Business Witch

Today, in honor of Halloween and to protest the fact that our Museum is having its board meeting on this most fantastic of holidays, I'm sitting at work in a business suit and a witch hat. I put it on upon arrival this morning and am not taking it off until I have to get into my car again much much later this evening....and then it'll go back on again for a party, but then I'll be party witch instead of business witch. Much more fun.

Book Catch Up:

1. Blindness - I actually took this one to Europe with me this summer and spent a good bit of bus time reading it. Not my most favorite book, but an interesting exploration of humanity and what might potentially happen to it in the face of a debilitating epidemic. I'm not sure that if the world were struck by sudden blindness people would really react the way that they do in the book, I guess I hope that most people have more goodness in them and more bravery. It seems to take an awful lot for some of the characters to react to some of the terrible things happening to them, but I have never been and hope to never be in situations they find themselves in, so I cannot really say what the normal reaction would be. A note on the structure of the book - there are no quotation marks or paragraph brakes to show when people are speaking so its a little hard to follow at points, you just really need to be paying attention. Oh, and despite its very crappy reviews, I actually thought the movie did a pretty good job at capturing the book. I am not sure that it would be appreciated as much by non-readers of the book though.

2. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Okay, so I'd heard from a few people that this book was fabulous so I decided to give it a try. Honestly, I was so put off by the pretentiousness of the title that I wasn't really into reading. If someone is going to call their work this, it better damn well be good. And....it was alright. I had trouble with the narrator - I wanted to feel sympathy for him because of the loss of his parents and his being left to raise his younger brother, and sometimes I did, but sometimes I just really disliked him. Again perhaps its a problem of never having been in similar situations, but I suspect my reactions to it all would have been significantly different. So maybe it was a difficult read because the narrator and I are at different places on the personality spectrum. Definitely some interesting writing techniques where he weaves fiction into the nonfiction (in ways that you can tell its fiction so it works just fine).

3. The Twilight Series - I really enjoyed this series and would recommend to fans of young adult fiction and/or vampires. I felt a connection to a number of the characters throughout the books and was pleased that the series ended with more than what could have been the obvious conclusion - the main character becoming a vampire - there is a lot more there which is nice. I'm not saying that the book doesn't have its obvious moments - you definitely can see a number of things coming before the characters identify them themselves. Fun and fast, of all three here, my favorite.

I can't remember if there was anything else in there so I guess we are all up to date!

Design Work

I'm feeling a little guilty for not posting in forever, so I thought I'd take a moment at work to post and let you all bask in the glory that is designing fun things like booklets and postcards and all the other weird things I get asked to do. Today's and yesterday's project was turning a very boring two-page text heavy list of PRI facts into a nice little booklet that someone might actually be inclined to read.

Voila -







Just a few more changes to make. Oh and the pics in the document are by Rachel Philipson, J. Casciano, and others. Wheee!

Giving in

Soo....turns out that M wanted to color her hair too....so I gave in and now I'm a kind of red that sometimes appears purply or coppery depending on the light. It's called "rosewood." I probably should have left it, but too late now. It'll wash out in about a month which is good because I'm not sure I'm in love with it.

In other news....um...got a whole lotta nothin. Maybe later!

Saturday

It was beautiful this morning, so after dragging myself out of bed and through the shower, I decided to take a walk down to the lakeshore. It turned out to be a bit chilly sitting around by the water, but it was definitely worth it. At a leisurely pace it takes me round about a half hour to walk down. Wish I could have been on one of those sailboats!

After returning from the lake, I decided that it was project time - I've been itching to dye my hair or rearrange furniture or redecorate. Dyeing the hair is out for now because it really is a nice color right now and I really should stop going random colors because of a seeming need for change. Number two was out because, well, there really isn't any other possible way to arrange the furniture in my apartment because of the placement of doors and windows. So number three it was. This is what I accomplished -

1. All my knitting/crochet in a nice new green bin. Also moved a huge pile of books off the table I'm sitting at to my bookshelf which I opened up a shelf of by putting a bunch of old college stuff into another bin.


2. Scrumptious dinner - Chili Chicken Tacos with a few modifications i.e. keeping most of the spicy out of the recipe. The chicken was cooked in my dutch oven for two hours and it shredded apart superbly! Yum. The Heineken is for another recipe that I'll probably make tomorrow but it only calls for one bottle, so I guess I'll just have to drink the other five - oh darn!

3. Stripped a wall in the main room to ready it for new wall decorations - looks kinda lonely right now... This was accomplished while listening/watching to Fellowship. Wizards and Hobbits and Dwarves, oh my!

4. Also put together this little beauty - collage o' my Europe trip. Yay!

Seriously Fantastic

Home-made convertible Renault Espace:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOIrEyAvot8&NR=1

Thanks, T!

Table for One

Yesterday I actually went to the gym and then came home and cooked for myself. It hasn't been easy to cook for myself lately, its just not as fun to cook and eat alone as it is to do so with other people, so I'm likely to just pop something frozen into the microwave, but I'm trying to do better and last night was a success. I had salmon, potatoes and onion, and green beans. I even had a glass of red wine and dessert - no fat chocolate pudding with peaches. And I stayed within my weight watchers points limit for the day! Pat on the back for myself.

I think I was going to write more, but I got sidetracked (nicely) with an hour long chat with my college bud, M, so I think that is it for tonight - more later!