Small Town Arkansas

Over the holidays, I spent five days in Arkansas visiting friends and family; exploring all my old haunts and checking out everything that has changed since my last visit. Each time I visit, I am struck by how "small-town" the place feels; it's the sort of perspective that only really comes from being away for a while. By Arkansas standards, Fayetteville is actually a decent-sized city (as of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 73,580 - the 3rd largest in Arkansas), and when you consider the Northwest Arkansas metropolitan area as a whole, the population exceeds 450,00. Despite these statistics, I run into someone I know just about everywhere I go; every other business is owned by a friend, acquaintance, or someone otherwise connected to a friend or family member; everywhere I need to go is less than a 10 minute drive away. You know, Small Town.

But I love it. I love going home to Arkansas, because it is so different than life on the East Coast. I wanted to share a few of the places I visited and the Arkansas-isms I encountered along the way. 

Tokyo Sushi , which apparently has no website (WTF), has been reviewed on a couple predictable sites:

Urban Spoon, Yelp and one less predictable site: Now That's Cookin ,an Arkansas food blog. Apparently this is my Mom's favorite sushi restaurant, so I was mildly shocked when she fought the temptation to introduce my brother and I to the owner (common occurrence on past restaurant visits). We had a small crisis with the parking situation here. In 2010, the city started charging for on-street parking downtown, charging a whopping $0.50 per hour during the day, a whole dollar per hour at night. Local residents are outraged. The rates seem pretty reasonable to me; especially if it means being able to park directly in front of the restaurant. Anyways, we parked. And were promptly greeted by our friendly waiter who offered us FREE edamame, FREE salad and FREE miso soup, which is apparently their "special" every day. Not bad. Sure made up for that $0.50 we had to pay for parking. And the sushi was delicious too!

Mount Sequoyah, a small hill (mountain?) overlooking the historical area of town. Home to the Mount Seqoyah Retreat & Conference Center, along with many beautiful hillside homes with georgous views, it is also the starting point of a series of little-known trails ("The Mt. Sequoyah Woods") that criss-cross their way along the east side of the mountain. Perhaps much of the reason for the trail's anonymity is that their development is recent; according to fayettevillehistory.com and historicwashingtoncounty.org, nearly 70 acres on the east side of the mountain were bought back by The City of Fayetteville and The Fayetteville Natural Heritage Association in 2003 with the purpose of protecting the area from future development and to make it accessible for everyone the community to enjoy. My family has made it a tradition to do a hike here on Chrismas Day the past few years - it's a beautiful, rugged area not more than a 3 miles from downtown, but you would never guess it while on the trail. 

Fayettechill (TM), the new hotness for the sorority/fraternity-type at the University of Arakansas. This is an impressive entrepreneurial effort by a recent U of A grad that appears to be pretty successful. Somehow this guy has convinced all the local outdoor stores to carry his clothing line, with great product placement to boot.  Fayettechill is a catchy brand name, and the founder certainly seems to have some business savy, but he's just selling T-shirts. Is that really sustainable? Seems like it would be tough, but another home-grown retailer has been at it for the past 20 years: Houndstooth Clothing Company. Maybe I should sell T-shirts.

Arsaga's Espresso Cafe  - With 5 locations in Fayetteville, it has been the coffee shop of choice for  Fayettevillians over the past 20 years. Each location has it's own personality, but all have great coffee, friendly service, and a fun artsy vibe created by uniquely designed spaces.  The cafe's success and loyalty of their customers may be part of  the reason that Starbucks didn't enter the local market until 2006. TWO THOUSAND AND SIX! And you thought Starbucks was taking over the world. Not in Fayetteville. To date, Starbucks only has 2 locations in town.

Shine Salon - Owned and operated by a spunky woman named Sunshine, this salon embodies all that I love about Fayetteville. I mean, where else can you find a stylist named Sunshine? The decor is simple and bright, with a funky antique couch and mid-century coffee table rounding off the waiting area. Sunshine is always friendly and talkative, but also refreshingly honest with her cynical comments and witty banter that she offers up to even her newest client. Every time I've been there I gain some kind of helpful info; last time I got a private viewing of the latest  Beyoncé  video and advice on what cell phone to buy! Now that's service.

New Year's Resolutions: A look back at 2011

Happy 2012, folks!

Thanks to all of my loyal blog readers (there seem to be about 8 of you out there) -- really, thanks for reading! And those of you who have stumbled upon these pages via a Google search, I appreciate you stopping by. If this is your first time stopping by, I hope my ramblings don't bore you too much and you'll come back for more. BTW, I highly recommend signing up for the e-mail updates (see right side bar for more info).

