One Rule

If you've seen The Fault in Our Stars,

you know what an encouragement is.

Like Augustus' mom, I enjoy seeing encouragements in the spaces I spend the most time in. 

I have a wall in my office with a bunch of giant canvas black-and-white photos of the Tiny Human. 

And I just recently added this encouragement below her pictures:

I need to be better at this. 

Be your wild courageous brilliant self every single day.

No matter what.

I have found, at least for me, it's easiest to be this most awesome version of myself when I am surrounded with equally brilliant and wild people.

Like LakeGirl, for one. Or my favorite people from law school. 

Morning Jo, mean-mugging' style

Last weekend, I sneaked away for the day and got to reconnect with a few of my soul mates. 

I haven't seen my friend, Count, since we graduated, which is totally unacceptable but life has just gotten in the way. But we finally found a way to connect and it was amazingly wonderful.

We fell back in to place like we had just seen each other, 

when in reality almost four years have gone by. 

Friends like that are the bestest.

It's so hard to describe, but my heart just felt happy the entire time I was "back home."

We spent some time at an old fave hang-out,

Atwater Beach.

The colors in Wisconsin this time of year are my favorite.

You can see why it's so true when I say my favorite color is October.

We also acted like ridiculous weirdos and made an obscene number of slo-mo videos on the beach.

LakeGirl had her new iPhone and we sort of stumbled across the slo-mo video feature and let's just say we rocked it like a boss. 

Think Chariots of Fire. 

Literally. 

It was that awesome. 

We also hit up the best burger/bloody Mary joint in the whole city . . .

and got to witness this beast going down at the table across from us.

Holy Moses- 

that's an entire deep fried chicken, 

two mini cheeseburgers and skewers galore of other meats and cheeses and creatures-of-the-sea.

I really, really wanted to pose with the Bloody Beast but my friends assured me that would be all sorts of awkward and weird, which is likely why I wanted to do it. 

You know, 

Be your wild courageous brilliant self every single day.

My intentions were good.

So instead of creeping on a bunch of random people's dinner,

I just consumed about ten pounds of frickles at my own table. 

What's a frickle, you ask?

A gift from the gods.

It's a deep fried pickle french-fry. 

And eating ten pounds of them?

Brilliant.