Ramblings

A Peek Inside My Office

by Aubre Andrus on January 30, 2013

Desk

My goal for January was to finish my office. When we moved into our new condo in October, I immediately painted three of the green walls light grey and the final wall with chalkboard paint. And there it sat for a few months. But I finally got around to finishing the decorating including building my own bookshelf.

Pictures

 

Most of the art hanging on the walls is from Etsy and Society 6. You can find the direct links on my office Pinterest board. The photographs are from my own travels. If you like the camera images you can print them here for free. The hanging terrariums in my window are from West Elm and CB2. The air plants are from Sprout Home here in Chicago.

 

Plants

The chalkboard wall took about three coats of paint but it was well worth it. My desk faces this wall and it’s great for writing to-do lists and for the week’s deadlines. To really clean off the chalk, you have to use a damp sponge — not just an eraser. And can I mention how hard it is to find an chalkboard eraser in a world of dry erase boards?

photo 5

I was eying the CB2 3.14 bookcase but at $500 (and it’s not even really wood!) I had to pass. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who had this thought. I found a bunch of tutorials online — including this one at Apartment Therapy – detailing how to build one yourself for about $80. Seven pieces of wood, a pint of paint and primer, and a couple afternoons later, my bookshelf was finished.

Bookshelf 2Bookshelf 1bookshelf

 

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I’m One Tough Mudder! (And So Can You!)

by Aubre Andrus on September 10, 2012

Tough Mudder is a 10 to 12 mile military-style obstacle course designed by the British Special Forces that’s held in various places around the world. And I voluntarily signed up for it. Well, in reality, I was bullied into signing up for Tough Mudder Wisconsin months ago by my good friend, the military veteran who did a tour of Iraq and who’s already competed one Tough Mudder. I had already committed to a half marathon, so I thought, Screw it! I’ll be in shape by then. What have I got to lose? Nothing. It turns, out I was actually right.

While the website is totally intimidating, and it’s true that you have sign a death waiver, the event is seriously fun. That’s right. I said it. F-U-N. I was on a team with six people (Odin’s Raven for the win!) and they are what made the event memorable. It’s all about helping each other get to the end. You’re not going to climb over a 10 foot wall on your own, right? That’s what your teammates are for. To put a firm hand on your ass and push you over. And if they can’t do it, a stranger from another team will. In fact, two of my own teammates were strangers — friends of friends I met that day. By the end, I felt like we were close buddies.

The event is not timed, and participants are encouraged (multiple times!) to skip any obstacles that they don’t want to do. It’s simple to walk around any obstacle (there’s about 25 of them) on the course. I’m insanely claustrophobic so I skipped the obstacle where you had to crawl through slender plastic tubes filled with muddy water and rocks, called The Boa Constrictor. (Looking back, I should have just done it, but whatever.) I’m also not that great at holding my breath underwater, but I forced myself to jump off the 15-foot high wall into water, take on the Underwater Tunnels (floating barrels that you had to swim under), and Arctic Enema (the flipping freezing cold ice bath with a nice wall in the middle that you also had to swim under). I even ran smiling through the Electroshock Therapy — the final obstacle where live wires with 10,000 volts dangle from a 15-foot long wooden archway just a few muddy steps from the finish line. I only got shocked once and I stayed on my feet. (Tip: SPRINT fast with high knees. That mud is slippery, but you don’t want to army crawl slowly through this obstacle like many people do. You will get shocked more often, and it will be worse.)

You can walk the whole time and no one will judge you — it just might take you a long time. Our course was a little over 11 miles (a half marathon is 13.1). We ran the majority of the time, were all fairly athletic, and it took us 3.5 hours. I believe the starting and stopping is harder on your body, so I preferred to jog the whole time and stay flexible. My muscles were cramping up by the end.

The only obstacle that sucked was the Electric Eel. We had to army crawl through the mud with live wires dangling inches above our head. I got zapped three times. I screamed the first two times — I got shocked on my foot and was NOT expecting it — but it’s not as bad as it sounds. I think.

On that note, sign up for Tough Mudder today! You’ll love it.

P.S. The event isn’t cheap, but it benefits the Wounded Warrior Project.

