks and beyond the boulders is this:

With a night of 2 hours of sleep behind me thanks to not remembering how to camp and ridiculously sore calves from climbing more steps than the broken Woodley Park metro escalator, I confronted my fear of white water rafting with a few class V waves and a native West Virginian river guide name Scott. Let's just say I know a new meaning of "indefinitely." Ask me about that one later. 

I've been back in the city one day and I miss the quiet, the stars, no electricity. Granted, I think it would take about a week before I missed the city, but sometimes I wonder. 

The psychology of lying about why you're sharing

I just came across an infographic produced by The New York Times Consumer Insight team (aka my dream job) on the Psychology of Sharing. They actually produced a substantial report on it, which can be found here, but without analyzing the entire study, I want to highlight a point which makes me thing people lie--especially in focus groups.

I can tell you that from my experiences of being on my grandparents list of people to email pictures of waves and pictures of dogs and deers being friends to, that 94% of people truly don't carefully consider how the information they share will actually be useful to the person they are sharing with. While my grandparents may be in the 6%, I think I can substantiate my point by pointing out the ridiculousness of people's status updates on Facebook. Did the person that I met 6 years ago, once, carefully consider that I would find her 8000 wedding picture updates useful? This is where Google+'s value proposition comes in. If you are thoughtful about sharing, the Circles can in fact make sure that you are only sharing with people who will care that you are sharing.

Also, are you kidding me with only half of people thinking that sharing allows them to inform others of products/ideas they care about and get people to like them too? Just my opinion, but I'm pretty sure these statistics should be swapped. And yes, I am sharing my thoughts in hope that I will change your opinion of these statistics just by reading what I wrote. Did it work?

via Social-Creature