Eat, Pray, Love

No, I am not writing this post because I have finished this book and am going to share my thoughts - I am writing this post because I STILL haven't finished this book and so I am going to share my thoughts.

This book is taking foreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeever!!!!  I thought it was going to be so good when I started it, but o m g I just can't get excited to read it at all.  I am only finishing it because I refuse to not finish any book I start...except for poor Gulliver's Travels which is TERRIBLE (technically my bookmark is still in it, so I could still finish it...but I won't)

I feel like a few Nicholas Sparks books are in line after this fiasco...

goings on...

I haven't been a very good blogger lately, but here is an update on things I have done in the past few weeks:

#1 best thing to happen in the past few weeks is that my bff Brenna is finally home!  I am so excited that she is here, but a little sad that she is so itching to leave again.  The day she got home Gretchen, Heidi and I made her lunch and some welcome home signs.  It is weird that she has been gone for a year, but it doesn't really feel that way.  Then I went to dinner at her house for two different nights of a "family" open house...it was fun to hang with the P's.  I talked to Bren's sister Brie about her new truffle/card company Blue Calla Kreations - Check her out.  Here is a pic of Brie, Brenna and I at Brenna's welcome home party, which was also super fun!  Oh how I missed my brenny.

Beyond Bren being home I have been working on a few volunteer jobs.  I have been doing a few things for the Alliance for Sustainability to help get ready for the Sustainable Communities Conference coming up on March 12 and 13th.  When I say doing a few things I mean making a lot of phone calls.  I wasn't the best volunteer since if someone didn't answer I called it good and crossed them off my list.  I just hate making calls!  The second set of people I called wasn't so bad, I pumped out 50 calls in 2 hours or so.  Next weekend I will be helping at the conference which is more my style...hands on.

Even though I swore to everyone I would never volunteer for anything again I have already signed up with another group called Great River Greening.  I will be supervising groups of 5-15 people working to remove invasive species and plant natives along the Mississippi River.  I think this will be a little better for me, but we will see.  I have a training on April 10th.

I am also volunteer assistant coaching for the High School Track team this year.  We had a coaches meeting on Friday and it was really fun to catch up with a few old friends and I am really excited to start the season.

On that note...I really need a job!  A paying job.  I keep finding volunteer things I want to help with, but I force myself to forget about them since I am running out of cash real quick.  I have a list of jobs to apply for this week and I WILL have a job by the end of the week.  In this case when I say job I mean anything that pays me.  I am still waiting to hear back from two career jobs, so here is hoping.

Whew, this is a long post.  To speed things up....

I have started reading Eat, Pray, Love.  I have worked out consistently for the last 5 days.  I have a new goal to read one issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine every day until my stack is gone. I have beat Jake in 19 in 21 games of Foosball.  I am still awesome.

The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World

Finished this book by A.J. Jacobs last night.  It took me a while to get through, but it was really good - I laughed out loud almost every page.  The book is about Jacob's reading through the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica.

EB facts: 33,000 pages, 65,000 articles, 9,500 contributors, 24,000 images, 44 million words!

I would highly suggest reading it. 

"I know that everything is connected like a worldwide version of the six-degrees-of-separation game.  I know that history is simultaneously a bloody mess and a collections of feats so inspiring and amazing they make you proud to share the same DNA structure with the rest of humanity.  I know you'd better focus on the good stuff ot your screwed.  I know that the race does not go to the swift, nor the bread to the wise, so you should soak up what enjoyment you can.  I know not to take cinnamon for granted.  I know that morality lies in even the smallest decisions, like whether to pick up and throw away a napkin.  I know that an erythrocyte is a red blood cell, not serum.  I know firsthand the oceanic volume of information in the world..."

The Know-It-All

I am not done with this book yet and am not usually a quote kind of gall, but here is why I love this book - it gives you delightful little tidbits of information...

Liar Paradox
The ancient paradox goes like this: If the sentence "This sentence is not true" is true, then it is not true, and if it is not true, then it is true."  I feel very lucky I am not stoned, because if I had just read this after a bong hit, my head would explode. (This is straight from the book...I do not feel very lucky that I am not stoned...jk jk)

Mann, Horace
In his final speech, the educational reformer told students: "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."  Good wisdom.  Great wisdom even.  I have to remember that.

Those are just two that I read today and remembered to mark.  This book is a slow read...similar to his The Year of Living Biblically...but I  love this book it is funny and informational.

One more factoid for you:
A miranym is the word in between two opposites.  Examples...Convex and Concave, the miranym is flat.  Hot and Cold, the miranym is room temperature.

Interesting, eh?!

