After spending 10 days in Japan, followed by a week in Korea, my mind is still processing the whole, amazing experience. I visited Japan in 2008 on my round the world trip, and it’s still one of my most-loved countries for so many reasons. For now, I’ll start by sharing some of my favorite Instagrams from Japan! Frozen yogurt and freshly made potato chips, drizzled with chocolate sauce at Calbee+ on Takeshita St in Harajuku. Japanese bookstores have a nice selection of cat magazines. Shocking how much print is NOT dead in Japan. Side note: their fashion magazines come with a purse Read more…

From my Instagram pictures, you’d think all I’ve been doing in Florida is walking the beach and collecting shells. This is only partially true. This Week: Beach House in Orlando – The band! Not an actual house. Sometimes things look closer on a map. After seeing that Beach House won’t be coming through Portland on this tour, we decided it would be fun to drive the two hours to Orlando for their show. So glad we did. Awesome show! Mandarin Hide – St Petersburg has a newish old-timey cocktail bar downtown. We originally planned to just walk by since we Read more…

Greetings from the Sunshine State! Round two of my “work remotely in 2012″ goal has brought us to Florida for a bit. Hello, sunshine! This Week Dirty Minds – I joined my coworker Jessica at Powell’s Hawthorne last week to catch Kayt Sukel’s book reading. She’s a travel blogger and new author, and it was interesting to hear her talk about this book and chat with her afterwords. Adding her book to my reading list! [Dirty Minds: How Our Brains Influence Love, Sex, and Relationships] Bamboo Sushi & Pix Patisserie – I talk about Bamboo Sushi too much. It’s my Read more…

After being back in Portland for what seemed like just a few days, we headed to Scottsdale, Arizona for JSConf. Newsflash: my skills in nerdliness have not increased that much in the few weeks since I designed my WordPress theme. I was there for the ‘significant others’ track. Say what? A cool idea, indeed. An even cooler idea on my part would have been taking a vacation along with it. But alas, here’s what I’ve been loving this week… This week: -Pool at FireSky Resort – If we had a do-over, we would have stayed at the conference hotel — Read more…

You know what happens when you live/work from Hawaii for a month? You spend all of your free time outside — in sunshine and/or water — instead of blogging. Mixing things up is good for the soul. So without further ado, here’s a long overdue Weekly Love. -NerdPress – In March, I decided to focus my tidbits of evening Internet-ing time on designing a WordPress theme. Ta-da! Fun and exciting process (which my mom termed NerdPress on Facebook). -Being a Hawaii tourist – Our last weekend in Hawaii, we did a few of the more touristy things that I’d done Read more…