I have been eating the same breakfast nearly every day since May. Fruit mixed with yogurt and Kashi cereal. It goes without saying that I’m a creature of habit and like my routines. I have gotten a little wild and switched up which berries I eat though.

Now that the fruit is not in season (and therefore very expensive and not that tasty), I’ve started buying frozen berries. I wasn’t sure how to defrost them though. My roommate and I don’t have a microwave and leaving them in the fridge overnight to thaw out still left them a bit hard.

That left me with my hair dryer or the radiator. After some experimentation, I have found that covering a bowl full of berries and leaving them on the radiator while I showered provides the perfect thaw. Sometimes if I take a longer shower, the fruit juices form a deep, rich red puddle at the bottom of my bowl. When I decided to attempt Project 365 (taking a photo every day), I knew my berry breakfast had to be included.

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I was born in a hospital (not a barn, contrary to frequent speculation by my mother during my formative years), but I was raised in the ‘burbs. After I graduated high school, I stuck around and got my first job serving up caffeine and pastries while wearing a green apron. While I was serving suburbanites lattes for three long years, I was attending Sierra College, which is nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas…and the ‘burbs (Rocklin, to be exact.)

Eventually, I completed my education at Sierra College and was up to my eyeballs in job dissatisfaction, so I found a new job. A job Downtown. Skerrrry.

I’ve been working at this job now for about a year and a half, and sometimes when I reflect on it, it seems sort of surreal. To recap: At 21, I was a young woman who spent the duration of her life in the suburbs of Sacramento, barely setting foot in the city proper unless it was for some special occasion. I had a basic understanding of the traffic grid but I certainly didn’t understand the parking rules and Lord knows I hadn’t a clue about the one way streets. I was also relatively sure that people got shot if they were out too late downtown.

Now at 22 and 1/2, I’m a young woman who has spent approximately 3,120 hours sitting at my desk on the fourth floor of the Traveler’s Building at 5th and J. Every time I walk from the parking garage to work, I see the Federal Courthouse standing very tall, and very, very beautiful just two blocks away. On my lunches, I generally take walks around the city, unless I have my bicycle in the back of my car, in which case, I ride. I have regularly made pilgrimages to the State Capitol (not as tall, but beautiful in a way that makes you proud and ache simultaneously). I have learned that California’s official State reception site is not at the capitol, but a few blocks south at the Stanford House, a beautiful Victorian home owned by Mr. and Mrs. Stanford (one of the powerful “Big Four” railroad Barons, and eventual founders of Stanford University). I’ve discovered that you can’t throw a stone in this town without hitting a “fixie,” and I fear creaming one every time I drive. Awhile back I had some jerk Fixie wearing a cast on his arm almost sideswipe me. Maybe the cast should have clued him in that he wasn’t very good at riding bikes, and should stick to light rail or trekking on foot like the rest of Sacramento. Plus, I now know that Parking is free on the streets after six and on weekends, that the grid follows a basic pattern of one way-other way-BOTH WAYS, and that people do get shot downtown, but that it’s very, very rare. The last shooting I heard of was a man getting shot by a homeless woman after he refused to give her money. And while it was a block away from my building, everyone was suitably shocked. That stuff just doesn’t happen here.

But the realization I am most pleased to have acquired by working downtown and partaking in urban exploring is that I really love Sacramento. I was never sure before if I liked Sacramento, or just Fair Oaks, the suburb where I grew up. Now I know I love both, though at this point in my life, I might love Sacramento proper just a teensy bit more. And I feel really lucky to have discovered that.

— — —

Kelly Miller, a guest writer for This Ordinary Day, is an extremely busy lady. When not working for an educational non-profit organization serving California’s community college faculty, she’s either attending classes at CSU Sacramento, hanging out with her stellar boyfriend or dead asleep.

I have experienced many glorious sports moments in my life. Some of them I was a participant, and those were the most glorious.

My seventh-grade track season was probably my best, and the pinnacle was the third meet of the year, in which I won the 1,600-meter (metric mile, four laps around a 400-meter track) and took third in the 1,200-meter run (three laps). What was most impressive was that I was running against eighth-graders, and I turned in the best times of my young career.

The highlight of my athletic career, however, was during baseball season of my junior year of high school. It was the final inning of a game we had to win in order to keep our playoff hopes alive. I was the go-ahead run as I stepped to the plate, and I hit into an almost double play, but I managed to beat out the throw to first. I wanted desperately to be given the “steal” sign, making it much easier to score. But Dusty Duke wanted to make it more exciting.

