On Friday, I celebrated my 31st birthday when some great friends. 

My mom tells me that I'll stop liking my birthday as I get older, but I don't think I will. It's one of my favorite days, along with Christmas. 

And it's not because I get presents, because eventually you don't. And it's not even because it's all about me, because it's not really. 

Each and every year, on my birthday, I get to bring together a group of people from different aspects of my life. People I've known awhile, people I've just met, sometimes people I've never met show up too. And for that day, it's all about friends meeting friends, sharing laughs and good times, creating moments and memories. 

These people bring so much to the table, they have very different backgrounds, experiences and skills that come together for a night to create some interesting conversation.

Usually it also reminds me of the people who came to birthday celebrations in years past and how much I miss some of those people but how grateful I am to be finding new friends in my new home. 

To me my birthday is an annual reminder of how good I have it. Of where I've been and where I'm going. Of what I've accomplished and the work left to do. 

And it's especially nice to walk into the bar you picked for your birthday gathering and have the bartender remember which beer you drank the last time you where there. 

Some might look at birthdays as a mark of age and time running out, but I look at it as a chance to reflect on how far you've come in the last year. How you've changed, how you've stayed the same. And most importantly, to spend a whole day knowing exactly how many wonderful people you have in your life. 

My 30 by 30 list never quite got finished, but it was overly ambitious I think. Besides, some of priorities and goals have changed.

So, for this year, there's a few things I want to focus on.

+ Renovation progress. I'm being open-ended and saying progress since setting some specific goal tends to set me up for disappointment on this front. It's slow going and the chicken projects diverted our attention for the summer. it seems that every time we start one project, we find so many other things we have to do before we can really do said project, so I'm counting "progress" from now on as something pretty great. Progress can be actually getting kitchen counters/cabinets that are mounted to the floor; ripping out the hideous carpet in the mudroom and putting in the tile we already bought; finishing popcorn ceiling removal or painting over the paneling in some rooms to make it tolerable until we're ready to tear it all out.

+ Operation Closet Purge. The never ending project that does bring a certain kind of peace to every day life.

+ Run another race. It can be short, or maybe a long one. Can't say I love running, but I do want to give myself a fitness goal that doesn't involve a number on the scale to get back into some of my old (good) habits of running much more regularly. I'm counting skating in this area too. We'll see if I've got the guts to try some more jumps and other moves this season. 

+ Never stop learning. Work keeps me busy reading whatever new report or budget document is out and world affairs have me digging into complex topics on the fly, which can wear me down so that I want to watch mindless television at home or read silly things to give my brain a break. But after sitting in the history section at the bookstore for awhile the other day, I felt that old familiar desire to read everything and learn about everything. There's no way I'll ever know it all, but I've begun to realize what a profound thing it is to recognize how much you don't know. 

+ Get things done. I'm on a few boards, involved in many projects and have work. In continuing my efforts to focus on my passions and the areas I care about most and can have the most impact, I also want to work on being more efficient and better with my time management. Less time worrying about how much I need to do, more time doing what I need to do.

+Explore. I haven't been able to leave the country in awhile, but there's so much to explore out West, north to Canada and well, everywhere. Here's to hoping we can get out an about every now and again while still working on renovations and getting everything else done. Plus, a weekend off to road trip or see something I haven't seen before always clears my mind and energizes me for all those things I need to get done.

It's going to be a great year and I'm glad to have you along for the ride! 

What's your favorite thing about your birthday or favorite birthday memory? Do you set goals each year on your birthday?

If you've been hanging out in this space lately, you might have noticed my growing interest in food and where it comes from. 

We've been busy tending to our tomatoes, peppers and carrots. We've had onions, lettuce, cucumbers and herbs growing inside while we built another raised bed, which isn't done yet. 

Over the weekend, I found a magazine with great edible container ideas so I had a good ole time with the half-off plants at the local farm and ranch store and made my own edible container with cauliflower, purple basil, African Blue basil, variegated sage, Swiss chard, and a dahlia. I am over the moon about it, assuming the animals don't find a way to destroy it all. Rest assured there will be more on this edible container project later in the week.

