Health, Happiness, and Hochdeutsch

Resolutions, Goals, Rules, Whatever

It's a new month, which is the new New Year. At the suggestion of a friend, I'm trying out HealthMonth for tracking weekly goals. Nothing too surprising here:

• Exercise for 30 minutes at least 5 days a week
• Stay under my calorie limit at least 6 days a week
• Track your meals at least 6 days a week
• Write or journal every day (blogging counts)
• Study German at least 4 days a week

I had been using Lose It to track my calories and eat more consciously, but I haven't logged in for a month or two now. So I started up again, to support my HealthMonth goals. HealthMonth uses gamification — points and teams — to encourage you. End of day 1 is looking pretty good. :)

Moving Back to California

So pretty much everyone who knows me in real life already knows this, but this month Forrest and I are moving back to California. When the startup we worked for was acquired by Google, moving to their headquarters in Mountain View was one of the conditions. So February 18th, we're packing up all our stuff and heading back to the Bay Area.

I've lived in Seattle since 2007, and we both really like the area. We had always strongly considered moving back to California... some day. We're not especially happy that we're being forced to move back sooner than we wanted to, however. (Despite great benefits and good pay. I know, I know, it's not really a horrible situation. I'm lucky that this is what I have to complain about. I get that.)

Neither of us like the sprawl of the South Bay, where you have to drive to get anywhere. We are definitely going to miss our apartment in Fremont, where we can walk everywhere or hop on a super-convenient bus. So rather than settle for some expensive, small apartment in some crappy, sprawling suburbia, we found ourselves a cool rental house 8 minutes above Los Gatos. (Note: There's a Borders in Los Gatos! Alas, they may soon be filing for bankruptcy...)

The house is this 150-home community in the middle of the redwoods of the Santa Cruz mountains. It's about as big as our old rental on Dexter Ave, except it has a second bedroom instead of a weird office/walkthrough area. The yard is pretty small, but big enough for chickens! I'm really quite excited about keeping a small flock of chickens. Number and breed TBD. Apart from the yard, there's a small deck between the bedroom's back door and said yard, and then there's a much larger deck off of the living room and kitchen. There is a wood-burning stove in the living room, and a pot belly stove on the large deck. All in all, I think we'll like it there — it will definitely be a nice daily break from the South Bay sprawl.

No, we don't have a date yet

Forrest and I are still engaged and still planning to get married in California this year. We've been holding off on setting a date, because we were waiting until we had moved to California. It's difficult to get a good sense of venues solely based on their websites — they tend to portray only their best side, y'know? And since venue will be the determining factor for specific dates, that's just going to have to wait a little bit longer.

Starting to Learn German

My sister Lisa foolishly said in my hearing, "I want to learn German." You should not say you want to learn a language in front of me. My response: "Orly? Let's!"

Turns out, she was actually serious. She's got some good motivation, since her boyfriend speaks German. We had some snafus with studying together remotely, however, so for now we're studying independently.

Ich nicht spreche Deutsch jetzt, aber ich studiere es. Ich lese deutsche Tweet, und ich höre ein Podcast bei Deutsche Welle.