Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

Tomorrow I have to go to make an emergency visit to the dentist. It's not going to be fun and it isn't going to be cheap. Plus side though; I get to sleep in a little on Monday so I can afford to be a little lazy on this chilly, December Sunday.

Currently listening too:

Alexz Johnson - "Skipping Stone"

I can't wait until this EP comes out in January. Until then if you like what you hear you can download "Skipping Stone" for free at www.Alexzjohnson.com.

Currently Watching:

Doctor Who

I'm on episode 4 and aliens have landed in present day London.

 I am seriously doubting the Doctor's ability to tell time accurately.

Currently Reading:

The Great Santa Search by Santa Claus as told to Jeff Guinn

Tis the season to read the Christmas Chronicles. These books never fail to fill me with the Christmas spirit! Reading them also helps me to kick ass whenever my family plays Tis the Season: The Christmas Trivia Game.

Currently Working on:

Finishing up Holiday Presents!

1. A scarf for my co-teacher made out of  Yarn Bee Highland Thistle

 in the Highland Fling Colorway. Side note, I really wish we had a Hobby Lobby here in New Jersey and that Hobby Lobby still sold the Highland Thistle yarn.

 It was one of my favorites!

2. Framing and matting my aunt's present. It isn't as easy to find a collage frame with 5x7 photo openings as I thought it would be. There should be more!

3. Wrapping, wrapping, wrapping.

When lazy time is over it is back to the housework grind.

 I hope everyone else is enjoying their Sundays.

The Black Hole

The dreaded Black Hole. Every knitter hits it, and unfortunately I have hit it with each of my 3 WIPs (two shawls and a blanket). I was seriously hoping to get one shawl finished in time to submit it to a Fall Harvest festival, but no matter how many hours I spent working on it last month I couldn't hit the halfway point. Sacre bleu!

My knitting frustration combined with starting a new job lack of concentration has led me to a reading binge so I haven't gotten any knitting done at all this past week. My knitting bag keeps staring up at me and I keep promising it and the shawl that I will pick them up as soon as I finish my book ... then I pick another book. My two main hobbies (reading and knitting) unfortunately don't work together unless you are listening to audio books. Luckily my library joined ListenNJ this summer and I am finally getting around to try it out. Tomorrow I plan to use my iPod to listen to Jesse Eisenberg reading Holly Black's Red Glove  while I try to knit my way out of the stinking Black Hole!

You Had Me at Cupcake

 My body and brain are ready for it to be Autumn! This means asides from craving apples, cider, crunchy leaves, and crisp weather I am also craving cozy mysteries. Yesterday I wandered over to my local library and perused the New Mystery shelf. There I found Sprinkle with Death and Buttercream Bump Off by Jenn McKinlay ... a mystery series about a cupcake bakery ... with recipes??? Yes please!!!

I got home with my books around 4 o'clock and I had torn through both of them by 10 o'clock. When I finished I turned on my Kindle to see if there were any other books to the series because I didn't want to be left hanging. Turns out the third book in the series, Death By the Dozen, isn't being released until October 4th. I preordered my copy, but however shall I make it through?

 Though the cupcakes sound divine I have to say that the charm of this series extends beyond the wonder of the cupcakes. That being said I am totally trying some of the recipes this weekend. One of them is called Tinkerbell and it is a lemon cupcake with raspberry buttercream frosting and pink sugar topping ... so what if I need to lose the 7 pounds I gained back in Florida last week ... but I digress, back to the stories!

 The main character Mel and her best friends Angie and Tate feel like people I would be friends with. I especially identify with the girls who have each been in love with two of the other characters since they were twelve. This speaks to me. I have been a (mostly secret) torch carrier for the same guy since I was sixteen. Since I've always been a chicken and my love has been unvoiced and unrequited it is nice to see characters who are a. in the same boat and b. in the case of one character the possessor of a happy ending (for now at least). The characters are well written and fun. I just hope they don't fall into the cozy mystery love triangle trap! I really enjoyed Angie's older overprotective brothers (priceless spy mission in Buttercream Bump Off) and Mel, the octogenarian romeo! I would recommend these books to anyone who enjoys Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series or Joanne Fluke's Hannah Swenson series. I liked them so much I wrote a thank you e-mail to the author today which brings my fan letter lifetime total up to five (Kristopher Turner, John Green, Melissa Marr, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, and now Jenn McKinlay in case you were interested).

I Went Overboard!

In celebration of the fact that I could read for fun again, I visited the library the day after I finished grad school. I carefully constructed a list of books that I wanted to read that were available and a list of the books that I wanted to request/ put on hold. Both lists were REALLY long. In addition to going to the library I also belong to Bookswim and I received a new shipment the same day I brought home eight library books. Three days later the phone rang. The library had two books from my list ready and waiting for me. Two more days go by and the phone rings again; now they have four books waiting for me. This cycle has repeated over the last three weeks so I now have 3 BookSwim books and 15 library books at home. The Bookswim books haven't been touched because they don't have a due date and I feel like I am playing Russian Roulette with library due dates. The pile of books is stressing me out! Any time spent not reading feels wrong! So until further notice I will be reading as fast as I possibly can ...

Oh and Book Expo is in a month. I can feel the eye strain already!

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.

You've Got to Be Carefully Taught

I haven't mentioned this yet, but I'm in grad school. The class that I am taking right now is about diversity, prejudice, and discrimination. I have spent the last two days quoting Rodgers & Hammerstein's "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" for various assignments. The message of the song is true. We are shaped by but we learn at home. Lately I have been thinking about one lesson I learned at home more and more ...

I grew up in a very tense household, but unlike other houses, the tension wasn't between my parents but rather, caused by my grandmother. My grandmother lived with us from the time I was one until I was 14. She was a very unhappy woman and she was verbally abusive on a daily basis. Whenever my parents got some extra money together or time off from work they would take my brother and I away on a trip so we could escape. They wanted to us to have happy times. More often than not we ended up at Walt Disney World ... hey if you want to be happy where else should you go but "The Happiest Place on Earth"?, but we would also take crazy drives to D.C., Amish Country, Annapolis, Chincoteague, and Williamsburg. We kept this practice up even after my father lost his high paying job when I was 13. Dark times have followed us for years, and even though it was fiscally irresponsible we continued to travel. These experiences have left me with a few things: 1. An extreme wanderlust and a very long list of places I want to see; 2. a desire to flee to somewhere else for just a little bit whenever the going gets tough; and 3. the belief that it isn't crazy to drive three states over just for lunch.

Right now I am going through one of those times where nothing is going right and I just can't shake the cloud of doom that is hanging over me. I want to flee, because hey, that's what I have been taught to do, but I am a little more responsible. I know I'm broke and I don't want to add to my debt, so instead I stay sad and continue to read about places that I wish I was at instead of here ... and I dream and I dream, and hope that sometime life will be better.