You know what’s fun? Waiting a few years to start watching a great TV show. Then you can cram several seasons worth of viewing into a week (or weekend). I do this all the time — it’s how I watched Charmed, Veronica Mars, the early years of The Simpsons and more. And I recently decided to do this with How I Met Your Mother.

The show had always been on my radar, and I had watched intermittently over the years, but when free time and availability in my Netflix queue opened up at the same time, I decided to take the plunge. And it was totally worth it.

The show is centered around single guy Ted’s (Josh Radnor) search for true love in New York. Along with his best friends Marshall and Lily (the always-hilarious Jason Segel and Buffy/Angel alum Alyson Hannigan, respectively), ex-flame Robin (Cobie Smulders) and his womanizing pal Barney (the legen-wait for it!-dary Neil Patrick Harris), architect Ted struggles through the trials and tribulations of looking for one’s soul mate in the big city. He’s ready to settle down and have kids; unfortunately, he can’t seem to meet a woman who wants the same thing. The show is actually told in reverse; set in 2030, Ted is telling his children the story of how he met their mother, so each episode is part of the story and essentially a flashback.

My husband described the show as Friends 2.0, which is actually pretty accurate: you have the married couple (Marshall and Lily to Friends’ Monica and Chandler), the on-again, off-again friends/couple (Ted and Robin to Friends’ Ross and Rachel) and the happily single man-slut (Barney to Friends’ Joey). HIMYM replaces Central Perk (the Friends coffee shop) with MacLaren’s Bar, and Ted even goes on to become a college professor, much like Ross.

Despite the similarities, HIMYM is definitely its own show, with excellent writing and perfectly crafted performances by all the actors (especially Segel and Harris). Neil Patrick Harris is single-handedly reintroducing the expressions “awesome!” and “legendary” into modern lexicon, and the show has certainly reinvigorated the high-five around my house.

Check out the Season 4 bloopers (but beware, some of the language is NSFW):

I discovered the Breathe Easy Deck while looking for meditations and affirmations to share in my yoga classes. This little deck is perfect – each of the 36 cards contains a theme, such as compassion, meditation, floating, sacred space or balance, as well as an affirmation related to that theme. For example, the “openness” card reads:

I am open.
When we open ourselves up to the truth, we show real faith-and then miracles can happen.
I breathe in the faith that things that I do not know and cannot see at this time will work out for the best. I am filled with receptiveness. I breathe out close-mindedness.

I use these during meditation time in my classes. Since meditation can be challenging, I like to read an affirmation for the class to reflect upon as a way to guide the meditation. These work very nicely!

Ew. This just proves that we should always take time to read ingredient labels. We should know what we’re eating!

The juice in the photo is the Depth Charge, from Daily Juice in Austin, TX.

I enjoy making my own juice. Sometimes (especially in summer, when the fruit is amazing) I make fruit juice, but more often than not I make green juices, with cucumbers, celery, kale, limes, grapes, apples, coconut water and more. I’ve been using my Breville juicer since 2007, and although it has served me well, I’ve been thinking about an upgrade. The Breville is a centrifugal juicer, which means it’s speedy and easy to clean, but you have to drink the juice fast to avoid nutrient loss, and the pulp is pretty wet, which means the juice isn’t being fully extracted. This means I can’t make juice in large batches to save for later, and as the juicer gets older, I’ve noticed that its extraction power seems to be deteriorating. For about a year, I’ve been eyeing the Green Star, which is the gold standard of juicers. It makes really good juice, but is bulky, slow and expensive, so I’ve never taken the plunge. It seems that now I don’t have to. According to awesome raw chef Kristen Suzanne (she really is one of my faves), there is a new juicer on the market that combines the quality of the Green Star with the ease and speed of the Breville. Luckily for me, Kristen compared all three juicers; the videos are posted below. I’m definitely going to start saving for the new Hurom juicer, which looks amazing.

For Kristen’s original post on juicers, click here.