Month: September 2012

adventures
18 Sep 2012

the best of summer 2012

Despite what I might have portrayed here, this summer wasn’t all jobs & stress & retail. I did have a few moments of summer fun. I even put on my swimsuit once! Here are some of the highlights:

My close and semi-extended family descending upon Boston for my graduation.

My Favorite Darling Roommate coming to visit.

(Please guess which two ladies in this picture went to an open bar wedding the previous night!)

That day I went to a job interview, then laid on the beach and ate Cheet-os.

Lantern festival picnic in the Forest Hills Cemetery.

Fancy rooftop risotto & scallops & sangria at Daedalus.

Watching my sisters get married while we shopped for wedding venues.

All-terrain backyard urban croquet.

And last but not least…

A multitude of summer sunsets in Boston.

Lucky for me, the fall sunsets are pretty great, too.

goals
17 Sep 2012

weekly: week thirty-seven

September 9 – September 15

This week, The Boy bought his first power tool – a 30 dollar drill. He has now drilled holes in a number of pieces of furniture and in many walls happily, and offered to make me a bookshelf.

I had a similarly adult transformation: I bought my first wine glasses. Those of you who have known my longstanding proclivity to drink wine from cups – plastic, if you have it – realize what a monumental five dollar purchase this was!

However, I decided that tomorrow will be my first day of the Whole30 challenge, and my wine glasses will remain unfilled for the next thirty days. This nutritional mind-body transformation better be good… now excuse me, I need to go hard-boil some eggs.

Reading:

Listening To:

  • Tom Waits – The Mule Variations
  • The Last Five Years
  • The sound of holes being drilled

Watching:

  • Still auditioning Up All Night
  • Daily episodes of “Liberal Propaganda” – The Boy’s choice of The Daily Show, Bill Maher, Colbert Report, or the Rachel Maddow Show.
  • It stands to note that I voluntarily watched a football game this week. In a bar.
  • An episode of Breaking Bad. We are also auditioning LOST replacement shows…
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adventures
13 Sep 2012

doing fun things (in new england)

I am finding it a bit hard to believe that I have been a New England resident for three years now. As my longtime friends know, I am here because of school, not because I have a penchant for colonial history, skiing, or foliage. I’ve been working, studying, and being poor. I haven’t spent my weekends crisscrossing state lines, haven’t stayed a single night in a bed and breakfast.

It all seems like a bit of a shame, now. I don’t have to love New England to at least drive around a little. An old friend of The Boy’s moved to Boston a year after we did, along with his lovely girlfriend. They seem to rent a Zipcar every two days or so to take a trip out of town. We invited them over to our apartment a few weeks back and they decline; they’d already planned a trip to Vermont.

The Boy is even more skeptical of New England than I am. “What, exactly, is so great about Vermont?” he asked.

Our friend was livid. “Breweries! And vineyards! And the Ben & Jerry’s factory! And covered bridges!”

Now that I have weekends and a little bit of gas money, I’d like to see me some covered bridges.

Here is a short list of fun things I’d like to do in New England in the near future:

  • Go to the beach on Cape Cod. I should probably get started on this one being that it’s already September.
  • Take a hike on a pretty mountain
  • Live out my lifelong, Summer Sisters inspired dream of visiting Martha’s Vineyard.
  • Pick some seasonal fruit. Okay, I did this once, but it was fun!! And so many delicious apples!
  • The Eric Carle Museum of Picturebook Art. This was, surprisingly, The Boy’s idea. I am just a bit ashamed I haven’t been yet… maybe swing by Northampton while we are in the area?
  • Something fun in Salem. We did the Salem Witch “museum” on a rainy  vacation once but didn’t really have a chance to take in the town at all, and now we have some friends who live there who we can visit!
  • Eat a Lobster Roll in Maine.
  • Take a trip to Providence. After reading The Marriage Plot, I’d like to at least take a look at Brown’s campus…
  • Look at some freaking foliage already.

me and this tree

book reviews
12 Sep 2012

How Fiction Works by James Wood

Every week, I make a little note in my planner to Write a Book Review. However, this implies that I should have, each week, read a book that I would like to review.

I am not reading as much or as often as I should, so here I am, Writing a Book Review… of a book I didn’t read.

Granted, it’s not really a review. My non-review will be brief and reflect only the material I have read, and despite my misgivings, I might continue to read it.

You see, it all started on the green line, a fresh new library book in my bag calling my name (see also: why I can’t finish reading a book). A few pages into James Wood’s How Fiction Works and I was smitten. Writing instruction merged with pop-literary criticism, emphasis on structure? Oh, baby, oh baby. And Wood writes in these intoxicating little idea bits, every few paragraphs numbered, clearly distinguishing between ideas. This is all the pleasure of studying literature without any of the parts that hurt your brain.

