You are here for life

So I've been keeping myself fairly busy lately...all good things, but things that take up a lot of my time. Work obviously, and yoga, choir and running, so the usual. Plus I'm joining The Singers Anniversary Chorus for Mozart's Coronation Mass on 2/22, the winter session of Asana Junkies is in full swing, my dear friend Lindsey is coming to town this weekend for my birthday, I'll be spending the following weekend in a workshop with Noah Maze (and that's the weekend of the Singers concert), and the weekend after that, Ben and I are road-tripping to Madison. And I'm subbing for Laura the first two Wednesdays in March. Oh and I'm also legit working part-time(ish) for Minnesota Bach Ensemble now, doing marketing/website/event planning shtuff. So you know... in case I didn't have enough going on already.

It does feel like a lot, but it's also helping me to compartmentalize my life more. When I get home from work, I have to TURN OFF work...and turn on whatever else I'm doing (MBE, yoga, choir, what have you). I know I have a tendency to take on too much (as my friends are constantly reminding me), but this time I'm approaching it as a conscious choice. I'm tired of living out of fear - avoiding taking on things I really want because I tell myself I can't or I don't have time. Bullshit. I will make time. You only get one life, and if you don't fill it with the things you love then what is the damn point.
End rant.
I guess this is my version of leaning in.
And I honestly think what will happen is, my vision of where my life is going and what I want to fill that space with will become clearer and eventually some things will start to fall off. It's already started, at least mentally.

Oh hey, also it is really cold here in Minnesota. My dad keeps saying it's "just like the olden days of winter, back when men were men and we walked to school both ways through 80 feet of snow bla bla bla"...ok so obviously those were not his exact words, but you get the general point. That statement is in fact FALSE. This is officially the coldest winter we've had in something like 30 years, so no, every winter did not used to be like this. Turn off your selective memory.

In a related story, here is the view out the window of my office building...delightful:

Welcome to MN, where the people are tall and...
the snowdrifts are even taller

Continuing on with random photos of my life...Ben and I went to Macbeth at MN Opera a couple of weeks ago!

excitement for the scottish...italian...play...opera? thing.

Also, this was in Rice Park. Worth posting, I thought.

And here is me, working from home. These are the days...when anything goes.

Someday, I will forget how to dress professionally and will wear holey jeans into the office..

I've been doing some quality reading lately, as well - John Eliot Gardiner's biography of Bach, and the third installment of The Lunar Chronicles. This is quickly becoming one of my favorite young adult series - basically, it's fairy tales set in the future, in space. Each book adds a new major character, and manages to cleverly re-tell the fairy tale for that character (Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel...and the final volume is Snow White), while still keeping the overarching story rolling and looping the new characters into the existing main cast. Plus, the female protagonists are quite bad-ass: Cinder is a cyborg mechanic who ends up basically leading a revolution, Scarlet is a pilot and Cress is a technology prodigy. Yes, I realize you probably had trouble taking this recommendation seriously after the words "Cinderella is a cyborg mechanic"...or possibly "fairy tales set in the future in space" and yes it sounds totally weird, but I am really loving this series.

(sidebar - one of my yoga friends joined goodreads recently, and after looking at my shelves is accused me of never reading anything light. Clearly he has not seen my extensive shelf of childrens and YA lit.)

Bach was one sassy cantor

Sometimes...you just need this in your life. YA lit FTW.

Also last weekend, I went to Wits for the first time! I sort of describe Wits as...Prairie Home Companion for a younger audience. I've listened to it a bunch on the radio but had never been to a live show before. This installment featured Andy Richter, with musical guest Neko Case. There was a recurring bit with Abe Lincoln's Ghost, Tom Waits and Morrissey doing commercials and it made me legit laugh out loud. Multiple times. Highly recommend.

AND Theoroi got to go backstage! So fun.

Had to take this photo - brick at Wits signed by one of Ben and my favorite bands (Storyhill)

Hmmm OK. Well, I have a 7am call tomorrow so I should probably get some sleep.  Hope you are having a lovely week!!

we are all connected

"In daily life, we are often lost in thought. We get lost in regrets about the past and fears about the future. We get lost in our plans, our anger, and our anxiety. At such moments, we cannot really be here for ourselves. We are not really here for life." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Book of the Week: A Wild Sheep Chase

"Body cells replace themselves every month. Even at this very moment. Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories."

