I’ve got summer on the brain this week. Maybe it’s because Andy and I are preparing for our first backpacking trip in almost a year now that it’s finally warm. (The last trip we tried to take was Halloween weekend when there was an unseasonal snow storm in North Carolina. Needless to say the weather reports kept us off the trail.) Maybe it’s because I’m thinking ahead to my friend’s wedding in June. Maybe it’s because my HOA just sent an email that the pool is now open or because I took a long run this morning and the sun felt so nice. Whatever the reason, I’m ready for it, and I’m formulating a doable summer bucket list to make sure I maximize my fun.

1. I’ve always wanted to go tubing, or Shoot the Hooch as it’s termed here in Atlanta, and I’m hoping this year will be the year. A group of friends, the hot sun, a lazy river, and a cooler of drinks sounds like an A+ way to spend the day. (Well, with lots of sunscreen.)

2. Relax at dusk watching an outdoor movie. Atlantic Station has them, as does the park near my house. We have camp chairs–what more could we need?!

3. Check out the light installation at the botanical garden. I never made it to the animal topiary exhibit that I wanted to see a few summers ago, so I don’t want to miss this one! Tickets to the garden always feel like quite the splurge, but it’s a fun place to visit.

4. Hang out at the lake and hike at Don Carter State Park. I watched excitedly a few years back as this new state park prepared to open, but then I never actually made it there! It’s an easy drive from Atlanta for a day trip.

5. Drink more of my favorite seasonal beers. I discovered Red Brick’s Dog Days (a hefeweizen) and Heavy Seas Red Sky at Night (a saison/farmhouse ale), and they may just be my favorite beers I’ve ever had. And yet last summer I don’t think I drank a single one of either! That has to change.

Did you notice a motif in my list of “I wanted to do this, but for some reason I never did”? It’s easy to think the seasons don’t mean as much when you’re not tethered to a school schedule, and when your job doesn’t change because it’s summer, it’s harder to do those summery things. And I mean, sure, in a month I’ll probably be complaining about how hot it is. But that doesn’t mean I can’t prioritize a change of pace and make sure I spend some time outside! I already have a beach trip planned for June, and if I check items off my bucket list too I know I’ll have a good few months.

What are your summer must-do activities? Are you already planning for your summer fun?

I’ve started seeing all the graduation pictures and getting all the wedding invitations that mean summer is nearly upon us. And that means I hope you’re planning at least one fun trip for yourself to enjoy the warmer weather! When I worked in an office, I noticed that, even for adults with no kids’ school schedules to dictate their calendar, summer was still when the majority of people took the time to travel. Andy and I beat the rush by traveling to Portland in April to celebrate our anniversary.

Planning vacations as an adult makes me really, really appreciate those school trips where everything is all mapped out for you: transportation and accomodations are included, your itinerary is already in place, and food options just seem to appear. I’m no travel agent, and I’ve learned that vacations where you walk a lot and do some going with the flow are really fun, but I did want to have some of the big pieces nailed down before we flew across the country to make sure we got the most out of our trip.

I had a bookmarks folder in my browser with over 30 sites of Portland attractions and restaurants, but it was hard to know what to make of those. How would we get to each of the locations from our Airbnb? Was anything convenient to anything else? Did we need to buy tickets in advance or make reservations?

I wanted to add them all to a map, but I couldn’t figure out how to add as many “destinations” to a Google Map as I wanted. I eventually found Google’s My Maps and started toying around with it. I settled on a workable solution for planning our trip that I think might help you, too!

First I opened all of my bookmarks in tabs in my browser. Yes, Chrome, I really do want to open 37 tabs.

My Maps looks a lot like the Google Maps interface you’re probably used to using to get directions, so I found it pretty intuitive to use. For each tab I had open, I would search for the place in My Maps and, once Google found it, save it as a location. I created a color-coding system for the pins to indicate what type of destination it was. My categories were:

• Home Base (where we were staying)
• Useful (a laundromat, the co-op near our airbnb, etc.)
• Transportation (nearby bus stops, Zip Car pickups)
• Restaurants
• Sweet Treats/Alcohol
• Recreation/Outdoor Spots
• Shopping
• Educational/Enrichment

But of course you could organize your pins however you’d like!

I added a description to each pin that included a link to the website I’d bookmarked and information about a reservation or tickets if we had them.

My Maps has a function where you can divide pins into layers, which I didn’t do at first but ended up implementing while we were on our trip. Pins that are on one layer can be swiftly hidden from view with the click of a button. The map felt cluttered by all of the transportation pins I had included, so I separated them out into a layer. Then, I created a layer called “Visited” and moved pins to it once we had checked them off the list. That way, I could hide that layer and get a quick glimpse at the things we had left to do!

