Yesterday, as I prepared to leave for my first day of mountain biking this season, Chris helped ready my bike, then loaded it into my car. As I pulled away, he stood there waving incessantly. “It’s like the first day of school,” he said. Indeed, it felt like the first day of school—the excitement, the slight tinge of butterfly in the stomach, the “do I have everything” anxiety.

First days are often the best and worst of days… everything is new, or new again. You’re fresh, you’re pumped, you’re ready. Yet you’re also perhaps naive, undertrained or ill-prepared. Lucky for me, my first mountain biking day was on the positive side. I didn’t crash or ruin my bike; I didn’t have an asthma attack or feel too out of shape. And despite being a little rusty (or just plain “not good” in the first place), I managed to learn a few things and have fun. Now that’s a first day to remember (rock climbing is another story).

Yes, that’s right. I am an official WordPress dork. I’ve bought my ticket to WordCamp San Francisco and will be convening with some experts in the blog biz on May 30. Look for some exciting post-camp changes to my site—I’m sure I’ll learn a fancy trick or two.

Check out the Mother’s Day cards Chris and I made for our mommies. Stamps + coffee made from a percolator = one creative evening… don’t you just love the fireflies made with the exclamation mark stamp?

Saw my first bear of the season this morning on a walk down near Skylandia Beach in Tahoe City—quite a strange place for an ursine encounter as the industry on Lake Forest Road was bustling, and the bear (a big, honking coffee-colored guy) was not even an eighth-mile from the road.

In other bear news, Li’l Smokey, the cub rescued from last summer’s Moon fire in Shasta County and rehabbed by South Shore’s Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care, has been reported alive, well and out of hibernation by the California Department of Fish and Game, who picked up a signal from the bear’s transmitter last month. Li’l Smokey was released in the Klamath National Forest in February. Another happy ending for Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care!

For more info, check out Smokey’s rehab blog.

For my work as an editor at a regional magazine, I rarely have a chance to write in first person. Unfounded thoughts, quick opinions and good-old fashioned biases certainly don’t make it passed an editor’s cuts, or even onto the page in the first place. And that’s where this blog steps in… I look forward to bringing you more of an unfiltered me, and to keep you updated on my writing career and life along the way.