Still on the green line. Wood is discussing the many advantages of free direct discourse, summoning memories of creative writing classes past, and his example on page 12? Make Way For Ducklings. Children’s lit being acknowledged in a lit crit book for mainstream adult audiences. I am basically making out with this book at this point. Fellow train passengers are looking at me strangely.

Then, page 13 happens:

“What happens, though, when a more serious writer wants to open a very small gap between character and author?”

Really? Really!?

I hang out with so many kid lit champions that I sometimes forget how easily this genre that I love can be dismissed. Boo on you, Wood, for writing this, boo on any FSG editors who let this completely superfluous phrase that adds nothing to Wood’s larger argument to remain on the page.

And boo for me for submitting to the temptation of something shiny when I could have cracked open one of the other books in my bag. Perks of Being a Wallflower or Dying to Know You.

Kid stuff.

File this post under: How A Children’s Lit Degree Destroys Everything You Love. Ask me sometime about how I wrote 4 papers on The Giver in 9 months…

assorted media
11 Sep 2012

television, television

So, we have cable again. They offered us a good package, basically the same price for internet+cable as just-internet. The boy can’t resist sports, and I like to think that I am master of my technology and not the other way around.

This is going to sound weird, but I think a lot about what I want my future-non-existent-IAMNOTPREGNANT children would think of my lifestyle. Who wants a mom who spends her 90% of her hours watching TV/on a smartphone/on her laptop/playing video games? I try to cultivate non-screen habits whenever I can.

However, I love a lot of TV with the same love I reserve for books. It’s a medium that, when done well, can provide some complex storytelling. And I like staying relatively current with pop culture. I don’t like pushing my fingers in my ears whenever anyone mentions Mad Men while I am waiting for the latest season to show up on DVD (please don’t tell me anything about Mad Men, please please please).

Also, from a parenting standpoint, I LOVED TV as a child, watched a lot of it, and while I probably could have been cultivating better habits and skills, I feel really fondly toward many of my childhood favorites. Maybe my future-kid considerations are misguided.

Maybe I’ll do this on-off-on-off thing for the rest of my life. Enjoy it for awhile, then get rid of it. Catch up for a year, then do without.

For now, I am doing the following:

1) Catching up on shows I started watching in the Fall but had to quit

I’m currently taking second auditions for shows I DVR’ed from September to January. Up All Night, 2 Broke Girls, Suburgatory, The New Girl, Hart of Dixie (goddaaaamn I was watching a lot of shows…) Whatever is on the Season Catch-up list, I’ll give another shot. If not, then goodbye old shows.

2) Watching some new summer shows I seem to have missed out on.

So far, Bunheads has won me over. I’ve heard it gets questionable/terrible, but I’m not really sure how I could hate a show that includes ballet routines set to Tom Waits songs. Don’t ruin it for me.

3) Abusing my year’s worth of HBO and Showtime

When you have premium channels, you must take advantage. My recent poison? HBO’s Girls. Which I watched as it came out…. but  with OnDemand I ran through the first season again in less than a week. I regret nothing. I want to start again, but I should probably do something more mature like starting The Wire.

 

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life maintenance
10 Sep 2012

2012: week thirty-six

September 2 – September 8

I wish I could say I spent all week unpacking, rearranging furniture, making trips to IKEA, and otherwise settling in to this new home. However, my horrible paint job has yet to be taken care of, so my furniture must remain a few feet from the wall and my boxes full of pictures and other tchotckey-things must remain unpacked and in the way.

The good news? My subtle persuasion skills saved me from another year’s worth of printer-paper-white walls. Hello, “Navajo white.” The boy called it “vanilla ice cream,” which I think is a decent assessment. Not quite as subtle as I’d like, but definitely better than white-white-white.

The bad news? They are not done yet. I am in apartment purgatory. My picture frames remain unhung. My (free from the curb) dresser broke during the move and I am dressing myself out of cardboard boxes again.

The best news?

Peach has become brave enough to hang out in the living room, even with all the scary street noise outside the windows.

I cooked a handful of simple meals in my awkwardly arranged, full-of-boxes kitchen.

My walls are Vanilla Ice Cream.

I squirreled away a $100 giftcard to spend at IKEA next weekend.

On Friday, we sat together on the couch and had a conversation about ordering The Same Dish from The Same Restaurant for dinner, and the phrase, “Well, we can order it because we’ve never had it in THIS apartment.”

The cross-breeze can’t be beat.

I am almost ready to be Jessica again.

Reading:

Listening To:

  • Podcast.podcast.PODCAST.PodCAST. I have a PROBLEM!
  • Tom Waits – The Mule Variations

Watching:

  • HBO OnDemand = life is a Girls marathon. What a good little show.
book lists
08 Sep 2012

reading wishlist: fall 2012 releases

I have been told by children’s lit graduates before me that this would happen, this reading slump, but here I am, still slumping, behind on my yearly reading quota, unable to read anything other than fluffy nonfiction and overly dramatic memoirs.

