jump up on it

Setting off the smoke detector while cooking steak totally counts as testing the batteries in said smoke detector, right?

And so I begin blogging again, in a slightly smoky apartment in Austin that smells mouth-watering-ly like steak, with a glass of seven dollar Vinho Verde on my desk, and my wonderful husband killing zombie spiders on the XBox directly behind me. Eleven years ago, I started a Scribble or LiveJournal or whatever was popular and free at the time, and launched my innermost, drama-laden, high school desires and woes into the abyss of the world wide web. Looking back on those entries, which now sit printed-out and tucked safely under my bed in a dusty Bongo boots box, I cringe at the melodrama but relish in the words as a way of realizing how much my life has changed, and what a drastically different person I am eleven years later.

Eleven years? How did that happen? How did I graduate high school, move to Austin, go the the University of Texas, meet my husband, graduate with a degree in nursing, run a marathon, start my dream job, and get married? How does one's life become a delectable blur overnight? I want to be able to read the entries from this blog eleven years from now, and vividly remember this time in my life: my mid-twenties, eight-months-married, free from the commitments of house-ownership or kids, doing a job I love in a city I love surrounded by people I love.

A great man once said, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it."

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Here we go.