Disappointment in My Generation.

At work today I overheard a mother chastising her son,
"Holden," she said curtly, "you have enough water, get over here now!"

Its always a little awkward to observe parenting so I try to make conversation with her. "So you're a big fan of literature?" I ask. She gives me a blank look. Just stares. "His name" I say, "Holden, like Holden Caulfield?" Her mother comes up and seems surprised. "That name is in a book??"

At this point I just feel dumbfounded. I read The Catcher in the Rye when I was 15 and between a husband, wife and her mother none of them even know that the name of their offspring comes from a great literary character?

I just kind of went about cutting their fabric and said, "well, if he grows up to be a crazy rebel of a teenager I guess now you know where he got it from." And I silently wept inside. Because they looked at me like I was crazy.

Brontesaurus

I've been craving a read through of Wuthering Heights since the snow started falling.  Something about dreary white wasteland just makes me want to get sucked into a miserable novel full of vengeance and suffering. 

I found this video n my friend's facebook and had to share it. 

The power of literary women! 

And for some follow up, here is The Jane Austen Fight Club!


I'm a huge fan of Fight Club, and actually not a gigantic fan of Jane Austen, but this is a clever video.

Ketchup

Yep. I took my own advice and spent some time off of the internet and read a book! Given, it was a graphic novel but it was excellent. Browsing through the local library I found a copy of Persepolis and had to read it. It's a memoir of a woman who grew up in Iran in the 1980's and about her experiences as a girl in a family that was opposed to the changes in the government at the time. It was moving to see how much her family fought for their cause and eventually her parents sent her to finish school in Vienna because they knew that she would only be punished and persecuted more if she stayed in Iran.  It's a beautifully told story and really informative so I'd highly recommend that you check it out. 

15. a photo of you and someone you love

This is me and my mom making total tard faces at my sister's wedding. You can only smile for a pictures and look normal like 500 times in one day. And this was obviously not one of those times. 

 16. a photo of you at the last party you went to

I've been to parties since Halloween, just none of them have been documented. 

 17. a drunk photo of you

Well no drunk pictures of me exist anymore, so this will have to do. Because any normal person in this situation would probably be drunk. I find it HILARIOUS!

I Have An Odd Fear Of Papercuts

I'm returning to my bookish ways and wanting to expand my collection a little. Here are some titles I'd like. My birthday is not for another 4 months but I wouldn't be offended if you wanted to send them to me now.

I think this could be some excellent summer reading, and perhaps I could go thrifting and find some oversized binoculars to aid the boywatching?

 

This one reminds me of childhood. Charly had an Edward Gorey book that I used to read.  It was so gruesome to my nine year old eyes that I tried to hide the fact that I liked it. Perhaps if I had admitted to liking it I would have been introduced to Edgar Allan Poe so much earlier.

Absolutely enough said.

I hope that you are aware that macaroons are the new cupcakes.  Last September I was in San Francisco and I fell in love with all of the little sweet shops in my Uncle's neighborhood of Hayes Valley.  I saved the postcard sized fliers they had on display and I plan to frame them for my kitchen.  My absolute favorite shop is Miette.  They have mail orders Yum! Sounds like a treat that I'll have to indulge in sometime soon!

I found this little goody in an order catalog at work and I want it so badly! I just love birds of all shapes and sizes. There is another book that was shown that I want badly as well, but I can't remember the name or find it anywhere online.  Oh memory, why must you fail me at a moment like this? 

Turning Over New Pages

I've been reconnecting with a lot of old friends in the past few months and I can't begin to describe what a joy it is to have them back. Moving around a lot makes it tricky to keep everyone connected and caught up and its so dissapointing to lose contact with great people.
My good friend Hannah is a talented cake decorator and she always has something delicious lingering, waiting to fall right to our hips. She invited some of us over for cake munching one night and I caught up with Kimberly, anther friend from our days at Royal Crest. She invited me to join an online book club with some of our other friends who have moved away. Isn't that just the greatest idea? I'm usually working on some novel in my "spare" time so now I have people to discuss them with! The first book I'm joining in on is Mitch Albom's Have A Little Faith. It's been ordered from Borders.com and should be here in 3-5 buisness days. Hooray! And who can pass up free shipping? I sure can't. So the movie And Ideal Husband, you know, based on the play by Oscar Wilde, starring Rupert Everett, my secret Victorianesque acting crush, is on it's way too!!!