You may remember a post about The Dirty Life, a book on farm life that took me awhile to finish, but I loved it. Absolutely loved it. 

So on my flights to and from Virginia at the end of June, I went looking for more. Sadly, I couldn't find anything worth lugging around in the airport bookshops so I opted to do a more thorough book search online when I got back to Montana. 

I went looking for Made From Scratch by Jenna Woginrich, but then I went a little wild with the "you might also like" suggestions. All in all, I ordered seven books on farm life, food and making things yourself. 

Six have arrived. One isn't even out yet, but I got so carried away that I ordered it anyway. And while most of these books have a theme about our society's unchecked consumerism, I did get most of these books for $3 or $4 each. I didn't pay full price for any of them, not that I don't believe you should pay for great writing, but a spending spree on books about making things yourself would seem a bit foolish. So all totaled, I think I spent less than $50 and had a gift card to cover the entire book haul. 

Here's what I got:

Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl by Susan McCorkindale

Grow the Good Life by Michelle Owens

Made From Scratch and Barnheart by Jenna Woginrich

Growing a Farmer by Kurt Timmermeister

Greenhorns edited by Zoe Ida Bradbury, Severine von Tscharner Fleming and Paulo Manalo

I'll be deep diving into these this week and this stack will likely occupy me for a bit. I'll be starting with the one on top, it was the perfect thing to see in my stack of mail when I got home last night from a particularly stressful day at work. 

What are you reading lately? What kind of books inspire you or encourage you to read more of a certain topic?

About a month ago, I was on my way home from Chicago after running an 8K with Alicia and Eileen. 

Typically, I don't like to buy books or sit down to eat in airports because it's more expensive than it should be. But, I had a long layover and had already finished the murder mystery I'd lugged from the library on the way out. 

I wandered back and forth between a few book shops on my concourse, annoying one book seller because I kept coming back and not buying anything. 

When I'd just about given up finding anything I'd want to read that wasn't stupid expensive and/or hardback, I found The Dirty Life, by Kristin Kimball. 

The back cover told me that Kristin was a big city writer before meeting a farmer, who's from a town near my grandparents in New York, and moving to the country to start their own farm in northern New York. 

New book in hand, I wandered again for food that would fill me and not bankrupt me. I settled on the Rock Bottom Brewery with an appetizer and beer as my dinner while I dove into the book. 

Just a few pages in, I read this: "There are still moments when I feel like I'm an actor in a play. The real me stays out until four, wears heels and carries a handbag, but this character I'm playing gets up at four, wears Carhartts, and carries a Leatherman, and the other day, doing laundry, a pair of .22 long shells fell out of her pocket and she was supposed to act like she wasn't surprised. Instead of the lights and sounds of the city, I'm surrounded by 500 acres that are blanketed tonight in mist and clouds, and this farm is a whole world darker and quieter, more beautiful and more brutal than I could have imagined the country to be."

I don't carry a Leatherman, but we have one, and I don't wear Carhartts year, but M does and there's a good chance I will soon. We don't have 500 acres, but we have 26, and there's nothing around us, but a wildlife refuge, state land, unoccupied private hillside and more farms. It's a world away from my previous life in D.C. and still hard for me to wrap my head around some days. Though there's still some city in me. Just the other day, I interviewed a general, wrote about nuclear weapons and defense budgets, then came home to water the chickens and work on our planting plans as it's warming up. I've talked about this life change before, but the shift is worth further discussion.

Last week, we made salad with greens we grew and fed the rest to the chickens, then dumped the remnants on the compost pile. We're finishing up the temporary outdoor chicken coop to get those birds outside and I've got trays of vegetables starting in all the windows. I went a bit overboard with the seeds, we might have a ton of tomatoes and peppers if they all make it and my pack of broccoli, kale, cucumber, cauliflower, lettuce and more tomatoes arrived in the mail the other day. 

We've still got quite a ways to go and plenty of projects for the summer that exhaust me just listing them out, but the idea of making dinner with ingredients pulled from my land, breakfast with eggs from chickens that I raised and creating a little country oasis is exhilarating. 