As we move into a new year, I wanted to take a minute to revisit my goals for 2011. You can call them resolutions if you wish, but I prefer to think of them as goals - not so much something I hope to change about myself in the coming year, but rather milestones I hope to achieve. This was the first year that I actually wrote down (well, more like typed up) my goals and revisited them periodically throughout the year to check my progress. Many of these goals are simply guidelines by which I strive to live my life - habits I hope to adopt that haven't (or had not) yet become habits. Throughout the rush of daily life, I found it helpful to keep these simple goals in mind, to keep a focus on what really mattered.

I categorized my goals into different pockets of life that I wanted to develop more fully. Each being important and in no particular order, below are a few of my goals for 2011:

Health/ Fitness

• Yoga 2x per week (1 paid class/1 free class) - This goal was met more weeks than not. During the summer months, yoga took a backseat to being outdoors, but I made it to no less than 1 yoga class each week. Love my studio, Evolve Movement, and my wonderfully caring teachers there - definitely recommend giving it a try! Also, props to Lululemon, who recently opened up a new store in North Hills, offering FREE classes every Sunday morning. I'm a huge fan of Lululemon products (especially when they "make too much") - if you haven't checked them out, you need to go to their website today (and no, I'm not getting paid to write that!)

• Running (>30min) or walking/hiking (>1hour) at least 2x per week. - During the summer months, I exceeded this goal nearly every week, walking >1 each week and running 1-2 times per week. However, I've been lagging during the winter months; with fewer hours of daylight and less welcoming weather, my nightly dog walks are often shortened to 30 minutes. I still think this is a very achievable goal, and I'll continue to set this goal for myself in the coming year. I've realized that it is essential to take advantage of my weekends and get outside for at least an hour each day (whether it be running, hiking or walking - usually at Umstead Park, The American Tobacco Trail, North Carolina Museum of Art Park or Harris Lake County Park).  I also want to get my day started earlier (at work closer to 8am instead of 9am) so I can get home early enough for a long walk and still have dinner at a reasonable hour.

• Train for event(s) - This was one of my goals that I shared with a friend earlier this year, and I am grateful that she took the initiative to suggest we run a local 5k race together - The Jingle Bell Walk/Run 5K for Arthritis, which was held December 3rd. Thanks to Kathryn for suggesting this great event, Kevin for running with me, and all my friends and family who donated to the cause! Having an event to train for really helped to keep me on track for my running goal also. I really enjoyed this event and plan to set a goal of training for one event per quarter in 2012. Maybe a triathlon in there somewhere? 

• Get at least 7 hours of sleep each night - This is a tough one for me because I always get a second wind about 10:00pm each night and decide that it is the perfect time to get a million things accomplished. Not good for getting up early and doing all the things stated above. Must learn to *wind down* at 10:00pm instead of getting wound up.

Create - Design - Imagine

• Spend >4 hours per week indulging my creative side. Painting/ making collages/ writing for the sake of writing/ cooking new recipes. - This blog has gone a long way in helping to accomplish this goal, and for that I am thankful. I've also been quite crafty this year in doing home decorating projects. A few photo highlights are provided below, including a hand-crafted doggie bed, refurbishing a couple chairs from thrift stores, and building shelves! I'm also appreciative to the wonderful invention of Pinterest, which provides for hours of creative indulgence. I am happy to say that indulging my creative side has become a habit, and I'll continue to set aside time for this in 2012. 

Homemade Dog Bed

Refurbished Chair - $10 at Thrift Store

• Read one “fun” (travel) book per quarter. - Admittedly (and somewhat shamefully) I've struggled with this goal. I blame it partly on my book selection, partly on my inability to get to bed before 10:00pm, and partly on not making reading for fun a priority. This will be on my goal list again in 2012.  However, thanks to a resurgence of reading in the 4th quarter, I have read 3.5 books for fun in 2011:
• Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, by Ken Auletta - an interesting work of non-fiction,which chronicles Google's evolution over the past 15 years and their impact on the technology industry and Life As We Know It. Critical reading for anyone hoping to understand how Google is changing the world, but I could have done without the last 150 pages, which seemed to drag on a bit. 
• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt - Arguably the most famous book about life in Savannah Georgia (and surprisingly a non-fiction work). I picked up this book to read at the beach during our Memorial Day trip to the low country of Hilton Head and didn't finish it until the day after Christmas. Not that it wasn't a good book, but at no point did I get "hooked" on the story line. I appreciated it more for it's references to Savannah history and architecture, especially after making a trip there last February and seeing many of the sights referenced in the book. 
• The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir, by Elna Baker - Recommended to me by a co-worker after a lunchtime discussion about dating as a Mormon, this book kept my attention more than any I had read in a while. As the reviews suggest, it is truly a mix of Sex and the City wit and Eat Pray Love soul searching. This was a book that I stayed up way too late reading and finished in less than a week. 
• The Help, by Kathryn Stockett (in progress) -  Recommended to me by Amazon.com and everyone else I know, it's easy to see why this is the book everyone seemed to be reading on the airplane this holiday season. 

Entrepreneurship

• Start a blog - Check!  Happily blogging since May 2011.