Knit Two

Just finished reading Knit Two this morning.  I seriously love these books.  Read it. Now. Then buy a copy of Knit the Season and lend it to me.  Seriously. Now.

True Blood

So I have just finished watching season 2 of True Blood, the HBO series based off the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris.  Seriously, I can't stop thinking about this show - it is stuck in my head day and night and I CANNOT wait until June for season 3 to come out!  I may just have to re-read all of the books to get my fill of Eric. [sigh]

Speaking of Eric...Alexander Skarsgård, the actor who plays him, is from Stockholm, Sweden.  Even more motivation to get into grad school - my fingers are crossed...because that will happen...

Comfort Food

I just finished reading Comfort Food, by Kate Jacobs.  It was a slow to start book, but pretty good from halfway through to the end.  Now I am excited to read Knit Two which is her follow up to Friday Night Knitting Club, which was great!

The View from Mount Joy

Just finished reading this book and I swear to you every Lorna Landvik book is better than the last.  The View from Mount Joy and The Tall Pine Polka are by far my favorites of hers.

This book makes me want to own a grocery store, seriously.

...empty

So I have finished all of the Sookie Stackhouse novels that are available to me and now I don't know what to do with myself...  (I even checked the libraries in the area and all copies of the 9th book are out)  I mean I guess I could start a different book, but what's the point if it doesn't include a dreamy vampire like Eric!

Cross the following off of my 'bucket list' (I hate that phrase):

My car ran out of gas on the way to work yesterday!  Thankfully I was on my way to the gas station, but my car just quite working about 100 feet away from the turn lane.  Something I didn't know...your power steering goes out if the car has no gas...it was definitely a struggle to pull the almost U turn I need to get into the parking lot.  I was able to coast most of the way, but fell short by about 15 feet and had to ask some guy to PUSH ME!  It was mortifying.  And of course I kept babbling like a fool, saying this has never happened to me blah blah blah.

About the only other thing new with me is that I started working at Costco for the holiday season.  I repeat it will only be for the HOLIDAY SEASON!  I will have a 'real' job after that if it kills me...wait, don't they cancel your student loans if you are no longer among the living?  Where is vampire Eric - whoops there I go again fantasizing that I am Sookie.

Also, my grace period is officially up and I have to start paying off my student loans at the end of the month. Ug

Random: did you know that the new standard in typing is to only put one space in between sentences...this could take some getting used to.

Also random:  I NEED to start working out again!  I have put it off because I haven't been able to find the pair of shoes - I am very particular about my running shoes and I haven't found a replacement for my beautiful New Balances yet.  I have bought and returned two pairs already.

Music:  Has everyone heard the new song by Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johansson?  It is great, although I don't like the begining much.  Stream The Current more if you haven't...

3 books, 3 days

So I just read three of the Sookie Stackhouse novels in 3 days.....boy do I need a life.  But, I just love Sookie too much to stop my marathon - I am currently working on book #7, All Together Dead.  My goal is to NOT finish this one today and to actually do some other, more productive things.

[SPOILER ALERT - don't read below if you plan on reading these books!]

As much as I love the Sookie stories, I have to say that Charlaine Harris, however creative she is, is not a very good writer....or maybe she just has a bad editor.  I have found multiple spelling and grammatical errors and the recap of what has happened in previous books seem to contradict what actually happened in those previous books.  I also feel like there are books or parts of the story missing, maybe that is just me.  For example, in Definitely Dead Sookie tells us about her cousin Hadley who was turned vamp and then died again...she remembers the LA Queen coming to her house to tell her this, BUT I never read anything about her cousin becoming a vamp and dying for good in any of the other books.  I am so confused and I feel like C. Harris might be as well.  I think this calls for an intensive study of the series with time lines and pie charts.

Besides all that, I just can't decide who I want Sookie to end up with!  Currently she is dating Quinn, who I love!  But I also love Eric and Sam.  I CANNOT believe Bill!  (I think I am going to play with Gadgets and create a poll for Sookie's love life!  How fun)

Sookie Stackhouse

OH NO KIER! I read these books out of order. Here is the correct order:

1. Dead Until Dark READ
2. Living Dead in Dallas
3. Club Dead READ
4. Dead to the World
5. Dead as a Doornail
6. Definitely Dead
7. All Together Dead
8. From Dead to Worse
9. Dead and Gone
10. A Touch of Dead

I hope you have the rest of these ready for me when you come up at the end of the month....or don't bother showing up!

