Where are my singing woodland creatures when I need them?

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My Weekend

Happy Spring Cleaning Everyone!

A Jumble of Thoughts

While taking a break from paper writing I am trying to sort through the jumble of thoughts I have in my head right now. Please keep in mind that I'm a little over-emotional right now before you choose to judge this free association list.

1. Woke up today and learned about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, sigh.

2. While online trying to find out more about the above I saw a former friend's post about something totally unrelated to earthquakes. I actually commented for once, even though I kept second guessing whether or not I should. This got me thinking of how we once planned to celebrate my graduation from grad school, but for reasons I am not quite sure about we are no longer friends. Realize that this is probably a result of bad friend karma. I was a bad friend to others in the past and now it is coming back to haunt me. I need to take hold of what I am considering my Christmas Carol moment and work to be a better friend from this day forward.

3. In order to distract myself from these thoughts I got to thinking about a project I started planning last night. On twitter a while back I read about how Megan McCafferty was creating a Top 40 Songs list and I remember thinking that would make a great challenge. In preparation for paperpalooza this weekend I was looking over my playlists. I began to ponder what would make my personal top 40.
This is def. one that would make it:



4. While showering I thought about the fact that I liked my two favorite Elvis songs exactly equally. They are Suspicious Minds and In the Ghetto





So imagine my surprise when I then go to watch this week's episode of Harry's Law and I find out that In the Ghetto features heavily into the episode. Each episode so far of Harry's Law has made me tear up, but this one made me outright bawl.

5. So now I am back at step one where I am left wondering why life has to be so hard for some innocent people and while I ponder this my mother is watching the 25th Anniversary concert of Les Miserables and I know I will be crying again because a. come on have you ever seen Les Miserables? and b. This girl has a whole lot o' Eponine in her!

If a Tree Falls in the Forest ....

I'm sure we have all heard that age old question before, well I have a a new question for the technological ages: In the land of a million blogs if you have a blog and nobody reads it, is it still considered a blog?

I vote yes. It is my own fault no one reads what I write here. I haven't told any of my friends about it and I don't post the address anywhere. I sort of enjoy the vague, veiled anonymity of it all. I've always been a paranoid diary writer because I have a younger brother, and I had a roommate who once confessed to reading my journal. I don't know about you, but paranoia stilts my candor! For once I can write about things that I do and do not like, or the things that bother me and not worry about what people are going to say. It is funny that this lesson has been learned in such an actually quite public forum, but hey that's life!

Make Believe or Denial? It's a Fine Line.

I have nine days left until my Capstone project is due and grad school is over, and yes I am nowhere near done. Once I get my diploma I will have two new letters to list on my resume, an additional S41,000 in student loan debt, and absolutely no job prospects. This alone is scary enough, but it joins the jumble of work stress, family stress, and money woes, and enough has finally been enough this week. Fortunately Netflix is trying to distract me. Flipped arrived yesterday.

Flipped by Wendelin Van Draannen is one of the best books I ever read while running the Children's and YA section of a bookstore. Sometimes when you work at a bookstore if you see a book on enough lists you decide you will never read it (see Eat, Pray, Love). Fortunately repeatedly looking at those fuzzy chicks didn't put me off like it did one of my friends. The story is sweet, simple yet complex, and timeless all wrapped into one. It never fails to make me cry and feel hopeful at the same time, because I choose to believe that the ambiguous future ends brightly for Bryce and Juli, probably because I want to believe that the magic of falling in love for the first time can sometimes end happily. Imagine my surprise when I found out last year that Rob Reiner had turned it into a movie! Imagine my dismay when I found out that Flipped wasn't being released anywhere near my area!!

Time got away from me and Flipped came out on video. I put it on my Netflix list, but it kept getting lost in the jumble of other releases that were added to the queue. Until yesterday ...

As I type this the movie is quickly coming to an end. I still do not know if Rob Reiner added a more definite ending to the story, but right now I can definitely say the story is still magical. I'm just left wondering how fine is the line between make believe and denial really?

Closed for Renovations!

So it seems I am really a failure at blog writing. I haven't written a single thing since June because life has been too hectic so I made a New Year's promise to myself that I will start over again come April first when I am officially DONE with grad school :)

Dear Rush, Time Really Doesn't Stand Still No Matter How Much You Want It To!

Spring sprang and major leaks (some might even say floods) appeared in my life. My mom got sicker and between looking after her, housework, homework, actual work, and such I basically forgot what fun was. Don't let the Rush reference fool you, this entry is about books. There hadn't been much recreational reading going on in my life until last week. My recent genre of choice, you may ask? The cozy mystery. I normally go on "cozy" binges during the fall and winter, but they just seemed to fit my mood right now.

Mystery devouring was going along swimmingly, I had read 5 or 6 in a row, when I suddenly had a thought ... "cozy" mysteries are odd if you really take the time to dissect them. In most cases the author creates a charming small town or village that we the readers would love to move to. The people are interesting, the hobbies relaxing, the architecture soothing; all in all the world is indeed cozy ... that is until you remember that the death rate in these towns are HIGH! Come on, think about it, there I was finishing up the newest Seaside Knitters book, Moon Spinners by Sally Goldenbaum, and I found myself thinking that I would move to Sea Harbor in a heartbeat. It has everything I'm looking for in a hometown: a. the ocean, b. a really great LYS (local yarn store to you non knitters out there), c. a bookstore, and d. nice people including single rugged fisherman and single handsome artists/ musicians ... and a lot of murders. Hmmmm. Maybe I need to rethink how I would decorate my fictional Sea Harbor cottage .... or maybe not. It's possible that I could learn to overlook the danger because of all of the above mentioned benefits. Anyway, this realization isn't enough to get me to stop reading "cozies", after all I have a lunch appointment at a little tea shop in Charleston scheduled for tomorrow and it would be bad manners to cancel at this late of a date.

Should've Known Better ...

I tempted fate by complaining about yesterday, Today we discovered our entire basement is flooded. The water that covers the floor is 7 inches deep. How did we find out the basement was flooded you may ask? Well see the power blew in the dining room and half of the kitchen. While on a breaker and fuse hunt in the dark we stepped off of the stairs right into it. Surprise!

so now ,
floods: 1 us: zero
no electricity: 1 1/2 us: zero

Currently I am mainlining Girl Scout cookies and gatherings flashlights and batteries in preparation for the apocalypse.