It was extremely useful to be able to see at a glance which of my desired destinations were in clusters near each other. We didn’t come up with a firm itinerary for our trip necessarily, but we did say, “Well, on Saturday we want to go to the Portland Saturday Market, and that is near this restaurant someone recommended, so we can combine those into a trip,” or “Hey, the Japanese Garden and the Pittock Mansion are both in Washington Park, so maybe we can walk between the two of those!” (Which we did, and which was lovely.) Especially since we were using public transportation, combining outings made us very efficient, and we visited a lot of the places people and the Internet had recommended.

I thought that by having made a Google Map I’d be able to open it on my phone and use it to navigate, but evidently I thought WRONG. My Maps does save the map to your Google Drive, meaning you can share it like you can any other Google Doc, but as it’s a .kmz file, the Google Maps app has no idea what to do with it. BUMMER!

Luckily my husband is a savvy engineer and had the brilliant idea that Google Earth might be able to handle it. So, I downloaded the Google Earth app and voila! The .kmz file that I had exported from My Maps and texted to myself had a happy place to be opened.

The downside is that Google Earth doesn’t have a navigational function, but at least I could access my pins away from my computer. I could look and see where we had intended to go and then search for it in my preferred maps app to get directions. Not an ideal solution, perhaps, but a doable workaround. (Beware, too, that Google Earth is a giant app, so you may want to download it when you’re on wifi.)

Evidently there is a My Maps app for Android, so if that’s the kind of phone you have you’re in luck!

If you’re heading to an unfamiliar city and have lots of sights you want to see, give Google’s My Maps a try for planning! And if you happen to be visiting Portland, feel free to check out the map I used. We walked a lot, ate a lot, and drank a lot (of both coffee and alcohol), so if that’s your kind of trip then I’ve done the legwork for you.

P.S. If you are going to Portland, I’d also highly recommend the Airbnb where we stayed. It was in a beautiful neighborhood, easily accessible by public transportation, and was a great spot for a home base.

Yesterday Andy and I embarked on a mission to organize the big closet in our second bedroom. It has a LOT of stuff in it and is great to have, but it just wasn’t really working for either of us. I wanted to make it so that you could actually walk into it, and so that I could more easily access stuff. Anyway, in doing so we got rid of a bunch of empty boxes we’d been keeping, and Kira finally became like a real cat and sat herself down into this box lid.

That was our weekend excitement. It’s been awhile since I’ve shared links, so some of these are old–weekend excitement for YOU!

• 7 quirky holidays to celebrate in May
  Cuz why not??

• 5 things you should do every day, even when life is stressful.
  For me personally, I don’t have a load of laundry to do every day, but I appreciate the sentiment. And the others are great! I’ve been really prioritizing cleaning the kitchen, meaning I sometimes do it several times a day, but each of those times takes me about 2.5 minutes, and the pay off makes me very happy.

• A refreshingly straightforward account of how one woman lost 33 pounds and has kept it off
  She limits how much she eats, she eats mostly real foods, and she exercises. But when she has a particularly strong craving for one kind of food, she eats it! The wonder.

• Related: simple rules for healthy eating

• 31 cat reactions to every day situations

The best on Twitter:

• Funny blurb from the local news

Best local news ticker: "Georgia police use bag of Cheetos to capture runaway goats."

— Laura Lindeman (@lclindeman) May 2, 2015

• Now that the royal baby has been born…

British line of Royal succession is now: 1 Charles 2 William 3 George 4 #RoyalBaby 5 Dowager Countess 6 Benedict Cumberbatch 7 John Cleese

— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) May 2, 2015

• My cat met another Kira Lindeman and had a marriage proposal

Pretty much the best thing is happening on my cat’s Twitter. pic.twitter.com/7SRPLPQjBl

— Laura Lindeman (@lclindeman) April 30, 2015

I won’t even try to top that.

I flew through six books in April. I went on a novels binge, which always helps, because once I’m engaged in a story I read it pretty quickly.

I’ve been trying to replace my downtime urge to mindlessly scroll through Facebook with reading a non-fiction book on the Kindle app on my computer instead, and in large part it’s been working pretty well. I got bogged down when my book of choice was The 4-Hour Workweek by Timoth Ferriss, though, so that one is still lingering in my “currently reading” category. I should probably consider it abanadoned here before too long. In general I think I like the concept–that if you’re efficient and automate things you can accomplish a lot in a little time, and free yourself up to enjoy life on your terms–but I could have gotten the gist from a blog post or a bulleted list. The writing is not great, and Ferriss comes across as awfully cocky to me. (I mean, he’s a veritable empire at this point, so I can’t blame him, but it’s not pleasant to read.)

Anyway, on to the books I did read:

This one was a big book, and I liked it. I was able to check it out from the library as an e-book, a system that works really well once you figure it out! I even renewed it online and re-delivered it to my Kindle. I’m so fancy. I enjoyed trying to envision the parts of the city the book took place in, even though I’m not super familiar with Paris, and I loved the sense of place it evoked. Not all of the characters and their stories were as fleshed out as I might have liked, but it was already long enough!

