Dana Burland

Remember when all it took to get geeked out was the idea of dad’s French toast on Sundays, a new episode of All That  or your swim coach allowing you to prop your favorite stuffed seal on a set of kickboards to watch you practice? I know you do. Today, I’m that insignificant-situation-seems-overly-awesome amped up. Today, I mailed a check to join a CSA . Every Wednesday night from June to October, I’ll have a plentiful basket of local seasonal fruits and veggies waiting for me at a farmer’s market near work. Ta ta gray looking cucumbers from Florida hanging out at my grocery store! Sayonara box of strawberries from California that always includes a few grossely mushy berries! I’ve wanted to do this for a few years now, but now can finally commit to it. And to living in one town through fall . Even with a half share, it’s very possible Ben and I will be up to our eyeballs in produce. I might just have to get a juicer—commence double geek-out.

Driving into Chicago is like diving straight into a sea of steel. It’d been awhile since I’d been to the Windy City, but B and I had good reason to make a weekend trip. It’s still surprising when proof of our parallel Midwest roots pops up. It’s not shocking for two Michiganders to both have experienced Chicago before; but for as much as I associate Ben and Michigan with home, I still associate Ben and adventuring with the Northeast. I can’t tell you the amount of times one of us pointed out a touristy sight just to hear in return “yeah, I know, I’ve been there.” None the less, we are still tourists when it comes to the vastness of Chicago, as obvious by our Saturday plans. The first thing we did was to ogle the city from the 94th floor of the John Hancock building. Seeing the lake to the right and the city gradually shrink into the Great Plains to the left vs. NYC’s BUILDING!BUILDING!BUILDING! overdose makes Chicago feel more connective and welcoming to me. In t...

Three miles isn’t scary for me, neither is six really, but 13? (And the .1!) YES. It just seems like such a large margin for blister, bathroom or cramping errors. It’s just seems like suchhh a long timeee to runnn. I really did want to run another half. When I saw the Chi Town Half aligned with a 13-mile training run for my 25K , I figured it was racing fate. I was a little ball of nerves standing behind the starting line before the race began. Something about being right on the edge of a race is riding-a-rollercoaster-in-the-dark terrifying. It always feels so much better when the race starts and you can just GO. I mentally broke the race into three-mile chunks. It was a solid tactic and got me through the first six miles quickly. I picked a race  mantra —run strong. At mile nine running and dudes trying to suddenly race when they saw they were about to be passed by this little lady started to get old. I entertained a mini panic that I still had four miles left, a...

I’m still still not ready for more of the sweaty athlete and suited commentator combination. After making it through my first NFL season living with B, I’m sports’ed out. What I am ready for is to be a part of the bracket excitement, though. It’s with that readiness that I came up with the bones of the GRacket. The GRacket is NCAA March Madness plus Grand Rapids to the power of the Grand Rapids Magazine social media following. The result is a Facebook campaign that keeps GR Mag fans celebrating the city while feeling engaged and valued. We stayed within the brand’s cheerleading voice by focusing our championship on what the city is most known for. With a rich history (Amway, birthplace of Gerald R. Ford, furniture production) and more recent growth (ArtPrize, the beer boom and sustainability movement), we’ve slam-dunked our way onto the map. Sorry, bad pun. I had to. To keep the campaign manageable, we seeded 16 ‘teams’ we felt were not only a good representation of the...

Forgive me G-d , for I have sinned. I’ve done a very, very bad thing in the name of Passover; but a very, very good thing for my taste buds. I made my aunt’s famous chocolate caramel matzo crunch, and then I topped it with the Pope of pork products—bacon. I know, I knowww  you can’t bring bacon to a Passover seder; but I can’t make it to any seders this year, nor do I anticipate having any of this goodness left over by sundown on Monday anyway. I must say, this treat is a little Sunday school gathering of deliciousness. The matzo is like bread on a delicious open-faced crunch sandwich, the caramel is molassessy and sweet, and the layer of chocolate is smooth like buttah velvet. But really, it’s the salty bacon bits on top that will knock your yarmulke off. So friends, it’s with this recipe that I toast to you; l’chaim. No matter what you’re celebrating this spring, I hope you do so tastily—and maybe a little less sinfully than yours truly. Bacon Caramel Matzo Crun...

What do ducks do in the winter? Yahoo! Answers says they don’t hibernate, but if that’s true, where did the team that used to hang out near our deck go? Looks like I can shelf that concern ‘til next winter, because they’re back! Only a four-foot ring around the pond has thawed so far, but that hasn’t stopped the little duckaroonies from paddling about or waddling onto the frozen surface. Don’t their little webbed feet get frostbitten? Does anyone make duck socks or water shoes? If there’s one true sign of spring around these parts, it must be the return of the ducks. I can’t wait to open the slider and hear their random quack-laughs fill the apartment.

Listen, I know this area is religious — and not in the variety that I loosely associate with — but what does a girl have to do to get a box of matzo around here? I schlepped to two different grocery stores last night and came home empty handed. Welp, empty handed except for the green apple granola B is obsessed with. There are so many great things about living in West Michigan, but seeing a store employee’s utter confusion over unleavened bread is not one of them. Grand Rapids needs some matzo awareness classes. Stat.

“This feels like I’m cheating,” I told B while sitting in the Gazelle Sports parking lot. On my feet were my trusty black Brooks running shoes; in a box on the backseat were my new hot pink Nike LunarGlide 4’s. Getting new running shoes is scary; switching brands is traumatic. I’m confident in my Brooks—both in their ability to get me through a long run and their predictability in blistering locations. How am I to know these Nikes won’t disintegrate mid-run or explode shattering my foot bones in the process? They have proven nothing. I’m deep in the throes of training , where just about everything (often including rational thinking) but running has been shelved until late May. Things so far have been going well. I’ve been staying on schedule, stretching, strength training, foam rolling, yogaing and holding small séances to honor the running gods. And while the majority of my runs have been good runs, I’m afraid of unknown factors that may make one anything but. It’s with that...

My dad has talked about snowboarding for longer than my grandma’s been attending her weekly Mahjong games. It started off with an innocent observation of a few boarders at Boyne Highlands then transformed into a totally unprovoked declaration of how he was never, ever, ever getting his feet bound on one board together. Enter last weekend up north, complete with a boarding boyfriend who happened to wear boots close enough to his size. There were lots of really good moments from that weekend—like a chorus of ski patrol men serenading me with a birthday song and helping my mom download Cake’s “Short Skirt, Long Jacket”—finally getting my dad on a board so I wouldn't have to hear him wonder about it anymore was right up there, though. He’s one lesson away from a Flying Tomato.

These colorful flowers are the only physical indication of the headaches and are-you-kidding-me moments I’ve survived at work in the last few weeks. Forty-four of these bright bouquets—well, this is actually two bouquets in one—lined 44 tables surrounded by ten guests each at a luncheon earlier today. It was my company’s biannual Top Women Owned Businesses event; the second event I’ve taken the lead on. Event planning of this magnitude is like attempting a crossword puzzle in Japanese. I don’t feel like I have the background needed to get it done, but somehow I figure out ‘トースター’means toaster complete the puzzle anyway. I know that’s not a confident (or logical) perspective, but confidence only goes so far when the majority of your project depends on a catering team, venue staff, floral company and 440 folks you’ve never met before. We sold this event out weeks ahead of time, which was exciting yet terrifying when it came to dealing with potential registration errors and w...