I am a huge Murakami fan. I absolutely recognize that he's not everyone's cup of tea but...if he is your cup of tea call me; we'll talk. This is Murakami's first widely published novel and the fifth one I've read (after Kafka on the Shore, Windup Bird, 1Q84, and the nonfiction What I TalkAbout When I Talk About Running) and I've fallen completely in love with his particular, quirky brand of magical realism. Reading a Murakami novel is like floating around inside someone else's strange and slightly creepy dream. AWSC is part detective novel, part sci-fi, part quest/self-discovery and (and this part I was kind of unprepared for) part horror. 

There's always a sense of the eerie and foreboding in Murakami's novels, but this is the first time he has genuinely FREAKED ME THE F*&% OUT. Ben can vouch for that at one point I yelled AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! and threw my book onto the coffee table like it was a hot potato, because I was so creeped out. Anyway, if you are looking at venturing into the wonderful and weird world of Murakami I would highly recommend A Wild Sheep Chase...although I'd maybe say start out with Kafka on the Shore or Wind up Bird Chronicle (KotS is probably not his best, but it's a good introduction to his style. WBC is maybe his most critically acclaimed novel, but it is a bit more of a committment).

Yay reading!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Randoms, and the joys of stress baking

Please observe the super healthy breakfast I made for myself and Ben on Saturday...and yes, we demolished half of the pan by ourselves in under an hour. It's cool, you don't have to tell me how awesome and impressive we are. We know.

APPLE CRISP! Favorite of fall baking

On Sunday, my mom came over after church/choir and helped us rake leaves in the backyard. There were a LOT of leaves...like, a whole lot. The maple tree on our neighbor's property (the same tree that is infested with carptenter ants that like to invade our attic) drops most of its leaves into our backyard every fall, and we rake and dispose of them. Delightful.

Ben and my mom, hard at work. Don't worry, I was helping too :)

The fruits of our labor

This has been a rough week at work. I don't really want to get into it (also, can't really get into it, nondisclosure and legality blah blah blah) but Monday and Tuesday were especially stressful. Luckily, Monday is was saved by some quiet reading time and an amazing yoga class. Most Mondays I head to my favorite coffee shop and relax with a book and a beverage (this time, mint tea) and then head to my favorite yoga class at 7. Currently I'm reading this book which is fascinating and also terrifying...I'm only about 1/4 of the way through but so far I highly recommend it.

Class was PERFECT and exactly what I needed. I do love to push and challenge myself in my yoga practice, "do the thing that scares you" and whatnot. But there is a time and a place for that, and there is a time and a place for...not that. There are poses that actually do make me feel fear, and I will pretty much only ever do them if forced (visvamitrasana, he full form of vasistasana with the leg up, and upavistha konasana), and also poses that are not scary but are definitely confrontational (urdhva dhanurasana, dhanurasana, pinca mayurasana...so basically backbends) and these are great and beneficial poses. But some days I'm like crap, this entire day has been confrontational; can I just do some hip openers and stretch my hammies and do my favorite arm balances? And on Monday the answer was YES. For the record, this is my favorite pose.

Tea + Book + Yoga = happy times

At some point during the day on Tuesday I consumed five mini Milky Ways in a fit of blind rage and sent Ben some very violent and probably concerning text messages about punching people in the throat. Luckily, I did not punch anyone and instead channelled all of my stress into a batch of ghost cookies which I then decorated with pink sparkles because why not. And I ate them while watching Sleepy Hollow and New Girl, so I immediately felt one billion times better about life.

The products of my rage

Today I worked from home (again! yay!) because I had a coffee meeting in the morning near my house. Since you've all now seen what I look like on a workday when I can't be bothered to put on real people clothes, I figure you're all dying to know what I look like on a normal day at the office. Ta da:

Blazer and Tshirt from H&M
Pants from J Crew
Shoes from Target
And no I'm not wearing socks, my ankles are actually that white
.....

