Dana Burland

Last week was a grade A, code red Chinese take out kind of week. Both Ben and I had busy days at work and were anxiously awaiting news. Big, why-isn’t-it-here-yet, where-is-the-postman news. Earlier this summer Ben started the process of applying for a local MBA program . Due to unnecessary headaches involving transcripts, we were still waiting on his acceptance letter while simultaneously counting down the days until the semester started. It felt like the stars would align. The advisor he had been talking to said his acceptance looked imminent, he still had time, everything should work out. But man, we just really wanted that confirmation. The nervous waiting and busy work days came to a head one night. In a few quick text messages: Chinese for dinner? Yes. My heart was on General Tso’s, but my head was stuck on the mountain of produce that would sit for another day, unused, in the fridge. Actually, no Chinese. I’ll make dinner. I pulled out a smorgasbord of vegetabl...

I had a dentist appointment yesterday. It just so happened to fall between a really busy morning and a really busy afternoon. Everything was routine all the way around until the very end of my appointment. While checkout out, my hygienist scheduled my next appointment in early March. I got out my phone and quickly tapped away adding it to my calendar. I had been flying around all day and, of course, was trying to fly through adding my appointment on my calendar too. I started typing in my work email address to save the appointment to my work calendar. D, B, U, R. Usually that’s all I need to type and the rest will pop up. And it did. So I was all set. Or so I thought. As I hit “save”, something strange caught my eye. “Invited 1: David Burina”. Who is David Burina? It turns out David Burina is a employee at the company I work at with a very similar email address as me. And since my phone is connected to the larger company address book database, his name popped up as an invi...

Our TV has been tuned in to the Olympics non-stop since the games started last week. I love watching swimming, track and field, gymnastics—and equally love the more obscure sports like handball, white water rafting and trampoline. Watching swimming especially reminds me of the 12 years I swam competitively. I relate (on a much smaller scale!) to the nerves, excitement and thrill in racing. I fondly remember the friendships and the community I was lucky to be a part of. I smile thinking back to how we’d eat concession stand nachos behind whichever friend was unlucky enough to be swimming the 200 butterfly at winter swim meets. I forget how fond and deep my swim memories are sometimes. I felt something similar with a recipe I made last night—sweet potato falafel. I love falafel and I love sweet potato, so I figured the mash up would be worth trying. Even though I had different dinner plans, I remembered seeing this recipe online, and in a stroke of kitchen magic I had all the i...

There’s a skinny section of our yard sandwiched between our house and the neighbor’s yard. It’s not suited particularly well for anything other than a single outdoor bowling lane. Outdoor bowling… hm, is that a thing? Anyway. When we bought the house, this side yard was an awkward mix of garden, compost bin, rotting wood and overgrown weeds. It needed attention, but we weren’t sure what kind. First and foremost, the fence separating our side yard bowling lane from the neighbor’s yard was leaning horribly. Ben dug up the adjacent garden and compost bin and re-concreted six posts. If that doesn’t win a gold medal for home ownership, I’m not sure what does. After the fence was straightened, Ben wanted to stain it. It was three mismatched colors already and after a few weekends with paint brush in hand we got it to match the dark brown of our deck. Then the side yard project got abandoned for a while… GMAT studying, triathlon training and a trip to Europe happened. In ...