Aubre Andrus is a freelance writer in Chicago who specializes in copywriting, blogging, reporting, and social media consulting. View her website and portfolio at www.aubreandrus.com or find her on Twitter @aubreandrus.

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Half Marathon #2: Complete!

by Aubre Andrus on August 20, 2012

The Madison Mini Marathon was my second half marathon, and it was way better than my first race in Columbus, Ohio. Exhibit A: The medal is shaped like a beer and doubles as a bottle opener. Exhibit B: The race ended at the Memorial Union Terrace, and in addition to the typical water, banana, and granola bar, we were handed a beer, Cheetos, Oreos, and Sassy Cow Chocolate Milk. Exhibit C: I got to high five Bucky at the start line and all the sausages from Miller Park at the finish line. And my friend Meg was nice enough to bring me fresh flowers from the Farmer’s Market!

Aubre Andrus is a freelance writer in Chicago who specializes in copywriting, blogging, reporting, and social media consulting. View her website and portfolio at www.aubreandrus.com or find her on Twitter @aubreandrus.

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100 Best-Ever Teen Novels List Released by NPR

by Aubre Andrus on August 9, 2012

{Image taken at my local Barnes & Noble.}

There’s an entire section dedicated to “Teen Paranormal Romance” at Barnes & Noble. Thankfully only one of those books (Twilight) made it on the list of NPR’s 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels. More than 75,000 people voted to create this list, and I believe that it’s missing just about every Judy Blume book ever written (only Forever made the list). Here are the top 5:

1. Harry Potter series

2. The Hunger Games series

3. To Kill a Mockingbird

4. The Fault in Our Stars (a new book that sounds like a better version of A Walk to Remember)

5. The Hobbit

Looks like I have to take another stab at the Lord of the Rings series. Glad to see Anne of Green Gables and The Princess Bride on the list. Also happy to see that my time spent reading every popular series lately has paid off.

P.S. More importantly, NPR also released this list of Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books.

Aubre Andrus is a freelance writer in Chicago who specializes in copywriting, blogging, reporting, and social media consulting. View her website and portfolio at www.aubreandrus.com or find her on Twitter @aubreandrus.

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Is Guest Posting Great? Copyblogger Results.

by Aubre Andrus on February 3, 2012

{Image via ntr23}

I’ve always heard that guest blogging is a great thing to do. These stats prove that it definitely drove traffic to my website and to my online presences. (I have to admit, it’s really fun to watch all those numbers quickly and steadily climb almost instantly after the article was posted.) What can’t be qualified is that I “met” some interesting people online who reached out to me via comments on the article itself, LinkedIn, my Facebook page, and Twitter. I got a lot of nice notes and cool retweets from all over the Internet. I have yet to see real results from this (Will I get any new clients? Make any money?), but it definitely drew some attention. The article was posted on Tuesday and here are the results by Friday:

Copyblogger article (via Copyblogger
622 Tweets
61 Facebook Shares
34 Google+ +1s
35 comments
4 pingbacks (bloggers linked to it)

Twitter Followers (via twittercounter.com
Monday: 588
Friday: 671
Total: +89 fans

Website Views (via Google Analytics
Monday: 12
Tuesday: 531
Wednesday: 119
Thursday: 199
Total: +849 visits (85% new visitors)

Facebook Fans (via Facebook Insights
Monday: 97
Friday: 134
Total: +37 Fans

Aubre Andrus is a freelance writer in Chicago who specializes in copywriting, blogging, reporting, and social media consulting. View her website and portfolio at www.aubreandrus.com or find her on Twitter @aubreandrus.

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A Special Project for My Dad’s Birthday

by Aubre Andrus on August 30, 2011

I have to think a man turning 50 already has everything he needs. But hearing how much people love you never gets old, right? So for my dad’s big 5-0, I reached out to friends and family through a mass e-mail campaign asking them to submit a “thing they love” about my dad. I edited the submissions and sent off the copy and a few design ideas to an art director friend of mine. Here’s the finished product thanks to Paula Riley (who also designed my website…and business cards…and blog headers for this blog and my travel blog). I may be a little biased, but I LOVE how it turned out! And my dad did, too.

Read all 50 reasons here.

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