If you're wondering what the heck is that thing in the bottom right hand corner of the above photo, the answer is obviously, a bust of William Shakespeare wearing my blue wig from Halloween. Duh.

Working from home is about 80% less stressful than being in the office sometimes. I get just as much done if not more, but it just feels easier to keep everything in perspective and remember what is really important in life. I think that right now, I need the occasional WFH day for my sanity, and because I have trouble keeping frustration and disbelief from showing in my facial expressions WFH days also keep my eyeballs from freezing permanently into this position:

This is the face I make after 1 hour calls with IT

Book of the Week: Tell the Wolves I'm Home

Maybe all I wanted was for Toby to hear the wolves that lived in the dark forest of my heart. And maybe that’s what it meant. Tell the Wolves I’m Home. Maybe Finn understood everything, as usual. You may as well tell them where you live, because they’ll find you anyway. They always do.



I'm having a tough time giving Tell the Wolves I'm Home a straight assessment. There's no denying that Carol Rifka Brunt's prose is gorgeous and full of little gems of profound wisdom, but ultimately the beauty of her writing wasn't quite enough to make me overlook the flaws in character and story. Still definitely worth a read though.

Book of the Week: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“Monsters come in all shapes and sizes, Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't.”

I never know how to start writing about the books I truly love - the ones that infiltrate the corners of my mind and stay there for days, weeks, months after I've finished them.

I can try to tell you what The Ocean at the End of the Lane is about...at least, I can tell you what it made me think about. This is a book about childhood, memory and loss. How would we live, if we knew what was lurking behind the thin veneer of reality? Would we make different choices if we understood the sacrifices that had been made on our behalf? Is it really easier to forget, to not know these things, than it is to walk through the world with the weight of them on our backs?

This is one of those novels where upon finishing it, I immediately had to start it over again because the ending made me see the beginning in a whole new light. It is poignant and heartbreaking, and fantastically eerie in the way only a Neil Gaiman book can be. There were times when I felt like I was reading a very dark Studio Ghibli film, and I mean that in the best possible way. Plus kittens. KITTENS NEIL REALLY?? Come on.

Anyway. That's all I'll say for now. Read this book.

I'm going to start trying to do this book of the week thing. Is it even a thing? Eh...it is now. I'm making it one. Even if I'm not actually able to finish a book a week (highly likely) I've read a lot of books in my life so I have some serious catching up to do. Book of the Week may be a book I'm currently reading or a book I just finished, or it might be something I read years ago. Whatever strikes my fancy. We'll see where this goes.

Read All the Things

As I'm sure you are aware, I am a huge nerd and I love to read books. I started reading at a very young age, and just didn't stop. I would read while walking down the street (much to the concern of my parents). I read in class (much to the dismay of my teachers, especially when they called on me because they thought I wasn't paying attention and called on me, only to have me spout off a correct answer. I'm not sure my ability to multitask is a good thing necessarily). I would eagerly await the delivery of a new book from our school's Scholastic delivery program (anyone else remember this...?), only to devour it halfway during the ride home from school, and the other half sitting in the stairwell because I couldn't put it down for even one second.

Hence my currently being in three book clubs. Luckily, one of these book clubs (my work book club) keeps picking books I've already read which is fine with me at this point.

Anyway, I came across this reading survey on Tumblr and thought it was fun and that I should fill it out because I love the books.

But first, sidebar.

Did you know that Gillian Anderson was offered the part of Lady Cora Crawley in Downton Abbey? And that she TURNED IT DOWN??!  My heart is so sad you guys. I mean, Elizabeth McGovern is...fine I guess...but how bad ass



...it hurts too much, I can't think about it.

Moving on.

55 Reading Questions

(poached from Tumblr)

1. Favorite childhood book?

• Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede - still one of my favorites actually.  Cimorene is a princess who is tired of being a princess, and runs away to live with dragons. I love how Wrede plays with standard fairytale tropes, and this book was a true inspiration to a girl who would rather have taken barbies on 'safaris' through the backyard than watch them lounge in their dream house all day

2. What are you reading right now?

• The second volume of In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

3. What books do you have on request at the library?

• Tell the Wolves I'm Home has been on request for eeeeeeeeverrrrrrrrrrr.

