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So, my sister and I have this thing with IKEA.  We get tricked into going there on occasion for various reasons: need to revamp a room, just moved and need some new things for the new diggs.  Whatever the case, we always thing IKEA is a great place to go. And then we get there….and we’re lost in the maze of IKEA – spending way too long in each of the floor model rooms – we’re filling our cart up with random things and we’re not even sure why we’re adding them.  We make our way through the entire warehouse with carts full and get to the checkout line.  Then there is the pause before getting in line.  A pause long enough to have the thought, "what the hell am I doing will all this stuff?"  We had this feeling all along while shopping and felt like if we persisted on something good would come of it. But, no.  At that point, we usually look at each other and, in synchronous motion, abandon our full carts in line and walk out the door.

We’ve recently coined this event with the term "Banana".  That means, if you’re out shopping, particularly at IKEA and you’ve got that feeling (your cart filled with absolutely nothing you really need but somehow tricked into putting in your cart) you just announce "Banana!" to your shopping partner and that is the code for "get the heck out of here and go to a place of serenity not anywhere near here".

The other day my sister called me and asked "Can you call ‘Banana’ on your life?"

Too funny.  I wish.

Happy New Year!

This past summer, Rob and I invented a ritual for ourselves that was inspired by our attendance at the Gottman Institute weekend workshop for couples.  The ritual was designed to incorporate travel as a core value in our lives and is something we believe we’ll pass down to through our family.  The ritual we invented is this:

On New Years Eve we will each enter our top 2 destinations in the world we’d like to visit.  The entries will be written on paper and folded up.  We will put the entries in some container.  On New Years Day we will draw one of the pieces of paper and that selection would determine our trip for that year.  The trip will be 2 weeks (minimally) and at the time of year of our choosing.  To celebrate our selection we will go to a restaurant of that region.  And we will plan activities in preparation for the trip – for example: we might choose to learn the language of the region we’re going to or we might sign up for a class to learn skills we might want to have for activities in that region (i.e. Avalanche training for back-country snow sports).

This was our first year to try out our new ritual.  Things didn’t go entirely as planned.

We had torn the house apart painting the entire downstairs (minus a few rooms) and Rob got sick.  So we didn’t have a lot of time to create our container and submit our entries on New Years Eve.  So, after a day of cramming in as much painting as we could on New Years Day we finally sat down to submit our entries.  It turned out that we both really wanted to go to either Tibet (with time in Nepal) or Ecuador (with time on Galapagos Islands) over all other places on our list.  So we decided to narrow our entries to those two choices.  We put our entries into a hat that Rob bought in Italy and Rob drew Ecuador / Galapagos Islands.  In that moment we both realized we really wanted to go to Tibet and agreed that we would disregard the accidental drawing <wink>.  So that’s it!

TIBET 2008!

This will likely include time in Nepal as well.  We’ll be looking to all of our family and friends on advice for traveling in these areas.

Yay!  We’re going to Tibet!  This weekend we will look for a Tibetan restaurant to celebrate our choice – though we’ll probably go to multiple throughout the year.  Right now Annapurna Cafe and Tibet First are the top contenders.

Clearly we have some things to work out in our new ritual, but it’s a great first start!