FROM: STELLA

TO: LAURA

1. When Laura and I first moved to LA ~8 years ago, there wasn’t a single Dunkin’ Donuts anywhere in the state. Having moved from Boston, the DD capital of the world, we greatly missed the chain. Slowly they started appearing and we made it our mission to go to each new opening. I was thrilled to see this billboard in Encino boasting that we now have 50+ locations in LA! 
2. I’ve been obsessed with “getting steps” and reaching that 10k a day goal for several years now. I go through different phases of how obsessed I am with getting them and usually drive my husband crazy when I get on a streak of a few days in a row and want to take midnight walks to keep it going. He sent me this article about the health benefits of walking more and how many steps you actually need. It was a fun read.
3. I loved this article about using spreadsheets to track happiness. I definitely live by the there-is-a-google-doc-for-everything motto.
4. I stumbled upon this Amazon page dedicated to signing up for free samples and am very excited to see if anything comes of it. I love getting free things in the mail!
5. I enjoyed watching this tasty video about kitchen hacks while baking. I am a free form cook (don’t really measure or use recipes….) so baking is always hard for me. I think this list of tricks will help me out down the road when I run into trouble.

FROM: LAURA

TO: STELLA

1. My little sister graduates from high school this weekend and I couldn’t be more excited for her (and also I couldn’t feel more old??). She is an amazing student and made it through all four years without missing or skipping a single class! Definite nerd status, but an accomplishment I’m pretty impressed by. As part of her graduation gift I’m starting a Wealthfront account for her to start the compound interest enthusiasm early! I wish I had had a bit more experience with personal finance when I graduated college and entered “the real world,” so hoping to pass on some tips while she’s still young.
2. My husband and I are taking our first trip with Ernie next week! We’re keeping it relatively close and short, heading to La Quinta thanks to a great TravelZoo deal we found. There are 41 pools on the property, and I’m not sure I want to take our 1-month old in the water, but just in case the urge arises I’m prepared with these swimmies.
3. Stack Overflow is a resource I use for my job a lot; it’s a question and answer-style forum for programmers to share code and ask and answer questions related to code, software, etc. I laughed a lot at this question and its answers by a bunch of typical engineers: How to pair socks from a pile efficiently?
4. Now that I’m feeling mostly recovered, we’ve been going on lots of family walks which I’m very much enjoying as a way to get out of the house! We got this Lille carrier as a hand-me-down and I’m so psyched we did, it’s very comfortable and a lovely way to bring our little Beep along 🙂