4. Bad book habit?

• Probably buying too many books and then not having time to read them

5. What do you currently have checked out at the library?

• Nada

6. Do you have an e-reader?

• No. The luddite in me refuses to purchase such things. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of not having to carry several paperbacks with me every time I go on vacation, but I just love having books. I love looking at them on the shelf, flipping through the pages to find passages I underlined. Nope.

7. Do you prefer to read one book at a time, or several at once?

• I definitely prefer one at a time so I can be completely immersed in that world.

8. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog?

• Not sure this question is relevant to me. No, not at all.

9. Least favourite book you read this year (so far)?

• I haven't read anything this year that I disliked.

10. Favorite book you’ve read this year?

• Hmmm...probably Swann's Way actually

11. How often do you read out of your comfort zone?

• Haha good question. My comfort zone is very broad. I love everything from classics, to YA lit, to sci fi, fantasy, contemporary lit and everything in between. The only thing I don't reach for as often is non-fiction, but I wouldn't say that is necessarily because it's outside of my comfort zone, it's just not the first thing I tend to reach for. One of my all-time favorite books is non-fiction.

12. What is your reading comfort zone?

• See above. I honestly don't know that I have one.

13. Can you read on the bus?

• Well, I don't take the bus anymore since it isn't really convenient to home or work. I did take the bus to school when I was in my grad program, and I read on the bus all the time.

14. Favorite place to read?

• On the living room couch, or a coffee shop if I can find a comfy chair.

15. What is your policy on book lending?

• I'll absolutely lend books, but if someone loses it/fails to return it/destroys it then they lose their borrowing privileges. I've never actually had this happen though.

16. Do you ever dog-ear books?

• Not really. I tend to underline more than dog-ear.

17. Do you ever write in the margins of your books?

• All the damn time.

18. Not even with text books?

• See above.

19. What is your favourite language to read in?

• English, which is the only language I speak fluently at the moment. I used to be fairly fluent in German and would read in German at that time, but I've kind of gone lax on my Deutsch skillz.

20. What makes you love a book?

• How drawn into it I get. The beauty of the prose. The depth of the characters. How the book makes me feel. If it can make me feel deeply and it's beautifully written, I'm pretty much in. It's a very visceral thing for me, if I love a book, I love it deeply and despite its flaws.

21. What will inspire you to recommend a book?

• Hmm, this is a tricky one. I actually tend not to recommend books I hold too close to the chest, unless I really trust the person I'm recommending it to. I'm afraid someone will ruin the magic, especially if it's a book that might not be for everyone, or if it's not necessarily the greatest work of literature ever but I love it anyway. I'll usually recommend a book if while reading it, I think 'wow, so-and-so would LOVE this' and it's somewhat independent of my own feelings about the book.

22. Favorite genre?

• All.

23. Genre you rarely read (but wish you did)?

• I kind of wish I had the initative to read more non-fiction.

24. Favourite biography?

• Wagner and Philosophy by Bryan MaGee is fantastic. It's not necessarily a biography, more an exploration of the ways in which philosophy influenced Wagner's work, and how his views changed and developed over time. It also explores Wagner's relationship with Nietzsche which is friggin fascinating.

25. Have you ever read a self-help book?

• Nope

26. Favourite cookbook?

• The ones I go back to over and over are anything by Heidi Swanson, and So Easy by Ellie Krieger. I never thought a book by a FN chef would be one of my favorites, but there are some winners in that book.

27. Most inspirational book you’ve read this year (fiction or non-fiction)?

• Inspirational? Honestly I'm not sure. I've been immersed in BKS Iyengar's Light on Yoga lately, which is pretty damn inspirational actually.

28. Favorite reading snack?

• I don't snack a ton while reading - all I need is a good cup of tea, and maybe a cookie if I'm feeling peckish :)

29. Name a case in which hype ruined your reading experience.

• I hate to say it but, Gone Girl. I heard all these things about how OMGAMAZEBALLS it was, and I expected it to blow me away and it just...didn't. Don't get me wrong, it was very good and I enjoyed it but I wish I'd read it without hearing all the hype, so I could absorb it without expectations.