The post of all posts

(so I haven't updated my blog in a while so this one is going to cover a lot of events)

First of all I am in the process of coming up with a new idea for my blog. I hate the layout and the header (which is why it is gone) and I feel like it lacks direction - even if the direction is my random thoughts I think it has to specify that. I know no one reads this except my mom, Kier, and Nic, but I would still like to pretend people care about what I am writing. I want it to be about what I do everyday obviously bc that is what I do everyday, but I also want to talk about books I am reading, how much life sucks right out of college, how lazy I am at looking for a job which makes life suck right out of college, how confused I am about life, how I overthink every single decision ever (like blog design), how I am training for a marathon, all the things I want to do, and of course about how awesome I am. SO anyways, that is a work in progress and my blog page may change 300 times in the near future, so stay tuned...

So let's see...since my last blog post I made this cake (Root Beer Float Cake, from previous post):

It was delicious. So Kier doesn't kill me I will give her credit for mixing flour, salt, and baking powder together....go you!

I had an exciting weekend that started on Friday with a Date. Christian drove up to Blaine and 1) brought me flowers, 2)brought me out to dinner to Punch Pizza - it was soooo good, I am trying to think of the next reason I can come up with to go there again! and 3)went for a walk with me around Minneapolis (from Punch over the Stone Arch Bridge, to the new Guthrie Park and back). It was freezing out, in the 40's, but I had a sweatshirt and warmed up quickly while walking and thinking about how much I love Minneap. We were going to watch a 'movie on the lawn' (i.e. get a projector, laptop, and blankets to watch a movie on the side of the house) but it was just too cold!

We 'ended' our date early because we had to get up early Saturday morning to head to the first ever Minneapolis Duathlon! Christian had a 5k run, 18 mile bike, and another 5k run ahead of him.

We got up at 6am and CKE raced at 8:05. I saw him and caught a pick at the end of the first 5k and then went to find a spot to see him in the bike portion. Well I brought my book with me and got a little too involved and suddenly heard a 'MADDIE' and turned just in time to see the back of CKE zoom away from me....uggg I couldn't believe it.

Sunday night I went to the State Fair with Heidi and her friends, Mike, Lindsey, and Amanda. We went to go see the Kelly Clarkson/Eric Hutchinson concert. Well, an hour before the show Kelly C canceled due to illness and we were told we could get our money back!! This was the best possible thing to happen - I didn't even want to see her, I was just paying $40 to see the opener Eric Hutchinson. So I got my money back and also got to see my future husband perform and he was great! Best part about it was that although our seats were in the nosebleeds and behind a pole about 2 songs in E Hutch said, much to the security gaurds dismay, "I think this is a free for all tonight so why doesn't everyone just move up here to the front." There was a mad dash to get good seats and we got on the floor, it was AWESOME. After the concert I wanted to wait in line to get a picture, but no one I was with is all that into him so we had to drive home...sad! I went to the state fair and only saw one thing I wanted to (I missed out on my photo opp and seeing The Current booth)

(hmmmmm, I love him - I am certain had I waited in line to take a picture with him he would have immediately fallen in love with me and taken me on tour with him..)

Anyways, to complete my stalker status I left work on Monday afternoon determined to see E Hutch at the Best Buy in Roseville where he was doing a free performance. Only problem was that he performed at 12 and I didn't get off work until 1. By the time I got there he was gone. My future hunsband evaded me yet again...

Back to reality (oh there goes rabbit), I pretty much am on my last few days at work. I am working today and then don't know when I will be working again, definetly not in the next few weeks if ever. I am, however, working on updating my resume and portfolio in hope of getting them finished before the long weekend starts.

Finished reading Julie and Julia. It was good....I thought the way it was written was a little confusing at times, but overall worth reading. I am super excited to see the movie this weekend in Washington!!!







Running.....well I skipped my 18 mile run last weekend. That was the first long run I have skipped - it seemed just a little too long. But I am back on track this week with a 5 mile run out of the way yesterday and a 9 mile run coming up after work tonight. Only worry is that about every 10th step I take it feels like my achilles is going to snap (maybe I should call that thing they call stretching).....so we will see how that goes when I am 5 miles from home....

That is all for now I suppose. I have a smoothie waiting to be drank and omg I almost forgot my delicious Golden Delicious Apple and Cheddar Turnovers with Dried Cranberries. The recipe is out of this months Bon Appetit magazine. They were good and look something like this:

(Now I am going to write good things and bad thing I have done during this post period because I think it would be fun to do)

Negative Nancy's:

• I skipped my 18 mile run and feel guilty
• I still haven't finished my portfolio and Seattle is coming up in 2 weeks
• I am soon to be out of a job

Positive Pedro's:

• I have finished a first draft of my final resume, which is a step in the right find a job direction
• I am going to Washington this weekend!
• I got to see E Hutch perform and am now more in love with him than ever (could this be a negative since now I just want to have his babies even more and am no closer to it being a reality...?)