I am trying to pep up my reading with the excitement of some Brand! New! Fall! Books! Here are eight YA/MG titles, one of which might lure me back into my usual voracious reading habits.

 

Ask the Passengers by A.S. King

I never got around to reading Everyone Sees The Ants, but I think that was because it seemed a bit manly and a bit bizarre. If there are two qualities that might prevent me from reading a book, manly and bizarre might be the most common. I am just a girly realism fan at heart.

However, now King has written a work of girly realism, so I get a tinge more excited. This is a book about a girl who is having trouble with a secret relationship with another girl, which reminds me of one of my favorite reads of 2011, Annie on my Mind.

A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel by Hope Larson

A Wrinkle in Time. Graphic Novel. Hope Larson. That’s really all I have to say… who would NOT want to at least take a gander?

Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor

Okay, so this is probably the only book on this list that I am truly geeked for. Loved Daughter of Smoke and Bone, hope this sequel doesn’t disappoint!

Live Through This by Mindi Scott

All fantasy sequels aside, you might recall that contemporary realism is more my bag. This book is about a girl with a troubled family and a crush on a geeky saxophonist and lots of secrets. Sign me up.

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

I reluctantly enjoyed The Scorpio Races, so I’m allowing the pre-pub buzz for Ms. Stiefvater’s latest to lure me in a bit.

Ten by Gretchen McNeil

After reading Marianna Baer’s Frost, I have been intrigued by the YA horror novel niche. Gretchen McNeil’s Ten is about an illicit parent-free party weekend gone creepy and murderous. I’m hoping it will not be too Christopher Pike-y but still really freaky.

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Well this one doesn’t come out until February, but it’s a first love story (which I love), and LOOK at that cover. Cutest cover ever.

The Wrap-up List by Steven Arntson

Remember those few years in the early 2000’s when every book was about teenagers dying or was told from beyond the grave? Oh wait, that really didn’t stop, ever (or start in the early 2000’s, I guess. Oh YA, you are so depressing sometimes) The Wrap-up List seems like an interesting twist on the theme – in this particular world, death writes you a letter letting you know when he’s going to show up… so what do you decide to do with your final time if you’re 16?

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life maintenance
07 Sep 2012

life as a normal human

I am looking back on the past months, six months, year, three years, and… I can’t figure out what happened. Yes, I did so many great, fun things, got so much experience, and I didn’t go broke, and took amazing classes and met amazing friends I hope to have all my life. I have a job now. I must have did it right.

But a big part of that was putting my head down, muscling through, and other metaphors that mean hard work. More specifically, I worked 40-50 hours a week on top of grad classes, worked seven days a week, skipped vacations and didn’t watch TV and took a lot of ibuprofen.

It wasn’t particularly fun. I wasn’t always sure of my choices, or even aware that I was making choices. Yes, I have a job, but for three years, I wasn’t quite human.

Now, however, I am. I have things like time and energy that I haven’t had for years. And what’s even stranger – when I last had these things, I was living in my parents’ house and making 10 dollars an hour and fretting over my long distance relationship. I have all sorts of adulthood and security, and time.

So what do I make of it?

Right now, it’s a struggle. Everything I’ve been wanting to do, everything I still want to do, everything that is fun and everything that is work, everything everything everything is here, on the table, but what do I do this weekend?

I’m still muddling through this transition, and I am sure to keep you updated.

 

 

book lists
06 Sep 2012

horrifying books

My new job puts a lot of books in my face. Some of them I have never heard of, and some are completely horrifying.

First off, a self-published mystery with a classy, punny title. Does the murderer have allergies? Does the detective have a keen sense of smell that helps solve mysteries? I will never know because I will never read this book.

I think this next picture is a Frankenweiner. Or a Haunted Hotdog. Or something else you would write a children’s series book about. I can’t even remember what book this is from.

A sexy, sexy paranormal romance called…. The Undead In My Bed. Brings up fuzzy feelings of necrophilia.

Soulacoaster: The Diary of Me is not so much horrifying as amazing. But then again, I think Trapped in a Closet is a work of genius, so my taste is obviously questionable.

And last but not least, I present to you the questionable manga series Vampire Cheerleaders

Volume 2: “So my Sister’s a Bitch in Heat.”

That’s all I got, folks, but I think that’s plenty.

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books
05 Sep 2012

the perks of being a wallflower

Anyone else excited about The Perks of Being a Wallflower movie? This is a book I have felt fondly toward since I was a teen, when I saw actual commercials on MTV for this very book. A television commercial, can you believe that? In between Road Rules and Say What Karaoke!

Yes, yes, they will probably ruin it because Movies Ruin All Books. I, however, am skilled in separating books and their movie counterparts. They are what they are.

Plus, Emma Watson? Emma Watson.

I think I will queue up Perks in my reading list. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a good re-read, and I know for a fact that my copy is a lovely, worn-in paperback that I think was withdrawn from the library at one point. Feels good in a purse, laid flat on a table, in my hands.

Now which box of books to open first…

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