10 things I did yesterday... instead of social media.

I usually try not to get on social media until after church/noon on Sundays, but yesterday I thought, "Why not keep it going?" (Full disclosure: I took about twenty seconds and posted one photo, but didn't check back until today.) Here's what happened.

Slept til 9.

Ate peanut butter toast, scrambled eggs, and chicken sausage with Sean.

Went to church and sang hopeful hymns and listened to Pastor Alice talk about the sin of sloth - not necessarily laziness as we think of it, but indifference.

Ate my lunch at the dining room table with sunlight streaming in. Started reading A Feast for Crows (Game of Thrones #4). Ate four strawberries and four Thin Mints and three Tagalongs and drank tea.

Got an unexpected phone call from a beloved faraway friend and talked for an hour.

Stood outside for five minutes and listened to two birds calling back and forth to one another from different trees. Looked at my reflection in the glass door and decided my hair looks really nice glinting in the sun. Found the first bloom in our backyard (pictured!).

Wrapped up in my blanket and sat outside in the warmth. Journaled by hand for thirty minutes which I haven't done in God knows how long. Read Still Writing by Dani Shapiro. 

Spent time with Sean when he got home from baseball.

Went to writing group.

Sat in front of the television with my legs crossed like a little kid and watched the last Downton Abbey, beaming one minute and bawling the next. (Golly, I adore these characters.)

So, you're probably thinking, it's not like she wouldn't have done these things if she had been checking Facebook and Twitter and Instagram during the day... but normally, I would have to add something to the end of those sentences above.

Slept til 9... and checked Facebook immediately after waking up. Went to church... and skimmed Instagram when I got bored. Sat outside and... looked at email. Spent time with Sean... with my eyes sometimes on my phone. Watched the last Downton... and followed along with everyone else on Twitter.

Social media is an important part of my life - I manage it at work, and connect with friends and family on it personally. But taking a full day's break made everything feel a little crisper, a little more meaningful. And I think this means that more social media-less Sundays are in my future.

P.S. You'll probably notice that I'm playing around with blog design these days - just trying to get a feel for what's best. Bear with me!

The Friday Five: It's the experiences, and the little things.

My husband is the hardest to shop for. (From what I hear, this is fairly common among husbands.) He tends to buy himself what he needs, and wants very little. But I recall a conversation we had early in our relationship where we agreed that we'd always go for the gift of an experience over a material thing. That may be we why we've seen five of the world's top guitarists in five years, and why when I put together a photo collage of five summers at the beach, we're wearing the same bathing suits, hats and sunglasses.

I say all of this because looking back over this past week, it is experiences that have stood out the most for me. This is probably the case most weeks, but for some reason it's extra clear as March 2016 kicks off.

This lovely was a birthday gift from my in-laws - it hangs on the bulletin board in my office.

So, friends, what has saved your life this week? Taken you out of a bad mood, lessened your stress load, made you smile or laugh - even for a moment? Here are some of mine:

1. Adventure planning! Sean and I are taking our second trip out to the Pacific Northwest, and over the weekend we scheduled some new and exciting stops.

2. A fun and fruitful coffee date with a new friend this week. It's hard to beat chai and conversation about writing, photography and storytelling.

3. Women's group on Wednesday night was especially good - lovely people, rich conversation, laughter, and two sweet babies for us to fawn over.

#4, AKA: When you grown kids crash your Wednesday night

4. After group, I stopped over to see my parents for a few minutes, and my brother was already there, so we got to spend a little time as our original quartet (plus the dog). This doesn't happen as often any more (for good reasons), and so is extra meaningful when it does.

5. Voting on Super Tuesday - I always consider it such a privilege. And in these days when I achingly miss Jon Stewart, I felt hugely grateful for John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight" episode on the Republican frontrunner, whom I will not call by name except to say #makedonalddrumpfagain. It's worth watching if you haven't seen it, and even my Republican friends will tell you that (because they posted it before I did!).

Of course, the little things matter too - sometimes, it's the little things that make days bearable. With that...

Honorable mentions: Stephen and Golden State's epic OT finish, Singing "For the Beauty of the Earth" in worship, watching Fuller House (yeah, I know), finally reading Wild (wow!), burrito night at our house, lemon zinger tea, watching the "Leap Day" episode of 30 Rock (because Leap Day), working out every day even for just 15 minutes, sleeping more soundly (maybe because of those work outs?), and a delish peanut butter chocolate chip cookie delivered at work right when I needed it today.

