Hi there, friends!  Yay me; I made the move from Blogger to WordPress and things are feeling pretty fresh over here.

Heads up that I’ll be learning how to use WordPress as we go, so these first few posts will be missing things (like photos) that I normally like to cram in my posts.

Let me start by explaining my chosen title: a girl called ryan.  For those of you I’m meeting for the first time, my name is Ryan.  And I’m a girl.  I like to say that my mom was a pioneer to name me something like “Ryan” in the 80’s when it was still cool for girls to have girl names.  It’s one of the most unique things about me and it’s something that I get commentary on alllllllll the time (“Oh!  I expected you to be a boy!”).

I’ve recently become a resident of Des Moines which is where most of my stories will come from.  A fun fact about Iowa that I find completely fascinating is their dedication to corn.  (You should probably know at this point that I have desperate aspirations to be an urban farmer.)  For example, on Saturday I took a different way to work.  I wanted to get a sandwich and a coffee from Panera and there’s only one “on my way” to work and it’s a town and a half away, in Johnston.  I ended up going the long way around by the DuPont/Pioneer buildings.  Pioneer is the super seed company here and the long way around took me right by their corn test fields.  People, it’s serious business.  I wanted to pull over and check out the buildings where they were, presumably, growing corn in the winter.

In addition to WordPress, we’ll be learning about Des Moines together.  I like to talk about food, so you’ll probably hear about that a lot.  I’m constantly trying to be a runner (we’re going on 11 years now on and off), so you’ll hear about that too.  I have big plans for us, friends.  Oh – and I’m sorry in advance for talking too much about my cat, Remy, but she is pretty much the coolest cat (okay, she’s totally not).

I’m already coming up with some new posts, so you’ll be hearing from me soon.