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 ...

I did sit still for a little this weekend… but not for the whole weekend. Today was Ben’s birthday! I made “dark chocolate, extra gooey” brownies per his request and after we spent the afternoon staining our side yard fence together we took said brownies to a concert at Frederik Meijer Gardens with our neighbors. I listened to Ben Folds a lot in high school but haven’t listened to his new stuff at all. My pal Elena said his performance with a live symphony was one of the best concerts she had ever seen. This might not have been the best concert I’ve ever seen but it was impressive and really fun. Also a beautiful night with good friends and a tasty picnic we threw together last minute didn’t hurt.

Never one to sit still, I returned from Europe just to fly into another trip. My family and I had planned to explore Pittsburgh for the 4th of July weekend long before a trip to Europe was on my radar. We spent a long weekend exploring the city and the surrounding areas—and loved it. Pittsburgh reminds me so much of eastern Pennsylvania—windy roads, hilly green farmland, hidden streams and wildflowers and jagged stone sided mountains. We stayed about a half hour outside the city in a small rural town with turkey vultures ( ugh ) in our backyard, pitch black nights and a nearby pay-and-pick farm stand. So charming! Minus the turkey vultures. We visited the National Aviary (which was much cooler than I thought, partly because of a baby sloth!), went 400+ feet up the historic (1877) Duquesne Inline (whoa the views) and walked through the Carnegie Natural History Museum. The highlight of the trip, though, was a day trip out to Mill Run, Pennsylvania to tour Frank Lloy...

This is part five of many recapping my trip to Europe. Read about my fourth leg in Rome , third leg in Switzerland , second leg in France and first leg in Amsterdam (part 1) . Beyond an over-confident moment upon landing in Amsterdam causing our first real traveler’s headache, Amsterdam was great. I played tour guide for Ben and we booked an impromptu day-trip to see the countryside. Amsterdam feels like Seattle in that its climate is cooler with always a chance of rain. We walked around the canal lined streets popping in and out of shops, restaurants and museums and mostly missed the rain. Our day trip to the countryside was a real highlight. We toured a town with working windmills, visited a gouda cheese factory (omg best gouda cheese ever), stopped at a beautiful lakeside town, watched wooden shoes be made and learned more about the Netherlands’ history. We learned most of the country sits below sea level, and canals/rivers run like veins all over its landscape. Ye...