For me, it's a constant mental shift since I write about nuclear weapons and mission changes from fighter jets to cargo planes and city government by day, then come home and want to work on my blog, rink events or other projects, but I've also got to feed/water the chickens, tend to the plants, renovate a house, turn the compost and think about the garden layout, the kinds of trees I eventually want to plant, where to put bushes and sunflowers and how to protect the pretty flowers I want from wind and deer. 

It's a cross between big ideas and big dreams with things like growing my own food and the simple life. My brain is almost always tired and I think this is why. We no longer have cable, we don't have central air, we use a pellet stove to heat the house in winter. We're close enough to town to get everything we need, but it's still a far cry from my D.C. life when I could walk 10 minutes to the metro, have cupcakes delivered to my office, get stuck behind a presidential motorcade and spend afternoons shopping my favorite outlets or eclectic boutiques few blocks off the Potomac River.

Kristin's story is different than mine and she and her now husband built a farm from nothing that now feeds their entire community, but there is so much in her story that resonates with me. 

Only a few more pages in was this: "As much as you transform the land by farming, farming transforms you...Your acres become a world. And maybe you realize that it is beyond those acres or in your distant past, back in the realm of TiVo and cubicles, of take-out food and central heat and air, in the county where discomfort has nearly disappeared, that you were deprived. Deprived of the pleasure of desire, of effort and difficulty and meaningful accomplishment. A farm asks, and if you don't give enough, the primordial forces of death and wildness will overrun you. So naturally you give, and then you give some more, and then you give to the point of breaking, and then and only then it gives back, so bountifully it overfills not only your root cellar but also that parched and weedy little patch we call the soul."

I'm still only about a third of the way through the book, but picked it up again this week. It's good reading as we're prepping for the growing season.

Other good reads on food, land and agriculture:

Five links to read before heading to the farmer's market. 

I already planned to create my own apple orchard, perhaps we'll have apples for cider-making since there's a shortage.

We're still thinking of having bees and this one's for Courtney. A look at life without honey bees. 

Looking forward to watching this documentary about young farmers. I might be turning into my sister, who was very aware of these issues years ago. 

Why Alicia started blogging, it involves lots of cooking and interesting recipes.

A few weeks ago, I went to the local library to get a library card, finally. 

A few days later I went back to check out as many books as I'm allowed, just four for the first three months.

I've already read two books, watched a journalism documentary and started a third book. 

The visit to the library reminded me how much I love libraries. And books. 

There's no possible way I can fit all the books I love or want to read in my house, or afford them all, but the library is like an endless supply of discovery, adventure, learning and exploring, all for free!

There was a time in Virginia when I had a library card to no less than four libraries at once.

It's true that I have amassed quite a library of my own, but now with home renovations, chickens, gardening and house payments, it's far more practical to take advantage of the local library. Of course, I'll still buy a few books now and then, but I won't feel bad about it when I breeze through the latest Dan Brown and another Sophie Kinsella book from the library. 

My highly active imagination is nurtured and encouraged through books and from the very beginning, I've been a book worm. 

Books are a low cost way to learn. Self-help books aside, you can learn about science, language, computers, business, history and more. You're only cost is the time you spend reading. 

You may not be able to book a flight at the drop of a hat, but you can read a good travel book and be transported all over the world or back in time.

When life gets heavy, you can escape to the lighter side. There's chick-lit, fairy tales, mysteries, sci-fy and so much more to drop into a character's world for a time.

You can fall in love with characters and they'll take you through emotions and make you think in ways you might not have in real life. 

Reading can be life changing, inspiring, motivating and make you a better writer. All within your reach with just a quick trip to the library.

But, until your next trip to the library, some recommended online reads.

Alicia on beating the cubical blob and freeing your mind with Allie. 

When the clutter starts to overwhelm you with Julie and how to get over being stressed about your house, a feeling I'm far too familiar with these days.

On being a better blogger with Marissa, why Jamie loves to read your blog and Erika's back to blogging after a break.