On the first pitch, he sent the ball screaming into the right-center gap, and I was off to the races. Before I reached second base, I glanced and saw that neither the center-fielder nor the right-fielder had reached the ball. As I headed for third base, I saw my coach bouncing up and down excitedly, and he was sending me home. We were going for it, baby.

As I rounded third, I saw the cut-off man for the other team throwing the ball to the catcher, and I gathered myself for a close play at the plate. I churned my legs with fervent urgency as I barreled down the third baseline, and I began to edge to the outside corner of home plate to avoid the tag. I leaped toward that outside corner, landing and sliding smoothly on the right side of my body as I extended my left leg out to “hook” home plate as I slid by. A massive cloud of dust caught up to me as I come to a halt, and the world seemed to move in slow motion as the umpire signaled me “safe.”

Jubilation erupted from the stands and the dugout as we dog-piled Dusty just behind the pitcher’s mound. We didn’t even make the play-offs that year, but that play will forever reverberate in my mind as one of the single greatest moments in my athletic career. Moments like that are priceless, and nothing can ever take them away.

As great as that moment was, it was small potatoes. After my playing days were over, I witnessed athletic achievements so grand that I consider myself lucky to have been present. There are times when you know that you have just experienced something special, a feat so spectacular that it may never be duplicated. I had just such an experience the other night, and it came from the most unlikely of sources.

My mom’s side of the family had gathered at my aunt and uncle’s house to celebrate Christmas, and the evening had culminated in an extended session of Nintendo Wii. There were many different games played, but the defining moment of the evening came in the 10th frame of a bowling match for the ages.

Down by at least 40 pins, my younger sister Abi needed a miracle. As she toed the line, there was a stern and determined look on her face. She let loose a ball that screamed as it tore down the virtual lane, knocking down all 10 pins with authority. We all clapped with approval, and Abi gave a cutsie little “yay!” before donning her game-face once again. Another booming throw again sent the pins flying. Abi had thrown her second consecutive strike. The cheers were even louder this time, and Abi’s celebration a bit more girly. But she still had one more throw to make.

We could all sense that something great was about to happen.

Her body language was calm and cool as she readied herself for the final throw. A hush fell over the spectators, in awe of her focus and intensity. As she let the ball fly, the entire room let loose a roar that could have waked the neighbors. She crushed the pins, sending them flying into the back wall of the virtual bowling alley, bouncing and spinning all the way. She raised her arms victoriously and unleashed yet another girly scream. She had done the impossible.

The best part is that when you bowl three strikes in a row, it’s called a “turkey,” and Abi did a turkey/victory dance for the ages. We continued to play various games on the Wii for quite some time, but no moment could ever match the improbable magnitude of Abi’s 10th frame magic. Not even scoring from first base in the bottom of the last inning to win the game. No game will ever be as big, no feat as monumental. No one will ever forget the night that Abi “danced the turkey.”

It’s like the sword of Damocles or something, hanging over my head, trying to knock me over on the finishing line.

(pronounce in either a deathly whisper or Darth Vader voice) The Future.

Because I’ve almost finished my PhD, thoughts along the lines of Dear God, what will I ever do with my life? keep creeping up on me.

To be honest, I don’t really understand why I always have to know what’s coming. Nevertheless, I’ve become an absolute expert in planning everything to the tiniest detail. I was raised this way. Security was a big deal where I grew up, maybe because of a world war in the aftermath of which my parents grew up. It doesn’t matter; it’s just the way it was.

Of course, my plans don’t materialise as expected. Ever.

In addition, I’m totally happy with what life has dished out for me up to now, even though it’s not necessarily what I had been planning to have/do/be. (Sometimes I’m more pleased with the end product than with the process, though.)

So basically, I have spent half my life (and this is only a rough estimate) planning and worrying about things that never, I repeat, never turned out as planned. Like poor Sisyphus with his rock.

“Not too bright though,” as some people would say – and I would have to agree, now that I think of it.

So I figured 2009 will be my year of unplanning. I will go with the flow (if you knew me, you’d be rolling on the floor laughing right this minute). I will stop trying to control what I cannot and will not.

I will jump.

I will try to take it a day at a time, and to cherish the moments as they come. The good ones, and the bad ones, too. Because, in the words of Virginia Woolf, “You can’t find peace by avoiding life.”

Apparently they — whoever they are who decide these kind of things — have added an extra second to 2009. The “leap second” will synchronize atomic clocks and astronomical time, an adjustment that is necessary because technology is better at measuring time than the earth and the sun. I know this because several of the bloggers, columnists and marketing geniuses whose words I read have discussed what they will do with that extra second.

Some say they’ll spend it with family — thus giving the writer license to write 800+ words musing on the joys of family life. Others are sure the second will go unnoticed (which is a pretty good bet). They say they’ll sleep an extra second, or watch TV for an extra second or spend that extra second surfing the Internet.