This Is Why I'm Hot

Or in other words; This is why I've been too busy to write any blog posts.

1. It's my last semester of College
2. I've been ridiculously sick and have missed a lot of class, so I can't exactly be on the computer can I?
3. Mr. Diego, the computer in question, has been malfunctioning and needs to be replaced (want to send me a free computer????)
4. No motivation
5. I've been doing so many projects that there isn't enough time to share anything about them!
6. Our school's production of Macbeth is in full swing and I do makeup backstage several nights a week
7. My ceramics class is in project overload and I'd rather be on a wheel than a laptop
8. I'm not sure that I care about writing everything out for the world to read. Hey world! Want to hear about the guys that I made up to look like 50 year old me?! So exciting I'm sure ;)
9. I'm venturing into home decor projects and having more fun than I expected
10. Remember #1? It's so stressful!!!!!!

So now that the list is out it's time to make a confession and share a few other things.
Confession time: I never did that January challenge. It kicked my trash. I'll blame it on the malfunctioning computer because I never even printed out the score sheet. But I've been given new goals! I'm in a women's weightlifting class with one of my best friends and it has done WONDERS for our triceps! Take that flabby Relief Society arms! So our teacher is this adorable little old man who sings us Michael Buble songs as we bust our guts doing crunches and then tells us we need to be lifting more, more, more!!! (In other words, my shoulders have absolutely no strength and he was disgusted at my wimpyness). So Mr. We-Don't-Actually-Know-His-Name gave us a challenge today: No sugar or fast food for the next month.

The fast food part really won't be hard to tackle since I don't go out much to eat and when I do it's usually because I'm craving a Blizzard from Dairy Queen (Why don't they make Blizzards with nerds candy in them anymore? Those were my cocaine on road trips as a child). The sugar will be harder. Its just something that is so easy slip up on! I just went down to my kitchen cupboard and poured my cinnamon sugar into my roommate's container of it, split up the remaining Twilight Sweethearts that I bought for Valentine's Day (Don't judge. They were cheaper than the normal ones and also really delicious!), and realized that I'm seriously going to have to pay attention to what I eat. Not like this wasn't news to me. Hello you're talking to the girl that is addicted to popcorn and cheese & crackers! (Crunching a Keebler one as we speak...)

So, that's the crap. No Ben and Jerry for me. Sorry guys. I'm seeing someone else. He's Jolly, he's green, and he's larger than the average human. Carrot sticks and raisins here I come.
Can't you just hear my enthusiasm?!!!

Resolute.

Somewhat Simple is a new blog I have just become a huge fan of and I am taking up the new challenge for the month of January. It is based on a point system and ten goals that will be posted next Sunday on the site. I'm never very good at keeping up on my own goals, so being part of a group where I am required to check in weekly and have the opportunity to win prizes would be most beneficial.

I think I'm speaking a little oddly because of an over exposure to British literature and film. Yes, Wuthering Heights is coming along quite nicely I'm now on page 260 of the Penguin Classic version with the Ruben Toledo cover. That is the picture I used on my post a while back and I just realized that I didn't mention anything about that cover. I think it quite stunning and I'll admit that it is probably what was the final motivation in my reading the novel.

I have also found a new podcast that I am infatuated with, Classic Poetry Aloud. The reader of the poems has such a soothing voice that I have taken to falling asleep to the sound of Wilde, Longfellow, and Browning. Sweet dreams to the sound of verse!