30. How often do you agree with critics about a book?

• I don't read critical reviews too often. I tend to avoid them until way after I've had time to digest the book.

31. How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews?

• Oh I have absolutely no problem with it. If I dislike something I will be very blunt, but it doesn't really happen that often.

32. If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you chose?

• French - so I could read Proust and Hugo in the original language :)

33. Most intimidating book you’ve ever read?

• I tend not to be intimidated by books. Well, except for really dense philosophy. I was fairly intimidated by Kant when I read him in college.

34. Most intimidating book you’re too nervous to begin?

• Again, I tend not to be intimidated by books.

35. Favorite Poet?

• I'm not a huge poetry person but I do love T.S. Eliot, Walt Whitman and Octavio Paz.

36. How many books do you usually have checked out of the library at any given time?

• One or two

37. How often have you returned books to the library unread?

• Never

38. Favorite fictional character?

• Hermione Granger

39. Favourite fictional villain?

• Iago

40. Books I’m most likely to bring on vacation?

• Well, on my last vacation I brought two fantasy novels by Patrick Rothfuss and 1Q84. On our honeymoon I took Treasure Island, The Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest, Kafka on the Shore, Love in the Time of Cholera and The Toilers of the Sea. So...you know. Anything.

41. The longest I’ve gone without reading.

• haha

42. Name a book that you could/would not finish.

• Then We Came to the End. I just was not feeling it at ALL. You only have so many hours in your life to read, and I don't think there is any point in wasting them on books you don't like. I also refused to finish the Twilight series.

43. What distracts you easily when you’re reading?

• The internet. My cat.

44. Favorite film adaptation of a novel?

• The Lord of the Rings is quite excellent actually. And Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Alan Rickman etc.

45. Most disappointing film adaptation?

• The Time Traveller's Wife. Goddddd it was terrible.

46. The most money I’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?

• I...do not know?

47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?

• Hardly ever. I usually just dive right in.

48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?

• If I get too busy and then forget where I stopped. Or if I'm just really not feeling it and decide my time would be better spent reading something else.

49. Do you like to keep your books organized?

• Yes I keep my books categorized by genre and then alphabetized. Shut up.

50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?

• Keep them if I would ever plan to read them again.

51. Are there any books you’ve been avoiding?

• Not really.

52. Name a book that made you angry.

• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. It was just so whiny, and it's a shame because Dave Eggers is a really great writer (see What is the What). Vomit.

53. A book you didn’t expect to like but did?

• The Casual Vacancy. My expectations were not super high but I really liked it!

54. A book that you expected to like but didn’t?

• Matched by Allie Condie. I really thought it would be a good bit of entertaining, YA dystopian lit but it was pretty bland. Boring characters, story ripped straight from The Giver. Not impressed.

55. Favorite guilt-free, pleasure reading?

• YA fantasy. I've really been loving Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles, Colin Meloy's Wildwood books and the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series by Lani Taylor. I also re-read all of Madeline L'Engle's Time quartet recently, and have been meaning to give The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (see question1) another go-round.

Today in Literature and Paying it Forward

OK so I'm two days late on this one, but on October 8, 1930 one of my favorite books was published - The Waves by Virginia Woolf.  The Waves was Woolf's last major work, and IMO one of her least accessible but most rewarding.  If you thought the stream-of-consiousness...ness.. of To the Lighthouse was frustrating, just give The Waves a shot and then get back to me.  I'll be honest, the first time I picked it up (I think I was probably 21), I went "WTF" and put it down after 20 pages or so.  It took a while for me to appreciate the beauty of this novel but I'm glad I gave it another shot.  Virginia Woolf remains one of my all-time favorite writers.