Because these men and women took the time to tell me what they’d do with extra time, I felt obliged to think about it myself. But if “they” can give us an extra second this year, then why not consider a little more time, say, a minute, an hour or a day.

If I had an extra minute, I’d make my bed.

Usually the covers on my bed are a mess. I tell myself that the bed will just be in disarray again the next morning, so why waste the time? No one sees my bed anyway, I say, now that I live in a place with more than one room. (Seriously, this is the first time I’ve had a door between my bedroom and my living room… it’s great.) But I always feel more put-together when the sheets are pulled taut and the comforter is folded neatly over straightened pillows. So if I had an extra minute, I’d make my bed.

If I had an extra hour, I’d wash my dog.

She’s an unusually smelly dog who enjoys rolling in piles of leaves (OK, maybe that’s WHY she’s a smelly dog). I love when she smells like lavender (i.e., dog shampoo) and is a little cuddle bug. She likes me to pay attention to her until she is completely dry, so she rolls onto her back and snuggles against my feet when she gets out of the bath. I love this time — when she’s damp but smells good — but she gets really bad dandruff after a bath and it takes awhile to get her washed and dried and get the bathroom cleaned up. Therefore, baths are usually reserved for the days we go to the dog park or it’s especially muddy outside. So if I had an extra hour, I’d wash my dog.

If I had an extra day — oh, if I had an extra day — I’d, well, I’d watch a dozen movies on Netflix or read an entire book. If it were warm, I’d ride my bike and wash my car. I’d travel. I’d… well, I’d do exactly what I wanted to do each and every minute because that day would be free. And mine. And I’d make my bed, and I’d wash my dog.

But an extra second?

I’ve already used it. I read about what other people will do with their extra time.

There’s a run on discount cough medicine at Target. The shelves are empty and broken. I grapple with the remaining bottles, my hands turning over labels with big words and numbers. The pharmacist eyes me from behind the counter. I’m probably not the first clueless guy to fumble his way through the cold and cough section today.

I don’t get sick. Not during flu season. Not in foreign countries. Not trapped in an elevator with 11 sneezing, hacking, wheezing, festering bacteria hosts. Call it luck. Call it a good immune system. All I know is it was impossible to stay home during my school years.

With that track record, it seemed incredulous that I had suddenly developed a cough. Surely it was a gag reflex. Bad paneer perhaps, or those off-brand frosted flakes I’ve been eating. Excuses, excuses. There wasn’t a chance in hell I was coming down with something. I don’t use the s-word. I was skeptical until the occasional hemming developed into full-blown whooping. Sniffles became a constant flow of mucus. My eyes were red and my nose followed shortly thereafter.

What the hell do regular people do when they get sick? Eat soup? Drink orange juice? Sleep? I didn’t know what the remedy was, but it most definitely would not involve me sleeping or eating healthily.

Still, I tried to play it smart. I guzzled water. Avoided alcohol. Went to bed on time. After a week of the same symptoms, I was starting to take this seriously.

But taking it slow is not my idea of a productive lifestyle. I had a mild fever, and I began my morning by running a 10K. I went out and joined friends for movies, for outings. It was the holidays and it impossible to be antisocial. The results however, were not encouraging.

People around me knew I wasn’t well. When I coughed uncontrollably through a holiday dinner party and nearly crashed at 10 p.m., it was obvious. They asked if I was OK and I replied, “Of course.” Everyone knew it was lie and kept their distance. No one wants to hang around a breeding petri dish.

I kept hoping my slight attempts at healing would work. My mistake. In hindsight, I couldn’t bring myself to admit defeat. I didn’t want to say that word.

Here it is, two weeks later, and I can’t sleep. I spent the night on the couch, watching TV because my condition kept me awake. Tossing and turning and trying to think of anything but my lungs, my raw throat. It didn’t help that the movie I was watching was Outbreak.

When I caved and went to that Target, it was admitting failure. You cruise the pharmacy aisle and you might as well just have a thermometer jutting out of your slacked jaw. All around me were specialty medicinal coping products. Cough. Cough and cold. Flu and cough. Flu, cough and herpes. I grabbed a handful of whatever and headed home.

I’m not used to being bedridden and inactive. This bout of sickness is my personal hell. It has crippled me longer than anything before. Because it refuses to relent, I’m left with no choice but to admit my affliction.

There, I said it. Man, feels like I just came out of the closet.

Now that it’s in the open, maybe I can accept treatment. Rest, medicine, rest and more rest. This is not going to be fun. Sooner than later, I need to be working and sweating and sucking up oxygen. I need to be be well so I can feel alive again.