Thankful

Karen wrote a lovely post about what she's thankful for. She's inspired me. At Thanksgiving, it's a family tradition to tell everyone at the table the things you're thankful for. Chris and I did it with my parents while they were visiting. Now I'll do it for you all. (This ritual always makes me a little watery-eyed so bear with me.)

Chris - I'm very, very thankful for Chris and my relationship with him. I am so happy sharing my daily life with a wonderful man. I love how we communicate and how he's always emotionally supportive. Plus, we have a lot of fun together! Living with Chris is so, so much better than seeing him every two weeks, like we did for the past year. I'm very thankful he moved to Arizona.

My Job - Since my move in March from a large corporation to a small web company, I've been a lot happier. A LOT. I found the balance between work and life that I was missing before. I love my coworkers and have been reminded that laughter at work is a benefit of immeasurable value.

Thanksgiving

For me, Thanksgiving was a much needed break. I absolutely loved having so much extra time to relax and just bum around the house. It's amazing what a long weekend will do for one's outlook.

On Wednesday morning Mom, Dad, and the little dog, Mia, flew in from Texas. Chris picked them up and spent the day with them while I was at work. Wednesday night we went to Sassi, a lovely rustic Italian restaurant in Scottsdale. The meal was divine, especially the made-from-scratch pasta. I especially enjoyed the view of the city since Sassi sits on a higher elevation. It was a wonderful and relaxing night.

On Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, we stayed close to home. The only venture out was to take the dogs to the dog park. Mac loves the dog park because of the dogs. Bentley likes the dog park because of the people. Mia didn't seem to like anything about the dog park. She was clearly overwhelmed. Back at home, I spent a leisurely morning preparing side dishes for our traditional Thanksgiving meal. Chris managed to get Mom and Dad to try the Wii (that I had borrowed from work). The turkey finally went in the oven just as the Cowboys game started. All the food was complete just in time for an early evening meal. For me, the best part of Thanksgiving was not feeling stressed over the food (by doing little bits throughout the entire day, it felt really easy) and not feeling sick from eating too much.

Early Friday morning my parents caught a flight back to Texas and left Chris and I to ourselves for the weekend. Friday we played the Wii all day long. Yes, seriously, all day. It was the relaxation I needed! Saturday and Sunday we did projects. Chris put a new suspension on his car. (Wow!) I met a customer who was in town for the holidays and did a whole bunch of sewing. (No pictures of the sewing since it's all Christmas presents and I don't want to ruin the surprise.)

Saturday night Chris and I went out on a date - dinner and a movie. We saw Beowulf in 3D. The movie was fun but we enjoyed Grandma's Boy on video even better. (Thanks, Phil, for that recommendation! It was hilarious.)

View the entire set of pictures.

Stumbling on Happiness

Recently, I've been reading a few blogs that focus on personal finance. I really enjoy Get Rich Slowly and FiveCentNickel. One of these sites (or both, I can't entirely remember) recommended the book Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert.

I've been thinking a lot these days about happiness. Generally speaking, I'm happy. I like my life and feel in control of it. But within the past six months, there have been a lot of changes in my life such as my recent engagement to Chris & his move to Phoenix to live with me. Currently, I am very, very happy (if I knew living with Chris would be so good, I would have done it a year ago!), but that doesn't mean I didn't worry about it tremendously before it happened. And as is my nature, I've been worrying plenty about the future. Will marriage make Chris and I more or less happy? How about kids?

I haven't read much about happiness despite thinking about it a lot. So I went to the library and picked up the book. (Actually, I requested it via their website and it was put on hold at the library closest to me so I could pick it up. How convenient!) The author looks at happiness from a scientific perspective. He sites study after study to back up his points. For me, this book was great. I learned a lot about humans and how our brains work. It opened my eyes to happiness and is helping me worry a lot less about the future.

Here's a summary of the key points from my perspective:

• We rely on our imagination to determine if we'll be happy in the future. We "imagine" the future situation. But our imaginations are bad! They only fill in part of a story and can never provide all the details of a situation.
• Our memories are bad! We only remember small pieces of our experiences (like a snapshot) and our imagination fills in the rest. We are bad at predicting the future because we are bad at remembering the past. Our memories just aren't accurate.
• The best way to know if you'll be happy in a particular situation is to ask someone else about their experience of that situation. Don't rely on your own imagination!
• Money doesn't lead to happiness. Once you get your basic needs met, there's little improvement in general happiness. The specific study showed little difference between people who made $100K a year and people who made $5M a year.
• Society perpetuates ideas about happiness in order to perpetuate itself. For example, society says money will make you happy in order to keep the economy going. It says having children make you happy too. Imagine what would happen if people stopped having children! The book showed four studies that showed happiness diminished with the introduction of kids to a family.
• Humans are really good at rationalizing really bad situations. We have a tendency to make the best of all situations so generally, we're happier than we imagine we would be. For example, we see the loss of a job as the opportunity to begin a new career.

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Local First Arizona

Need to make some time to investigate this site later - Local First Arizona. It's got a directory of local businesses. Could be a great resource to help me find some new things in the area!

Thanks, Aaron, for the link.

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