There is nothing more important than self-care. After the kind of semester I’ve just had (and let’s face it, the kind of 2 years we’ve all just had), I’m looking for it more than ever. And self care can take a variety of forms: either spending some time to yourself getting lost in a good book, heading to the beach for a girl’s weekend, or a splurge on the cutest new handbag range from Vendula London.
I think sometimes we tend to find comfort in what we know – a certain vibe, a certain pace. And going outside of that comfort zone can be pretty jarring. Deep down, I think I always considered myself a city girl. You know, wise and worldly and all that. Even though the reality is, I’ve lived in a lot of different places, with varying degrees of cosmopolitan. Everything from a huge, bustling metropolis, with 8 million people crowding its streets, to a tiny fishing village, with little more than 500 people and a dairy. We’ve lived in the most isolated city…
I’ve always been a bit of a bookworm. Ever since I was a kid, I couldn’t get enough books to read and would devour them in a few hours. It was something to help me keep up with my ever-buzzing mind or my place to escape to when the bullying got to be too tough. There were pages full of adventure. A world beyond my own. When I got older and would travel, my backpack would be laden with at least 5+ books by the time I got home, as I’d need to scoop up a new one in every…
I’ve oddly found myself drawn to rabbit-themed items lately – it’s inexplicable, as Easter is months away and, although fluffy and cute, I’m not sure I would even count bunnies in my Top 10 list of animals. And yet, this Kate Spade handbag somehow hippity-hopped off of the cyber pages and onto my arm recently. And my very-favorite whimsical Irregular Choice bunny wedges seemed to shout at me from inside my closet this morning. What the bunny foo foo is going on?
I know what you’re thinking. “But Kara! Shark Week was MONTHS ago.” Well, dear readers, it’s time I come clean: In my world of marine biology and shark neuroscience, every week is shark week. And in true shark week fashion, I could think of no better option than to finally burst forth in a vintage novelty print I have hunted for years, but only just managed to recently acquire…
I’ve had a love for theatre ever since I was really young. I was definitely the shy, quiet kid who found herself amongst like-minded misfits. Theatre tends to attract other creative souls who want nothing more than to be themselves and somehow find it in becoming someone else for a few hours. I made some of the best friends of my life in those shows: performing, stage managing, painting sets, and flipping through racks in the costume closet. And there was something magic about the curtain call. Not just the feeling of being applauded for something I truly loved. But,…
Over the years, I’ve gotten into many conversations with women about vintage (shocker, I know). But, one particular path that we inevitably skip down is the phrase that has come to be known as “the whole vintage thing.” Women who admire bloggers or their favorite instagram ladies, but sigh and say, “I absolutely love that dress. But I could never, you know, do the whole vintage thing.”
I haven’t officially started yet at my new University, but I’ve been made an Adjunct Professor and therefore have access to my new lab and office. I’ve also been taking advantage of getting here a bit early to learn the campus (a sense of direction jumped a generation in my family) and get to know my colleagues. Most members of my Department I met during my interview, but there are dozens of other faculty members from different Departments who I’ve had the chance to shake hands with. I usually greet them and we do the standard small talk. And after…
It has been raining nonstop in my corner of the world. And we’re talking all manner of rain. Big, fat saturating rain. Little spitting furious rain. Windswept biting rain. All of the above. Blustering wind, soggy shoes, and hair plastered against my face. It’s not pretty. I have felt waterlogged for weeks and less than impressed. It also makes taking blog photos that much more difficult (I know, I know, first world problems).
There’s this thought puzzle known as Schrödinger’s cat. It’s based around a ridiculously complex quantum physics paradox, but the basic idea is that, if a cat were in a sealed box with a vial of poison, there is a point of unknown, at which the cat is simultaneously alive and dead, yet neither dead nor alive. When you look into the box, clearly it’s one or the other. But there’s always that moment before you know, where hope remains both alive and dead until that box is opened.