Tuesday, September 20, 2005

A Few Favorites

11:59 p.m. / 23:59

I have read to many books now to have any hope of being able to create a concise favorites list. However, here are a few of my favorites that I haven't had cause to mention here previously.

Jane Eyre / Charlotte Bronte
The Solace of Leaving Early / Haven Kimmel
Sammy's Hill / Kristin Gore
The DaVinci Code / Dan Brown
The Secret Garden / Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe / C. S. Lewis
Faking It / Jennifer Crusie

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Friday, September 16, 2005

Seven Months of Books

9:35 p.m. / 21:35

This was probably more fun for me to put together, than it will be for you to read, but I decided to make a summary list of books I've read (cover-to-cover) since the start of this blog.

Brashares, Ann
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
The Second Summer of the Sisterhood
Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

Cabot, Meg
Boy Meets Girl
Every Boy's Got One*

Crusie, Jennifer
Fast Women
Welcome to Temptation

Dahl, Roald
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Daswani, Kavita
For Matrimonial Purposes
The Village Bride of Beverly Hills

Evanovich, Janet
Eleven on Top

Fielding, Helen
Bridget Jones' Diary

Hornby, Nick
About a Boy
A Long Way Down

Lynch, Sarah-Kate
Blessed Are the Cheesemakers

Maxted, Anna
Running in Heels

McCullers, Carson
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Rowling, J. K.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince



*It seems I failed to mention having actually read this one before now.

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Thursday, September 15, 2005

Little Known Fact: I Love Organization!

5:55 p.m. / 17:55

But nobody knows that. Nobody knows that, because my stuff is always in a state of disaster. I was sitting here thinking about how I need to be cleaning off my desk. Here is a list of just ten of the many items that belong somewhere that is not my desk:

my wall calendar
gum wrappers
books
a bottle of vitamin C
package of butter cookies (empty)
mail addressed to a student organization I'm no longer president of
the empty box my Wireless-G PCI Adapter came in
my college diploma
sale stickers removed from book covers
earrings

Let me see if I can make sense of this for you. I love to be organized, but the way organization works in my mind is exhausting and time-consuming. My first problem is I don't like to start organizing, unless I am going to finish organizing. I tend to put off cleaning off the desk until I can also pick up the floor, etc. My second problem is once I'm organized, I cannot seem to form habits that keep me organized. Everything becomes a mess again in a rather brief period of time. I've never really understood how that happens; I can never remember the transformation from clean space to messy space.

On the right day, in the right mood, I can get such a thrill from organizing (organizing pretty much anything), that really it's almost kind of sick. Alphabetizing is fun! Color-coding is like a game! It feels so good to dump stuff in the trash!

Most days, though, I live with really random piles of stuff and equally random boxes of stuff. Oddly, I can usually find anything I'm looking for, but my stuff doesn't look good this way, and it really doesn't feel good to live this way.

So, I checked out two books from the library that I thought might actually help me.

Organizing For Your Brain Type: Finding Your Own Solution to Managing Time, Paper and Stuff by Lanna Nakone

Organizing From the Right Side of the Brain: A Creative Approach to Getting Organized by Lee Silber

I've just realized though, that I've run out of renewals, and still haven't read either book. So, I guess I'm doomed to be disorganized for a while longer. I have just got to clean off this desk, though!

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Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Wake Me Up

4:41 p.m. / 16:41

Sure, my eyes are open, and I'm sitting in front of my computer typing, but I swear I'm actually asleep. My days off have been this way lately, at least when I don't make plans ahead of time. I just sort of sleep-walk through the day in a state of permanant bordem. I read. I check my e-mail. Sometimes I literally fall asleep out of bordem. I think about doing laundry or walking the dog and I get sleepy. Actually, this sounds kind of like depression, but I swear I'm not depressed. I want to go do something, but I don't have much money until Friday, and my friends are busy.

I did get a phone call from a friend trying to entertain herself on a lay-over in Detroit on her way to England. That was nice. Otherwise, I've been hanging out with Merlin (cat).

Monday, September 12, 2005

Live from Campus

12:20 p.m. / 12:20

So, today is the day I'm camping out on campus at the university I just graduated from last May. So far, it's been a nice day. It's definatly weird though. I don't have any classes to go to and I'm not worried about not having read my textbooks last night. And it feels a little lame. I sort of feel like I'm just not supposed to come back and hang around. I mean, I'm supposed to be too busy with my new post-graduate life to be hanging around on campus... but I'm not busy at all, and here I am.

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Have You Heard The Polyphonic Spree?

2:59 a.m. / 02:59

If you haven't heard The Polyphonic Spree, you should. My opinion of them hasn't really solidified yet, but this is a very unique band that's worth being aware of. When you hear them, or better yet, see them (I saw them on DVD), you'll realize they are exactly what their name says-- a polyphonic spree.

If nothing else, their website is awesome (see title link). Normally, I really don't get all that excited about band websites, even for bands I really love, like U2 & The Barenaked Ladies. However, the Polyphonic Spree website is a worth-while experience.

Thursday, September 08, 2005

School-Sick

2:55 p.m. / 14:55

I've been school-sick for almost two weeks now. It feels just like home-sick, except the feeling is caused by not being in school, rather than by not being at home. I knew that as much as I could not wait to graduate from college, there would be things I'd miss. I never thought it would be this bad, though.

