5 little things I liked this week

I have spend a lot of time at the office this week. For most of the week, I have had code running on two computers while trying to write a book chapter on a third computer. As you might expect, I have done a lot of internet wandering during the week and I thought I would share a few gems with you covering a wide variety of topics – office life, cool people, great ideas, fab fashion, and completely unnecessary.

OFFICE LIFE

This is my desk object of shame: the days-old coffee cup. You know the one that has that shameful ring of coffee, from the last sip you didn’t drink the previous day. If you have spent any time with me, you know my love for coffee runs deep. If you spend a little bit more time with me, you will learn that similarly, my hatred for domestic tasks is similarly embedded. This creates a perfect situation where I have been known to leave and reuse my coffee cup for days on end. I give it a quick rinse in the morning and splash new liquid happiness in. THIS has made me feel completely justified in my questionable avoidance of daily washing. Maybe I am doing an OK job at adulting! Thanks science!

COOL PEOPLE DOING AWESOME THINGS IN THE WORLD

It is so lovely when a childhood friend is really rocking at life! Jenny Berkel just released a magical music video (amazingly comprised of clips from a 1956 GM Motorama commercial) and it is perfection. It was even featured on RollingStone! You should definitely watch it and love it.

GREAT IDEAS

On the topic of rad youtube videos, I thought this exploration of beauty was lovely.

This video dovetailed perfectly with something that really stuck with me from “Shrill” by Lindy West (which I HIGHLY recommend). She discusses how our standards of beauty are culturally constructed, and one of the actions she took to start to shift what she viewed as beautiful was really simple: she started to seek out tumblr feeds and other sources of media images that showed bodies of all shapes and sizes as beautiful. This is such a simple and powerful act of rebellion – rejecting the impossible standard of traditional media and instead choosing to see the beauty in diverse bodies. I think this simple step may help each of us in finding our own body beautiful. This is a quote from Lindy West:

“You can feel your brain change if you just look at pictures of bodies that aren’t the bodies you’re used to looking at and aren’t the bodies you’re used to valuing. Look at their stomachs and say, ‘What if I could find this beautiful?’ or ‘What actually, objectively, is bad about this?’”

FAB FASHION

My “fashionable” splurge of the week. For as long as I can remember, I have been a cold butt-ed human, an icy-bottomed girl. I basically concluded that my blood is generally too lazy to travel many parts of my body when it gets cold to ensure basic levels of warmth. This issue was exacerbated when 6 years ago I got a wicked case of frostbite on my thighs. I had ambitiously headed out for a 20k run in my winter tights but had severely underestimated the wind whipping across open fields in the middle of a frigid Ottawa Valley February. When I finally got back home, the sitting in a tub of cold water waiting for my splotchy red and white skin to thaw was one of the more painful experiences. Since that time, I have been extra sensitive to the cold. I have decided to pick up one of these super fashionable down skirts. So today, instead of a run-walk cycle on my long run, I did a run-shop cycle, popping into a few outdoor adventure shops in downtown Stockholm to find a suitable puffy skirt. My new companion should arrive in a few days and my chilly thighs and bottom could not be more excited!

I ordered a short one in “beet root” which seemed like the most Swedish option). I had looked at the Houdini skirt, but it didn’t have the bottom side zips, which I feel will be essential for comfortable running, which will be the primary purpose for this item.

COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY (BUT DELIGHTFUL)

Sometimes I am just happy that stuff like this exists: Bears vs Babies – a super inappropriate but awesome looking card game where you build monsters to eat babies…