I dare you: Take five minutes or less and list your Friday Five!

Convergence, Again.

I originally wrote this piece on March 5, 2013. After Saturday night (um, see below, although it doesn't include the high-pitched shriek I let loose), I thought it warranted a repost. Plus, it's March - and we college basketball fans know what that means. Happy Senior Day on Saturday, Wildcat Class of '16!

Top left: December 2006 vs. Elon; top right: March 2008 Elite Eight vs. Kansas; bottom left: February 2009 vs. UNCG; bottom right: March 2010 at his first NBA game in Charlotte.

Stephen and Coach McKillop being interviewed after our win against UNCG, February 3, 2007.

Mama there goes that man! 

LOUD NOISES

WOO HOOOOO!

Steph in the zone!

THIS IS EFFING AWESOME

49

If you never saw Steph play at Davidson... well, it sort of looked like this.

Proud to call this kid my teammate at one point!!!

Speechless

Playin like he did in college

My timeline is going crazy for @StephenCurry30 and I love it! 

#ItsADavidsonThing

The above constituted a mere sampling of the tweets prompted by Stephen Curry's 54-point performance against the Knicks on Wednesday night. (At least three of them are my brother's. He was 17 when he came to visit me at Davidson as a freshman and we witnessed one of #30's first legendary moments - his back-to-back threes against UNCG.)

I got home from dinner just in time to watch the fourth quarter, something I only knew to do because I had been checking Twitter to keep up with the Davidson/Elon score. Suddenly, Steph was raining threes and Twitter was raining Steph tweets.

There I sat, on my couch, by myself, at 10:30 p.m., whooping every time he made another shot - so not much has changed in the last six [now nine] years. I heard my own voice echo through my little house, but I knew I wasn't alone. If we could have one of those cool world maps, y'know, the kind that shows how much electricity gets used across the world, and NYC is insanely bright and the Sahara Desert is pitch black? - well, we could make one for the noise made by Davidson fans across states and even across oceans when these universal moments bring us together.

Converge: (intransitive verb) To come together and unite in a common interest or focus.

Because for us, our Davidson teams will always be universal, Steph Curry and his teammates will always be universal, Mike Maloy and Jake Cohen [and Jack Gibbs] and everyone in between will always be universal. Ours. We will always claim them, no matter what year or generation, no matter what the future holds. And I felt that yet again after this thirteenth consecutive Davidson victory, after a Steph show for the ages, on a much bigger stage than warm popcorn-smelling Belk Arena. Both of these - this particular team and this particular player - I have been privileged to watch from the beginning. And that makes nights like this one even more meaningful.

Twitter told me that the team was barreling back home from Burlington, with the TVs on and tuned to the Garden. Watching a player who sat exactly where they were sitting, a player who knows what their lives are like right now, the life of a Davidson student-athlete preparing for the SoCon Tournament, that one chance to dance. A player who, perhaps, made them want to come here. A player who, though he never played alongside them, has come back for summer camps and games and 5Ks and season banquets and even classes. A player who made a home here and still holds it dear. Watching him sink shot after shot, watching him dance in celebration and point up to the sky, these guys know that he came from moments like the one they are in, late night bus rides after a gritty win. (And Steph Curry knows something about gritty wins at Elon, that's for dang sure.)

On Saturday we celebrated Senior Day, and four fantastic players who have truly made their mark on this program for years to come. They were freshmen when I was a senior. Their first season was the first without Steph. Both of those things made it a bittersweet season for me - I didn't know the program without Stephen, and I couldn't imagine what the future would bring for me after graduation. And it's wonderful now to be able to look back and see the journeys that have sprung up in the last four years, for all of us. I love celebrating what they have done. Coming into the program during what could be called a rebuilding year (and that would have been an understatement), these four have been leaders since the beginning. And not only have they broken school records and hung their hats at the top of nationwide stats and given us countless memorable moments on the court, they have grown to love this place as humans, as athletes, as students, just as we all have. They know it, and they love it, and come May they won't let it leave them. They'll be there for future generations the rest of the way. I don't know them personally, but I know this about them. I just do.

Before the game, Clint Mann tweeted: Great day to be a wildcat. Senior day at Belk Arena. Bittersweet, but what a great journey.

And from somewhere on a plane or in a hotel during the Warriors' East Coast swing, Stephen Curry tweeted back: Congrats Clint. Finish out the year strong.

We are a family. Don't ever doubt it.