Be Well-Read: An Update

This is about how I feel like my reading progress is going: s   l   o   w.

I have improved at remembering to read and making more time to do so. But this whole 50 Books in 2010 thing (fancy link in the left sidebar marks my progress!), which should be about a book a week, is progressing s  l  o  w  l  y.

I blame two things.

First, while I'm enjoying The Lord of the Rings, they're not a quick read. When you add lots of pages of tiny-printed complex storyline and my moderate reading pace, things don't get completed quickly. I feel like two weeks to tackle them individually is totally reasonable and I've been going at a pace of two-three weeks each.

Second, where has my time gone?!?!?! I was determined to finish The Return of the King this weekend but Friday I was doing house tasks and procrastinating on them ridiculously. Then Saturday and Sunday it was pretty much one event after another. The reading time I squeezed in was devoted to my church's women's book group book. While that does count toward my overall reading goal, my total books read is not on track at the moment.

But that's okay. As soon as the LOTR is done I'm going to down some quick reads, which should get me back on track before reading some meatier choices.

So while it doesn't seem like it, I'm making progress. I promise!

Random side note: I did not see Valentine's Day this weekend. We went, got tickets, got in line for popcorn...and waited...until I realized that the movie had already started 4 mintues ago! I leave Lee to go find a seat and the only two seats together are in the front row. So we got a refund and will hopefully go see it soonish.

Happy National Poetry Day!

My senior year of college, to procrastinate from writing a paper that was very likely about a poem, I made a list of my Top 10 Favorite Poems. Sadly, I have lost this list, but I will try to recreate it for you now. I think I can recall all the poems, and the 11th poem that I struggled to find a spot for, but the order is a little fuzzy so I've broken it down as well as I can. Now it's more like My 11 Favorite Poems in a Mildly Particular Order.

Cute story before we begin: Lee and I had been dating for a couple weeks and this list came up in conversation. This was when I still had the list. I shared the list with Lee and he read all of them that he could find on the internet! How sweet! This was when I started to suspect he was worth keeping around. ;)


My books are organized alphabetically by author by genre. Here's the poetry section.

1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot
2. One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

Rest of the top tier:

Wild Nights by Emily Dickinson
Love is Not All by Edna St. Vincent Millay
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning by John Donne
My House by Nikki Giovanni

Bottom tier:

Sonnet X from Astrophel and Stella by Sir Phillip Sydney
Sonnet 116 (Let me not to the marriage of true minds...) by Shakespeare
Roma by Sarah Arvio (If you click on the link and click on "Read Excerpt", it's the first one.)
Clear Night by Charles Wright
Song Five (Give Me One Thousand Kisses/Da Mi Basia Mille) by Catullus

Pillow Fabric...Check!

I found the fabric I want to use for my new couch pillows at Hobby Lobby this weekend. Joy!

Of course this leads to a new problem. I had planned on doing your basic square, sew the right sides together and turn it inside out, pillow. But perhaps I should consider some more possibilites? I could add a couple pleats? Or what do you call that trim around the edge that's like a tube? Do you just call it tubing? I don't know, but you can see a sample of it above along the seam of the couch.

I think the more pressing concern of the moment is my overgrown craft corner.

Ooh...someone played with Photoshop Elements!

We just have a one-bedroom apartment and Lee's monster of a computer desk is in our bedroom. The living area is probably large enough to make a craft nook, but since I hope to be moving into a house sooner than later (Does six months to a year classify as "sooner"?), I'm afraid this is it: a corner shelf in the dining room.

I'm wondering if I could find the books on the bottom shelf a new home. (In case you're curious, I organize my books alphabetically by author by genre. The bottom shelf here is religion and travel.) The Christmas Craft-Extravaganza (Coming Soon) will need more space. I might just have to put them on top of one of the other two taller bookshelves, as I've already had to do with Lee's textbooks.

It's Possible!

I always thought to have a secret room in my house that could only be accessed via bookcase, I would have to spend millions on a haunted Victorian mansion, but not so my friends!



I found this on Lifehacker today. Secret bookcase rooms can be accomplished with some Ikea shelves and basic tools. I'm going to go ahead and add "secret bookcase doorway" to Lee's to-do list for the house we don't own.

