Luck of the Irish

Happy St. Patty's Day! I hope today finds you wearing green and partaking in junk like shamrock shakes and green beer. Yum.

It has been awhile...last week my thesis proposal was due and school had me a bit bogged down. This week, though, that will not be the case. Glorious, glorious spring break. I get to stay in Madison for over a week and a half sans any commute and am just thrilled.

Mmmm, speaking of, spring is arriving and it is just delicious. Every bone in my body feels invigorated. LOVE IT! My goal and excitement for this spring is to train myself to be a bike commuter. Our plan is to go down to one car for the summer (because I'll be DONE commuting to Chicago, yes!) and thus I am hoping to bike wherever my legs need to go. It is so easy in this eco-friendly, biker-friendly city and I'm pretty stoked about it...I love the feeling of not depending on a car to get around. And I really hope I can get a bicycle basket because that would be really rad.

I'm feeling a bit tangential, thus on a totally different topic...have you been following everything going on with Walter Reed? Oh my. There are so many places I could go with it all, but here is one piece that really gets me - because so many more soldiers are surviving serious wounds, more and more are getting denied disability rights due to government cuts. AND the main illness being denied disability rights is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is so maddening and speaks of a huge regression for the mental health system - PTSD is highly chronic and debilitating and it horrifies me that these soldiers who have been to hell and back won't be able to get any services. And their mental illness will just take over. One more thing about this whole war mess that is unbelievably infuriating...ACK!

So that was the downer of the random post. The upper...I had an amazing birthday yesterday and felt so blessed and showered with love. I have some incredible friends and loved ones. Shout out to my brother and our "twin" birthdays as he turned 21 yesterday. I have a feeling he might not be up to that green beer for St. Patrick's day...

And on that note, au revoir.