I'm serious. I'm actually thinking about taking classes next semester. I probably won't, because of money and other things. Hopefully I'll be over this by then anyway. I'm actually thinking about driving out to my university's campus on Monday, because I have some business to take care of there anyway. I wonder if that will actually make it worse, though, to be there for a day, but not really be a part of it anymore. I keep trying to remind myself that, overall, school never really agreed with me, and that so much of the time I was miserable.

I guess the problem is that even though I've graduated, I still don't really have any career goals. I don't have a clue what I'm really going to do with my life, and I'm not sure how to figure it out. Some days I want to be a librarian. Other days, I want to teach high school social studies. Every now and then, I think about going back for an art degree. Really, any of these would mean going back to school. Is that a coincidence?

In the mean time, I'm working 20 - 24 hours a week at a job that I love, but have outgrown. Oh, yeah, and I live with my parents.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Second Installment of Random Quotations

2:05 a.m. / 02:05

“Feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitolism and become lesbians.”
-- Rev. Pat Robertson



“I have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminest whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.”
--Rebecca West, 1913



"I love to talk. About anything and everything. It's not that I love the sound of my own voice. It's just that talking serves as a safety valve, releasing the pressure cooker my brain becomes when thoughts and ideas start ricocheting around."

-- The ADDed Dimension, by Kate Kelly, Peggy Ramundo and Steven D. Ledingham



"As I lie upon my bed
In the early evening gloom
Impaled on my wall
My eyes can dimly see
The pattern of my life
And the puzzle that is me."

"Patterns" by Simon & Garfunkel

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I've Been Reading Again...

2:00 a.m. / 02:00

I finally finished The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. It is a good book. My only complaint is that very little seemed resolved at the end of the book, and I've got to say I like to see some resolution at the end of a book, once I've come to care about the characters. It is strange to think Carson McCullers was younger than I am when she wrote this book, or at least when she started writing it.

After that, I blew through The Village Bride of Beverly Hills, the second novel by Kavita Daswani. I don't think I enjoyed it as much as For Matrimonial Purposes, but it was still good. I hope that there will be a third novel (and so on) from Daswani.

I'm still working on Harriet the Spy.

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The Odd Appeal of a Labelmaker

1:37 a.m. / 01:37

Why are labelmakers so exciting? Is it just a geek thing, or do more normal, much less geeky people also find themselves in the office supply aisle at Target, nearly drooling and trying to think up an excuse to own a labelmaker? I know I'm not the only one!

Last Friday, I gave in a bought a DYMO LetraTag. It was on clearance! I couldn't help myself! I was just there to buy toothpaste, and a few other equally exciting items, but somehow I wound up in "seasonal", which is currently what remains of back-to-school items. (I'm not sure when labelmakers became major back-to-school supply, but I assume it is related to the maternal instinct to put a child's name on everything said child takes out of the house.)

So far, I've used it to make some address labels, but that's about it. I still have no idea what (if any) real, long-term benefits there are to owning a labelmaker, other than I will no longer be tempted to purchase one. Moreover, now there will be a new temptation: pretty colored tapes to use in my lablemaker. Really, the White Paper, White Plastic & Silver Plastic triple-pack of tape cassettes I bought with the labelmaker on Friday could last me my whole life, so there's no need to be buying any more.

Friday, September 02, 2005

Update (Oh, yes, finally!)

2:45 a.m. / 02:45

First of all, this is bound to be utterly random; I'm warning you now.

Books: I gave up Watermelon for now. I still want to read it, but it was a library book, and I decided to make a specific effort to read books I own for a little while. So, since then I have read For Matrimonial Purposes by Kavita Daswani and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl.

I really enjoyed For Matrimonial Purposes. The culture-clash humor is great. It also has a very satisfying ending.

When I was younger, I really loved Roald Dahl's children's books. I read Matilda and The Witches back then. I'm not really sure if I've out-grown his books, or if having seen both movies based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory left me unable to really enjoy the book.

Since finishing those two books, I've been reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers and Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. I'm enjoying both, but progress has been slow, because I've been watching more television and playing more video games (game boy advance) than usual. Oh, yeah, and even though it was mid-August at the time, I started making Christmas ornaments.

Movies: I went on a cheap DVD buying spree at Best Buy last week. I got The Neverending Story for $9.99, Muppets From Space for $6.99 and What Dreams May Come, also for $6.99.

My Computer: Why did I abandon my blog this most recent time? Just a week and a half after installation, my wireless adapter card stopped working. Ahhhhhhhhhh! I tried everything. A very knowledgeable friend made some suggestions, and I also looked at the tech support website provided by the card's maker-- but nothing worked! As a last, hopeless effort, I plugged the card into a different slot, and that fixed it, finally! Woo-hoo! I'm back online!

Hurricane Katrina: I have family who live on the coast in Mississippi. They're all safe, but their house is damaged. It was such an incredible relief to find out they're okay. Here in Indiana, gas prices have gone way up, thanks to Katrina plowing through such an oil-rich area. The higher prices are a major pain in the rear, but that's the worst of it for us. We still have our lives and our homes. I'm feeling pretty lucky.

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