The original 1931 cover

Read this article from Today in Literature if you're interested :)

...and here's a passage from the end of the novel:

"And in me too the wave rises. It swells; it arches its back. I am aware once more of a new desire, something rising beneath me like the proud horse whose rider first spurs and then pulls him back. What enemy do we now perceive advancing against us, you whom I ride now, as we stand pawing this stretch of pavement? It is death. Death is the enemy. It is death against whom I ride with my spear couched and my hair flying back like a young man's, like Percival's, when he galloped in India. I strike spurs into my horse. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!"




The waves broke on the shore.

And FINALLY, I am getting around to this blog award.  A few months ago, I was honored to receive a Reader Appreciation Award from the lovely Katharina of Katharina's Food adventures and I never passed it on!  Better late than never though, right?  So without further adieu...the reader appreciation award (and accompanying instructions)

The logo!

1. Include the award logo somewhere in your blog.
Done!

2. Answer these 10 questions, below, for fun if you want to.
Done!

3. Nominate 10 to 12 blogs you enjoy. Or you pick the number.
I will probably pick fewer than 10 - and is it cheating to pick some of my real-life friends/family members as recipients?  I'm going to go with no.

4. Pay the love forward: Provide your nominee’s link in your post and comment on their blog to let them know they’ve been included and invited to participate.

5. Pay the love back with gratitude and a link to the blogger(s) who nominated you.
Thank you Katharina!  Your blog is lovely and your creativity in the kitchen is really inspiring.
Link to Katharina's Food Adventures


Les Questions:

1. What is your favorite color?
Deep blue, deep purple, and really dark emerald green.  Most jewel tones actually although you'd never know it from looking at my wardrobe which seems to be composed almost entirely of grey, black, cream/oatmeal, and navy.



2. What is your favorite animal?
Cats!  Sorry Sidney - I love you dude but cats win this category. 




WAT I won?!

3. What is your favorite non-alcoholic drink?

Tea!  Especially herbal tea - I love all of the Yogi Tea varieties but really any herbal is awesome.  Peppermint is my new favorite.

4. Do you prefer Facebook or Twitter?
I like Twitter in theory, but I never use it.  It depends on the context I guess - for keeping up with friends, Facebook.  For baseball, news and other amusements, Twitter.


5. What is your favorite pattern?
I'm a sucker for floral and paisely patterns, especially ones that have an asian feel.  Pour Example:

Awesome Turkish tiles

Awesome Indian Shawl

Wood carved awesomeness from Thailand

6. Do you prefer getting or giving présents?
Definitely giving.  I love giving gifts - choosing presents for my friends and family has always been one of my favorite activities :)


7. What is your favorite number?
I honestly have no idea how to answer this.  I might have to go with five, just because it's purple and I like purple (synesthesia, sorry...)


8. What is your favorite day of the week?
Saturday!  Mostly because it is the one day of the week when I don't have to be anywhere in the morning.  I get to sit around in my pj's with coffee and I dare you to stop me.
9. What is your favorite flower?
I love orchids...but I have difficulty keeping them alive :/

10. What’s your passion?
This sounds really odd and generic but I think I would have to say my passion is learning.  I love reading, I pretty much devour books...I love discovering a new subject and diving into it head on, I love solving puzzles, looking at how everything is interconnected, just getting lost in discovering new things and diving deeper into the things I already know.

And as my husband could probably tell you, I am also passionate in my geeky excitement to immediately share my newfound knowledge with whoever has the bad luck to be sitting next to me at the moment.  This person probably does not care about the influence of Wagner on Nietzsche, but I'm going to tell them all about it and they really have no choice.

...and now, the moment you have all been waiting for since the beginning of never...the awards!

Coco, Melissa, Katie, Lindsey, Meri, Emmy, and Ben

Thanks again to Katharina for passing this on!  Hope you are all having a lovely week.

Resolution

I don't usually make New Year's Resolutions, mostly because I think they're kind of lame.  I'm more a fan of the idea that if you want to change your life, change it now - no need to put it off until Janary 1.  This year, though I did make one.  After three years without any TV at all (aside from Hulu and Netflix streaming), Ben and I decided to order cable when we moved into our new place. 