Tall, Dark, and Loathsome

"I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me"

Dang that Heathcliff is just getting to me! Last post I was what, 3 chapters in? Well I'm just past halfway now and sucked in more than ever! What an interesting story. The only thing I'd heard from friends was "Why are you wasting your time on that book" "Oh what a downer I couldn't finish it" and "It seemed like things just kept going on and on and it never ended". Well, I don't really pick up on the "Its so slow that I can't keep going" vibe at all. This is the most interesting story I've picked up in a long time. It's unpredictable. All I knew about the book previously was the name Heathcliff. Ok, is this boring. Yes. I should shut up about what I think. I like it. Its unique. Its a slow read so I get to enjoy it for even longer. And Ed Westwick is playing the dark brooding grump in the newest film version. LOOOOOOOOVE him! And he'll be perfect for the part!

I Heart Books

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. Highlighted are the ones I want to read. I'm about three chapters into Wuthering Heights and my plan is to finish it over Christmas break, along with about 3 other books...

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte -
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling – X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - X
6 The Bible – X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte -
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell -
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - X
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - X

Total: 6

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott -
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller -
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare -
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier -
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk -
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger -
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -

Total: 2

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell -
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens -
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky -
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame -

Total: 3

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy -
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens -
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - X
34 Emma - Jane Austen -
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen -
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini -
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden-
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne -X

Total:3

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving-
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery- X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy-
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood -
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan - X

Total: 4

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel - X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert -
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen -
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth -
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon -
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens -
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley -
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon -
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -

Total: 1

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov -
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas-
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac -
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy -
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding -
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie -
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville - X

Total: 2

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens -
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker -
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett -
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -
75 Ulysses - James Joyce - X
76 The Inferno – Dante -X
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -
78 Germinal - Emile Zola -
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray -
80 Possession - AS Byatt –

Total: 2

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell -
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker -
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro -
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert -
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White -
88 Tuesdays With Morrie - Mitch Albom -X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton-

Total: 2

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad -
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks -
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams -
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole -
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute -
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas -
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo -X

Total: 4

Total Total: 29

Click Clack Moo

First day of Winter Semester 2009!

Luckily my roommate Kami has a 7:45 religion class, so we were both up in time to trudge up the slushy hill to the Taylor this morning. I started the day with mission prep and I know it is going to be so great. It's sure going to be a ton of work, but that's what it's all about. Some of the class goals are to memorize D&C 4 verbatim, recognize all 100 scripture mastery verses, memorize the 13 Articles of Faith, and the names and seniority of the 12 Apostles and the First Presidency. I guess that those things aren't going to be impossibly difficult because I'm familiar with everything, but memorization is not one of my strengths! Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are my gap days, meaning there are breaks in between my classes so I can go to the library for short times throughout the day. Obviously I don't really need to be there today or tomorrow since my homework load hasn't really started yet, but I did a lap through the McKay for good measure, you know, see if my regular desk was as effective as it has been in the past. I did get some reading done for my American Lit class, which is a good thing.



My biggest goals for this semester are to have regular personal scripture study and to stay on top of deadlines for assignments.



The third class of the day was Children's Literature. I've been anticipating this class since I signed up for it because I've had the teacher before. Brother Grant is the type of teacher that wants his students to learn for themselves. He says that the biggest accusation made of him is that he is too vague. And yes. I agree. He is a very vague person. But I learned how to harness my creativity and use it for class through his assignments. Our booklist for this class is about 15 children's picture books and novels and for each one that we read for class we are required to create some type of teaching packet. That is the only instruction.

Our intro assignment today was based off of the book Zoom . Each page of the book was cut out, laminated, and lying facedown on the floor in the center of the room. Our instruction was to each choose a page and not show it to anyone else in the class. From there we described our pictures to each other and tried to assemble ourselves into some kind of order. Success!
I've actually done this exact lesson in a different class at the end of the semester so it was interesting to watch the class interaction. Our topic of discussion was perspective. I don't want to give too much description of Zoom because it is so unique and once you know what the connections between the pictures are the activity becomes so obvious. So I can just suggest you go find this book at the library.




