February

I love February! It doesn't hurt that it contains my birthday, but it is also the month that the horrible weather in Salt Lake breaks just enough to show that there is still hope for a warm future. January is historically bogged down with inversions, grey skies, and bitter cold. This year I was saved from the heavy Utah snow but didn't escape the cold or the grey. I am holding out (possibly-false) hope that on Tuesday at midnight, the temps will magically rise ten degrees (F), the skies will clear, and I will be able to go for some strolls without my face shattering off. I would love that!

Speaking of love, February has been hijacked by Valentine's Day marketers and therefore tends to be full of pink hearts and kissing teddy bears. That part I do not love. Every year I make my own calendar with pics of stuff and junk I like. A few years ago I made the mistake of getting cutsey by decorating February with photos of my boyfriend at the time and me so I could be all lovey-dovey on Valentine's. We broke up on Groundhog day. Needless to say, according to my wall it was March for two months that year. This year I decided to use photos of things that I love now and always will.

Hot chocolate (notice the lack of whipped cream and the addition of a marshmallow - it took a long time to find exactly the right hot chocolate for this photo), a comfy seating arrangement (when I was a kid I always wanted a reading nook/window seat in my room and it would have been lined with the softest, most form-fitting pillows ever made), rain (it's hard to see in this photo since it's a pic of the calendar but that's a table getting rained on. My perspective of rain has changed here but I love when it hasn't rained forever and it just dumps down hard), books. Basically I love all of these things separately but some of my favorite days have been spent giving equal love to all four elements.

Thinking about this love-fest made me remember some of my friends' blogs from last year. A couple of them wrote about people they love for every day of February. The people part seems like a recipe for disaster; I can think of more than 28 people without much effort so there is the difficulty of narrowing the list, then there is the issue of politics. What if I mention one person before another? Does that mean I love the first one more? Or is it a countdown to the person I love most? And what if I choose a day for someone that they don't like (probably not something most people care about but I am a number nerd so I would want to be on a good day - numerically speaking - if someone were writing about me)? Far too many issues to consider writing about people. The other noun categories, however, tend not to put up much fuss about their ranking in my life.

All this chatter merely to tell you, "Prepare yourself for twenty-eight posts about things I love." As always, I would love to hear from you about your loves in return!!!

1 - Crusty Bits

2 - Simpler Times

3 - Perfidious Albion, Angleterre, Home

4 - Ice + Water = Bliss

5 - Lynn Wilson - Green Label

6 - Strawberry Moraine

7 - One Man's Garbage

8 - Cuteness

9 - Green Goblin

10 - Nerds!

11 - Flower Power

12 - Spreadsheets

13 - Books

14 - Learning for Learning's Sake

15 - Cycling

16 - Life*

17 - My Gram

18 - Poems

19 - Awesome Friends and Hot Guys

20 - Wit

21 - Showers

22 -

23 -

24 -

25 -

26 -

27 -

28 -

*being slightly superstitious I'm reluctant to type that lest a giant piano fall through my ceiling onto my noggin....doesn't seem to be happening so we might be good.