~~~Lara Zielin~~~

STATUS: Wish you were here.

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: Just in time for Easter, more peeps.

Rob and I recently bought a new coffee maker. It’s ceramic and from Starbucks, which is beyond cool for me, the girl who’s owned cheap little Mr. Coffee’s for much of her life. Well, actually that’s not totally true. I had a Senseo for a little bit, but it was weird and felt like I was cheating on Mr. Coffee, so I came back to what I knew and was comfortable with. Anyway, the coffee maker has a timer, which is a coffee-maker feature that definitely is new to me. I love waking up to the smell of coffee — in addition to the cat kneading my stomach, but that’s another story.

The coffee-maker timer got me thinking about what else is brand new for me in 2008. What have I done so far this year that I haven’t done in years past? Let me tell you, the list is long and fascinating. Utterly riveting. Take a look:

Play video games. Technically, I suppose I play computer games, but whatever. It all boils down to me playing a game in front of screen — be it a computer or a television screen — for a while. I’m not an addict playing for, like, 30 hours a week; I’m more like a dabbler, and my games are pretty simple. But don’t let that fool you — this is still fun, and somewhat addictive, stuff. See Peggle if you don’t believe me. For anyone who has ever played Snood before, Peggle is like Snood on mushrooms. It’s cray-zee. And fun. And a nice distraction when you don’t want to write and you’re sick of blogging. I’m just sayin.

Eat 100-calorie snack packs. See? I told you this list was riveting. I know they’re kind of devoid of nutritional value, but I’m an after-dinner “sweets” fan, and these fit the bill without expanding my waistline. I’d never had one until just recently, but now I’m hooked. One pack, if you eat it slowly, can get you through almost the first half-hour of the Biggest Loser. If you love that show like I do, that is.

Buy a metro parks pass. Turns out this area of Michigan has acres and acres of beautiful land with scenic trails (which are paved and always clean) running through them, and for $20 you get access to all of them whenever you want. Oh, and did I mention they allow dogs? They do, which for us is beyond fabulous. I am so in love with this kind of land management. The more I see big-box stores and strip malls, the more thankful I am that back in 1942, state leaders had the foresight to set something like this up.

So, okay, if you count the coffee maker, that’s four things I’ve done for the first time in 2008, which is more than one new thing a month if you’re keeping track. Oh, I forgot to count Scrabulous! I have never really been a Scrabble player, but I love Scrabulous. There is actually another Lara Z. out there who writes YA books (I know! Isn’t that wild? And both our middle initials are M!), and we play together. The best part is that Scrabulous can’t tell us apart, because we’re both Lara Zs, so it always gives us both the points on any given play. It’s awesome.

Okay, that’s five things. I’m done now.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 1:48 pm and is filed under looks like life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.