Even though our original purpose in setting up DirecTV was to make sure we could catch all the Twins games (and how fun was that this year...), we pretty quickly found ourselves turning on the TV and channel surfing whenever we were bored, just to "see what was on." Occasionally we would discover little nuggets like a documentary about Giant Squid, but more often than not we'd just watch a bazillion reruns of something we felt ambivalent about.  Well I've decided to put an end to that.  My New Years Resolution-ish thing is that when I am bored, I'll read instead of turning on the TV.

I LOVE reading - when I was in grade school I got in trouble all the time for reading during class, and my parents were scared I would get hit by a car and die because I often walked down our (busy) street with my nose in a book.

Reading doesn't just mean books - it can mean nerdy magazines, too!



I also realized recently that many of the books I count as my "favorites", I read between the ages of 16 and 20.  Considering how much I've changed in the last 8-10 years, I wondered whether I would still love these books as much now as I did then.  I resolved to re-read all of them, alternating new books with old until I had finished my all-time favorite novels and come to a conclusion as to whether they still belong on the list.  On my mental bedside table are:

- Les Miserables
- Crime and Punishment
- The entire Dealing with Dragons series
- The Poisonwood Bible
- Naked
- The Toilers of the Sea
- Treasure Island

...I'm sure I'll think of more as I continue along.  I didn't add Shalimar the Clown or any of the Harry Potter books because I've read those relatively recently.

I made it through The Toilers of the sea and Treasure Island on the honeymoon, and am in the middle of Crime and Punishment at the moment.  Verdict is...so far, I love these books even more now than I did when I was younger.  I think the perspective of age and having lived in the real world a bit gives them more depth and flavor then they had when I was in college.  Don't get me wrong, I know I'm still young - but the distance from 18 to 28 feels like a million years.


For someone who loves a good novel, I have a lot of non-fiction on my bedside table right now...



Speaking of the Toilers of the Sea, my mom suggested sending my grandma a book for Christmas, I knew right away that this was the one I wanted to send her. My grandma, for better or worse, has always taken a lot of her reading suggestions from me...and by that I mean, she looks at the cover of whatever I'm reading, goes out and buys it for herself, and then calls me a week later to tell me what a weird book it was.  But for some reason she keeps buying books I like.  I can't figure it out.

Shortly before Thanksgiving, my grandma was in a car accident.  She passed out at the wheel which, it turned out, was because her heart was not pumping enough oxygen to her brain and she needed a pacemaker.  My mom flew out to Montana to see her for Thanksgiving, and grandma cancelled her plans to fly here for Christmas because she still wasn't well enough to travel.

Since she missed seeing us at Christmas, my parents decided to fly out for a visit last weekend.  They called on Saturday evening as Ben and I were heading out to dinner, and within five seconds of talking to my grandma on the phone I could tell something wasn't right.  Even after her accident and at Christmas she'd been mentally sharp, but now she sounded like she had no idea what was going on and wasn't really processing what I was saying.  My sister noticed a big difference too, and obviously so did my parents.

My mom was getting increasingly worried so she took her to the doctor on Monday to run a bunch of tests - and they did a CAT scan too, just in case.  Good thing, because the scan came back showing two subdural hematomas.
Luckily they were able to get her into the ICU right away for emergency surgery, but we're not really sure if she'll recover to her usual level of functioning.  Maybe the bleeding was the result of her car accident, maybe not - chronic hematomas can go undetected for weeks, but she also had a CAT scan shortly after her accident that showed nothing.  So really we have no idea.

Anyway, life got busy and I kept forgetting to send her the book. I wish I had, because she could have read it easily in the three weeks since Christmas - and now she might never read it.  My mom and I used to joke about how my grandma would probably live forever.  She beat cancer twice and seemed determined to keep living if for no other reason than to give a big old middle finger to the world.  My grandma is a complicated lady but that doesn't mean I don't love her.

We think we have all this time with people and then suddenly, we realize that maybe we don't.

Happy Halloween!

I can't believe it's been 20 years since the infamous Halloween Blizzard of 1991. I was 8 years old and dressed up as a vending machine (yep - weirdo), which actually turned out to be perfect because if I tucked my arms inside the black-painted cardboard box of my costume, I was completely protected from the elements.