• Sell products online (become more adept at using ebay) - Somehow this fell off the list of priorities. Need to focus on this in 2012. Plan to setup an e-bay account, maybe read some library books about selling online, and try to start by sellling some things I would otherwise give away.

• (Long Term): Maintain a base income ($1000/month) through involvement in business activities unrelated to my primary employment. (consulting, investing, blogging, etc). - Still a long term goal, and I feel like this blog is a start, but still pretty far off from making money. In 2012 I hope to investigate waysto publicize my blog more, bring in more traffic and organize blogging topics to make it more reader friendly.

Travel

• Get out of town at least once per month. This is for my own sanity, really. I've got Wanderlust in the blood, and if I don't get out of town once a month, I pretty much go crazy. Here is a summary of places I've visited this year:

• January - Chile! See all previous blog post :)
• February - Snowshoe, WV & Savannah, GA
• March - Jacksonville, FL
• April - Fayetteville, AR
• May - Hilton Head, SC
• June - Pilot Mountain, NC
• July - Hanging Rock, NC & Fontana Village, NC
• August - Charlottesville, VA
• September - Fayetteville, AR
• October - Austin, TX
• November - Charlottesville, VA & Washington, DC
• December - Fayetteville, AR & Washington, DC

Hoping that 2012 will allow for more opportunities to get out of town! So far, things are looking up with a trip planned to Colorado at the end of this month! 

• Take a trip to a place I’ve never been before (1 week vacation this summer) - I stayed local with my travel this past summer, spending a week at the beach with family in Hilton Head, SC and a 4-day weekend with my boyfriend's family in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. Both were places I hadn't been before, although neither was particularly exotic. Sometimes it's nice to explore the beauty close to home, and the remoteness of Fontana Village gave the impression of being in a different time and place even though we were only a few hours drive from home. In 2012, I hope to make a trip to the West Coast (Portland, OR/ Vancouver, BC) or possibly Northern Europe (Sweden) to visit old friends and see a part of the world that I haven't experienced before. 

• Make a point to visit/spend time with Mom & Dad at least every 3 months - Happy to say I saw my parents in January, April, May, June, August, September November, and December this year. Not bad :). Hope to have multiple opportunities to see them so often in 2012.

• Visit friends living in places I haven't visited before. - This year I made trips to see two of my best friends who live in Florida and Texas, respectively. I always enjoy visiting friends who have moved to new places - not only is it great to have a free place to stay, but it really is wonderful to meet all the people in their lives and come to know their daily surroundings - it makes phone conversations so much more meaningful when you can picture the person on the other line pacing around their kitchen or lounging on their couch as you do the same in your own home. 

• NEW FOR 2012: Vegas, baby! - Who's with me?

Home/ Auto

• Purchase new couch by April 2011- Check! Possibly the best purchase I made all year :)

New Couch!

• Continue to invest in items that make my home more comfortable and more “lived in” - This is more of an addiction than a goal these days, so I guess I've successfully made a habit of it! I could say that I'm "done", but I won't. Only that I could probably do to "diversify my investments" a bit :).

• Focus on upgrades for bedroom - Found a  nice desk on Amazon.com, paired nicely with the refurbished chair from the thrift store, added some nice bedding/pillows, topped it off with a matching pair of framed prints I found at the thrift store. voilà! I think I'm done with this project for now.

• Invest in recommended car  maintenance - performed recommended maintenance on my VW Golf until I sold the 10-year-old car in October in favor of a 2011 Mazda 3s, my new pride and joy. Looking forward to regular preventive maintenance instead of anticipating a potential major repair cost (although I loved my Golf, it was time to let it go). 

Zoom-Zoom, my Mazda 3s

Educational

• Spend time each morning reviewing online news articles - I try to peruse any news article that is sent my way. I tend to get 5-10 links/day sent to me via the e-mail list at work, a few more via my Facebook news feed, and daily update e-mails from the Triangle Business Journal (free, with great local news updates, but a little gimmicky). It may not be the most balanced way to get news, but I find I'm usually fairly well informed of all the top stories affecting my industry, region and demographic. I could do to check actual news sites more often - something to focus on in 2012!

• Use Sunday afternoons as a time to catch up on The Economist (read at least 3 articles out of each issue) - I'd say I have about a 50/50 success rate for this one. Some weeks I'll read more than 3 articles, sometimes none. I've found that this is a good thing for me to do during basketball/football games; even though I enjoy sports, I tend to get a little bored if I don't have something else to distract me.

• Research other interest/goals on a more detailed level by utilizing library books - I've done a lot of researching through my blogging activities, and tend to be naturally curious for details/facts about whatever I am working on at the time. However, books do offer a certain level of thoroughness that isn't available through a quick Google search. Need to focus more on this goal in 2012.

•  (Long Term): Become a certified yoga instructor - Still on my list :)