Finishing up the class period Brother Grant vaguely reviewed our syllabus for the semester and announced the packet assignment, our first one is to be based on perspective, to "create a powerful vision of possiblity". Click, Clack, Moo Cows That Type was our first assigned reading and we applied our discussion of perspective to it as well. I hope to keep up on the books we're reading and other assignments I work on this semester through blogging. As I've been writing this it has been a great review of my day, and so I guess I can count it as studying notes. Ha ha! Bonus!

Oh, and since I'm music obsessed:
Here is the newest song I'm obsessing over,
Silverstein-Apoligize
And I've got my desktop wallpaper set as quotes from the infamous "Lazy Sunday" so I sing it every time it comes on.

Books, Bronzing, and Beats

Have you ever gone to the library and come out an hour later thouroughly engrossed in the next chapter of your life? Maybe this is just something I experience. As I walked into the young adult section in the Humboldt Library I ran my fingers over the books on display. They stopped on a light blue binding and I slid out the volume to see the cover.

You see, I've got two views on the "don't judge a book by its cover" rule. I do judge books because sometimes the picture shows something I'm really just not interested in. In fact, when I worked at Borders last year I was not interested in most of the books I shelved and sold. But some hooked me with their covers. But many books have different covers based on print editions and publishing houses. If we're going with good old Harry Potter, I'm completely hooked by Mary GrandPre's illustrations but the British Edition doesn't look remotely Hogwarts to me.

The story inside is the same, but I'm prejudiced by the artwork.

That was a long side note, back to yesterday at the library...

Here's the cover:

And let me tell you, I'm not into baseball. Not in the slightest. Something was calling to me out of this book though and I couldn't resist taking a deeper look. I opened the front cover and I was charmed by the witty banter of the flap copy (the summary of the story as I learned from this book's flap copy). I pulled back a hard wooden chair at a table in the room and turned to the first page. An hour later I managed to pull myself out of the binding, 100 pages in already! I'm still working on it and I don't really want the story to have an end. The writing is so personable that I feel like I really know the characters. I've laughed out loud several times, which can be embarrassing when you're in the break room at work... Read it. And no I won't give you a summary because I wasn't given one when I began reading. I just jumped in with both, um...eyes.

What are some new things going on in the life of Elle? I've been making progress on my summer tan while working odd shifts and I'll let you know my secret:

That's right, I'm a fake tanner now. And I love it! My little routine begins with exfoliation. Take a small handfull of epsom salt, pour a little baby oil in so it's just saturated and rub into your arms/legs/feet in a slow circular motion. Follow up by shaving, but instead of using shaving cream or gel use conditioner! I know it's the bottle that always runs out first, but maybe it's time to invest in a bottle just for your legs. Because it's totally worth it. After you're completely exfoliated and smooth, dry off and pull on an old pair of basketball shorts. The bottle of tanning lotion recommends putting a thick creamy lotion on your dry spots like knees and elbows, but if you've just exfoliated with baby oil you don't need to, in fact the process works better if you don't. Now that all the prep work is done it's time to do the real damage! Only it's not damaging because there's no UV involved! The first time you tan use just a thin application to see how it reacts with your skin. Work the lotion into your skin in a circular motion and make sure that you coverd everything evenly. Don't forget to jump right up and wash those hands of yours though, or they will turn orange! And no one likes Oompa Loopma hands! The lotion takes a little while to set into your skin and a full 4 hours for the color to develop. I've done it right before bed, so I don't know if it rubs off during the night, but my white sheets are still pristine, so don't worry about that. This lotion isn't a gradual tan, but it can be used as one. I haven't used this product on my face and it isn't made for that, but I'm sure it would work. Just mix it into some of your face lotion to dilute the pigment. Good luck bronzing baby!

Since I'm a music nerd I have to add a new favorite song to the page:

I also have to add that I'm almost done learning "Anyone Else But You" by The Moldy Peaches on guitar. It's G and C chords for those of you that play along. And If I can learn it just by knowing the chords anyone can! Oh Juno, you've started a revolution.

Oh and p.s. Note the new items in the shop! Finally it's a store and not just one bag!