I've never been one to go all-out with the Halloween decorations (Christmas is another story though...) but that doesn't mean we haven't been preparing for this spookiest of days.

Dining Room table, spookified


Reading some scary stories...

Even Sid and Mini are getting into the Halloween spirit. They've been practicing their sneak attacks, although I think both of them could work on subtlety. I think Mini truly believes that letting you know exactly where she's hiding is a great scare tactic, and Sid just doesn't get it at all. But hey, at least they're trying.

Hee hee


Vampire kitteh will eat your face


Boo?

We've also been enjoying lots of Halloween parties and fun times with family - to be recapped later, but for now it's time to get to work so I can get home in time to prep for trick or treaters! Stop by our place - we'll be the ones handing out freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies :) Or, if you have some crazy fear of your children accepting homemade goods from total strangers, we also have Snickers.

OoooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooo....
(That was my best attempt at ghost noises. Deal.)

It's a Beautiful Weekend in the Neighborhood...

This weekend, the weather was absolutely gorgeous and Ben and I found ourselves with a surprisingly small number of scheduled activities. As a result, we had a ridiculously relaxing weekend of hanging out, cooking, watching movies and wandering about in our neighborhood. We walked (almost) everywhere which is part of what I love about where I live - just about everything you could possibly want is walkable.

We kicked off the weekend with a Friday night dinner with my dad at one of our favorite spots. My dad loves italian and lucky for me one of his favorite restaurants, Amore Victoria, is only about a mile away from our place!



The food is delicious (they are very selective in using quality ingredients and make most of their own pasta), and the interior really reminds me of a larger version of the cozy, rustic places I ate at in Assisi, Italy.





My dad and I split our usual - the Fettucini Della Nona, a house-made fettucini with tomato cream sauce and seafood. Sometimes we have trouble finishing it but we must have both been extra hungry because we polished it off, along with a glass of Malbec! After dinner we walked home, stopping for coffee and dessert along the way.

Ben and I had planned on going to yoga on Saturday morning, but fate intervened and gave us a flat tire on the way there. So instead, we spent the late morning doing our grocery shopping - walking to two separate stores to get everything we needed. Groceries are the one thing that is slightly less walkable now that we've moved, but at least walking all over town gave us a great workout! Later that afternoon I did a class on YogaGlo to make up for our AM detour, and in the evening we met up with some yoga friends for a screening of The Heart of Transformation, a documentary about Anusara Yoga.

On Sunday we finally made it to the Linden Hills neighborhood to check out Tilia! We've been meaning to go there for weeks but just hadn't gotten around to it. This was actually supposed to be our first week back at choir, but since we missed Wednesday's rehearsal to see Bon Iver at the Orpheum and Ben didn't feel comfortable performing without having learned any of the music, we opted for brunch instead (sorry choir peeps!).

Please ignore the lipgloss marks and enjoy the cute white dishes

Poached eggs with tomatoes, tarragon, parsley, and parmasean cream

Egg Wreckage

There has been a definite shift over the last few years from chains posturing as "neighbohood restaurants" (I'm looking at you, TGIApplechillisdaysbees...) to actual neighborhood restaurants, and Tilia is a great example of that trend. A truly welcoming, laid-back neighborhood gem serving creative and high-quality food. We will definitely be back.

...and as an added bonus, Tilia also happens to be right next door to one of my favorite childhood haunts - the Wild Rumpus bookstore! I can't even tell you how much I loved this place growing up - every outing to the Wild Rumpus was a special treat.

Remember kids: reading is cool

I really love the following series of photos because they perfectly capture my growing lack of comprehension of, and finally rebellion against, Ben's repeated picture-taking after I asked for "one photo with the little door."

Making a new friend

I spent the rest of the afternoon being quite domestic - blogging while drinking tea, cleaning the bathroom, doing some (minimal) work on thank-you notes (yikes...really need to finish those guys...) and making a batch of Deb's Peach Butter. Savoring the last flavors of summer.





Looks like fall weather is setting in tomorrow - time enjoy the warmth 'cause we probably won't see 80 degrees again until June!