This week's flavors of happiness

San Francisco winters. Cool, rainy, and green. After experiencing a Chicago winter, I really appreciate a Mediterranean climate...especially the fact that the weather here in January doesn't want to kill you.

Buddhist monks who wear sneakers with their robes. [Example.]

Sitting in front of my heater with a big bowl of salty steamed veggies and a favorite book.

Guy Delisle's books, and the fact that I can read his [French-language] blog. He has written several awesome graphic novels about his experiences in North Korea, China, and Burma, respectively. I highly recommend them to anyone interested in other countries. He is the perfect narrator for travel stories - smart, insightful, a bit cynical, with a sense for the absurd. By the way, does anyone know a tidy term for a graphic novel that is non-fiction, i.e. not a novel?

This week's mini-renaissance on Little Red Reading Hood, that loveliest of message boards.

Reading the news (source of choice) and feeling not-as-ignorant about current events.

My little sister's sense of drama.

A blog award from the talented PinkAppleCore.

Analyzing and making sense of my family. ♥ my therapist.

Making big plans that might never go anywhere. I am looking at some summer language intensives, including an ICELANDIC one that takes place in a very beautiful isolated part of Iceland which I was unable to see in November. I'm drifting away on wishful sighs...