This post is not about fashion or shopping.

So…it’s my birthday today. I’m not really doing anything special. I thought about going shopping, but I think I’m going to just enjoy my day, and see where it takes me. It seems like a good day to just “be.” A lot of things have changed for me recently, and life has been challenging at times, but I’m looking forward to this year; I’m going to treat it as an adventure.

I’m so grateful, SO GRATEFUL, for all that I have – I love what I do and sharing my life with you, I love all my new friends in Austin, and I love all the possibilities ahead for me and my fiance. I don’t know why it takes a birthday, or a major life event to remember these things, but sometimes that’s just the way it is. This year, I want to make gratitude part of my life everyday. And laughing. Lots of laughing

Since you don’t get to see my face here very often, or at least a full-on shot of it, here’s a picture my sister took of me when I was visiting her for her birthday in Atlanta (using the hipstamatic app for iphone). I love it because I’m smiling (something which I also need to do more of), and it has a cool 70′s look…kind of reminds me of pictures of my mom when I was born/little. She had VERY long hair.

And just because you already know that I’m addicted to online shopping and buying handbags, here are some random things about me you don’t know. Shopping and Fashion are huge parts of my life, but they’re not all that make me, me…

• Consistent with being a scorpio, I can get very jealous.
• I’m a political junkie – but that’s normally something I keep to myself and discussions with my family. I think it’s cool that my birthday sometimes falls on election day, but it’s usually very frustrating, because I’m a libertarian…
• I’m a voracious reader. I’m usually reading 2 books at a time, one non-fiction, one fiction. Right now, I’m reading “The Key to Rebecca” by Ken Follet (a spy thriller) and Outlier’s by Malcom Gladwell. My favorite genre is Fantasy and my favorite book is Atlas Shrugged. I usually read Atlas Shrugged every year or so as a birthday present to myself; I’ve read it 8 times. This year, I’m skipping.
• I’m the one who has to catch/kill bugs in our house. And since we live in Texas, we have LOTS of scorpions.
• I prefer sour to sweet – I drink grapefruit juice instead of orange, and sour jelly bellys are my favorite candy.
• I love to bird-watch and get really excited when I see any wildlife.
• I just recently paid off my student loans for graduate school. I never finished my Master’s degree in political science although I only had to write my thesis. It just wasn’t important to me or what I wanted at the time. Maybe it was a waste of money, maybe it wasn’t.
• one day I’d like to hike the Appalachian Trail.
• While I was in graduate school I taught 2.5 year olds at an upscale day-care center. One of the moms in my class was a stripper.
• I really really really really love doing bikram yoga.

I know this is such a random post, but it is my blog, and my birthday Thank all of you for being part of my life.