My 15 Minutes of Fame

On Friday I shared my masterpiece creation: a YouTube video to promote Louisville's Jane Austen Festival. Margaret Sullivan, author of The Jane Austen Handbook (I love it!) and AustenBlog (Love it too!), will be speaking at the event so our regional coordinator e-mailed the video to her and yes my friends, today I was on AustenBlog. (Okay well, my YouTube video, sans any linkage to me, was on AustenBlog, but same difference.)There are no words to describe my joy and sense of accomplishment on this glorious occasion. First, I must thank Jane because she started it all. Next, I must thank my parents for loaning me their video camera. Third, my friends and family who so graciously volunteered their time and talents to giving a voice to our beloved Bennets with only cookies as payment. And of course YouTube and the other Internet wonders that have made this kind of big publicity possible.

Today -- Austenblog.
Tomorrow -- Oprah?

Atleast Two of You Care

How am I doing today? Well, I'm not going to lie, it's been tough. I might have sat alone in the dark and cried a little last night. There might be a rant coming soon. I'll make it brief. So some say the problem is that UK isn't aggressive enough, the players aren't "competitive" enough, well WHO THE HELL COMES TO PLAY AT UK THAT ISN'T COMPETITIVE??!?!??!?!?!?!??!?! WE ARE THE FREAKING GREATEST COLLEGE BASKETBALL PROGRAM EVER!!!!!!!!!! YOU'RE IN IT TO WIN IT OR GO HOME!!!!!!!!! DO THEY REALIZE WHAT JERSEY THEY'RE WEARING?!?!??!?! DO THEY REALIZE THAT THEY GET TO CALL THE MOST SACRED PLACE IN AMERICAN SPORTS "HOME"??!?!?!?!?! DO THEY KNOW THAT WE GET TEARS IN OUR EYES JUST SITTING IN RUPP AND LOOKING AT OUR SEVEN BEAUTIFUL BANNERS?!?!?!??!?!?!? DO THEY EVEN CARE?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??

Moving on to things less depressing...

I have friends (approximately two of them) who like my Bachelor updates! It saves them the trouble of being quite so absorbed by the crazy while still being in the know. So if you go to Ellen's website you can see a clip from her interview with Melissa today where Melissa kind of confirms what I said yesterday, and what others have been saying all along. Melissa said that Jason started pulling away shortly after the finale, perhaps because she wasn't his first choice? Apparently, they broke up shortly after and so she knew that they weren't together when going to the After the Rose but she kept asking Jason if she was going to get blindsided by anything and he said no. She had also repeatedly asked him if he had talked to Molly because she had that feeling you get when your significant other might be cheating on you, and he said no. Although Melissa knows he contacted Molly once to "check up on her." Also, Melissa said that the e-mails that have been going around, that I linked to the other day are real. Hmm...very interesting! Jason and Molly are going to be on Ellen tomorrow so I'm looking forward to that.

I'm feeling very high-tech because I'm going to get my hair trimmed tonight and instead of printing out pictures I sent them to my phone via bluetooth. I don't know why but that makes me feel cool. Hopefully the new 'do will make me feel cool too!

Phantom Glasses

I got glasses in Kindergarten (1988-ish). In the summer of 2004 I had laser eye surgery. Not a fun experience, but worthwhile seeing as I was legally blind without my glasses or contacts. Since the surgery I have enjoyed 20/20 vision. At my last checkup, I learned that my left eye isn't seeing as well as before, but reading glasses are still optional since it's not enough of a vision change for me to notice. Now that I spend 95% of my work day staring at my computer monitor, I think I'm starting to notice. My eyes feel tired more often, I don't know if it's them or what they're looking at. I think I'm kind of mildly excited about it though. I sort of miss my glasses.

In 16 years, glasses became an essential part of my routine. Taking my contacts out and putting my glasses on was an essential part of relaxing after a long day, getting ready for bed, and buckling down to really get serious about homework (I know some of those activities are contradict each other, but that is my nature.). Even after 4 years of a spectacle-free existence, sometimes I still miss them. I don't have a phantom limb, thank God, just phantom glasses.

I also think glasses just fit my bookworm personality. They are the quintessential nerd accessory.