This was April’s book club read, and I read it pretty quickly. I’ve never been a huge Pride and Prejudice fan, so I appreciated how the author recapped some of the characters and plotlines. It was enjoyable to read but not a great book overall. The mystery plot was not intriguing enough, and Wickham wasn’t a strong enough central character. All of us agreed at book club that we wanted more romance and more Elizabeth + Darcy.

Okay, plenty of romance in this one (OF COURSE). You know I liked this one. I can’t help myself. It didn’t have the typical Nicholas Sparks suckerpunch of a twist, though it did have one sad thing happen (which I had predicted a few pages in advance). Surprisingly, I don’t think they’ve turned this one into a movie yet.

I picked this one up from Powell’s Books in Portland, OR when Andy and I were on vacation to celebrate our 5-year anniversary. I had decided I was going to buy an indie press book there to satisfy that entry on my reading challenge, and this was the one that jumped out at me. It was published by a small press in Portland, and it sounded like a fun, beachy read. I enjoyed the story well enough, but the book was riddled with typos, which I found very distracting.

Y’all, my friend Steph WROTE this book. How cool is that?! She asked me if I would read it and write an Amazon review, but I promise this is not a biased response. I really did enjoy the book. I’ve been on both sides of the volunteer equation (as a volunteer and as a staff member of a non-profit that used volunteers), so a lot of the stories in the book resonated with me. It was neat to be able to pinpoint why some things had worked really well and why others weren’t good experiences. It’s geared toward faith-based ventures, but the tenets would hold elsewhere too I think. It was readable but also would be very easily applied as a checklist.

Y’all, this book. It got so much buzz last year and made its way onto my TBR list. I picked it up on sale for my Kindle awhile back but for some reason I had been resisting it. I was wrong. I didn’t think it was in my typical genre, but it was so beautifully written and so interesting. I was blown away by how much I enjoyed this one. It deserved every character of hype it got.

2 more reading challenge tasks marked off: a romance novel and a book published by an indie press. 11 left to go, which means I’m just over halfway completed and less than halfway through the year. I have my book of poetry and my graphic novel all queued up.

Disclosure: links are Amazon Affiliate links, which help support my blogging habit.

I was first introduced to Connie Britton as Tami Taylor, a.ka. Mrs. Coach, on Friday Night Lights. She was such an epitome of the modern Southern woman - the drawl, the fierce mama love for every player on the football team, the stand by your man, and, of course, the hair. Her hair was impeccable. I grieved when I got to the end of the series on Netflix, and I know I wasn’t alone in that.

So a few years ago when I heard about this new show Britton was going to be on called Nashville, of course I scheduled it to record. (It doesn’t hurt that I also like listening to country music.) I’ve been enjoying it ever since. Every week I’m blown away by whoever the talented songwriters are who create practically an entire album of hits for each episode. Oh, the emotional drama sucks me in too (understatement of the year).

I wondered at first whether it was really the show’s actors singing. I remember thinking early on, “I didn’t know Connie Britton was a singer as well as an actor,” since I had only known her as Coach Taylor’s wife. Well, you know what?

She wasn’t.

I did some Googling, as one does, and found a few articles about when Nashville’s creator Callie Khouri picked Britton to play aging country star Rayna James.

Khouri hired Britton without hearing her sing, even though Britton had not sung for an audience since she did regional theater in her early 20s. Khouri’s husband, the music producer T Bone Burnett, was confident they could make it work. “All girls can sing,” he said. “I figured, Look, she’s going to go on national television, she’s not going to make a total fool of herself,” he told me later. “She must think she can handle it.” Working closely with a voice coach and Burnett, Britton developed what Burnett considers a strong, storytelling voice, more like a Lucinda Williams than a Carrie Underwood. Britton still gets nervous singing in public, but some of the more intimate musical numbers are more compelling for the vulnerability Britton brings to them.

Connie was a little surprised herself about being offered the role.

Britton’s real voice would be used on the show. And that made the actress very nervous. “I grew up singing,” Britton reveals. “My mother was a music teacher and I trained for [musicals] in drama school. But when I started pounding the pavement in New York, I realized that people there have these majestic voices. I’m a perfectionist, so I let that go by the wayside.’”

I also read an interview recently with two of the actors from the show who make musical magic together as a duo. They weren’t a package deal; they’d never even met before being cast. And it turns out, they’re not even Southerners. They’re a British man and an Australian woman playing a Texas cowboy and a Mississippi ingenue on an American TV show set in Nashville, Tennessee.

The music absolutely makes Nashville, and the show has such a sense of place. But all of that comes from an ensemble cast that includes a star who never sang professionally before and two people from far away continents.

It doesn’t make any sense on paper, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

So here’s my question: what have you been holding yourself back from because you’re not a fill-in-the-blank?

Connie Britton “wasn’t a singer,” yet I’ve been listening to her croon on Spotify all morning.

If you sing, you’re a singer. You don’t have to wait for someone to give you permission or to print out the right label to stick on your permanent record. Just start being a dang singer. That’s what Connie Britton did.

Tune into Nashville tonight and every Wednesday at 10/9 central.